House Hacking: How to Live for Free and Build Wealth in The Background

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode 189er.

Tony:
First, you can increase your income. Increase your passive income or B, you can decrease your expenses. And obviously, you should be attacking both of those at the same time. And house hacking is great because it essentially allows you to do both of those things. You’re able to get additional income by renting out the spaces, but then you’re also decreasing your expenses because your housing expense is being subsidized by someone else. So, house hacking strategy, again, is a really great tool for a lot of our new investors.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr and I am here with my co-host, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, information, and education you need to kick start your real estate investing journey. So, my co-host, Ashley Kehr, before we start, I got to give you some major props for your Boys in the Hood T-shirt. I love when you break that bad boy out. Look, Cuba Gooding, Jr., some young Ice Cube. I love it.

Ashley:
It’s usually this or my Biggie Smalls T-shirt, so I got a couple of them.

Tony:
I know what to get you for your birthday now.

Ashley:
Yeah. So, Tony, what is new with you? Today, we have a little podcast that’s different, but before we get into that, any new developments?

Tony:
Yeah, we’re super busy, as always, but we just opened up investments for our Big Bear hotel, so that’s moving along pretty nicely. So, our first time doing a syndication, so we’re learning a lot along the way. But excited to hopefully closing this thing in the next month or so.

Ashley:
That’s awesome. Congratulations, Tony. It super cool to watch you guys do this.

Tony:
Thanks, Ash. What about you? What’s going on?

Ashley:
I just got back from Seattle last night. I did my 24-hour East Coast to West Coast back to East Coast trip. And my first flip is live, so yes…

Tony:
Congratulations.

Ashley:
… setting to finish that flip, get it staged and put it on the market. It was definitely awesome to go see it all done. It turned out great.

Tony:
That’s amazing. So, what-

Ashley:
Yep. Anyone wants to buy a house, this one’s for sale off to Washington.

Tony:
So, now we’ll go from the Shreveport house to the Seattle house, so-

Ashley:
Oh, God. I hope not.

Tony:
Hope, yeah. Yeah, but once it’s all said-

Ashley:
I hope by the next time we record…

Tony:
It’s already sold.

Ashley:
… it’s already sold. Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah. But once it’s all said and done, Ash, we should do a Rookie reply. That way you can walk us through the numbers and break it down for us and let us know how amazing that first flip was.

Ashley:
Yeah, definitely. And I actually documented the whole journey, like everything that I learned and the whole process, so it’s actually going to be on YouTube. James Dainard, who is one of the podcast hosts for BiggerPockets, newest podcast on the market, he’s the one that I partnered with. And we filmed the whole thing, so that will be available on his YouTube, Project RE.

Tony:
Love it.

Ashley:
So, if you guys want to check that out. Well, today, we have a little different style format of a podcast. We do not have a guest today. Today, we are just going to talk to you guys about house hacking. And this is the real estate strategy that I wish I knew about when I was younger or when I was starting out in real estate, because I think it is a great way to actually build wealth.

Tony:
And you took the words out of my mouth, Ash, where like so many people in our audience are looking to get started. And I think with all of this market uncertainty and people not knowing where things are headed, house hacking is one of the lower risk ways, I think, to get started. You can get better debt. It’s a house that that you know you’re going to live there, so you can subsidize some of the cost of owning that property. So, there’s a lot of reasons to believe that house hacking is a great strategy for a lot of our rookie investors.

Ashley:
So, today, we’re going to jump in to this format and I highly recommend, if you guys are listening to this, actually go to the YouTube channel and check it out, too, because we’re going to have some things that we can show you guys. As we walk through, we’re going to give you an example of how to use the BiggerPockets calculator reports. There’s just so much that BiggerPockets has to offer. And we’re going to try and intertwine that with some of the information we’re going to tell you about house hacking today.

Tony:
Awesome. So, should we start Ashley about why. We touched on it a little bit, but why is house hacking such a great strategy for all of our rookie investors? So, I’ll throw out some of my ideas and maybe you can finish off with what’s new for you. But first is that, everyone’s biggest expense or most people’s biggest expense is what they pay for their housing. What they’re spending on their rents, on their mortgage, that’s usually the biggest line item in most people’s budgets. And obviously, the goal for a lot of our listeners is to achieve financial independence. It’s to be able to have enough money coming in from their investments to cover all of their monthly expenses.
And you can tackle that by doing two things. First, you can increase your income. Increase your passive income or B, you can decrease your expenses. And obviously, you should be attacking both of those at the same time. And house hacking is great because it essentially allows you to do both of those things. You’re able to get additional income by renting out the spaces, but then you’re also decreasing your expenses because your housing expense is being subsidized by someone else. So, the house hacking strategy, again, is a really great tool for a lot of our new investors.

Ashley:
Yeah. For my sister, she started out house hacking and she pays $50 per month towards her mortgage to live in a two-bedroom apartment that normally to be rented would go for $1,000 per month. So, I think there’s just such a great advantage to get into this. But it’s also, you have an advantage. You have an opportunity compared to an investor who’s going to purchase a property because you can get way better interest rate. You can sometimes offer more because you are getting better terms on your financing, and you’re having to put less money down on the house hack.

Tony:
And I guess, Ash, before we go too far down this rabbit hole, maybe we should define what house hacking is for all of our listeners that haven’t heard that phrase yet. So, house hacking is a form of investing in real estate where as opposed to buying a house somewhere else, whether it’s somewhere down the road in another city, another town, another state you’re actually buying a property that you’re going to live in with the intention of renting out the extra space that’s in that property. And you can house hack in a couple of different ways.
You can house hack by maybe buying a big five-bedroom house. You live in one bedroom, you rent out the other four bedrooms. You can house hack by buying a duplex where you live in one unit and then you rent out the other unit. You can house hack by renting out your basement. I’ve seen people build ADUs in the back of their house. So, there’s so many different ways. But the purpose or I guess, the definition of a house hack is you live on the property yourself and then you rent out the additional space to generate some additional income.

Ashley:
So, let’s go into just recap and give you guys an idea of what we’re actually going to talk about today, about house hacking. And we’re going to break down four steps to help you learn how to house hack, to get you into house hacking, and to build your way towards financial freedom. We’ll bring up three of the biggest mistakes that rookies make when they decide to house hack. And then we’re going to show you guys some tools that you can use to get started and run your new business as a landlord.

