Hi there!
My husband and I have 3 little ones, 7 and under. We are in the Central Florida area and have been considering house hacking our primary home. I'd like to get feedback and your perspectives of the pros and cons for our scenario. The idea just came to me in an effort to reduce our personal cost of living footprint.
Our goal is to do a financial reset. Yet given the dynamics of our family unit, we'd like to stay in the area we currently own in. My husband is very close to work, and the area is just wonderful with all the needs for a family within 10 minutes. Buying and selling right now, again given those dynamics I mentioned would be too much for us for the time being. So with the house hack...
My thought was that we could split our 4 bedroom 3 bath, 2,400 sq. ft. home into 2 family living spaces. I've always been interested in tiny house living, or eventually buying an RV to travel, so living in about 1,100 square feet under this house hacking scenario would be a soft step towards towards that.
We would fill in a 3/4 wall and add a deadbolt lock door to separate the two spaces, leaving the first half with the 3 secondary bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with the kitchen, family room, and laundry, with a garage door entrance.
The 2nd half (our family's half) would have the main house entrance. This half would leave the master bedroom, formal living room, and formal dining room with the master bathroom and sitting space. We would have to convert the formal living into a small kitchen type space (IKEA) (plumbing costs to add a sink and fridge to the space ...? not sure how much), and use the formal dining as a quaint living room. Leaving our oversized master bedroom for a triple bunk bed for the kids, and the sitting room space (divided by a privacy curtain) for us to sleep.
The tenant family and our family would share the garage, laundry, pool, and backyard.
Some extra details... Our mortgage is ~$2400 a month. We would look to rent the 3/2 side for about $2,000 with a short term lease if possible, otherwise may go down a little if HOA requires a 1 year lease.
The rental rate would include water and utilities.
Our house was built in mid 90's, and everything is still standard, so I'm thinking we would need to do some home improvements as part of the project to get the home's tenant side ready, particularly main kitchen (including flooring) IKEA reno & 1 bathroom reno.
I'm in the process of looking through our HOA docs to see if this is even allowed in our community. My thought is that if you, as the owner, are living in your property, leasing out part of your home is allowed. But I can't find the HOA docs to confirm just yet. :( If anyone knows what's generally the case on this in central florida, please let me know.
This Post is the first step in this project idea for us. What do you think :-/ Would appreciate hearing your input on HOA regulations, pros and cons of this scenario, and any other productive points. Thank you!
