The lease term behind the income is the number a first-time buyer almost never pulls
A first-time buyer focused on long-term investment needs to think about the property the way an operator thinks about it, not the way an owner-occupant does. That shift changes what you look at during due diligence and what you are actually willing to pay. Say you are buying a duplex at 280k, living in one unit and renting the other. The rent on the tenant side is 1,400 a month and the listing presents that as a feature. The question you need to answer is how that rent was set and when the lease behind it expires, because a lease that runs another 18 months at below-market rent is a liability priced into the asset whether the seller tells you or not. If market rent in that zip is 1,650, you are not buying a 1,400 a month asset with upside, you are buying a locked obligation at a discount that affects your debt service coverage until the lease rolls. A buyer's agent working with investors is supposed to catch that. Most agents working with first-time buyers do not look at the lease at all, only the rent figure on the pro forma. That gap is where new buyers lose money on paper before they close. The other assumption doing most of the work in a house-hack purchase is vacancy on the rented unit during a turnover that you have to carry entirely from personal income. A 60-day turn at 1,400 a month is 2,800 in lost income and probably another 1,200 to 2,000 in make-ready costs, so your effective first-year return is already lower than the numbers at signing suggested. None of that appears in a standard residential purchase agreement. What lease term does your target unit currently show, and is there a security deposit assigned to you at closing or held by the seller?