Tony:
So, we talked about this a little bit already, but the goal of so many people that are listening to this podcast is to achieve financial freedom and financial freedom has different meanings for different people. But in my mind, financial freedom means that you no longer have to work a day job because the income from your investments is enough to cover all of your expenses. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re flying private jets and you got all this money where you can just kick back on the beach every day. But it means that you have the option of not going into work, because the money that you’re getting from your investments covers all of your expenses.
So, that’s my definition. Ash, I don’t know. Is yours different from that or are you pretty close to that definition as well?

Ashley:
Yeah, I would say pretty close. And if you guys are listening to this, I want you to get amped up and excited about financial freedom. Think about that. Financial freedom, that means you get to do whatever you want because you don’t have to worry about the stress of your finances. Think about things that may be stressful in your life and I bet a lot of those things are tied to money. Whether it’s like, “Oh, I can’t take a day off of work because I have to work to make money,” or whether it’s, “My child can’t play the sport because I can’t afford to pay for the fees for this sport for them to play,” or maybe it’s just your parents. It stresses you out because they need financial help and you can’t afford to help them.
So, all these different stressors in your life and even your relationship. Do you fight with your spouse or your significant other about money? All these different things. There’s a lot of things that tie back to money. And there’s the saying that money can’t buy you happiness, but there’s also the song that money can buy you a boat. But I think that there really… yes, it’s not going to guarantee you happiness, but I think having that financial freedom can get rid of a lot of stressors in your life.
And having financial freedom doesn’t exactly mean that you’re a millionaire, you’re a billionaire. Financial freedom can just mean that you have passive income coming in that covers your expenses. You don’t have to have this huge luscious lifestyle. You can be financially free and just live a normal life. Live in a three-bed, two-bath ranch house on a farm and live life having the freedom to do what you want and when you want.

Tony:
Ashley, something that you’ve mentioned before in the podcast that I always thought was super insightful was you measured your happiness by your ability to be spontaneous. And I love that, where it’s like if you want to take a 24-hour random trip down to Seattle or pick up the bags and go down to Florida for the weekend, you can do that without worrying about, “Am I going to be able to get the time off of work? Am I going to have the financial ability to do that?” And I love that idea of living life in a… or I guess, measuring your happiness by your ability to be spontaneous.
And I guess, the last thing I’d add to that, because you also said that, people say money doesn’t buy happiness, which is true. But like you said, money also gives you a certain level of security.
And Dan Sullivan, he’s a business coach. He was in interviewed on the OG show, not too long ago, but his name is Dan Sullivan. And one of the things that he teaches his entrepreneurs is that if you have the money to solve a problem, then you don’t really have a problem. If something pops up in your life and you can write a check to fix it, then why even stress about it? Write the check and move on with your life. And when I heard him say that, I was like, “Man, what a way to approach life to remove a lot of that stress.” So, the financial freedom aspect ties into all of that.

Ashley:
I have two perfect examples of that, Tony. The first one is my family was down in Florida and me and the kids decided to come early, a couple of days early, so I changed our flights around. Well, when I did that, it somehow canceled our return flights home that were on the previous reservation. So, only my husband had a flight home and it was as I went to check in the day before I was supposed to leave, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. We don’t have flights.”
And yeah, it sucked having to pay $800 to get us home, but it was like, “You know what? It’s not going to ruin our day at Disney. We’re just going to pay the money and be on with it.” And that was like one of those aha moments for me where it’s like, “Okay, it’s not a problem. Don’t worry about it all day. Don’t let it ruin our vacation and just spend the money.”
And the second one is actually quite recently where I was on the way to the airport with my business partner at 4:30 in the morning to catch a flight. And I asked him if he checked in, he’s like, “No. My ticket is not even in my app.” And I had completely forgotten to even book his ticket and we had to go and book his ticket on the way to the airport. And yeah, it probably was more money than it would have been if I would have booked it months ago when I booked mine. But those are just two examples where it’s like, “Okay, money can fix a problem. Let’s just take care of it and let’s move on with our lives.”

Tony:
So, I’ll share one story, too, Ash. So, things have been really, really busy for us this year, the busiest five months of my life that I’ve ever had. And two weeks ago, Sarah and I, it was Thursday, we were looking at each other. And she was feeling overwhelmed, I was feeling overwhelmed. I was like, “Should we get out of town just for a little bit?” So, we literally, the next day we hopped on a flight to Vegas. We left at, I don’t know, 8:00 in the morning.
Went to a pool party out there. Had dinner with my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law. And we literally flew back the next morning at 5:30 in the morning. And it’s like we didn’t have to worry about the timing, the money or anything. We just packed the bags and we went. And it’s that ability to make those decisions on your own and live life how you want. To me that means I have financial freedom, so I love it. Flights in Vegas and pool parties.

Ashley:
Yeah. And I want to stress, too, that it’s not just about being able to travel and go wherever you want. But it’s also like, “Okay, you want to wake up. And you know what? I want to open a laundromat today, so I’m going to spend the day researching.” So, that ties into the spontaneity. It’s not just about going on vacation, but it’s also being able to have the flexibility to work on what you want to work on, too.

Tony:
I love it. So, as Ash and I talk about what it means to us, I think the question that we want to pose to you, all the listeners is, imagine if you had true financial freedom, what would that look like in your life? For me and Ashley, it means spontaneity, it means freedom of time, it means being able to make decisions for ourselves. But just picture who you need to become or who you would become if you had true financial freedom because I think that’s what keeps us all motivated to keep going.

Ashley:
So, I think a big question is, okay, yeah, everybody wants to have this financial freedom. You guys are all amped up, but how can you actually do it? How can you build wealth? So, we’re going to go over four things that are part of real estate as to how you can build wealth with real estate. So, the first one is cash flow.
Cash flow is the money that you’re getting from your investment property, the cash that’s going into your pocket. So, this is after your tenants have paid rent and you’ve paid all of your expenses. This is the money that’s left over each month. This is your cash flow.

