Renting vs. Buying a House: How to Get Wealthier with Either Decision

Renting vs. buying a house. Everyone has the debate completely wrong, and it’s costing Americans their financial freedom. “Live in Los Angeles? Guess you have to rent. Live in the Midwest? Guess you should buy.” What if there was a way to grow your wealth no matter where you live, how much home prices are, or what’s going on in the housing market? What if you could get richer while renting? What if your simple, affordable house could propel you toward financial freedom? What if you could make hundreds of thousands of dollars, tax-free, by buying the home everyone overlooks? Today, we’re showing you how to do all of them. We’ll give you three scenarios to buy, rent, or do a combination of both, and get wealthier in the process. Plus, Dave shares his “cheat code” investment strategy that gets him cheaper homes that he’ll love living in and makes him substantially wealthier in the process. It’s not buy vs. rent. It’s about building your wealth no matter your choice. In This Episode We Cover Renting vs. buying a house: The (not so obvious) answer nobody is talking about How to turn your home into future cash flow and what to look at before you buy The overlooked strategy Dave is using to make hundreds of thousands on his primary residence Live in an expensive city? This is how to rent and invest, so you always grow your wealth How just one house hack property can allow you to buy your dream home (Henry’s strategy) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1236 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  To rent or to buy? You might think it's an obvious choice, but it actually isn't. Both Henry and I own dozens of rental units with millions in equity between us. But I spent five of the last six years renting a property, not living in a home I owned. And my net worth still grew a lot during that time. Most people would probably not expect that. You got closer to financial freedom while paying thousands in rent every month? The problem is that every online calculator, every podcast or YouTube video is telling you it's a rent versus buy decision. That isn't the case. Today, Henry and I are giving you three scenarios where you can rent, buy, or do a combination of both and grow your wealth in each scenario.

• 0:42Dave Meyer?

  So if renting makes more sense in your market, you can rent and still build wealth. If buying a home is more affordable, you can ensure it'll pay off when you move out. And finally, we'll share the cheat code strategy that some of the smartest real estate investors use to make hundreds of thousands of dollars just buying a regular, affordable home to live in. This decision could change the track of your financial future, and you could be significantly wealthier because of it.

• 1:12Dave Meyer?

  What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer here at BiggerPockets. My co-host, of course, is Henry Washington. He's here, too. And we're going to jump right into this conversation about whether it's better to buy or rent, or if that's really even a decision that you need to make at all. So Henry, if you read the news right now, apparently just buying a home is just a terrible idea. That's what everyone seems to be saying right now. Are you buying it?

• 1:36Henry Washington?

  No, absolutely not. Buying a home is not a terrible idea. But I will admit that it doesn't make sense for everyone to buy a home, and it doesn't make sense for everyone in every market to buy a home. I do believe there are situations where it does make more sense to rent than buy. But I am a firm believer in no matter what you do, buy or rent, you should be doing it with thinking about how to invest what you're saving by not doing one or the other tactics.

• 2:03Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, like all those articles you see, it's every day in Bankrate or NerdWallet or anywhere, it's saying it's cheaper now to rent than it is to buy. That's a very simplistic and specific scenario, right? That's just basically like, if you're a regular person and you're choosing whether to buy your dream house or rent an equivalent property, that's actually true. It's probably better for most people to rent in that scenario. In fact, there's only one city in the entire country where it's better to buy than rent right now. Can you guess what it is?

• 2:32Henry Washington?

  Hmm, somewhere in West Virginia?

• 2:36Dave Meyer?

  Very close geographically. It's Pittsburgh is the only place right now where it's actually better. But we're investors, so we're not thinking about it this way, like, should I buy my dream home or an equivalent property? We're going to break down now how you can strategically think about your primary residence and ways that you can use it to grow your portfolio, whether this is your first property, whether you're looking to do an owner occupied strategy or not, and you're just trying to buy rental properties and grow a bigger portfolio. We have strategies for everyone to leverage the choices they make about where they're physically going to live to help grow your portfolio. So for investors who are trying to maximize the use of their residence, where they're living, what are the different scenarios they should be thinking through?

