Are Double Shotgun Houses a Good Investment? A Numbers-First Guide

Verify the current lawful number of dwellings before entering rent. Architectural form and legal use are separate: the two-family-use guide explains how the Property Viewer, municipal addresses, permits and formal determinations fit together.

Then document living area, unit layout, condition, leases or market-rent evidence, utilities, taxes, insurance, flood information and immediate work. The Orleans Parish Assessor warns that its property-search information is prepared for assessment purposes and can be incomplete or out of date, so validate material inputs rather than treating one record as transaction documentation.

Separate total basis, operations and financing. This prevents an attractive monthly rent from hiding a large repair scope or an apparent cash flow from excluding reserves and owner-paid utilities.

A house-hack model treats one side's net rent as an offset against the owner's housing cost. A fully rented model evaluates both units as income-producing operations. They can use similar property inputs but answer different questions.

Use the double-shotgun house-hack calculator for the owner-occupied monthly scenario. Keep its rent, vacancy and maintenance inputs conservative, then add acquisition and capital-work analysis here before making a decision.

Net operating income measures property operations before debt service. Capitalization rate relates that NOI to a chosen property basis or value. Cash-on-cash return relates annual pre-tax cash flow after debt service to the cash invested. None captures every tax, appreciation, refinance or sale outcome.

Use consistent periods and definitions, show the numerator and denominator, and avoid mixing an asking price with future stabilized income unless the transition cost and time are explicit. The shotgun statistics page explains why citywide inventory evidence is not an appraisal of one double.

Price immediate work separately from recurring maintenance and long-term reserves. The renovation cost guide and estimator provide feasibility bands; inspection and comparable bids must replace them for the property.

Obtain current property-specific insurance quotes and do not infer flood cost from a zone alone. If the plan includes changing between one and two dwellings, use the conversion guide before counting the proposed income.

For rental strategy, compare a lawful long-term scenario with any short-term scenario only after checking the current New Orleans STR rules. Permission should remain a gating assumption, not optimistic revenue.

Run lower-rent, vacancy, insurance, repair-overrun, longer-renovation and higher-financing-cost cases. A model that works only when every input is favorable has identified its own risk.