Tony:
Next is an appreciation, and this is where real long-term wealth is built in real estate. So, appreciation is your property’s value increasing over time. So, I’ll give you guys a quick example of how appreciation has helped me. We bought a property about two years ago, we paid $590,000 for that property. If we were to list that property today, it’s probably worth about $1.2 million. So, we gained over half a million dollars in equity off of this one property, about half a million dollars in equity off of this one property.
That is a benefit of appreciation. That goes directly to our net worth and helps us build our long-term wealth. So, when I one day die, I can pass this million-plus dollar property on to my family. So that, that is a big benefit of real estate investment as well as the appreciation.

Ashley:
So, the next thing are the tax benefits. So, with the tax benefits, there’s so many different opportunities here. So, one of the biggest one is depreciation. So, these are all legal tax things. These are not things that we’re saying are gray areas or anything to avoid paying taxes, but you can definitely pay less taxes with real estate legally.
So, depreciation is one where the IRS lets you take the total cost of the property and write off a little bit of that cost every single year. So, when you go and file your tax return, you’re showing what the income is, you’re subtracting your expenses, but you’re also subtracting that depreciation. So, that depreciation isn’t money you spent out that year, so you’re going to have more cash flow than what you’re actually paying taxes on. So that is a big, big advantage.
Then there’s also things like a 1031 exchange, where if you sell a property you’ve held for over a year, you can purchase another property and not pay any taxes on the money you’ve gained from the sale of that property. And those are just two of the many advantages, the tax benefits.

Tony:
Yeah. We 1031’d a property last summer and we were able to take those funds and buy two separate properties with that money, so 1031 exchange is definitely an amazing tool. And the fourth way that real estate can help you build wealth is by the loan pay down. So, if you think about pretty much any other time, you go out and get debt, if you use debt to buy a new car, if you use debt to rack up a credit card debt, shopping at all your favorite stores, if you use credit card debt to, whatever, pay for that vacation, who is responsible for paying that debt down?
Nine times out of 10, unless you want to go bankrupt, it’s going to be you. You are responsible for paying down that debt that you’ve accumulated. Real estate investing is different because you can get $300,000, $400,000, half a million dollar loan on a property. And you can have a tenant pay that loan down for you, which is one of the best ways to build wealth. So, when we talk about the depreciation up top, you have this property value that’s appreciating over time, but then you also have this loan balances being paid down by your tenants, so your equity in that property grows from both ways. So, we they love all these different strategies in real estate and the benefits that come along with it.

Ashley:
So, Tony, there’s a problem though. And that problem for newbies, for rookie investors is that they never buy a single property.

Tony:
Yeah. If I had to guess, Ash, I would guess that there’s two big reasons. First is because they’re fearful. There’s a big fear inside of most new investors, because starting to invest in real estate, it’s like the unknown. They don’t know what they don’t know and going into something that’s new, that’s uncomfortable, it stops people in their tracks. And then the second reason is that a lot of people believe real estate investing is too complicated. And really, at the earlier stages of investing in real estate, it’s actually quite simple.
Now, it is hard. It does take some hard work to make it happen, but the process that you can follow, the steps you need to follow are really quite simple. And luckily for all of you, Ashley and I will walk you guys through some of those simple steps today.

Ashley:
We want you guys to take away from this episode some actionable steps that you guys can do, so we’re going to give you four of them. Four steps to house hacking your way to financial freedom. Okay. Who’s excited? Everybody driving in their car, anybody sitting out listening, let’s hear the clapping, tooting of the horn. Let’s get into it. Tony, what is the first step?

Tony:
All right. So, the first step is to commit and to focus. So, I want to define the word commitment first. Okay? A commitment is defined as a pledge to do something, the state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to an ideal or course of action. So, what a lot of people do is instead of committing to something, they dabble. And to dabble, I should have looked at the definition for dabbling as well, but dabble is like, “Oh, I’m going to try this a little bit. Oh, I’m going to try that a little bit. Oh, I’m going to do this a little bit.”
But to commit means to pledge to do something, to being bound emotionally and intellectually to doing something. So, first you have to commit. And let me add one thing to that. A big way to commit or a way to help with your commitment is to have a strong why, like what is the big motivating factor for you to actually do this? Once you commit, it’s about focusing, so defining your crystal clear criteria.
Now, the strategy we’re going to talk about today is house hacking because like we said, we think it’s a great way for new investors to get started, especially in today’s climate. But when you focus on that one strategy of house hacking, there’s a few things you need to do. You need to figure out your location. What city, what market, what area are you going to invest in? Figure out your property type. Like we said, you can buy a single family, you can buy multifamily, you can add an ADU. What condition of property do you want to search for? Do you want something turnkey? Are you willing to take something that needs a little bit of work?
The price range and profitability, so what is your purchasing power. How much capital do you have available to go out and buy something? And then, are you going to do a long-term rental, maybe a midterm rental, or even a short-term rental. So, follow those steps to figure out once you’ve decided your strategy of house hacking, all those other steps to make sure you’ve got the right details in place as well.

Ashley:
So, the next step you’re going to do is you need to find leads. You need to find properties. So, how do you find them? One of the first ways that you can find properties for sale are properties that are already listed for sale, such as on the MLS, the Multiple Listing Services. You can connect with a real estate agent, who can sign you up for automatic emails where you’re getting them sent right to your email. And you don’t need to go to different websites to actually scroll through them every single day looking for ones that fit the criteria that you have defined.
If you guys do need an agent, BiggerPockets does have an agent finder. Just go to biggerpockets.com. And right at the top of the tool bars, you can click right on that and it’s almost like a matchmaking service. You can get matched with a real estate agent who is in your area and is also investor-friendly.
But then after that, there’s other ways to find deals off market. So, these are properties that are not already listed for sale. So, this could be maybe looking at Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or different online websites that aren’t your typical MLS, where maybe people are just selling them for sale by owner. The next one would be direct mail. This is where you’re sending out letters to people asking if they would like to sell their property to you.
You could also drive for dollars when you’re driving around, look for distressed properties where maybe there’s some value-add or looking on properties to see how many meters they have on the outside. So, my kids are pretty well-trained that when they see a house with two electric meters or two gas meters, it’s, “Oh, mom, look, there’s a duplex right there.” So, looking at those properties and then writing down the addresses.
There’s a bunch of apps you can download for driving to dollars, so just drop a pin and then you can send out letters to these people. You can find the addresses to these properties by looking up the property tax records to see where the taxes are mailed to. Because a lot of times, if you’re looking at a property that’s vacant, the person that owns it probably isn’t living there then and it will give you the address of where to mail to them.
Then the last thing would be wholesalers. So, wholesalers are people who actually go out and find deals, but they don’t keep them. They don’t want to buy the properties. They’re selling them to investors like yourselves, so get connected with wholesalers. You can find them by going to local meetups, looking in different Facebook groups, posting in the BiggerPockets forums, and wholesalers find the leads for you and then send them to you.

