Crash Course of our Story: Food Stamps to FI in 7 years

We always say if we can do it anyone can do it. Seven years ago we were working 2-3 jobs in a remote seasonal job market and still on food stamps. Fortunately we were living in a condo I (Em) had bought using money she invested from high school graduation. We decided to rent the condo out on the weekend, capitalizing on the tourist hot spot that we lived in. We quickly realized that we could easily save money if we rented the condo out full time. So that is exactly what we did. We purchased a 15ft camper ( a whopping 105 sq ft total) that we named Harvey.  We had found better jobs in a nearby city and a new friend and coworker let us park and live in her front yard.  We were able to use our Air BnB income to purchase a 2nd condo which we turned into a long-term rental. When our friend wanted her yard back,  D purchased her first home. We used Em’s birthday party, Fixer Upper themed, to help us with some renovations and a face lift.  Moving into 800 sq ft from our accustomed 100 we realized we could rent out our spare bedroom on AirBnB, so we started house hacking again. 

At this point, Em had been fired twice and D had finished her EMT program. Now, with Em needing to get a new job, we were desperate. Em applied for a teaching position in a town that she thought was 20 minutes away, it was more like 2 hours away. But like I said, we were desperate. So she took it.  We sold her original condo and used the cash to buy a duplex in a new town. We turned D’s first house into a long term rental. When we went to view the duplex with a realtor, D’vorah had never even been to that town. We figured it was a safe bet to purchase a duplex so we would have something that cash-flowed if we ended up hating the town. We house hacked that too, living in one side and doing some rehab while renting out the other side with a long-term renter. We got married a week after we moved in!  We made it about 6 months before deciding that our studio sized duplex was a bit crammed.

Em sold her second condo and we purchased a primary residence about three miles across town. To say it needed some TLC would have been an understatement. To this day, we aren’t sure how the bank approved it. There was an active leak in the roof that had water pooling in the master bedroom and black mold growing. It smelled like cat piss and the oven was an original from the 1980’s. D’vorah almost burnt the house down on move in day trying to make a frozen pizza!  With all that though, we knew all those problems could be fixed. We also saw a major opportunity lying in this house.

The downstairs had a finished basement, a full bathroom, and existing water pipes that were capped off. We immediately knew we could finish out the basement, put in a small kitchen and voila, more house hacking. At this time we had 2 properties (the duplex D’vorah’s first primary residence) and 3 renters. Then we moved someone into the studio apartment (door number 4). After that it was time to tackle the master bedroom. The worst room in the house! We learned that there isn’t much bleach, mold and mildew remover, sheetrock repair, and Kilz can’t fix! We put in a long term renter and bam! we had 5 renters and 3 properties.

From there all of our skills, books we read, and hard work came together and snowballed into 9 units and 11 renters within a 2 year period. We are going to share more details on how this all happened, so stay tuned!

We hope you can learn from our experience and apply some of our house hacking techniques to get your real estate investments cash-flowing!