I'm wondering how to best handle a potential housing situation financially. Condos in this area are very expensive, and I've noticed while hunting that it's actually more economical to buy a two family home vs one condo. For example, 900-1100 sq ft 2 beds are going for $600k, whereas getting a 2 family house that is 2000-2400 sq ft with 2-3 bedrooms in each unit is often $900k-1 million. 1 family houses are also the same price, so totally out of our range.
I have a best friend from middle school who I have been friends with for 25 years. She and her partner are also house hunting, and she's brought up that it would cost us less to buy a 2 family. I also have a partner. We could afford the house, but I'm wondering how on earth the finances would work for such a situation. The banks appear to be aiming their sales toward landlords, but in this situation, could we all be on the mortgage and then split it off once we owned the house so we had two separate mortgages for each household? Is there a penalty for doing so? It technically could be better for one of us to buy it and rent to the other but neither of us want to be renters and I don't think either of us plus partners would qualify for a 850-900k mortgage.
Obviously there are legal ramifications for this as well but for right now, focusing on how practically this would work is what I'd like to do.
Submitted February 24, 2018 at 09:37AM by TheChoiceIsMine123 http://ift.tt/2ovuIn7