Tony:
So, I know Ash just ran through a bunch of different ways to find deals. And we don’t want you guys to feel overwhelmed, but if any of those piqued your interest, my recommendation would be to go into the BiggerPockets forums and say, it was wholesaling that caught your attention or recommend wholesalers. I would go into the BiggerPockets forum, just type in the word “wholesalers.” And you’re going to see so much content and forum posts and wholesalers pop up and then you can do a little bit more deep dive that way.
So, these are just like the 30,000-foot view, but just know we’ve got more resources for you guys after the fact. So, after you get all these leads coming in from your off-market work, your agents, your wholesalers, the next step is to analyze the deals. And we’re going to show you how we analyze the deals using some BP calculators, so hold tight for that. But once you get good at analyzing, then it’s time to actually make an offer. So, you want to get all your deals coming in, crunch the numbers, and then you’ll know what is a good price to offer at that property or on that property.
Now, just as a basic rule of thumb, I know I see a lot in the BiggerPockets forums, in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, where people say, “Oh my God, I’ve submitted three offers and I haven’t gotten anything. This real estate investing thing just doesn’t work.” But just know you have to submit a lot of offers in order to get one offer. So, the general rule of thumb is to maybe analyze 100 properties, make an offer on 10 of those and then, you actually get one of those under contracts. So, just keep that rule of thumb in mind as you work through this step.

Ashley:
So, we are actually going to take you guys through analyzing a deal using the BiggerPockets calculator reports. So, the calculator reports actually have… oh, there’s a bunch of different ones that you guys can use. And we’re going to go through and use the calculators today to show you a scenario of what it’s like to run the numbers, to analyze a house hack property. Then we’re actually going to compare it to a single family home in a similar market, so that you guys can compare like, “Okay, if I house hack, this is what my living expenses are,” compared to if you go and live in a single family property by yourself. And show that comparison, so you can actually see the value of house hacking.

Tony:
All right. So, I’m actually going to pull up one of the listings that are on the BiggerPockets website. So, if you guys didn’t know, you can actually find properties for sale on BiggerPockets. So, agents, wholesalers, other investors will go on to BiggerPockets and list properties for sale. So, we have a property that’s listed on the BiggerPockets website and it’s at 30 Spooner Street in Plymouth. What the heck is MA? Maine? Wow, I’m like geographically challenged.

Ashley:
Massachusetts. Massachusetts.

Tony:
So, just a quick geographic lesson, so I live in California and I’m embarrassed to say this, Most people in California, we know California, we know Florida, we know New York, Texas, because it’s not too far. But like everything in between, geographically, I’m just challenged. All that stuff like Rhode Island, I’m not even sure what’s really going on over there. I just know there’s a collection of estates there. Anyway, we’re in Plymouth, Maine. Thank you for the geography [inaudible 00:26:13].

Ashley:
No, no. We’re in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Tony:
Massachusetts. We just lost all of our listeners from Massachusetts right now. I apologize, guys. Okay. There we go. I’m starting to-

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:26:28] second guess, I sell.

Tony:
So, we got a property from Plymouth, Massachusetts. All right? So, we’re going to take this property. We’re going to plug it into the BiggerPockets calculators. And we’re going to show you guys just how well or maybe not well this property would do as a house hack. So, we have all the basic information for this property on this listing here. So, we can see the list price is $699,000 or I’m sorry, $669,900. We’ve got the address, the bedrooms. It says zero square feet, but obviously that’s not correct, but 11 beds, four baths. Okay?
It also has some information down here on the unit details. So, this is a triplex or a three unit, but it’s got one renting out at $2,070 per month, another one at $2,070, and the third unit at $2,070. The first unit is a four-bed, one and a half bath, second unit four-bed, one and a half bath, and then the third unit is a three-bed, one bath. Okay? So, we’ve got some decent information on this property. And let’s see, it says front building each apartments, so it looks like it’s two actual buildings. So, there’s a duplex and then a single family residence all on the same parcel here. Okay?
So, I think we’ve got enough info to actually go into the calculator and start analyzing this deal. So, again, if you guys aren’t, make sure you jump over to YouTube, because I’m going to try and verbally walk you through how we’re using the calculator. But I think you’ll get the best benefit if you actually see it live.

Ashley:
And Tony, yeah. I can read off the information to you, too, if you want to put it in?

Tony:
Perfect. Yes.

Ashley:
So, the address is 30 Spooner Street.

Tony:
All right, Massachusetts. All right. So, one of the big benefits of the BiggerPockets calculator is that if you’re ever unsure of what an abbreviation is, it will actually pull it in for you. So, we have confirmed, this is Plymouth, Massachusetts, not Plymouth, Maine.

Ashley:
Tony, I’m going to be laughing about this in the middle of the night tonight. I’m going to wake up, just be like giggling.

Tony:
All right. So, we put in the initial property information, which is the street address, city and state. So now, I’m going to hit this blue button that says Next to put in the purchase details. And actually, so there’s some optional as we’re going through the calculator, I’m going to point out. Some of the stuff is required. Some of the other information is optional. So, there’s this optional property features and descriptions, so you can put in the bedrooms, baths, square footage, et cetera.
Some, it depends on how I’m using this calculator as to whether or not I’ll actually put in the optional information. If I’m just doing it for myself, I probably don’t care because I know the details of the property, but if I’m looking to present this to a potential partner or a lender, then I will really go through and make sure every one of these details is filled in because as a potential private money lender or a partner, I would want to know how many bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, you’re built in all those details.
All right, so I’m going to hit Next down here to go into the purchase information. So, Ashley, what is the purchase price on this property?

Ashley:
It is $669,900. And even if you know offhand, like, “Oh, I know the house isn’t worth that,” I still always start out with the purchase price of what they’re asking. So, the asking price I start with. And then once you see how that puts your numbers, instead of trying to manipulate the rent income or your expenses, I go back and I change the purchase price or maybe, see if there’s different financing I can get. But I always recommend starting with what the listing price is.

