House Hacking: My Journey & Experience (So Far)

We are going to go a little off-course on this one. Today I'm going to share my experiences through House Hacking so far, along with future plans.

So while I was finishing up school working towards a bachelors degree in business management and a minor in entrepreneurship at Iowa State University in Ames,

I knew I didn't want to go into the corporate world after graduation.

So pretty much from the get-go, I wanted to own my own business or "be my own boss" kinda thing.

As most do, I watched HGTV all the time growing up and always loved the idea of becoming a real estate agent - or really just something around real estate it just always intrigued me.

So fast forward, while everyone was getting internships and getting jobs set after graduation, I was studying for my real estate license and finally got that that towards the end of 2018 - about 6 months before graduating in May of 2019. 

I joined the most amazing brokerage ever at RE/MAX Real Estate Center 

And at this point I was pretty much a sponge, trying to absorb as much knowledge about everything I could within the real estate world - especially being brand new to the business right out of college

In addition to learning about the ins and out's of real estate with my "2nd family" at our brokerage, I started learning about the investment side of the business as well.

I stumbled upon podcasts like BiggerPockets and YouTube channels of people talking about real estate investing, like Graham Stephan.

With all of the help our family over at RE/MAX - and to Google, Spotify and YouTube, this is where I found this little "loophole" per se called House Hacking.

So back in 2020,  just a year out of school I saved up and bought my first house hack property in Ames. it's a 3 bed 4 bath townhome

and so I lived in the basement of this place and rented out the other 2 bedrooms to a few buddies of mine from Iowa State which was a blast.


After living in my first property in Ames for a year, and realizing - "holy crap this House Hacking thing actually works" - I started looking for my second property in 2021

Hello COVID-19! 

While the world stopped for a little bit, as many of you know, the real estate market accelerated.

This also brought great opportunity with super low rates. 

So finally, we found an awesome property in Ankeny which is just 30 minutes south of Ames or about 15 minutes north of Des Moines - and pulled the trigger on our second house hack property.

This time, it was with my girlfriend and now fiancé who would join the journey! 

We saw the potential in the Ankeny market, and moved into our 2nd property and turned the Ames property into our first actual full-fledged rental property

The cash flow from the Ames property helped with our general expenses and that's when the wheels really started turning - "What if we..Just keep doing this?"

Well, we found we really liked the neighborhood we were in and started asking neighbors if they had been thinking about selling in the near future

Low and behold, there was!

We got a great deal with the seller off-market and some months later in 2022, we purchased our third property and moved into and rented out the 2nd property.

Fast forward to 2023, we stumbled upon a new construction townhome in another neighborhood in Ankeny that checked all our boxes.

We are now under contract on our 4th House Hack and are scheduled to close later this year and we are SO excited.


Throughout this journey, our rental properties have continued to generate enough cash flow to cover some of our expenses while also saving up for our next venture. It takes some work and number-crunching, and of course - moving isn't the most fun thing in the world either.. 

But I'm here to tell ya, it is so worth it and we are so pumped to continue on this journey!

Especially being in our twenties and starting early while we have the time and energy to do this,

it's a pretty fulfilling feeling of reassurance for what our future could hold as these investments mature over time.

And I'm here to tell ya, if we can do it - so can you!

The only thing I love more than building our portfolio is helping others build theirs.

Give me a shout - I'd love to chat about how we can get you started on your House Hacking journey too!













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