Housing is more costly than ever. Many want to be homeowners have to come up with creative ways to make it feasible. Here, Money covers what home hacking is and how it is a successful way for many millennials to become home owners.
Like a lot of millennials, Craig Curelop lives with roommates to save money. One big difference? He’s their landlord.
In a housing market where young people struggle to afford a home, Curelop already owns three of them. He is a “house hacker,” a term he and other like-minded homeowners use to describe someone who lives a low- or no- rent lifestyle by buying a house and renting out the extra space.
The 26-year-old Denver-based blogger shares his six-bedroom, three-bathroom home with two long-term roommates and a rotating cast of vacationing Airbnbers. Curelop’s two roommates together pay $1,550. He takes in another $2,000 from short-term Airbnb travelers. The total $3,550 covers his $2,100-a-month mortgage, with plenty left over.
While the living arrangement has occasionally called for compromise — Curelop says he spent a year sleeping on a futon in his living room while renting out his former bedroom in his first house — the lifestyle has allowed him to max out his 401(k), take a trip to Thailand and cover an unexpected $2,000 hospital bill after an accident last year, he says.
Not everyone understands why a person would buy a house just to take in roommates — and that’s fine by Curelop. “You’re never going to be similar to your peers,” when you live frugally, he says, “so you really shouldn’t listen to them.”
Angela Rozmyn agrees. The 31-year-old who lives with her husband, a four-year-old son and a roommate in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland compares having a roommate to keeping a beat-up car, even if it draws looks from neighbors that drive newer ones. “There’s an expectation that, if you’re a real adult and you’re really in charge of life, you don’t need [a roommate],” she says. ”We aren’t really concerned with what we should or shouldn’t be doing.”
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