• 3:20Henry Washington?

  Yeah, it really comes down to about three scenarios with some forms of variation depending on the scenario. We have the option to rent your primary residence. We have the option to purchase your primary residence, or we have the option to owner occupy your primary residence as an investment vehicle. In other words, some form of house hacking. And when we say house hacking, we don't always mean just buy a duplex, rent one side and live in the other. House hacking to us just means finding a way to monetize your primary residence.

• 3:49Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so we're talking about whether investors should rent, just straight up buy their primary, or do an owner occupied. I think people are probably going to get mad about this. I actually think there are uses for all three. Like, I think that renting makes sense sometimes. Grant Cardone's going to be mad, but I think buying just your primary residence makes sense sometimes. I think owner occupied makes sense sometimes. So let's just break these things down. I think rent's going to make people the maddest, but like, do you agree that there are reasons why even real estate investors, even experienced real estate investors should consider renting a property?

• 4:24Henry Washington?

  I absolutely do. And I say this as someone who owns my primary residence and hasn't rented in years. And for me, it comes down to what's the cost to rent each month versus buy each month? And that's going to vary depending on your market. Like, we'd be foolish to say that there aren't markets where it costs substantially less to rent a like-kind property. And so if you're going to end up buying a house that's going to cost you 4,000 a month in a mortgage payment, and in that same market, you can rent a house that's going to cost you 2,000 to 2,500 a month for the same kind of property. To me, especially as somebody who wants to take their additional income

• 5:06Henry Washington?

  to invest in real estate, it would make a whole lot more sense for me to rent that property, save myself two grand a month, and put that two grand a month aside so that I can buy rental properties where it does make sense for me to buy rental properties.

• 5:19Dave Meyer?

  The thing that sort of drives me nuts about either it's, you know, people on social media, or even these like reputable websites saying like it's cheaper to rent or buy, they only look at the out-of-pocket cash, right? They say like, okay, my monthly mortgage payment is 2,000, my rent is 1,800, therefore it's better to rent. That is not how I would evaluate that, because like, as you know, in real estate, there are a lot of other ways that you're making money, right? You have to think about the amortization on your mortgage payment, the potential for appreciation, which no one really knows, but over time, the average is about 3%. So that really matters. And when you're leveraged, that really helps a lot. And also tax benefits, right?

• 6:02Dave Meyer?

  You have to also think about the fact that your mortgage interest is deductible off of your taxes. And so just think about it that way. But it is the right question to ask. Like, when you incorporate all those things, if you actually do the math right, and you see that renting is going to help you save money each and every month, you should do that. Like, if you're trying to maximize and not Not thinking about lifestyle, like you should absolutely do that.

• 6:25Henry Washington?

  Yeah. What we're saying when you rent versus you buy is I'm saving monthly income. And yes, I'm giving up the equity and appreciation, but I'm taking that additional income and then investing somewhere else where it makes more sense financially, whether that's in my backyard in a different neighborhood, or whether that's in a whole nother state, then you are getting the benefits of real estate because you're investing in a property somewhere else where you can take advantage of those benefits in a more financially beneficial way, then you spending substantially more each month. And then that hindering your ability to go buy property somewhere else.

• 6:58Dave Meyer?

  So what do you do then with the money? Like if you're saving money every month, do you invest out of state? Do you buy a property in state or what do you do with the money you're saving?

• 7:08Henry Washington?

  If you are investing in real estate because you want to build up cash flow over the next five years to help replace your income for your job? Yeah, you probably need to be looking at markets where you can get cash flow, where there's a more favorable rent to price ratio, where you can buy a property and rent that property out and it pays for itself and then pays you some cash flow. There are tons of markets all over the country where you can find real estate that gives you those benefits. And I think it's just up to us as investors to figure out where that makes sense for us based on our goals. But you should be looking to implement that money in a place that's going to help you meet your real estate goals.

