The occupancy rider is what saved the timing on my fourth conversion

Four scattered houses is the part I'd want to hear more about. I run a service business and my routing cost per stop tripled when my accounts spread past about six miles. Are you managing these yourself, and if so what's the drive time between P1 and P4? Because that number is the one that decides whether year seven of this is a business or a second job.

If P3's rent comes in at 2,000 instead of 2,150 on the next renewal, what breaks? Running the numbers, you go from negative 90 to negative 240 on that one and P1's surplus gets eaten. Does the whole thing still qualify for P5 at that point, or does the DTI math stall you out for a year?

Negative 90 on a house you'll own for twenty years isn't a problem, it's a fee. I've held land that cost me money every single year and paid for itself once. The thing I'd want to know is whether your basis and depreciation setup got handled properly on each conversion, and that's a question for your CPA rather than this thread, but ask it before conversion number five rather than after.

So the 60 day window let you renovate first, but the twelve months didn't start until you actually lived there. That's the opposite of what I assumed and I'm glad I read this before I planned my own timeline. Did your lender confirm the reading, or did you just go with what the rider said?

Which conversion was the hardest to screen for? I'd think leaving a house you personally lived in makes you pickier than you should be about who moves in.

What makes this repeatable isn't the rider catch, it's that every payment you set was low enough that the market rent could eventually cover it. P1 at 1,540 with 1,875 of rent is the whole engine. P3 at 2,240 with 2,150 of rent is the same strategy run at a worse price, and it still pencils since P1 and P2 sit underneath it.

The whole thing rests on being able to keep buying at owner-occupant terms while your existing leases count toward qualifying. Two things could stop that independently. Your lender's treatment of lease income, which is an overlay and can change and should be in writing from them before you shop, and your own reserves, since four houses means four water heaters on four different clocks.

fathom, the part I'd copy exactly is dating your move-in with utility records. That's cheap and it turns an argument into a document. The part I wouldn't copy is assuming twelve months from closing, and I say that as someone who had it written down wrong in my own notes until this post. Rider language varies, and what the servicer does about it varies more, so nobody should take your rider as theirs.

The thing that keeps me interested in this over anything faster is that one purchase a year is a pace I can actually hold without a second job. Four years in you have four houses, and none of them required 25% down.

How did you get the rider in front of you before signing? Every closing I've sat in, the package showed up the day before and nobody reads 40 pages in an evening. Do you request the docs early or is there a standard set you already know to ask for by name?

Four moves in five years is what stops me. I want income without a second job and moving is worse than a second job for me. Honest question, how much of your weekend does a conversion year eat?

This math looks different where I'm shopping. My price points run 85k to 130k and the rents run 900 to 1,150, so the payment side is tiny and the repair side is proportionally huge. One 9k roof against a 1,000 rent is a different event than against your 2,150. Same strategy, different thing that kills you.

I'd have bought duplexes at each step and had rent from day one instead of a year of nothing. But you end up with four whole houses that appeal to a wider tenant pool than my units do, and single family tenants stay longer for me too. Different tradeoff, not a worse one.

Do you have a household that's fine with this or are you doing the moves solo? I ask because that's the constraint nobody prices.

What's your total reserve across all four right now, in dollars, and how did you decide the number? You mentioned your lender wanted reserves per property to qualify, but I'd guess your own comfort number is higher than theirs. Also curious whether you keep one pool or split it per house, because I'd want it split and I can't explain why.

On the lease income question, the pattern I've seen described most often is a haircut on gross rent plus documentation of the signed lease and proof the deposit actually landed in your account. Some lenders want a couple of months of received payments before they'll count it at all, which effectively adds a season to your timeline. Get the specific requirement from your loan officer in writing, because two lenders in the same building can answer differently and the difference is a whole acquisition year.

Check whether any of your four sit in a city with rental registration or a pre-tenancy inspection, because that varies city to city and a few states let municipalities set their own regime entirely. I've watched a conversion sit empty six weeks waiting on an inspector while the mortgage kept coming due.

You could have done this in two years with a partner's capital and skipped the moving truck. What you'd have given up is the 5% down and the owner-occupant rate on each one, which is exactly the thing you're buying with your inconvenience. I still think the partnered version scales faster, and I accept it costs more per door to start.

Is the occupancy rider a separate page you sign, or a paragraph inside the mortgage itself? I want to know what I'm looking for by name when my own package shows up.

The one that got me at conversion time was insurance. My homeowner policy didn't cover a tenant-occupied house and I found out because I mentioned the lease to my agent in passing, not because anyone warned me. Rewrote to a landlord policy and the premium went up about 22%, which came straight out of the cash flow I'd already penciled. fathom, did all four rewrites land where you expected, or did any of them surprise you on price?