Live in one unit, rent the other, and the whole building finances as a primary residence. It is the cheapest entry into rental property that exists in Colorado.
Most first-time investors assume a rental property means twenty-five percent down and an investment-property rate. That is true of a house you will never live in. It is not true of a duplex where you occupy one side, and that distinction changes the arithmetic completely.
A two-to-four unit building you live in qualifies as a primary residence. Conventional financing reaches it with a small down payment, FHA reaches it with three and a half percent, and a veteran reaches it with nothing down. The rate prices as a primary residence rather than as an investment, which on a loan this size is a meaningful monthly difference.
Five units and up becomes a commercial loan, and that is a different file with different rules.
Lenders count a portion of the projected rent from the unit you will not occupy, usually around seventy-five percent of market rent, which covers vacancy and maintenance. An appraiser establishes that market rent as part of the appraisal. That added income often raises what you qualify for beyond what a single-family purchase would allow.
Colorado Springs carries a large military population around Fort Carson, Peterson and the Academy, which produces steady rental demand and regular turnover from permanent change of station orders. Purchase prices sit below the Denver metro while rents hold up well, and that ratio is what makes a small multifamily work.
Zoning deserves a look before you write an offer. Some older properties operate as duplexes without the zoning to match, and an unpermitted second unit changes both the appraisal and the loan.
Your tenant lives on the other side of the wall. Screen carefully, put the lease in writing, keep a reserve for the furnace and the roof, and understand Colorado eviction timelines before you need them. The financing is the easy part of this purchase.
Occupancy requirements typically run twelve months. After that you can move out, rent both sides, and repeat the same structure on the next building. That sequence is how a lot of Colorado portfolios started.
Bring Steev the address and the rent you expect, and he will tell you what it finances at and what the payment looks like with the other unit rented.
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