Triplex Househack, Payoff or Leverage

[Nicholas Daniels]

Im 20 right now graduating next year. I was wondering if someone could review my game plan and help me decide what I should do. (I plan on an fha plan househack).

So I’ve kinda been planning on buying a triplex and renting out the other two units. Living in one and renting the others or “house hacking.” The thing is, assuming I can live for free in the property (meaning it cash flows after CAPex, mortgage, taxes, etc). I went with a triplex because managing two tenants will be a little more difficult than one but don’t wanna get overwhelmed with 3 in a quadplex.

Should I just bang out the mortgage with my job money and the cash from the property. I think it would be nice to have a paid off triplex and get like ~$1000/month or so from the property and not have a mortgage on it. But, if I do this I’m tying up a lot of cash that I could have used for other things. At the same time, I’m not sure I want to own a bunch of real estate. I’m more of an ETF guy, but I do wanna lower my housing expenses and eventually get paid to live in a house by the tenants.

Thanks