House Hacking the Santa Barbara County area

[Denver Chavez]

Hi BP community!

Does anyone have any experience house hacking the Santa Barbara area? Such a premium and overpriced area seems like it would be difficult to offset what a mortgage would cost, in this current market. However, I'm curious if anyone has had any success in the surrounding markets like Buellton, Solvang, or Carpinteria.

Any tips or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Baird King]

Quote from @Denver Chavez:

Hi BP community!

Does anyone have any experience house hacking the Santa Barbara area? Such a premium and overpriced area seems like it would be difficult to offset what a mortgage would cost, in this current market. However, I'm curious if anyone has had any success in the surrounding markets like Buellton, Solvang, or Carpinteria.

Any tips or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Denver. My wife and are living in a house hack here in downtown SB. We converted the detached garage into a one bedroom ADU when we purchased the property in 2020. We now live in the ADU and rent out the front 2 bed 1 bath which covers 85% of the mortgage, and they are getting a screaming deal. We love our tenants, but if they left, we could get pretty close to our full mortgage payment covered with the front unit alone. If we lived in the front with a roommate and rented the ADU, our whole mortgage would be covered, no problem. Of course we got our place at a great time, but I would say with some creativity, you shouldn’t have a problem finding a property you could house hack that would cover your mortgage after some work and potentially a year or two of raising rents. All depends on how close quarters you are willing to live in with others.

We are just about to move to our new duplex in Ventura to rehab and do the same thing we did with our SB property. I am pretty certain we will be covering 75% of our mortgage by renting out one unit at that property immediately following rehab. 

 
Hope this helps.