Innovative "house hack" - my approach...

[Justin Tahilramani]

Good Evening Bigger Pockets Community,

I finally have some spare time, and would like to take the opportunity to share my latest "house hack". My wife and I are active duty Army officers and are currently stationed in North Carolina. About two years ago I had the opportunity to purchase 40 acres of land from a local bank. I didn't know much about land, (that's an entirely different story) but my wife and I decided to take a leap of faith and buy the land from the bank. I should probably mention that my wife and I were both in Afghanistan at the time and purchased the land without ever seeing it. Hey, before you judge, No guts - No glory!

I fully admit that in retrospect - it was a huge gamble. Luckily for us we were totally ignorant when it came to purchasing land. My wife and I had done a lot of "traditional" real estate deals in the past, but land was a whole new world for us.

Luckily, probably by the grace of a higher power, the land turned out to be what we expected. We cleaned it up and sat on it for about a year before we started seriously considering building a house on the land.

Early on in the process of designing the house I had decided that I was going to maximize the flexibility of our home. I finally settled on a design that basically allowed us to live on the first floor, have one apartment on the second floor (separate entrance), and a second apartment over a detached three car garage. I designed the house this way because I wanted the ability for family to stay with us for extended periods of time without feeling "imposed upon". We could have both my family and the wife's family over at the same time and everyone would have their space. It was perfect......in theory at least. 

It took some time, but I found a builder that was willing to build the house exactly as I had envisioned. We essentially ended up with three homes in one. When the house was finally done - we quickly realized that we were not taking full advantage of the apartments. Without high expectations - I decided to slap them up on airbnb and homeaway. After all - who would want to stay with us??? Its not like we are in NY City or Southern California...... Well, turns out that a lot of people want to stay with us. We have been booked solid for months. The two apartments are paying for our entire mortgage and then some. I'm blown away by the power of short term rentals - it's really the ultimate "house hack" in my opinion. Especially considering that all units are serviced by the same electric, water, cable, and internet service (economies of scale).

In case anyone is interested I will upload the plans for our house. I am more than happy to discuss in more detail if anyone is interested. Just wanted to share my story with the BP community....