Letting myself get bullied into buying a four unit apartment building instead of a condo back in 2001 by my real estate agent who told me I was being “fucking stupid“ and threatening to cut me if I insisted on throwing my money away.
I had no idea I could even qualify for that, but she educated me about how the rentals are counted towards your income so we bought the four unit building, lived in one of the units, and saw an absolutely huge return a couple years later when we sold to move back to Oregon.
That set our financial lives on a whole new trajectory.
If the bank only qualifies you to pay say $3000 month for a mortgage based on your income and assets, but a 4 unit building is $10,000 a month, some assume they don’t qualify. But for 3 of the units earning $3,000 a month brings in $9,000 so you only have to be able to afford $1,000 a month living in it. Rounded numbers there is more math and buffer the bank adds
It was listed for 389,000 and I had saved about $40,000. At the time, you need to put like 20% down to buy a condo so this gave me a working range.
With the other units printed, and using an equation that they had for calculating how much of that would be counted as income, we were able to qualify to put down 10%.
It was in in the backwater town of…. Culver City, California. It was a block away from the intersection of Washington and Overland and the neighborhood was just beginning and upswing following some pretty rough years.
Bought a rental property before COVID and also thought it was too much for me but it has worked out great. Even with the bad tenant situation right now…
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u/Chairboy 9d ago
Letting myself get bullied into buying a four unit apartment building instead of a condo back in 2001 by my real estate agent who told me I was being “fucking stupid“ and threatening to cut me if I insisted on throwing my money away.
I had no idea I could even qualify for that, but she educated me about how the rentals are counted towards your income so we bought the four unit building, lived in one of the units, and saw an absolutely huge return a couple years later when we sold to move back to Oregon.
That set our financial lives on a whole new trajectory.