Transcript
A (0:00)
Okay, cool. My, my mic was doing this weird thing where switching back over to my headphones.
B (0:17)
Okay, let's get your questions answered. I'm Ashley Kerr and I'm here with Tony J. Robinson.
A (0:25)
And welcome to the Real Estate Ricky podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And today we're diving back into the BiggerPockets forums to get your questions answered. Now, Rickies, the forums are the absolute best place for you to go to quickly get all of your real estate investing questions answered by experts like me, Ashley, and so many more. So today we're going to discuss first, what to know before buying a duplex, triplex or fourplex, what loan options are really best fit for a first time homebuyer, and finally, how to pull equity out of your property. So with that, let's get into today's rookie reply.
B (1:08)
Okay, so our first question today is if you are going to be buying your first ever two to fourplex or a small multifamily, whether to live in or just to to invest in, what are some of the concerns and questions on your mind? Things specific to two to four plexes. Okay, this is a good question. I like this one. There's definitely things that are different compared to buying a single family property. Tony, have you ever purchased a property that had more than one unit on it?
A (1:41)
Just the hotel, but never on the traditional long term side? Yeah.
B (1:45)
Yeah. So like the first thing that comes to mind for me is utilities. So are they separately metered? Are they all on the same meter? So very common. Near us, the water and sewer is not separately metered, at least water. I don't even know if they can separately meter sewer, but the water is on the same meter for a lot of the multi family property. So the owner pays the water. So I do have one property, it's a duplex where it's only 1 meter for electric and only 1 meter for the gas too. So I pay those bills so their rent is higher than another property where those utilities are not included. I prefer to have things separately metered because then they're paying for exactly what they're using and you don't have to worry about them sticking AC unit in their window and every window blasting it all summer long and decorating their house, you know, with tons of Christmas lights and having the heat on but the window is open, you know, so that.
A (2:50)
Is all at the same time. Right? All those things at the same time.