• 7:50Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I think this is particularly important for everyone who's listening out there. If you live in an expensive market in California, Washington, the Northeast, wherever, somewhere that it's super expensive, this is a good strategy. Like it makes a lot of sense. I talked to a lot of people here in Seattle about this all the time because there's a lot of people who have some money in tech or whatever, and they're like, ah, it doesn't really make sense to house hack even here in Seattle. What should I do? I'm like, go rent a super nice apartment for three or $4,000 a month. That's what it costs in Seattle, but a mortgage payment here is $6,000 a month.

• 8:24Henry Washington?

  Right.

• 8:24Dave Meyer?

  So like, go spend three, 3,500 bucks and take that money. You're saving two grand a month. That's a, you could buy a duplex. A year with that savings in the Midwest. Like you do that for five years, you know, 10 units in another place. Like that's personally what I would recommend for the majority of people.

• 8:42Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I can't disagree with you because there are markets where even if you were to buy a duplex and house hack, remember a duplex is going to cost you typically more than a single family is. And so if you go and buy the duplex, even if you rent out the other unit, sometimes what's left on your mortgage is still more than it would cost for you to go rent by yourself.

• 9:05Dave Meyer?

  It is like I was doing the math because I'm a giant dork. I made this huge calculator a couple of years ago that measured this. And honestly, I've used it like every year of my life. It's free on bigger pockets. If you want to go to bigger pockets.com slash resources, it's just a house hacking calculator. It shows you whether it's better to house hack to buy or to rent. So you should definitely check that out. But in a city like Seattle, renting is better, like just mathematically, it makes more sense. Like I get there are personal decisions. I have made all three of these decisions. I've bought my primary of house hacked. I'm doing a live in flip now. I've rented and bought in other states, but I'm just telling you, if you want to follow the math in

• 9:44Dave Meyer?

  an expensive market, this makes a lot of sense. There is one other scenario for renting instead of buying that I think people overlook. And it's if you don't know how long you're going to live in a specific place. I've lived in a ton of places and I have rented, I rented when I was in Europe, I rented for five years. I would have made a lot more money if I didn't, but I just didn't know how long I was going to live in any of those places. And there's transaction costs in the US, it's six to eight percent essentially to go and sell. So even if you say, hey, I have this primary residence, it's a great location. It's going to build a ton of equity. I'm getting at a great price, but I might only live there for three years, probably better to rent, honestly,

• 10:29Dave Meyer?

  because it usually takes three or four years of appreciation growth, even good appreciation growth to overcome just the cost of selling. And so I think that's something you really need to think about. A lot of times this decision really comes down To like, are you going to live there for three or four years? Four or five years, you're probably good by the house. But if you're going to live there for less than five years, it's kind of a toss up.

• 10:51Henry Washington?

  Absolutely, that matters because we're not in the market we were in in 2021, where appreciation was going through the roof in a short frame of time. Like, you're not going to be able to take advantage of some of the ancillary benefits of real estate in a less than five year period. And so, again, you got to pay attention to that monthly cost. If I'm in a place where it's very, very expensive, I think in any of those scenarios, it makes more sense to rent.

• 11:14Dave Meyer?

  Totally. Like, I live in Seattle. I should, if I was just doing this straight on math, like, I should be renting right now. I like, I don't want to even tell you what my mortgage cost. It is way more than I could rent an equivalent house for. But what I did choose to do was to buy a primary in a way that I do think is actually a reasonable way to offset it. It might not be the most optimal, but it is actually working for my lifestyle. And I do want to talk about when you should buy your primary residence, but we do have to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Summer bookings sound great until someone slips by the pool, gets hurt on your dock, or damages your property during a long holiday weekend.

• 11:55Dave Meyer?

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• 12:40Dave Meyer?

