Real Estate as an Undocumented Individual

How many of y’all want to own a house, apartment, tiny home, mansion, or anything real estate? I sure do. I think growing up most talks always revolved about where we would live, what we would do for housing, etc. I grew up living in a single-wide trailer. 

Once, in kindergarten I was asked to draw my house. I was still learning English and so I told my teacher that I didn’t have a house. I’m sure she was about to call social services after asking me a couple more times what I meant by saying that I didn’t have a house. 

Here came my ESL teacher to the rescue! My ESL teacher told me in Spanish, “Dibuja tu casa.” I answered, “No tengo casa, yo vivo en una traila.” I think it’s the cutest and very naive thing to say as a 5 year old now, but many people breathed a sigh of relief that day know they didn’t have a social worker case on their hands.

Now in my 20s, I’ve dreamt of having some form of property. I get told by my parents to invest in something that can be mine rather than spend more money that goes down the drain on rent. While that doesn’t make 100% sense in my life yet, I know many of my peers out there are looking for ways to get into the real estate business or simply start owning their own home. 

I’m going to share some resources I’ve come across that may help y’all. Feel free to send submissions of articles or real estate agents in your area that have helped you to [email protected].

In my past research I found out about the FHA Loan option. You can read more here: Federal Housing Administration. At the time, I also learned that I didn’t qualify as an undocumented individual. That has recently changed and there is a great article about this change from Bankrate. You can read it here: DACA recipients qualify for FHA. It’s a quick intro about how FHA loans make it much more accessible to purchase your first home. Do your due diligence on it but it can be what gets you a leg up to get into the real estate market.

Another idea that has been in my head is to buy a multi-family home as an initial property purchase. You can then rent out the second part, if it is a duplex, and have the renta help cover your monthly mortgage. There is a lot of reading available on this and you can start your journey here: 5 Reasons Your First Home Should Be A Duplex

I’ll continue to add on to this post, but for now I wanted to at least get my initial thoughts out about this. Real estate is one of the ways to get into the passive income market. 

Thank y’all for reading!