Tony:
So, the next field to enter in here is the purchase closing cost. Now, another thing that’s really helpful with the BiggerPockets calculator is that there are these little icons throughout the calculator that say, “If you need help filling in this specific field, you can click a link.” So, I’m going to click this link that says, “Calculating Closing Costs.” And what happens is a popup appears and it gives you a definition of what that term is, as well as some general rules of thumb in terms of what you should expect that number to be.
So, on this calculator, it says the closing costs are generally between 1 to 2% of the purchase price. So, I’m just going to assume that maybe it’s, I don’t know. Are you familiar with Massachusetts, Ashley? Are we closer to 1 or to 2%?

Ashley:
I don’t know, but if you’re unsure, I always say go higher than lower. So, let’s do that. In some states like in California, you just go through title. In New York, you have to have an attorney, so your costs are a little bit higher because you have to pay an attorney for closing. And then also, it depends on what financing you’re using, too. So, if you’re paying cash, your closing costs will be a lot lower because you’re not paying any bank fees and maybe you’re not paying your insurance upfront or your property taxes upfront. So, I would look at what financing you’re doing for this and if you have a preapproval letter from a bank, it should show you approximately what your closing costs would be or at least how to figure it out the percentage.

Tony:
And as you start to look at more properties in the same market, you’ll get a better sense of what your closing costs are. Like I know in Tennessee, our closing costs are typically about 2%, like 1.8, 1.9. In California, they’re closer to 3%, like 2.5 to 2.7, somewhere around there.

Ashley:
Yeah. And for me in New York, if I’m doing a cash offer with no financing, it’s usually about $1,000 to $1,200 is what I pay my attorney and that includes the title fees.

Tony:
Wow, that’s amazing. All right. Cool. So, we got the purchase closing costs in here. Again, there are some additional optional fields about the property value growth and whether or not you’re going to be rehabbing the property. Let’s assume for this example that we won’t be rehabbing, we’re just going to buy it as is, but if I were to select it-

Ashley:
Tony, it does say in here, “No repairs needed.” I’m not that you should completely 100% go off of what a listing says, but this one says here that it does not need repairs.

Tony:
Perfect. So, we’re buying this one turnkey, but just to show you all, if I did there. Again, there’s a box that says whether or not we’ll be rehabbing this property. If I check the box that says, “Yes,” then some additional fields appear and when I ask for the after repair value or the ARV, which is the property’s market value after all the rehab work has been done. And then the second field that appeared was the repair cost, so how much do we think we’ll actually spend to rehab this property? But again, this one’s turnkey, so we won’t have any repair cost.
So, I’m going to click the Next button, which will take me to my loan details. Okay? So, now we’re filling in the loan purchase section or the loan detail section and there’s a few fields here that we’ll need to fill out. So, first is your downpayment percentage. Let’s just assume that we’re going to put down 20%. That’s basic for-

Ashley:
Well, let’s do since we’re house hacking this property, let’s…

Tony:
That’s a good point.

Ashley:
… put it on 0.5%. Yeah.

Tony:
That is a great point.

Ashley:
So, when you’re living in primary residence, you usually can put 3.5% down or 5% down, which can be definitely an advantage. You don’t have to save as much money to get into the property.

Tony:
So, at 5%, our downpayment is $33,495. Just for comparison’s sake, if it was at 20%, it’s $133,980. So, we’re talking a difference of $100,000 to get into this property as a house hack versus a traditional investment property. So, let’s say that you did have the $130. Let’s say that you did have $130,000 available, you could buy one house hack with $33,000 and still have another $100,000 left to go out and buy more investment property. So, that’s the benefit of the house hack strategy here.
So, after the downpayment, the next section is the interest rate. So, interest rates are all over the place right now. Ash, I haven’t shopped for a primary residence, but I don’t know. It’s maybe like 4 and 4.75 reasonable right now?

Ashley:
Yeah. I would say that. I know what auto ones are at, but I don’t know. I haven’t shopped for a primary residence [inaudible 00:34:25].

Tony:
Yeah, so we’re just going to guess. About 4 and 3.75 seems pretty reasonable right now. Points charged. Every lender is going to be a little bit different, but just for example. Let’s say that your lender is charging like one point or something like that. The next fields you have to fill out is your loan term, so like how many years is this loan going to be in place. Again, since you’re buying this as a primary residence, typically this is going to be 30 years, which again helps you on the financing side.
All right, so next we’re going to go to the projected rental income. Now, luckily for this property, we already know exactly what it’s producing in income. Now, it said, Ashley, correct me if I’m wrong here. But that each unit was currently rented out at $2,070 per month?

Ashley:
Seventy, yeah. So, since we’re going to be living in one unit, we’re only going to take two of those units. So, that’s $4,140.

Tony:
$4,140. Now, let’s point out one thing, Ashley. So, two of these units were I think four bedrooms and then the other one was a three-bedroom. So, if you say that you’re a rookie and you want to get super house hacky, you could rent out the other two units in full, so you get the $4,140 from those units. But say you moved into one of the four-bedroom units and you only need one bedroom for yourself.
Now, you can rent out all three of the other bedrooms in that unit with you, and you can get some additional rental income from those bedrooms as well. But I guess, for example, so just to keep things simple, we’ll just assume that you’re living in one unit and you’re renting out the other two. All right. So, we’ve in input our gross monthly income. So, we’re going to hit Next.
And Ashley, before we move on just one quick thing to call out on the rent piece. So, BiggerPockets has a rent estimator and it works pretty well. I’ve tried it in a few different markets. I haven’t tried it for Plymouth, Massachusetts yet, but it does show what the projected rent is for this area and whether the confidence in that projection is high, medium or low. So, again, another good way for you to double check your rental projections there. So, next-

Ashley:
Did you try the Plymouth, Maine?

Tony:
I did not try the Plymouth, Maine yet. So, next we’re going to go to our properties expenses. Now, it actually already pulled in the property tax information. I didn’t pull this in, so it’s cool that it’s pulling that from the property’s address.

Ashley:
And when you input the address on that top field, if you click on the link, when it automatically populates, it will pull in a lot of the information. They usually find it off of the MLS or the BiggerPockets Marketplace, too. So, yeah, it’s definitely an advantage that you might get some information automatically pulled in when you do click on that populated field for the address.