  And with Airbnb's co-host network, I could partner with a vetted local co-host to help take care of the details, from guest communications to onsite support, so I can fully unplug and enjoy my time. Time out in the backcountry. If you've got upcoming travel plans, you can find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host. You know that thing where you discover a feature you wish your software had? And it turns out it already exists, just on a different platform. Like, oh, you want rent payments processed in two days? Rent Ready does it. Oh, you want to block tenants from making partial payments mid eviction? Rent Ready does that, too. Oh, you want full accounting and tax-ready reports without paying for a second tier?

• 13:24Dave Meyer?

  Rent Ready does it. And oh, you want tenant screening that doesn't overcharge your applicants? Rent Ready also does this. Basically, if you've ever complained out loud about your property management software, Rent Ready probably already built the fix. It's $12 a month. You're welcome. Sign up right now for $50 off your first year of Rent Ready with promo code BP CASH. BiggerPockets Pro members get it completely free. Sign in through your Pro account at rentready.com/biggerpockets. That's rent, R-E-D-I, dot com slash biggerpockets.

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• 14:29Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back with the BiggerPockets Podcast, and we're talking about when it makes sense to rent your primary residence versus when it makes sense to buy your primary residence. And we just covered scenarios where both Dave and I agree we think it might make a lot more sense to rent your primary residence instead of buy. But now let's transition, Dave. In what scenarios do you think it makes sense for someone to buy their primary residence instead of renting?

• 14:56Dave Meyer?

  I think when you have somewhere close to break even on this calculation, like rent or buy, it doesn't have to be exactly, but when you're relatively close. So that's number one, it has to be relatively close. And then I think there's probably two different criteria I would think about. One is lifestyle decisions. That's part of it, right? Like you can't ignore this. If you would prefer to own your own home, that makes a lot of sense. But I think for me, the real criteria is could I rent out that primary when I move out of it and make it a good rental property? Because as we were just talking about before the break, you have to hold on to it for four or five years. And if you think, hey, I might move out after two or three years, that's fine if it's going

• 15:40Dave Meyer?

  to cash flow as a rental. Like just as an example, I guess it was like 10 years ago now, I was house hacking and I kind of just wanted to own my own home. And I wound up finding a property that was in the path of progress. I got a great deal on it and we wound up buying it. And it did increase my monthly burn because I was house hacking in a place I got for super cheap and I wound up paying out of pocket for my mortgage every month, but it was worth it to me because it was a great place for me and my wife to live. And now I still own that as a rental. Like we moved out of that property six years ago and it's still a cash flowing rental property in a great neighborhood. I bought it at 450, it's probably worth 800 now, you know?

• 16:23Dave Meyer?

  So like it's been a great investment for me and we lived there for five years really comfortably. So it worked out as a really good investment.

• 16:30Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I think if you live in a market where your rents or your mortgage payment for the same type of property are about the same or even skewed where your mortgage payment would be less than what it is to rent, like you absolutely should buy. Like this is the scenario you should buy your property in because you now put yourself in a position where you're not losing money by buying instead of renting. You're going to spend the same amount or pretty close to the same amount either way. And so now what I'm thinking About as a real estate investor, making this rent or buy situation is if it's going to cost me the same to rent or to buy, that means I have the same money to play with each month

• 17:10Henry Washington?

  to put towards investing in real estate. So I should buy because now I not only have to spend the same amount each month, but I get the ancillary benefits. I get the tax breaks. I get the appreciation over time. And then I can think about scenarios like you just talked about, like when I move out, I can now keep this property as a rental property. And it's then I get the the benefit of debt pay down that I'm not actually paying down the debt for that a tenant is. I think this is the scenario where you should consider buying over renting for sure.

• 17:42Dave Meyer?

  There's a key caveat here, though. Again, my example, and I think this is probably true for most people. I didn't go out and buy my dream home. I mean, if you ask Jane, it was whatever the opposite of dream home is, that was for her.

• 17:56Henry Washington?

  Nightmare home?

• 17:57Dave Meyer?

  A nightmare? Yeah, like, we used to play a game, just gunshots or fireworks. Often, honestly, total toss up.

• 18:06Dave Meyer?

