[quote=sd_matt]Loan is FHA. So owner occupied..of course.
What if I move in (back “unit”) and have the current tenants sign room rental agreements? Assuming they will go for it. It is a family. I put utilities and cable/internet in my name. Would it fly in court?
Property is sfr and zoned as such.
I suppose I could rent rooms to college kids but prefer the family staying. Much simpler but, oh my, a serious cover my ass situation.[/quote]
In the situation you are describing, it’s not necessarily simpler in the long run to rent to one family. If you have to do an eviction especially.
Instincts go against that. I want control of the place where I live. I would not want to live in my renter’s backyard when they live in the main house…and a lot of prospective good renters don’t want that either.Flakes will want it. With roommates you can kick one out at a time and never have much of a vacancy or squatter problem. If one leaves, you are only missing a small percentage of rent. I had roommates for the 10 years of my single life in which I was a homeowner. When I said go, they went w/o much fuss, no changing of electricity phones or anything.
I had pretty decent relationships with all of them. I only rented to a couple of college students(quiet types). If you want to drop the tenant load for a while it’s easy. If you want to let a friend house sit for you nobody can say a thing. It’s not for everybody, of course.
A problem with my scenario is that it might be harder for an underwriter to accept a history or rental income, compared to having a contract with one household. I never was able to use rental income from roommates as income.