During your first 12 months of living in the house, you can rent out a room (to a roommate or on Airbnb). 

I could also get a roommate to split rent with me for the third unit, but that would increase total rent to $3000.After calculating expenses, my mortgage payment, PMI, and the cost of lost rents during the first two rents, I'd be breaking even for the first year. 

Carrying costs were $160/mo and it took us 3 months to renovate it before my son got a roommate to house-hack with. 

Turnkey is similar, but they do the renovation for you (or sometimes part of it).Househacking: great, if you want roommates.  

@aaron millispost pictures of roommates:)

I bought my personal residence at 23 and house hacked it with two roommates who paid the mortgage for me (100% financing).  

Our apartment complex had a policy packet that was 16 pages,, included everything , also had a page with moveout cleaning charges like clean the stove was $125.00 , missing blinds were $35.00 for window, 85.00 for patio, clean window were $15.00 each for example.It gave noise requirements, where to dispose of trash, what was acceptable for trash, and listed charge for any large items left like couch was $50.00 to dispose of, mattress $25.00 box spring $25.00 so we were covered if they put any large items out.It covered roommate changes to lease, what a lease buyout fee was, how to pay your rent, how to give proper notice, late fee charges, charges to change lock,, how much lock out charge was to come and open your door. 

It's quite interesting to see though because many of my peers are all working in tech, yet they are still paying $1500/mo with a roommate.

How different is that from having roommates?

Not only rent out the other units, I would rent out the other rooms in my unit to buddy room-mates.