My Tenant Pays $1,225 of My $2,022 Mortgage Payment

Fifty gallons, give or take. That was the shop-vac math on the evenin' of December 26, when I stood in the shared basement of my Kansas City duplex at 8:30 at night, running a wet-dry vac from Harbor Freight across forty feet of wet concrete while a dead 40-gallon water heater dripped off its drained valve above me.

What was at stake ran past the appliance. My savings held $2,100 that week, Marcus in side B had paid rent on the first of the month 14 straight times and was worth keeping at close to any cost, and my own payment of $2,022, with taxes and insurance and FHA mortgage insurance bundled in, does not pause for broken equipment. No hot water in a Kansas City December, in a two-unit building, means two households cold-showering at the YMCA.

The receipt from Southgate Plumbing came three days later: $1,340, and that number has reframed every repair decision I have made since, including a rent increase I almost talked myself out of in September. Before the heater, tho, the math that put a tenant on the other side of my wall. It starts with 3.5 percent down.

the FHA math that got me in

I closed on the duplex September 14, 2024, a 1948 brick two-unit near Waldo, for $245,000, with $8,575 down at 3.5 percent on an FHA loan and the 1.75 percent upfront premium rolled into a $240,562 balance at 6.875 percent thru Movement Mortgage. All in, the payment is $2,022: $1,582 of principal and interest, $205 of taxes, $124 of insurance, $111 of monthly MIP. Cash to close ran $11,900 with costs. I live in side A, 1,100 square feet of it, and side B is the mirror half with its own furnace, its own panel, and one shared basement where the water heater lives.

$1,150 for side B

I listed side B on Zillow at $1,150 on October 1, 2024, and eleven inquiries landed inside 48 hours, which is what a 2-bedroom near a bus line does in that zip code. Marcus, who works IT for a hospital system, toured on September 28 with a measuring tape for his bed frame and asked direct questions about the water pressure, and I signed him to a lease starting November 1. First of the month, $1,150, Zelle, deposit $1,150. He has paid on the first every single time, which I did not fully appreciate until a coworker told me what her tenants do on the fifth.

Marcus, fifteen months, zero late

The ledger as of this writing: 15 payments, $17,475, zero late, one renewal signed the same day I sent it. He waters my porch plants when I travel. I fixed his garbage disposal on a Saturday in August for the cost of a $22 part. This is the part the spreadsheet never models about house hacking, the part where your mortgage gets paid by a person whose dog watches you through the window when you mow. Blue is a lab. He is a bad guard dog and good company.

the shop vac from Harbor Freight

The heater went sometime on December 26 while I was at my sister's. Marcus texted a photo at 6:14 p.m., water spreading from the utility closet across the basement floor in a thin sheet. I got home by 7:10, killed the valve, pulled the shop vac I bought for $89 two years ago to detail a car, and worked the floor while Marcus moved his laundry upstairs and brought out his own vac, because he is the kinda tenant who owns a wet-dry vac. Ninety minutes, two vacs, one dehumidifier running all night. The floor was dry by mornin'.

the receipt from Southgate Plumbing

Southgate quoted $1,490 on December 27 and installed a 40-gallon unit on December 29 for $1,340 after matching a competitor, permit pulled, old tank hauled, one-year labor warranty. I paid from savings, which took the balance from $2,100 to $760, and then sat at my kitchen table doin' the only division that mattered: $1,340 against $1,225, one month of Marcus's rent, approximately 110 percent. One emergency, one month of rent. That ratio is the entire argument for this setup, and it took a broken heater in a December basement to make me run it.

the rent increase I almost skipped

The lease expired October 31, and in September I pulled comps on Zillow: $1,250, $1,295, one 2-bedroom at $1,325 with worse parking. I drafted a renewal at $1,250, sat on it nine days, tore it up, and sent $1,225 with a 60-day notice on September 1, because a tenant on time for fifteen months is worth more than $25 a month and I know it. He signed the same afternoon. I still think about those nine days, and whether a landlord who agonizes this much should just index to the comps and be done. Likely. I have not managed it yet.

$1,225 against $2,022

The standing math, flat: rent covers 60.6 percent of the payment. My out-of-pocket is $797 a month to live in half a duplex I own, against the $1,295 a 1-bedroom rental in Waldo went for in September. The gap is $498 a month in my favor, before any principal, before appreciation, before the water-bill split. Numbers on a screen. The basement made them real.

the January 1 text

Marcus's January rent arrived at 8:02 a.m. on January 1, the fifteenth consecutive first-of-the-month payment, with a photo of Blue wearing a coat. Payment 15: $1,225. Five months at the new rate. The screenshot lives in the same folder as the Southgate receipt now, the money and the bill, side by side.

one wall, one water bill

The duplex tax, honestly stated: I hear Marcus's bass through the brick on Friday nights, we share one water meter that runs $86 a month and splits $43 and $43 under the lease, and when the heater died we were both cold together. I wrapped both units' pipes in December for $40 of foam. Payment $2,022, rent $1,225, my half of this house $797, and on December 26 that arrangement looked like forty feet of wet concrete at 8:30 at night. It still does, some nights. The vac stays by the stairs now. That is the arrangement.