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Category: Buying A Home

Buying A Home

With Rent Control And High Prices, Is House Hacking Still Realistic?

People ask if house hacking is still a realistic and viable option in the Bay Area given our high price points and continued move towards tenants rights and rent control. We believe wholeheartedly that it is. It may not result in ‘free’ living right away, but we believe it’s far better than the alternative. Our clients who end up in successful house hack situations keep their monthly housing expenses far lower than if they had continued to rent or bought a single family home. Add that to the long term benefits of owning real estate, and these folks are in

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Buying A Home

Do You Need A Real Estate Agent To Buy A Home?

We’re the Joe Dickerson Group at Keller Williams Realty in Oakland, California serving the wider Bay Area. We believe in real estate as one of the best ways to build wealth, and our passion is to help people do just that! After all, the average net worth of a home owner is around a quarter million dollars, while the networth of a lifelong renter is, on average, only five thousand dollars.  So when the time is right, one of the best ways to set yourself up on a path of wealth building is to buy your home. And when that

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Buying A Home

What Should I Look For When Looking At A Listing?

We have a passion for helping people build wealth through real estate, and we know that every house you purchase, whether it’s an investment property or your forever home, is an investment that can help you build wealth for yourself, your family, and your future. But first things first. Let’s talk about the home search, which is the fun part! In this blog, we’ll cover the beginning of your search for potential homes. We’ll discuss the different platforms and tools available to find the perfect home for you . And we’ll also cover what to focus on when looking at

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Buying A Home

How Do I Know How Much I Can Afford for a Home?

In this blog, we’re talking about affordability, and outlining how to figure out how much house you can buy. Let me start by saying if you’re looking for a loan for the purchase of a property, a lender is going to be the one to determine exactly what you’ll qualify for. I’ve had many clients want to start the home shopping process before going through the loan application process, and that’s where the concepts discussed in this blog will help. Figuring out how much house you can buy has a lot of variables, but ultimately it comes down to two

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Buying A Home

What to Put Down for Your Down Payment

In this blog, we’re talking about financing, or securing a mortgage for the home or investment you’d like to buy. Specifically, we’re going over downpayments and what you, as a buyer, should expect to put down for a downpayment. There are tons of different loan programs available to all sorts of buyers, and these programs are changing all the time. We can’t possibly cover every possible scenario, but we want to give you a good idea of the basics. I’m sure you’ve heard that 20 percent is the required downpayment amount for a house. And in many cases, that is

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Buying A Home

Things To Know Before Starting Your Own Flip Project

We have a passion for helping people build wealth through real estate. One recent way we accomplished this was by partnering with a homeowner to fully renovate their property to maximize the sales price when selling. Essentially, it was a fix-and-flip.  In this blog, we’re going to walk through what exactly is a fix-and-flip and outline a process to make them more successful. We’ll cover how to find and analyze a property, steps to take before getting started, and some common pitfalls to avoid. What Is A Flip So first, what is a fix-and-flip. Flipping a property essentially means purchasing

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Buying A Home

House Hacking Case Study

In this blog, we’re going to walk through a case study of one of our past clients who have chosen to house hack. Earlier this year, our clients – we’ll call them Jim and Gabby – were looking to make the move into a more permanent home from a rented apartment. With their two young children, their goal was to find a 2 or 3 bedroom house and they hoped to stay in a good commuting location either east of Lake Merritt or along 580 in East Oakland. Their budget of 650,000 dollars proved challenging in their target neighborhoods, so

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Buying A Home

Frequently Asked Questions About House Hacking

We have a passion for helping people build wealth through real estate and one of our favorite ways to do that is through a strategy called house hacking. We’ve helped many of our clients purchase homes and benefit from house hacking. Over the years we’ve answered a multitude of questions regarding house hacking and we’d like to share some of our top frequently asked questions with you!  So in this blog, we’ll answer some of the most common questions we get regarding house hacking, which, simply put, is purchasing a small multi-unit property, living in one unit and renting out

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Buying A Home

Is House Hacking Right For You

We have a passion for helping people build wealth through real estate and one of our favorite ways to do that is through a strategy called house hacking. While my wife and I have done numerous house hacks over the years, I’m the first to admit it’s not for everyone. So in this article, we’ll help you determine whether house hacking is right for you. We’ll look at things you should consider before house hacking, the pros and cons of house hacking, and at least one scary story from my experience as a landlord. But first, in case you don’t

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Buying A Home

What is House Hacking?

House hacking is typically the purchase of a multi-unit property with the intention of occupying one unit and renting the remainder in order to reduce the overall housing expense while simultaneously building wealth. That’s a mouthful! And it’s only one of many definitions. In my work with clients, typically we’re talking about the above definition, which said more simply, is living in a duplex, etc that you own while renting out the other units. Though more broadly the term can be used to mean producing income out of a house you live in potentially be renting rooms, garage space, gardening

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