Been living and renting in Seattle for 5 years. Found BP in quarantine and became fascinated with REI. I've been wanting to buy for a while now and with WFH (big tech worker) for at least until the year's end, it seemed like a good time to upgrade into something more permanent. I've no prior experience in real estate, but I've been following the FIRE movement and wanted to use REI to diversify. I'm especially taken with the idea of house hacking via STRs, as I'm almost 30 and the flexibility of choosing when not to have roommates or housemates is nice.

I've been on the house hunt for about a month now, and found a lovely place in West Seattle with a partially finished basement. Toured it yesterday and preinspections found some but not too many major problems. I would like to learn to evaluate it (and others) for STR/Airbnb potential in the basement, and I'm currently down a rabbit hole about egress points and ceiling height minimums. I think this one might be too low to be considered habitable but the previous owner seemed to have a room down here? I don't intend for this to be a forever home, just a starter home, but a long term for such a place like this could be to keep as a rental, or renovate the basement to have a kitchen and rent out the top floor and basement separately. I can't find what regulations there are to build out a kitchen in a basement though.

Been lurking here long enough and am excited to start out on this journey and hopefully meet other FIRE and REI-minded folks.

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New prospective home owner/REI starting out in Seattle

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