  Not saying you have to do that, but I viewed it as an investment. I wasn't saying like, this is the house we're going to live in for the rest of our lives. You know, like, I was in my late 20s, and I was like, you know, this is not where we're going to hopefully raise a family one day, where I bought in the path of progress and in a place where I felt like I could really have a good investment. I think the area where Robert Kiyosaki or Grant Cardone are right, because they are, oh, just if you don't know, two big, famous real estate names who are very adamant that your primary residence isn't an investment. Robert Kiyosaki even calls it a liability. But like, where their sentiment at least is right, is like, if you're going to go out earlier in your

• 18:48Dave Meyer?

  investing career and buy your dream home, often that is not the best use of your money. Like, you could probably either be renting and buying something else, or you could be buying more of a starter home, maybe something with sweat equity in it, where you could go do that.

• 19:01Henry Washington?

  And I think that this is the caveat that we wanted to make sure that we hammer home with people. We're thinking about this decision to rent or buy as real estate investors at heart, right? And that's how we're talking to you as the audience. If you're a real estate investor and you're trying to decide rent or buy and you live in a market where it's about the same price, we're saying buying is the right choice in that scenario, but be smart about the buy. Like if you're first getting into your homeownership journey, maybe this is your first home purchase to live in. Maybe it's your second home purchase to live in. Chances are you're not picking that home as your forever home yet. Like you probably just aren't in that stage of your home ownership journey yet.

• 19:44Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 19:44Henry Washington?

  So buy something that will make sense as a rental property down the road. Because if that's your goal is to build a portfolio of rental property of cash flowing assets, like utilize your owner occupied loans to buy something that can be added to your portfolio in the future versus you buying something so expensive that you can't add it to your rental portfolio and you end up having to sell it. And I'm not saying that makes it a bad financial decision because if you keep it long enough, it'll, it'll appreciate. But being able to buy something that can double as an investment property is A, a safe investment and B, allows you to kind of kill two birds with one stone. You have a safe, comfortable primary residence, but now you have something that you've added to your portfolio.

• 20:28Henry Washington?

  And we all know the key to real estate is the longer you own it, the more financially beneficial it becomes. So you might as well buy that rental property now.

• 20:36Dave Meyer?

  I guess the advice here is if you want to buy your primary residence for lifestyle decisions or for financial decisions, underwrite it like a rental property. Go use the bigger pockets calculator. Treat it like you are going and buying a single family rental and just see where it comes out. Like if it's going to be really net negative, that's probably not the best financial decision. You might be better off doing an owner occupied strategy or doing the rent and buy strategy. But if it comes close or you're like, I'm going to live here two years. Rents are probably going to go up and will be cash flowing when I move out. Like that's a totally good decision.

• 21:12Henry Washington?

  Now I want to ask you another question about this because I can already see the comments coming on this video. Is if we're saying buy versus rent in this scenario, even when it's close to the same. What about the maintenance issues that you have to pay for as an owner that you wouldn't have to pay for as a renter? Like, how do you factor that into your decision if you're in a place where renting and buying technically costs about the same each month?

• 21:38Dave Meyer?

  Well, I'll give you the real answer and I'll also give you my hot take. That's gonna piss a lot of people off right now. My hot take is when I was living in Amsterdam and renting, it was so nice. I loved being a renter. Like, I had great landlords. Every time something broke, I just called someone else and then just went about my day. I didn't have to go call like nine contractors to go fix something. Sit at home all day. Maybe they'd show up or maybe they wouldn't. So I actually, I think there's part of that. But I do think it's just a matter of underwriting, right? Like, you have to treat it similar to a rental property where you're assuming there's maintenance. Because every home I've ever bought and lived in, the maintenance has been higher than I expected. And I actually

• 22:23Dave Meyer?

  think you should maybe even budget a little bit more than you would for a rental property because your personal standards are gonna be higher, right? Like, if you are living with a spouse or you have kids, like, even if you wouldn't make that upgrade, that repair for a rental-grade apartment, it's your home. Like, you're gonna wanna do it. And so you just really make sure that you're budgeting for that.

