Building a multi for house hacking

[Erik E.]

Hey everyone,

My wife and I are talking about if we want to save for a house of our own, or buy investment properties while continuing to rent. I have heard about house hacking and my wife seems to be on board with it as well. Just the other day I started looking into buying property and building a modern prefab house which I hear CAN be cheaper than buying existing or doing traditional home building. That argument aside, what if we went straight to building an affordable duplex on a plot of land and jumped into house hacking right away on the first property we owned? Aside from me needing to learn more about the home building process for my area and if it'll work for my budget in the first place, does anyone see any downfalls to this scenario? I know a lot of people start with SFH and then "upgrade" the multi arena, but in the DC area there are not a lot of existing multis around, and their either too expensive for me right now or they are in a bad area so I wouldn't do an owner-occupied situation. Please let me know what you think!

[David Faulkner]

I agree with Matt. You need to learn to walk before you run. "Walking" for me was buying a cosmetic fixer SFR and living there while putting in "sweat equity" in paint, flooring, kitchen, and baths. Believe me, this alone is stressful enough on a relationship. Then, after 2 years of living there, you will have learned acquisition and remodeling and can buy the next fixer and turn the 1st house into a rental to learn the landlording side. If you want to try landlording before then, you could rent out rooms. If you can find a duplex where the numbers and quality of neighborhood works for you, you could do that too, but you said that it didn't look like it would. One other tip: sometimes the numbers work better without it being ghetto on the outskirts of town or in the burbs ... your sacrifice there will likely be commute time.