The Rentish Podcast

House Hacking for Beginners: Funding Strategies, Building Equity & Historic Property Revitalization with John Blatchford

• Zach and Patrick • Season 1 • Episode 21

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In this episode of The Rent-ish Pod, we welcome John Blatchford, a Cincinnati-based developer renowned for his expertise in historic property revitalization. John unpacks how house hacking can be a game-changing entry point for first-time real estate investors, focusing on smart funding strategies and proven methods for building equity from day one. If you’re eager to break into real estate and want practical tips on financing, renovations, and maximizing your investment, this episode delivers actionable insights and investor wisdom you won’t want to miss. Discover more about John Blatchford’s work at Cohorts and get inspired to kickstart your real estate journey!

Got questions, hot takes, or real estate horror stories of your own? Email us at questions@therentishpod.com—you might just make the next episode. 

Check Innago at https://innago.com/podcast/ to learn more. 

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SPEAKER_03:

What's going on, everybody? I'm Zach, and I'm here with my co-host, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00:

What is

SPEAKER_03:

up? We are your hosts for The Rentish Podcast, which is a podcast kind of about rental properties and hosted by two guys that work in the real estate industry and kind of know what they're talking about. But mostly don't. That's right, Patrick. Mostly we don't. But we might have someone here who does. Spoiler! We'll get to it here in a second. But you're going to have fun hearing us talk to experts and learning with us or laughing along at how little we know along the way. Rentish Podcast, follow us, do the things. We talk about it every single week, right? Anything that you can do. We appreciate you for listening to the show. If you've gotten this far in the episode already, we really thank you for coming around and listening to the show. It's been really fun doing this podcast with Patrick and all of our guests. And follow us on Instagram at TheRentishPod. You can email questions at TheRentishPod.com if you have a question or comment that you'd like to share with us or maybe just a topic suggestion, advice for fellow renters or people that are interested in real estate and property management. Or if you're an esteemed guest or maybe someone famous and you want to be on show, email us. We'll thoroughly vet these, I'm sure. Yeah, that's about it for the podcast. Patrick, how are you doing today? I'm good. I'm full of

SPEAKER_00:

energy.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. In case you tell.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Oh, I can tell. I mean, you're very twinkle in your eye. You're ready to rock and roll. Well, we got a special episode today. We're not going to do the typical rigmarole here at the top where we talk about Superman and the fact that it's coming out in a Real estate investing series, we're gonna be diving into a strategy that's all about turning your living space into an income stream. It's called house hacking, apparently. This one's especially popular with younger investors, first time home buyers, or anyone looking to ease into real estate without tacking on a ton of risk. The idea, buy a property, live in part of it, and rent out the rest to cover your mortgage or even turn a profit. And to help break us, help us break it down. Lots of new words here, lots of new words. To help us break it down, We're joined again by John Blatchford from Cohorts, who was here a few weeks ago to talk to us about buying new properties and renovating them. And he's going to walk us through what house hacking really looks like, how to make it work, and who should or shouldn't try it. And judging by how rough my intro was there, I would say maybe we shouldn't try it. But we're going to learn about it. John, thank you for coming back on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

What's up, fellas? Not much.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't know. What's up with you? All's

SPEAKER_01:

well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, all's well.

SPEAKER_01:

That's good. Sunny day, well caffeinated, and everything's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

that's good that's good yeah I think we're all in the caffeination department I think I've had a half pot of coffee and a soda so I'm ready to rock

SPEAKER_00:

and roll that's the problem I haven't had any caffeine yet

SPEAKER_03:

today no caffeine at

SPEAKER_00:

all no that's what it is I was gonna make I've been doing Earl Grey tea with honey that's been my thing recently and I heated up the kettle and I realize now I forgot to pour it in my mug the producer was

SPEAKER_03:

just in the room asking you if you

SPEAKER_00:

wanted to drink and you declined no I didn't decline I said yes and he said too bad no this is not how things gets what

SPEAKER_03:

they want. That's what I'm saying. I think you're wrong. I think I heard you say no. I'm good. I said I want one. You misheard. I misheard. I'm sorry. John, educate us. You're here to talk about house hacking. We're very curious to hear about what you have to say. We're here with Open Ears. I'm sure we're going to have questions, but take it away. We kind of are just your audience today.

