Quote from @Sat Palshetkar: Hey,I'm a first time investor in real estate and my wife and I are planning to invest (with house hacking) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

But they could just buy the house or condo next door and go to cosco and spend $10k making it nice like my wife does. 

Then buy out my partners on my Costa Rica properties, and just host retreats in Costa Rica, visit my cabins, collect cash flow, and enjoy my wife and kids and travel around visiting friends in my awesome motorhome which I have not purchased yet. great goals.. mine is to buy a nice drift boat and flyfish all over the west and up into BC. trying to figure out do I buy a summer cabin say in Western Montana or Eastern Idado as a home base..

This combined with my new boss giving me additional responsibilities (how dare he...) and the support of my wife prompted me to take the plunge. 

I did the exact same thing 5 years ago except it was a single family and I rented the rooms out to friends, now my wife and I have built a portfolio of 10 homes.

I have several vacation homes and several local STR's my wife and I run. 

My wife and I do it separately and see what each of us may have overlooked. 

The beauty of personal finance is it's all personal :) If leverage works for you, awesome!

LOL My wife gives me crap all the time and now my goal is to get it right through escrow. lol

If something happened to me, I wanted my wife and kids cared for.