House Hacking

What if someone else would pay your mortgage while you still got to live in your home? 

I'd like to introduce you to house hacking.

With house hacking, someone lives inside your house while you live there too. You get to choose how connected or disconnected they are from you. 

Sometimes, it's like having a roommate. I know some people who share a living space and a kitchen with their "renters." That's still house hacking, because someone is paying a chunk of your mortgage every month in exchange for a chunk of your house.

Our family prefers house hacking with distinct separation, where the renter never comes into "our part of the house."

For our specific house, we have a room over the garage that has a second staircase down to the garage. It is attached to our home in two places, but we are able to lock both of those from the inside, and he can enter and exit his space via the door in the garage.

He has a huge room; which includes a dining and buffet area, futon/couch t.v. area, desk and computer area, and a queen sized bed. He also has an attached full bathroom and lots of extra attic and closet space. There's enough floor space for his pac man machine to fit nicely in addition to all of the other furniture. 

What he doesn't have, is a kitchen.

You may think that no one would want a space without a kitchen, but we have found two people since we moved in who have been willing to live in our space with no kitchen access. We provided a microwave, crockpot, small grill, and hot plate for them. We have a mini fridge up in their room, and an older fridge/freezer combo in our garage for them to store their food in until they're ready to cook/eat it.

The first renter was a college student, in town only for a semester, that wanted a place to rent, short-term, in a safe neighborhood, not too far from her college. She was a friend of a friend of a friend. Sweet girl. She graduated after staying with us for four months. The second renter is a single friend from church, who wanted to live on our side of the water. He has been with us for a couple of months.

How could you shift your home to make house hacking work for you?

If you are able to buy and live in a duplex, that's the easiest way. Sometimes, if you buy a duplex, you can charge 100% of the mortgage to someone else, for one half of the duplex and live there in the other half completely free. 

If you have a single family home, you can still house hack, even if you don't have a room above the garage/second staircase situation! Count the exterior doors to your home. If you have more than two doors that leave your home, chances are, you could get by with using only two of them (like a front and back door). The third door could be your renter's entrance.

If you have a third entrance to your house, you're already almost there! If you lock off the ways that the third entrance connects to the main rooms of your home, and make sure they have access to a bathroom, they have their own way in and out!

Or, as the most laid back option, rent out a bedroom to someone you trust and share the main spaces.

Obviously, giving up some of your square footage is a loss, but as long as they're helping you knock off a a percentage of your mortgage payment (ours pays over 20% of our monthly cost, and we don't miss the room!), you get to your end goals faster! Just like with any debt payoff, this decision is only for a time.

Make it official.

As an additional measure of communication and security for our family, we talked to someone else we know who owns rentals and got an official renters agreement, which we edited to fit our situation and had signed. That way, if there's ever a period of non-payment or something else that voids the contract, we have an official document that both parties signed, to reference. 

House Hacking is one way to make extra income, which can help you climb out of debt or move towards your retirement goals faster. 

What about your home? Is there a way you could make a third entrance work for your family?