• 22:43Henry Washington?

  Boom. That's exactly my thought. Like, I think that's a valid concern. If it's cost the same to rent or to buy in a market, just consider the additional maintenance in that decision. That way, you can buy, understanding that, yes, it's gonna cost me $2,000 a month to pay a mortgage here. It would also cost me $2,000 a month to rent a property here. Let's call it $2,300 a month, because I'm gonna factor in the additional maintenance burden that I will take on as the owner of this property versus just calling somebody as a renter. And in that scenario, I think a few hundred dollars, you should still own.

• 23:22Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, we have one more scenario, which is owner-occupy. That's either house hacking or a live-in flip, which I think is a much better option for people than they even realize. We're gonna get into both of those right after this quick break. We'll be right back. For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple, but honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still, the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI

• 24:07Dave Meyer?

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• 24:52Dave Meyer?

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• 27:00Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the Bigfoot Podcast. Henry and I are here talking about the best ways to think about where you live, your personal residence, to maximize growing your portfolio. We've talked about when and how you should consider renting. Next, we talked about buying a primary residence as living in it. But then there's sort of a combination strategy, which is owner occupied. You've probably heard us on the show talk about house hacking plenty of times. This is when you either buy a small multifamily, you live in one unit, rent out the others, or you could do the co-living approach where you buy a single-family home, live in a single bedroom, and then rent out the other bedrooms. But in addition to house hacking, you can also do something called a live-in flip. Henry, what's your feeling generally

• 27:44Dave Meyer?

  about owner occupied strategies?

• 27:46Henry Washington?

  I love them so much.

• 27:49Dave Meyer?

  Nothing more to say.

• 27:53Henry Washington?

  So what we're talking about is monetizing your primary residence, right? What ways can you offset the mortgage payment? And that helps you have more money to save for investing or whatever else you want to do with your additional income. But I love that strategy. Even and technically. I do it today because we talked about I bought a single family with an ADU. We rented the ADU and then the money we were saving from a mortgage payment from before, we just put into a savings account until we had enough for a down payment. And then we ended up buying the home that we're in now. The other thing that we don't typically talk about with this strategy is yes, I lived in a two family. I rented one of the units that offset my mortgage, but then I moved out.

• 28:37Henry Washington?

  And when I moved out, I now was able to rent the unit I was living in. And so now that created a situation where I have cash flow from that property because rents have gone up over time as well. And so we were making enough to almost cover the full mortgage by renting out the ADU. But now we rent out the main house and that creates a lot of cash flow. And I take that additional cash flow and it pays for about half of the mortgage at my dream house now. So technically my house isn't an investment property because I'm not monetizing the house that I'm living in, but I am taking the cash flow from my house hack to cover half of my mortgage. So technically it's an owner occupied investment strategy, just kind of continuation of that.

• 29:20Dave Meyer?

  I think house hacking for most people, I'm going to give a caveat unless you're living in a very expensive market like we were talking about, is the best way to go about it. Like just on paper, you know, lifestyle decisions aside, it just makes so much sense. You get the benefits of rental properties. You get the amortization, you get the tax benefits, you get the benefits of primary residence. You get owner occupied financing. Like there's just so much good stuff to like about this. And I'm going to be honest, we've talked about this on the show before, like people say that it's some big sacrifice from a, you know, lifestyle perspective. I just don't buy it.

• 29:59Henry Washington?

  It's not.

• 30:00Dave Meyer?

  Maybe the co-living thing is like, that's not for everyone.

• 30:02Henry Washington?

  That's fair. That's very true.

• 30:04Dave Meyer?

  But if you could go out and buy a side by side duplex, right? You got your own yard, you got your own driveway. Like frankly, if you want to grow your portfolio, like that's a very small sacrifice in my opinion for the benefits that you get from house hacking. So I, I just think for most people. There there's good properties to do it because that's another caveat. Like there are some parts of the country where you just can't find good, small multifamilies. But if you're in a place where you can find good, small multifamilies and you're willing to do this, like you should probably just go do it. Like anywhere in the Midwest, this is just a no brainer.

