Owner occupancy clock: move out at month 13 or stay put for three years

Your $92 answer is the whole thread, hollow. A move costs you closing costs, a vacancy risk on your own unit, and a few months of attention you could have spent elsewhere. If the vacated unit doesn't clear that with room to spare, staying is the cheaper decision. I've held things for eleven years mostly because moving is expensive in ways the spreadsheet doesn't show.

One thing that pushes me toward staying longer than people expect is zoning. If you're in a place where an ADU or a second unit is permittable, the years you live there are the years you can actually get the work done, because you're on site and you can walk the inspection yourself. Leave at month 13 and that project becomes a remote general contracting job you're managing from another county. Rules on accessory units differ enormously by municipality, so check your own ordinance rather than what someone's podcast said about their city.

I'm mostly reading about paper rather than buildings, so forgive the basic question. When you move out and convert your unit to a rental, does the loan itself change, or is it the same note and you've just changed how the property is used? I've seen occupancy clauses referenced and I can't tell whether satisfying the period means the clause is gone or means it stops being enforced.

Same note in the cases I've read about, vellum. The occupancy requirement is a term you agreed to for a defined period at the start, and once it's satisfied the loan keeps running on the terms you signed. Anyone doing it should have their actual note read, because programs and lenders word this differently.

On hollow's question I'd stay. Two mortgages and a move every year is a job. The version of this I want is one building, low payment, nothing dramatic for a decade.

I'm planning a first purchase now and I've been assuming the repeat model, so this thread is uncomfortable in a useful way.

What changes my answer is which unit I'm sitting in. If I take the worst unit in the building on purpose, the smaller one with the bad layout, then moving out is an upgrade for me and a modest rent bump for the property. If I take the best unit because I want to live well, moving out means downgrading my life to gain $92 and I won't do it. So the stay-or-go decision gets made at purchase, before there's anything to decide.

quill's point is the sharpest one here. From a capital standpoint the repeat model only makes sense if each cycle adds a property that stands on its own with a market manager and market rents, because that's the test the property has to pass eventually anyway. If it needs you living in it to work, you haven't bought an asset, you've bought a discount on your own rent. Nothing wrong with the discount. It just doesn't compound the way people assume, and hollow's $92 is exactly what that looks like on paper.