Like I said in our house hacking guide, house hacking a duplex was one of the best financial decisions I’ve ever made. However, after I lived in the duplex for over a year – I started to think about what I should do next.
So, in this post, I’m going to talk about what led me to think about my next plan, what I ended up doing, what options I had available, and what I wish I would have done.
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What led me to think about what to do after house hacking
I started to think about my next plan after talking to my wife and realizing that she wasn’t as happy as I was house hacking. Now, you might be wondering why I’m mentioning this since a lot of people on the internet will tell you that “if the numbers work, it’s a good decision”. And while they’re not wrong, being a multi-faceted human is more than just good/bad decisions.
So, me and my wife lived in a 1k square feet, 3 bed + 1 bath unit (with “Brandi” – a 60lb dog)
We both come from the inner city and have lived in duplexes for most of our lives. Both of our families were low-income and owning a duplex that wasn’t in the inner city was a big accomplishment.
However, living in a duplex comes with disadvantages that affected my wife more than I realized. For example:
- It’s difficult to host holidays or throw parties in 1k square feet while being considerate of your neighbor and the yard space.
- We needed 2 bedrooms for our individual offices and 1 bedroom to sleep in. This didn’t leave us with any dedicated space for having children.
- Having random, sometimes long, conversations with neighbors when you’re just trying to take the trash out in the morning with bed hair and no bra – can be overwhelming.
And those are just the inconveniences I can think of off the top of my head.
Now, if you’re like most people, you might look at those inconveniences and say they’re minor or not a big deal due to the benefits of house hacking – and I would agree if her goals included the benefits of house hacking (which they never did).
If you’re reading this post before you start house hacking – what I want you to take away from this section is the understanding that: just because something works, doesn’t mean it works for your situation. Make sure you evaluate everything based on your own personal situation.
What I did after house hacking
So, after talking things through with my wife and coming to a compromise – as all good marriages should – we settled on a plan for purchasing our first single-family primary residence.
And that’s exactly what we did, albeit sooner than either one of us planned.
In the same year that we started planning/saving – we found a property that “checked the majority of the boxes” and it was close to the duplex that we were house hacking (which would now be 100% a rental property). Since we liked the area and could afford the much higher payment/maintenance (especially without a tenant to help pay for it) – we pulled the trigger and moved
What we could have done after house hacking
Even though me and my wife settled on moving out of our house hack, turning it into a rental, and moving into a single-family home – there were other options available to us that we didn’t choose.
Here’s what we considered:
Move into another house hack and rent out our old unit
We considered purchasing another multi-family property to house hack and renting out the unit we were living in.
If living at our current house hack wasn’t the plan – I was fully on board with purchasing another house hack that fit our needs better (more space). We agreed that this could be an option but we never found a property that fit our needs in an area we wanted to live in.
Sell our house hack and move into a single-family home
We considered selling our duplex and just buying a single-family home.
After talking about this option, we both quickly declined it. We had already completed most of the “hard” work of updating the systems at the property and even though we may have made a profit by selling – we hadn’t owned the property long enough for it to be worth it. However, if we needed the money in order to buy a single-family home that met our needs – we may have considered it further.
Sell our house hack and purchase an apartment
Another option we considered was selling our duplex and using the money to purchase a 6+ unit apartment building.
We discussed this option and although it could make sense financially, it would likely leave my wife with the same issues she had with our current duplex.
We also moved from an apartment to the duplex because she hates apartments and, at the time, I didn’t want to spend the money on a single-family home. So we compromised on house hacking a duplex.
What I wish we had done
Thankfully, me and my wife have both worked hard enough to be able to afford a relatively indulgent lifestyle compared to how we were raised. But, even though we’re doing OK, we could have been much better off (financially) if we continued living in our house hack.
So, I wish we could have taken advantage of house hacking for a longer period of time without the negatives that affected my wife and our near future.
But, like everything, there are pros and cons to rental property – especially when you’re the one living in one of your own units. For example, we didn’t use paint colors or flooring that we would have liked to use because, since we were planning on renting the property after left – we needed something neutral that was attractive to the majority of potential tenants.
What you should do after house hacking
You should evaluate your goals and what you’d like to achieve before you make any decisions.
Your goals will shape what options are available to you while your desires will help guide you to the correct option at that moment.
