Duplex House Plans Ideas

There is a lot of talk about getting your first house. It’s part of the American Dream to get a house and maybe get a dog named Rover. But maybe someone’s first home should instead be a duplex. Why would I propose such a thing? Is it possible I am a secret Russian spy that hates American pie? No, there are simply too many advantages to buying a duplex first.

Buying a duplex has a number of financial advantages over buying a house. A lot of people assume that duplexes would sell for about twice of what a house sells for in the same neighborhood. This is rarely the case. Duplexes are more frequently about 1.5 times the price of a house in a given area. So to pick an easy number if a house is selling for 100k then a duplex should be selling for 150k.

So let’s compare buying a house to a duplex. To keep things the same let’s assume we have 20k to put down and we are looking in the Austin real estate market so that the taxes are 2.5 percent of the purchase price and insurance is 0.4 percent of the purchase price.

1. Lower Monthly Payment

To start off with let’s look at the house. For the house we are going to have a 6.5 percent interest rate.

100k house price
20k down payment

Monthly Payment = $747.32

Moving on to the duplex. Since duplexes usually have higher interest rates we are going to assume a 7 percent interest rate. We are also going to assume that the other side of the duplex is being rented for $650.

150k duplex price
20k down payment
Monthly Payment = $1184.18
Rent Payment minus 5 percent vacancy = $617.50
Monthly Payment minus rent = $566.68

The monthly payment on the duplex comes out to be 31.8 less than on a house. You might get different numbers based on your area. In most areas a duplex leads to a lower monthly payment but there are a few real estate markets where the opposite is true do always run the numbers.