• 30:36Henry Washington?

  Yeah, that's a slight uncomfortability for the option to build amazing wealth. Like, I'm fine with that. And also, you're the landlord, so you have some say in who lives next to you. Like, it's not like you have absolutely no control over that situation. So, small sacrifice to me. And if you live in a place similar to the scenario we talked about where it's the same price to rent and buy, like buying with owner occupied strategy in mind just kind of like doubles the benefit of you buying that property. Because if you say, okay, well, I can rent and buy. Well, let me go look at what it costs to buy a duplex, a one to four family. And then house hack, you're just multiplying the impact of that buy decision.

• 31:20Henry Washington?

  Or, like we talked about, buying something that will make sense as a rental property later, or buying something that will make sense as a multifamily later. Because in a lot of places in the country, you can build ADUs. And so maybe you buy a single family home on a piece of land that you know has enough space and has the potential for approvals for an ADU. And you can add an ADU to that property down the road and increase your potential.

• 31:48Dave Meyer?

  Last thing I want to add on house hacking is that you do not need to cash flow in house hacking. Like, that is great if you can pull it off. It is hard to do realistically in this market. But think about it, how much money you're saving for that next purchase. You know, I gave that example of buying my own primary for the first time in 2016. I had been house hacking. I wasn't cash flowing even back then in 2016 in Denver. Like, I think I was basically living for free. It would have cost me 1,400 bucks a month to live in that apartment. I did that for two years. That's my down payment on the next house. Like, I wasn't cash flowing, but I saved so much money that I could go buy the next house, still own that place as a rental property. You know, like, I got great financing on it that I still have.

• 32:31Dave Meyer?

  Ten years later, and I still have the property 10 years later. So just think about it as a stepping stone. I think when you meet people at meetups, Henry, I think the people who've grown the fastest, in my opinion, for average people who aren't starting with a ton of capital, are people who house hacked four to five times in a row. Like, that is the most, I think, proven way to get a good portfolio when you're just starting, middle-class, regular person.

• 32:55Henry Washington?

  Hundred percent. They either house hacked a few times in a row, or they leveraged their first primary residence as a rental property after they moved out, because that allowed them to have so much equity built up that they could take out a line of credit on that equity and use that to fund their investment career. It gave them a boost and a head start. Absolutely.

• 33:15Dave Meyer?

  So there's one more we got to talk about, another owner-occupied strategy, which is the live-in flip, which I am in the, I don't know if I can say I'm in the middle of doing this. I've bought a house with the intention of living.

• 33:27Henry Washington?

  Intent. You have intent.

• 33:29Dave Meyer?

  To do it. I moved in in June of 2025. It is now January of 2026.

• 33:37Henry Washington?

  Give us a percent. Percent done.

• 33:39Dave Meyer?

  Zero.

• 33:43Dave Meyer?

  Haven't swung a hammer. Nothing has happened in here. But honestly, part of that was intentional. My wife and I don't really know how long we're going to live here. So we were like, we're going to live here for three or four months, figure out like what we want to actually do to the property. We now have a plan, and I actually, I, we have contractors line up to start in March.

• 34:02Henry Washington?

  Okay, okay.

• 34:03Dave Meyer?

  Keep you posted. But I will just sort of explain the concept here. It's a strategy that mixes the idea of like house hacking and house flipping basically at the same time. The idea is you buy a property, you actually move into it and live in it, but fix it up while you're living there. And you can add value in the same way that you do in a flip. But there are some benefits over flipping, at least in my opinion, that are really, really important for people to know. First and foremost, you get owner occupants financing. As Henry can probably tell you, I've only been a part of really two or three flips in my life, but man, that financing is expensive. You're paying a lot of points, you're paying 12% on a hard money loan. I am living in a potential flip right now and I have a 5.25% mortgage rate.

