THE HOUSE HACK : Day 1

[Jamie Montpellier]

Hello everyone,

I thought I would chronicle my experiences with my first house hacking experiment with all of you.  My wife and I finally became homeowners in January after renting for 3.5 years and saving up enough mula to make the transition. 

However, we thought we could use a boost in the early going and so we waited to find a great home in a great upscale neighbourhood that had a rental unit in the basement.  So here we are on the eve of having our first tenant move in downstairs.  BP has been instrumental in helping us carefully screen our tenant applications.  Even though we reside in Canada, we simply modified our documents to reflect our local/regional by-laws etc.

We already own one SFU rental property and we are considering a second SFU probably sometime  in the next six months as the extra cashflow we are getting from this rental unit is enabling us to put away more money for more downpayments on more properties. 

Stay tuned as we hope we can share more of our stories with you guys!

One last thing before I go, would you consider the basement suite as a rental "door" in your portfolio or not??? In other words, should I consider myself having one SFU + one basement apartment when crunching my numbers?

Cheers,

Jamie