Our Kids Love Our Rentals: House Hopping with the Family Part1

If you have a family and are considering investing in real estate I am here to say me and my wife successfully went property to property with 4 young children. Our Journey was crazy at times but looking back at it all we are so grateful for the experience. We now have 2 luxury multi family properties fully rented and cash flowing in an area of the country rumored not to cash flow.

Our first buy and hold property was a duplex. We Closed on the property a day before my second child was born. I did most of the renovations myself for my first deal, I did this for 2 intentions. First, I wanted to learn how to renovate a property what better way then to do it yourself. Second, I had very little money to spend and was not in a rush to leave. With a 2-year-old and new born I gutted the duplex. What I loved most about investing in multifamily properties was the fact that I was close to home, we lived on site. Getting home to the family was as quick as walking down the steps.

It took me under a year to get the unit I was working in complete. I managed to open it up, install a sound attenuation subfloor, new flooring, new cabinets, quartz countertops, updated the bathrooms, sheet rocked the walls, and painted. I made what was once an outdate illegal quad into a luxury 4bed 2bath. We immediately found tenants.

Next step I started working on the unit we lived in. The place was livable but in need of a major updates. At this point my wife was pregnant again with our 3rd on the way. Remember I put a sound attenuation floor on the second level. Well the reason I did that was to minimize noise and because the floors were so unlevel. With this being said I was pouring self-level in the kitchen while my wife went into labor, I was able to pour the last bag just as heard the shouts from the basement. This was the middle of summer and super-hot outside, if you know anything about self-level the heat makes it set up fast. I manage to get the job done with not a second to spare… Next step the hospital.

At this point I was in the middle of finding new tenants as well. The second level unit was being rented by College students and their lease was up in August. In the middle of renovating our kitchen we brought our baby girl home; our oldest was 4 and our middle child 2. Quite the circus life style we were living, moving room to room throughout our unit. We would go to one room, renovate the next, move into the finished room renovate a new room. I made a temporary kitchen in the basement to give us a place to cook, the unit was an illegal quad prior so there was some perks of that.

Three years after moving in we finally completed the property and began our hunt for out next property. Our experience with our first buy and hold was a wild one but our journey was no where near ending, it had just begun. My wife was pregnant with our 4th child! Do you think we stopped? You know the answer… What better way to close on a new multifamily property then to do it once again right before our 4th was born….