4 Tips to Keep Your Family Safe During a House Hack

House Hacking is a great way to dive into real estate if you have a family. My wife and I spent years moving our family property to property building some impressive cash flowing and high equity properties. We house hacked with a growing family closing on our first multifamily the same week our second son was born, along the way we added two more children to our journey. At one point we had 4 children under the age of 6 while house hacking. This is how we made sure to keep things safe.

Separate units

We house hacked multi-family properties for two reasons: better cash flow and we did not want anyone we did not know personally sharing our living space. Making sure to have separate, private living space was a must. I would not trust a room by room rental with kids. Having separate living spaces is no different than a condo or apartment building. Close neighbors is not a bad thing but keeping tenants separate is a must with kids.

Screening

We are in control of who gets to live next door. Full background check is always required along with proof of income and credit check. How the prospective tenant shows ups is huge as well, the entire time leading up to signing the lease is all a test. We are 5 years in and yet to have a reason to evict any of our tenants, we attribute that to the high standards we put in place with who we rented to.

Construction Safety During Renovation

Making sure each unit has its own locks at all times is important. Anytime there was danger; power tools in use, demolition, etc. We made sure the doors were locked unless my wife or myself was with the kids watching what was happening. Showing our kids how to handle tools properly was a great way to get them comfortable at a young age and making sure they understood the safe way. Cleaning up each day was important, it is something you should do regardless but having kids on site we made sure to clean up daily.

Powerful Lease

This one should come with all rental properties regardless of your family being onsite but you may want to tweak a few things to make life easier. The two big things that stood out in our lease are where do tenants park the cars and who gets the yard. For car parking we made it clear absolutely no parking in our spots. Kids enjoy riding bikes, chalk, playing on asphalt in general so we wanted to make it very clear that no one parks in our area. Backyard space was mainly ours, most of the tenants we had over the years kept to themselves never really used the yard space but we still made it known in our lease if it ever came up what designated times we had for the backyard. Altering the lease to make your family safe is huge, most of what you tweak specific to yourself you will never need to use but you still want it in case issues come up.

I hope these tips help gain some clarity around how you can invest in real estate with a family. My wife and I made it a mission that we would do whatever it took to not allow our children to be an excuse not to invest. We made it clear in our heads that our children will be our reason, they are what fuels us to keep investing in real estate. When obstacles of safety came up we got around them and figured a way to make it work.