Tony Robinson:
The only thing I’d add is that just look and see when the property last sold. If it’s sold, I don’t know, three decades ago, there’s a chance that when you buy the property, your property tax might go up. If it just sold last year, then you can reasonably assume that your property tax will be pretty close to that property as well.

Ashley:
Yeah. Great point, Tony. Always verify. Even on an MLS listing, verify what the property taxes are, and you can just do that by Googling the county it’s in or the town it’s in with property taxes. And you would be able to put in the address and you’ll be able to see the property tax bills.

Tony:
Awesome. So, let’s keep rolling with the expenses. So, after we input our information for our property taxes, next is our insurance costs. So, Ashley, I don’t know, can you give me a ballpark maybe on what you’re spending for some of your small multifamily in New York? I know they’re different states, but-

Ashley:
Yeah, I believe on my three unit, I think we pay about $1000 a month for our three-unit or $1000 a year. I’m sorry, not a month.

Tony:
All right. I was going to say, “Man, that’s some high insurance,” but it is what it is. All right. So, we’ll say a thousand bucks annually. So next, it’s going to ask us to see how much we want to put aside for repairs and maintenance, vacancy, CapEx, and any management fees. Now, it’s super important that when you’re buying a property, whether it’s a house hack or traditional rental, that you still set aside, some of your income for these expenses, because things are going to break, you’re going to have to repair things.
Your property will not be filled 100% of the time for the entire time that you own it. You will have people moving in and moving out. There’s some downtime there. You will have to replace things like roofs, appliances. Maybe your siding, your garage door, your water heater, your wash or dry. All those things will need to be replaced at some point. And then you have to decide whether or not you want to manage this property yourself.
Brandon Turner is known for saying that even if you plan to self-manage, still set aside some money for management fees that way one day if you decide you don’t want to manage it anymore, you have that built in as well. So, Ash, give me your best estimate on what we should set aside for repairs and maintenance here.

Ashley:
So, usually I do between 5 to 10% for all of these, depending on the age of the property and what it’s at or if I’m going to be rehabbing it, making it all new. For this property, I’m going to say let’s put in 8% and then management fees in this area, the average on the East Coast, average tends to be around 10%. So, even if you’re going to self-manage, plan to have a management fee built in, in case there’s a point where you move out and you don’t want to manage the property anymore. Or even you still want to live there and you don’t want to be the manager, make sure that the numbers work out, so if that does come up, you already have it built into your numbers.

Tony:
Vacancy, I used to struggle with when I first got started, but I found the best way to find this figure is just to call some property management companies and ask. And typically, if you tell them it’s your prospective client, they’re usually willing to share what the projected vacancy is. So, Ashley, I don’t know, in your properties over there, do you have a ballpark on what vacancy you typically use?

Ashley:
Yeah, I put 5%.

Tony:
Okay. And CapEx, again, ballpark, but somewhere between 5 to 10% is typically good as well, depending on the age of the property. I mean, I don’t know, maybe we’ll just put this at 8% as well to match repairs and maintenance. Three units, think the property was a little bit older, so 8% seems reasonable.

Ashley:
Yeah. And it did say it had a new roof and things like that.

Tony:
Okay. So, after our repairs, maintenance, vacancy, CapEx, et cetera, then we have our utilities costs. So, electric, gas, water, sewer, garbage, and all those other things.

Ashley:
So, it doesn’t say in the listing, but we’re just going to assume for this scenario, and this is something you would want to verify with maybe the person that’s listing the property or the owner of the property, are there separate meters? So, for this, and it’s very common for the units to be separately metered. So, we’re going to say that the tenants each pay their own electric, gas and their own water and sewer. So, we’ll leave all those blank because those are not the responsibility of the landlord.

Tony:
Boom. There you go. So, once you input all that information, there’s this big button at the bottom that says finish analysis. So, I’m going to go ahead and click that button. The calculator is doing its work. And now, I see this beautiful report that shows me how… well, maybe not so beautiful, because I’m looking at the numbers here. But it shows me how well this property might perform. So, based on the info that we put in, it’s showing that there’s a negative cash flow of $1,318 per month.
Now on, at surface level, this might look like a bad investment, but you have to remember that you’re living in one of these units and the units are renting out for $2,070 per month. So, have we rented out all three, we’d be cash flow in like I don’t know what is that, a little over 600 bucks per month. But since you’re living in one of the units, that’s where that difference comes from. But what we’re saying is you, as the investor, will be able to live in this property, rent out the other two units, pay a property manager and your living expense is only $1,318 per month. I don’t know too many people who can go out and buy a property for almost $700,000 and only have a mortgage of $1318.

Ashley:
So, as you can see the variable expenses are expenses that may not happen, but these are what you’re going to save for. So, if you don’t have a vacancy, if you don’t have a CapEx, or you don’t have any repairs, that dollar amount is going to be, you’re not going to have to spend that out. So, it’s not like every single month you’re going to have to pay out of pocket that $1,318.

Tony:
Yeah. So, there’s a total of $1,283 in variable expenses. We have vacancy at $207 per month, maintenance at $331 per month, CapEx at another $331 and then, management fees at $414.

Ashley:
Yeah. So, let’s go real quick and let’s look at compare a single family property to that. And we’ll just take a glance, since we already went through the calculator reports for you guys, we’ll just do this super quick. Just showing you what the cost would be for you to live in the single family property.

Tony:
All right. Awesome. We got the [inaudible 00:43:33] in there.

Ashley:
Okay, so the purchase price-

Tony:
[inaudible 00:43:35]?

Ashley:
Yeah. The purchase price is $334,995. And this is also a three-bedroom, so the units on the other property were two or four bedrooms and one was a three-bedroom.

Tony:
Like $7,000 in closing costs, give or take. All right. And then, we’ll do the same thing. What did we say, 5%?

Ashley:
Yep.

Tony:
All right. Let me say 4.75 for the interest rate. Oops. Then, a point here for the points charge and then 30 years on the term. Insurance, I’ll say…

Ashley:
We’ll do a little bit later.

Tony:
… it’s $1,000 for three. Yeah.

Ashley:
Yeah. Put like maybe $750.

Tony:
All right. So, since they’re living here, we’re not going to set aside anything for that.

Ashley:
Well, we should. We should put it aside because you still will have repairs, maintenance, even though it’s your primary.

Tony:
That’s pretty important.

