Creative strategies for house hacking

[Siyi Tang]

My partner and I plan to buy a home (single family or duplex) and house hack. We are not comfortable with sharing rooms with the tenant, so a separate entrance such as an ADU would be ideal. We are considering purchasing a home with an ADU, but also looking for other options.

Fellow investors, what creative strategies have you done for house hack? What would you recommend for an expensive market like the bay area?

[Bonnie Low]

We love ADUs and have evolved our business model to target properties that have a severely distressed main house and a secondary unit that can be converted to an ADU such as a detached garage, shop or studio. One of the advantages to this is that you can save a lot on the permit fees relative to the ADU build if you're working with an existing structure. Bonus if you can reuse the foundation and if it already has water and/or power to it. Lots of properties in CA already have detached units on them and CA if one of the most ADU friendly states. Not sure about San Francisco, but even nearby San Jose has a lot of parcels that have existing bonus structures that can be converted to ADUs. If your lot is big enough you can put up a fence in between so there's virtually no interaction with your tenant.This also makes it easier to rent it out as an MTR to travelers with pets. Even a postage stamp sized patio or yard can be very attractive to midterm guests.