If I Had to Start Over in Real Estate Today, I’d Do This

At 22, I went to work for a hard money lender doing purchase-rehab loans. I bought my first rental property at 24, which kicked off a decade of active real estate investing before I accepted how badly I’d bungled my early investments and unloaded all of them. By my late 30s, I’d wiped the slate clean. My early losses and later wins offset one another, and I did end up starting over from scratch. After that, I managed to go from nothing to $1 million in under seven years despite a modest household income. This is all to say this isn’t just a theoretical exercise for me. So, knowing everything I know today after 23 years in real estate, how would I start over today? I’d House Hack for “Free Housing” When I bought my first home, I rented out the other bedroom to a housemate I met on Craigslist. To this day, she and her now-husband are two of my closest friends. At one point, we spent a week in northern Italy together. Granted, I was in my early 30s at the time and single. Today, I’m married with a daughter—and I’m still looking at buying a two-unit home to house hack. If you can knock out your housing payment by having renters pay your entire mortgage, you can supercharge your savings...