Touring my First House Hack

This week I had the opportunity to tour a potential house hack. In this post, I’d like to go over the pros and cons of the house and what my thoughts were about the property.

Pros

• 2 minutes from campus

• Set up as a duplex

• Separate utilities

• Fixer upper

• Small kitchens and bathrooms = less money to upgrade

• In a great location

• Roof and windows were in great shape

Cons

• Needed a lot of work

• Both kitchens needed to be completely redone

• Both bathrooms needed to be completely redone

• No HVAC

• A bit overpriced for the amount of work needed

• Tons of other people are looking at it (2,300 views on Zillow in 2 days)

Thankfully I had the opportunity to walk this property with my friend who was an investor. His expertise was great to have! We toured the property and he was able to show me what needed to be renovated and what could be saved. He gave me an idea of the prices it would cost for each unit to be fixed up and was overall super helpful! I encourage anyone reading this to go out and find someone like my friend who has tons of knowledge about investment properties.

The building was originally set up as a single family but was converted to a duplex by locking a door in a bedroom that led to the stairs. I would go ahead and wall this off if I bought the home. The downstairs had 2 bedrooms 1 bathroom, a large dining room, and a family room. The hardwood floors could be saved but would need to be replaced in the hallway, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The kitchen needed more cabinets and updated appliances. The bathroom needed everything to be redone. To finish off the downstairs I would add a fresh coat of paint and new lighting. He thought I could get it done with $25,000.

The upstairs was a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom. It needed a new kitchen as it was almost nonexistent. The bathroom upstairs also needed to be completely redone. Other than that I would add a mini-split HVAC unit, paint, new lights, and that was pretty much it upstairs. He thought all of this could be done with $20,000.

The basement needed a new HVAC unit and with other small miscellaneous things down there he thought to add $10,000.

This home is honestly exactly what I am looking for as my first house hack. The problem is that it is out of budget with the amount of updates it needs. I believe we could bring down those estimates some as I would be willing to do a portion of the work. I can paint, install new lighting, and learn how to do the floors. I could probably do some of the work in the bathrooms but the portions of that and the entire kitchens would probably need to be hired out. With this information, I will probably not be able to purchase this home because I do not believe I will have much leverage in getting the price lower.

That being said I will continue to watch this property in the hopes that maybe the price will come down. You never know, it always could go lower! This was a really good learning experience and I’m glad I had the chance to look at the home.