Ashley:
So, let’s put the same percentage. Oh, but it won’t show up a percentage because we didn’t put anything in the rental income.

Tony:
There you go.

Ashley:
So, let’s go down to Other. If you go down to Other, you’ll be able to add that in.

Tony:
Okay. And [inaudible 00:44:49].

Ashley:
Where you could do a dollar a month there, right?

Tony:
Yeah. Maybe like, I don’t know, $400 a month for all that stuff over the course of a year, maybe. Is that fair? That seem to-

Ashley:
But you’ll also have your utilities, too, that you’ll be paying. Yeah, so let’s, yeah, that should be fine, $400.

Tony:
Okay. So, do we want this all inclusive of all the utilities, Ash? Or you’re saying just for?

Ashley:
Yeah, just do the $400 all inclusive, yeah.

Tony:
All right. So, then we’ll go down. We’ll hit finish analysis and we’ll scroll up here. So, on this property, there’s a net difference of -20, about $2,700 per month. So, that means you’re putting out about $2,700 per month into this property, so you get-

Ashley:
That’s about double of what the other one costs. Yeah.

Tony:
So, I think the point that Ashley and I are trying to make here is that you could potentially spend less money per month for a bigger property that’s going to give you actual income. That’s going to give you more appreciation, more loan pay down versus going out and buying a single family property for yourself that could potentially cost you more. That is the power of house hacking.
And when you move out of your house hack, if you go back to that three-unit, when you move out, now you’re going to be net positive because you’ve rented out that unit that you were living in. So that, that is the true power of using the house hacking strategy.

Ashley:
So, you guys can check out the BiggerPockets calculator reports. You can use that five times for free, unless you’re a Pro member, then it’s just unlimited. But practice, practice, practice and try this out, the calculator reports. And you go back and watch how we did them. Click on the little blue links to get the information. If you’re not sure about something as to where to get the number or what the number means.
So one, if you’ve analyzed the deal and you’re like, “Yes, I want it. This looks good,” what are different ways that you can actually fund the deal? How you can pay for it? So, the first one is an FHA loan and FHA loan is if it’s going to be your primary residence and you can do a low downpayment and get a low interest rate. The second is conventional financing, so this is your standard loan product. A lot of times I’ve seen recently that they are doing 5% down four conventional loans, and you’re still getting a low interest rate and that low downpayment.
The difference between the two is the FHA loan, they will sometimes bring you down to 3.5%, but they also do an inspection. There’s an FHA inspection where they just look if everything’s up to code, it’s livable. And then maybe sometimes where they may make you want to install a handrail or things like that. If you go conventional, you don’t have to do any of that inspection and you can buy a dumpy fixer upper and really add some value.
The third way would be to do a partnership. So, me and my sister actually did a partnership for her to purchase her first property. But you can also receive a gift letter from family members for your downpayment, too, for the property if they don’t make you pay it back. You can partner with another investor or somebody who’s going to lend you the money to purchase the property.
And the last one is seller financing. Asking the seller of the property if you can actually make monthly payments to them instead of going and getting a loan somewhere else and giving them a lump sum.

Tony:
All right. So, next, let’s talk about managing. Once you’ve found your property, you got your financing, you have to make decisions on how you’re actually going to manage this property. Now, I’ve never done this before, but I would imagine and from the folks that I’ve spoken to that self-managing while living in the same space as your tenants can definitely prove to be challenging at times.
So, I think the first question you want to answer for yourself is who do you want to rent to? Do you want to keep it to friends and family or are you open to having strangers come into your space? What about ongoing maintenance issues? Are you going to be the handy person fixing those yourself, or do you need to build a roster of different trades people to help you with those issues as they come up.
Next is building out the actual lease agreement. So, everything from if you’re house hacking where you’re sharing like an actual house and there’s different rooms, what are the rules about common area usage? If someone is buying toilet paper, how does that work? So, just think about all the different rules and I don’t know, policies you want to put in place for your tenants, knowing that you guys are sharing such a tight space.
And then just remember that house hacking does mean you have to live with other people. So, just ask yourself, truly, honestly, if that’s something that you’re willing and ready and able to do. And then the last thing you need to know is just learning and understanding the landlord laws and regulations for your specific area. These could vary from city to city, from county to county, from state to state. So, just get familiar with what those rules and regulations are for your area that way you can make sure that you’re operating your properly legally.

Ashley:
Yeah. One cool thing about BiggerPockets, too, is that if you’re a Pro member, you actually get access to the landlord lease agreements that you guys can pull and have access to. And then you just fill in your information and the tenant’s information, so those are free to you guys. And they’re state specific. An attorney from each state has drawn them up. So, whether you’re from Maine or Massachusetts, that your property is in, you’ll be able to find the lease agreements that you need.
But let’s go into, okay, you guys know what to do. You know what your four steps are, but what are some mistakes that new investors make along the way? The first one that I think of is that they just never take action. Never start. Get stuck in this analysis paralysis or listen to other people’s negativity or oh, you’re going to be getting phone calls in the middle of the night that somebody’s toilet is broke. Or just the lack of money, and don’t know how to find money.

Tony:
And I’d say the next mistake that most rookie investors make is buying the wrong deal. So, that’s a big reason why we went through the calculator on today’s podcast is because we want to make sure that all of our listeners know and understand how to correctly analyze a deal. You want to make sure that it’s financially the right move for you to do. So, use the calculators, find the right deal, take the time to build that skill.

Ashley:
And the last one is just poor management. So, Tony went over, make sure you know the laws and regulations, make sure you stick by the lease agreement. Also, a bad screening process, so not knowing how to properly do a credit check or a background check on somebody and getting the right tenant in place. And having no written policy.
Your lease is the leases of landlord, so what you have in your lease you can go by and say, “Tenant, you know what? You signed this lease agreement stating that you were responsible for maybe mowing the grass.” So, there’s no dispute going forward because you both agreed to it on the lease agreement.

Tony:
So, that was an overview that we hope was really helpful for all of you into the house hacking strategy. Like Ash and I said up top, we know that a lot of the listeners at this podcast are new. You guys haven’t done your first deal yet and the house hacking strategy is a way, a low risk, low-cost way to kick start your real estate investing journey.

