Luxury House Hack (Ideas Needed)

[Daniel Pitner]

My wife and I just got a great deal on a 1/2 acre lot in Peoria, AZ.  Our goal is to eventually build a home on it and do a luxury house hack but I need some help thinking through some different options.The lot has two driveways (one out the back and one out the front) so the back side would be used for the guests/tenants.

 Here are the three options we've come up with: 

1) Build a large house with an attached mother-in law casita to rent out all at the same time. Pros: faster time frame to accomplish plan, mother-in law casita appraises at the same price/square foot as the main house.  Cons: very expensive up front costs 

2) Build a main house and wait a few years until we can put a large chunk of cash towards a casita. Pros: gives us time to save for a very nice ADU. Cons: We would still need to carry a large mortgage with no income to subsidize it.

3) Build a small ADU first and live it in until we can save up more cash for a large main home. pros: low living expenses for a year so we can put a big chunk of change towards the main house, ability to turn our current home into a cash flowing rental faster. Cons: small house for a while, not sure how this would work in terms of permitting with the city.

Any input and ideas you guys have would be wonderful!