• 34:47Dave Meyer?

  So I'm pretty happy with that. That's why I can take the time to figure out what I'm going to do. Number two is it reduces your time pressure. To get the max benefit of a live-in flip, you should live in it for a minimum of two years because in the US tax code, you live in your primary residence for two or more years. All the capital gains that you get, those are tax-free. So if I do a renovation on this house, I sell it, I move out. Unlike a flip where Henry pays normal income tax on that.

• 35:16Henry Washington?

  Short-term capital.

• 35:17Dave Meyer?

  Short-term capital gains, I'm paying nothing on that, up to $500,000, which if it's more than 500 grand, I'm pretty happy to pay that tax because I just made a lot of equity. So I think that takes sort of the time pressure off of it and it allows you to take advantage of the financing. So personally, I can't speak from experience. I'm doing it for the first time right now, but on paper, I just love the idea of a live-in flip. I will say that I'm going to do the baby move and I think we're going to move out of our, like we're doing a first phase where we're not moving out, but when we do the big part where a lot of the systems, the windows, like those things are getting replaced, I probably will get an Airbnb for a couple of weeks, but there are ways to mitigate that. You don't have to live in a construction zone 100% of the time.

• 35:58Henry Washington?

  I think this is a great strategy if you're in a position where it makes sense to do this. Is it a strategy you can scale big? No, absolutely not. But it is definitely a strategy where you can make a lot of money in a reasonably short period of time. I mean, you're talking about being able to walk away with 100 to 200, sometimes $300,000 tax-free in your pocket. There are investors who literally do this as their primary residence strategy. They do a live-in flip, they do it about three times and by the third live-in flip, they're in this amazing dream home and they were able to just carry over these profits into their dream home so that they're owning their dream home almost free and clear because they've just.

• 36:40Henry Washington?

  Move the profits forward into bigger and bigger owner occupied live-in flips. I think it's a fantastically undervalued strategy.

• 36:48Dave Meyer?

  Hundred percent. Like if you know Mindy Jensen from the BiggerPockets Money Show, she does it. This is basically all she does is just do live-in flip, live-in flip, live-in flip. And Mindy's doing pretty well. So I think it's worked very well for her. And I will just say, like, I think this is a really good option for people in expensive markets. Like in Seattle, I was doing an analysis, like, I didn't want to rent just for lifestyle decisions, but this was the second best option for me for like financially on paper, how to leverage my primary residence into a good investment. I think this is true in other expensive markets, in California, in the Northeast. Like, this is something that could just have huge financial benefits in almost any market. So I think this is something you should definitely consider doing. All right. I think we went through all of our scenarios, Henry.

• 37:32Dave Meyer?

  Any, any last parting words of wisdom here?

• 37:34Henry Washington?

  Yes, I think the caveat we're trying to lay out here is no matter what you're thinking about, buying or renting, be thinking about it from an investor's perspective and pick the choice that allows you to reach your investment goals sooner than later. And if we're smart about whether we rent or buy, in order to take any additional income that we make to grow our investment business, I think it's going to put you in a better financially sound position sooner than later.

• 38:03Dave Meyer?

  Just don't listen to dogma. Anyone says it's always better to rent or buy. It's always better to buy or rent. Just do the math. Like, you can do it like there are calculators in BiggerPockets. I told you about the spreadsheet I made. You can download it for free. Go check that out. Do the math for yourself and you can make a really good decision. I, Henry and I, I think have both shown that you can get huge benefits. It can be a launchpad to your investing career if you think about this in the right way. And pretty much anyone can do it. So go check it out.

• 38:30Henry Washington?

  Amen.

• 38:30Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, Henry, always fun hanging out. Are you scared of the comments?

• 38:34Henry Washington?

  No, I mean, I think there are going to be some spicy ones for sure, but that's, that's a good thing.

• 38:38Dave Meyer?

  Bring it on. We want to hear what you think about this episode. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

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