SPEAKER_01:

This is your TED Talk. Cool. Thanks, guys. I think we're kind of building on or continuing our series, which I think is effectively how do you go from zero properties to whatever your dream is, say 100 units or 1,000 units. So we talked about my first property recently and kind of how I got into it. And hopefully, from all the mistakes I've made, I can help people not make those mistakes. But this is a good way to get started, this topic of house hacking. And I think the general idea is, if you are working at a job and you want to get into real estate, what is the pathway to do that? And one consideration is like, what are you hoping to get out of that? Are you trying to ultimately become a real estate developer? Do you want to quit your job in 10 years? Do you want to just have some safe investment over the next 30 years? And I think that'll kind of dictate what you want to do. But one like fairly low bar, fairly easy way to get into real estate is this idea of house hacking, which is basically, you know, instead of just buying your house, you know, which can be a great lifestyle choice and, you know, can be a good long-term investment, you know, turning that house or property you buy into something that can make you some money. Right. Or at least that somebody will pay to live there and can pay your mortgage. So this idea of house hacking, I think, is basically, you know, the hacking part of it sounds a little bad, I would say. You know, like, oh, how do you hack your way in? It sounds cool. Like an 80s tech bro. I'm going to hack this house. Get into the mainframe. But it's basically, you know, how do you get money? How do you get somebody to pay, you know, pay your mortgage or to pay to live in this house? So, you know, I think there are different ways to do that, certainly. But I think the first hack is that if a house costs$400,000, obviously you do not need$400,000 in cash to buy that. You know, that would be impossible. And so there's this first idea of just like, you can get debt, you can get a loan against your house. And most people, you know, appreciate that when they get their mortgage, but a mortgage might come at like, you know, 20% down payment on the house or something. So even for a$500,000 house, you know,$400,000 house, you need$100,000 in cash and which for a lot of people, you know, won't come until much later in life. Right. So, uh, one way to get into a house with less cash is an FHA loan. I've talked to a lot of people. A good friend of mine, Donovan, has done it and now built a really successful real estate business. But it's a way to sort of get started with, say, 5% down. So on that same$400,000 property, you now only need$20,000. A lot of people can work their way up to having$20,000 that they could invest. With an FHA loan, you can buy the property if it's your primary residence and you're going to live there. And you can make it a little better if you buy a duplex. So there's two units. You live in one and you rent out the other one. That's a place that you live. It's your primary residence, but it also has a rental component. And so, you know, your tenants living there will be paying your mortgage. And so immediately you've basically, you know, moved into a house that's now, you know, it's not free, but somebody else is basically paying for your house. Right. So that's the hack, right? Because for now, a$400,000 property with two duplex, you know, two units, it's a duplex. You now are into it for$20,000 and somebody else is going to pay that loan for the next 30 years, right? So that's like a pretty good way to get into real estate.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the hack with John Blatchford.

SPEAKER_03:

Can we, can we trademark that? I like that. Like that's a great t-shirt. Like that's the hack. And then with John Blatchford on the

SPEAKER_02:

back of the t-shirt, that's awesome. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's one way, right? You don't have a ton of money. You know, you have a salary. You're just trying to like, okay, how do I start building some equity? How do I maybe start building for retirement? And that's one way to do it. And you don't need, you know, a ton of cash. You know, the potential downside of that, of course, is you can't do that regularly. The whole program of the FHA is like your primary residence. So, you know, you're supposed to live there. I think you can only do one of those like once a year. And so, you know, that's the hack. You get into it and, you know, that's like a good way to get your first property.

SPEAKER_00:

And FHA works for duplexes?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if it's your primary residence.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. Yeah. This is a safe space for all questions, whether they be the most intelligent, beautiful thing or the stupidest thing ever. Are you about to ask a terrible, stupid question? I'm about to ask a stupid question. What does it stand for,

SPEAKER_01:

FHA? Fair Homes Act, I think. Okay. And the intent of that program is our housing policy throughout time, throughout history, has been fairly racist. Certain people, certainly black people, could not get loans. And, you know, homeownership was expensive if, you know, historically it would cost a lot of money, 20 percent, 50 percent of the home cost to buy a home. So to buy, you know,$200,000 house, you need$100,000 in cash. So this program, you know, it's a federal program where now you only need, you know, say 5 percent. And it's really trying to encourage homeownership for people that, you know, aren't already rich. And then, you know, you pay that off over over 30 years.

SPEAKER_03:

Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. 1934, Congress created the FHA loan. Little trivia fact. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01:

And then, you know, and then depending where you are, depending who your lender is, you know, there are a lot of sort of like first time homebuyer programs. You know, friends of ours through Wells Fargo years ago, you know, were able to buy houses, I think, with even less money down. And, you know, so there's really kind of creative ways that you can especially buy the place that you're going to live. And then the hack is like then you get a tenant. The extreme hack, which my friend did, is not only did he have a duplex that he rented out one unit, he then in his unit had roommates who who paid him rent. That's a lot of people within one building. That's a pretty extreme way to do it, but he was in his maybe early 20s, so that's one way. That's

SPEAKER_03:

awesome. That's very, very cool. I don't want to speak for the both of us, Patrick, but amongst all of my friends straight out of college getting big boy jobs for the first time, like right when you leave school. This was the most common tactic for home buying for most of my close friends was we bought a property, we bought a duplex, we rented out one unit and we stayed in the other one. And then eventually once we felt comfortable with that, we bought a property that was just for myself and my wife, for my partner. And then we rented out the other unit and now we have this investment property that's on the side. This is like This is like the most common thing I think used by people in my age bracket for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