Ashley:
So, we are super excited for you guys that you even took the initiative to come listen to this podcast today to learn about house hacking. And maybe it’s because you’re tired of working your 9:00 to 5:00, you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, you don’t like your boss or you just want to change. You know that sitting at a desk or whatever you’re doing isn’t the lifestyle that you want. Or maybe you just want more time to spend on the things that you love to do. So, we all know that a lot of this is true for newbies, but it’s also super scary and that’s where we want to help you guys.

Tony:
Yeah. And sometimes it feels like jumping into real estate is like, I don’t know, jumping off the side of a mountain with a parachute that may or not be working, right? There’s a lot of fear that goes into getting that first deal done. But here’s what we do know. Real estate investing can help you reach financial independence. I think Ash and I are both examples of that being true. And the process of real estate investing is actually quite simple, but it is not easy. People are often confuse, simple and complicated with easy and hard.
So, real estate investing is simple, but it does take hard work. So, we have created the tools and the educational resources and really built a community. That’s what BiggerPockets is, it’s community to help you get to financial freedom faster.

Ashley:
So, first, you guys need to ask yourself a question, are you actually committed to taking consistent action until you achieve your goals? So, ready? Everyone yell, “Yes.”

Tony:
So, if you are, then let’s talk about how a BiggerPockets Pro membership can actually help you get there. So, first, you’re going to be able to analyze more deals in less time with less risk, so you can reach your goal of getting to financial freedom faster. Ash and I both started off as BiggerPockets Pro members before we even became hosts of the podcast. And I actually still have my Pro membership today, like I actually pay for it every month because I get value and benefit from it.

Ashley:
Yeah. When I found BiggerPockets, I had been an investor since 2014. I found BiggerPockets in 2017 and within a year and a half, I had tripled my portfolio just from going through the forums and learning about creative financing and using the calculator reports to better analyze the deals. So, I have taken so much value. It’s seriously has paid for itself over the years just of what I’ve been able to get out of it.
But I think some of the biggest benefits from having a Pro membership is that you can confidently run the numbers. Having access to those calculator reports and being able to analyze so quickly and then, all your reports are saved back in there. So, if you want to go back and run different scenarios for a property, you have them all saved. If you want to go back and look at a property that maybe you ran the numbers on a year ago, you can come back and say, “Oh, this person has decreased the price. The property is still for sale. Let me go back and see what was wrong with it last time. Why the numbers didn’t work.” And maybe now the numbers will work on the property.

Tony:
You also get access to a lot of really helpful data and additional educational resources. So, there are Pro exclusive webinar replays, articles and videos. They cover pretty much everything you need to know to make really smart investments and avoid some of these bad market conditions that we’re seeing out there and being able to navigate them with confidence.

Ashley:
And it’s something that’s cool on there, too, is that when you do become a Pro member, you get this little badge on your profile. And it’s almost like that Instagram verified badge, like people take you more serious. But when you’re a Pro member, it’s true. If you go to the forums and you look at people asking questions or responding to questions, the people who are getting the most traction are the ones that have that, that Pearl member badge, where people are like you know they’re serious, they’re committed to their real estate journey.
So, I think that’s cool, too, that you can, there’s the people without profile pictures or don’t have any of their profile filled out. And that does not mean at all that they are not a serious investor or committed to learning about real estate investing. I just watch how the people that interact with them is a lot lower than the people that actually have that Pro badge.

Tony:
Another big benefit and one of the questions I get all the time is, “Hey Tony, can I get your legal docs for this situation?” Or, “Hey, Tony, what do you do from a contract standpoint to do this thing?” And I’m not an attorney nor do I play one on a podcast, but BiggerPockets, they’ve done all the hard work of working with the different lawyers in all 50 states to get lawyer-approved lease documents that are available to all of the BiggerPockets Pro members.

Ashley:
Okay. So, if you guys want to become a Pro member with me and Tony, we actually have a discount code for you guys. As a bonus for listening to us today to talk about house hacking, so you can actually start using all the tools and resources that we mentioned, you guys can actually save 20%. We all love saving, so use code rookie pod 2, that’s rookie P-O-D 2 when you check out at biggerpockets.com to sign up for your Pro membership. Because usually, a Pro membership is around $390 and you guys with that 20% off, it only ends up being like $312.

Tony:
Now, not only are we giving you guys a really good discount on the Pro annual membership, but you’re also getting some cool bonuses, so you’ll get 20% off the annual membership. There’s a bonus workshop with Brandon and David that has a $200 value. Then there’s a finding great deals masterclass, which is valued at about a thousand bucks. And you guys also get access to all of the online boot camps, which it’s hard to even put a value on the boot camps because there’s so much value that comes from them.
But in addition, we’re also giving you guys this super mega bundle, it’s called the Ultimate Package for the House Hacking Strategy book by Craig Curelop. So, Craig, if you guys want to know, he’s really well-known in the BiggerPockets community, but he wrote a book on house hacking. And we are giving you guys the ultimate package that comes with a physical book, you get the E-book, the audio book and some additional video content related to the house hacking strategy. So, when you guys sign up using that code, rookie pod 2, that’s rookie P-O-D number two, you get access to all of that plus this super amazing ultimate package for the house hacking strategy.

Ashley:
And the last thing is you, guys, if you don’t love being a Pro member and you don’t think it’s worth it, there’s 100% money back guarantee in 30 days. So, worst case scenario, you can email [email protected] and get 100% refund, and you still get to keep the book that you got. So, definitely, worth checking out because I know you guys are going to get value from it, especially using the calculator reports.
There’s so many other resources in there that just the other day I found just browsing through BiggerPockets that they have files that people have uploaded. Different lease agreements, contracts, addendums, a checklist, a move in/move out checklist for when you have a tenant. All these different things that people are willing to share in biggerpockets.com. So I think the Pro membership definitely has a huge value to it.
And we hope that you guys loved talking about house hacking today. It definitely is a great way to build wealth. If you guys have any more questions about house hacking, we are actually going to be bringing onto our podcast, very soon, Craig Curelop, who wrote the house hacking strategy book. So, this is your time, guys, to use that rookie pod 2 code, get your Pro membership, get that book and read it before we have Craig on as a guest and you can actually get a lot more valuable information from him, too.
So, thank you guys so much for joining us this week. I’m Ashley @Wealthfromrentals, he’s Tony @TonyJRobinson on Instagram, and we’ll be back on Saturday with a rookie reply.