I had my first friend to buy a house. It was pretty much right out of college. He got some sort of, I don't know how, but he got a rent-to-own contract. It worked really nicely for him. And then he had a roommate who paid rent to him to help cover that rent-to-own thing. And then I lived there for like two months and crashed at his place for a sec too. But rent-to-own, that wouldn't be the same thing as house hacking. Is house hacking specifically like owning a property, living in that property, and then having somebody also live in that property paying you? That's the term house

SPEAKER_01:

hacking. So again, the hack is like anybody can buy real estate. You can go out and buy a property, but the expensive way to do it is$40,000 property, you put in$100,000, you get a loan for the rest, whatever. So the hack is really like, okay, it's your primary residence, you need much less cash, and then you have a tenant. And I think the other good, like assuming you want to get maybe more into real estate is this. It's such a good, relatively low risk way to appreciate what it's like to have a tenant, to have maintenance issues, to maybe do a little light renovation, to redo the kitchen, you know, see if you can add value. Like, oh, someone might rent there for$700 a month. But like, what if you redid the bathroom? Would they pay$750? You know, so you can start to like all the fundamentals, I think, of real estate. You can get, you can start to get through that, you know, managing a construction thing. Maybe you want to invest$5,000 into the kitchen over there and invest a little more there. and just see what that's like. What's it like hiring a plumber? What's it like finding a flooring person? No, they didn't show up. Oh, they took your money and ran, whatever. All the things that, those are the exact same problems at a$100,000 project and a million dollar project. You start to get a taste for what it is to own real estate, manage real estate, and do construction. Yeah, so it's a really nice lead-in, I think, too.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Would you always recommend house hacking to first-time buyers, or is there situations where that might not be the best idea? I

SPEAKER_01:

think as an investment, I think a mistake people make is viewing buying your primary house as this great investment. It can be a great investment, but you're still going to pay that mortgage every month. The roof fails and you have to fix that. You're really just hoping it gains value over time, which it has pretty much the last 20 years, but that's not necessarily a guarantee. So I think you should buy your primary house to be happy. You You want it to be yours. It has the bedrooms you need. You can paint the kitchen and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. It makes you happy. But if you want it to be an investment, you know, somebody paying your mortgage or loan every month like that starts to be a really great investment. Got it. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03:

OK. Are there any local zoning considerations or legality that you have to consider when doing house

SPEAKER_01:

hacking? Yeah. So, you know, again, I think the hacking piece, people think like, OK, I can do this this here and then, you know, I don't even have to live there and then I can do another one. And, you know, people try to get sneaky with that. And obviously, you know, you're taking money from the federal government. And so, you know, I think you need to be careful that you're like doing what the program intends, which is, you know, to buy and live in a home. And then, yeah, anytime you're doing construction, if it's not already a duplex and you're turning it into a duplex, you definitely want to check that. Does the zoning allow for a two unit, you know, don't buy a property that's only a single family home, expecting that you can maybe build a accessory unit or you can turn the attic into a rental like, you know, that that's pretty highly regulated. And, you know, if you get caught, it's like you have someone living in this fire risk attic. That's a pretty serious thing.

SPEAKER_03:

As someone that owns a lot of property and have developed property in Cincinnati, I feel like I have witnessed a lot of some, let's call them janky homes, like old Cincinnati homes that have been renovated into three family units or whatever. Do you see this relatively commonly? People trying to get around it and doing this sort of stuff with house hacking?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and there are it often does happen that historic buildings don't need to meet current building code like that is allowed some of the time like for example buildings we renovate where the stair handrail is lower than the current building code but they don't make us match the current building code because it's a historic building it's historically protected so there are cases where like it's still legal it's totally fine it just doesn't quite match what we would expect today but there's also the case of like yeah if you turn a single family house into three units and you don't have a fire escape you know like that's quite risky and that's that happens a lot around universities it happens around uc i think you know there have been cases recently or not recently but years ago like you know kind of unpermitted unapproved attic unit that becomes super dangerous so yeah you want to be careful of that because okay maybe you can sneak by for a period of time but eventually like you know that's like pretty life-ruining right yeah you're caught doing illegal stuff

SPEAKER_03:

so in short check make sure you're within those guidelines check professional resources and all that yeah

SPEAKER_01:

yeah if you're doing construction you know there if it's a small thing you often don't need a permit but you know if you're redoing the kitchens or a wiring and plumbing and, uh, you know, you need permits for that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. But it seems like a lot of people that do end up going the house hacking route tend to look for places that are already pretty established as duplexes. Um, and my, it's going to cost more to be able to do like to buy a place that's not suited for, to be a duplex or a multifamily and then renovating it yourself that takes additional costs. So

SPEAKER_01:

yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So our current duplex and, you know, and the, the, if it exists as a duplex, that's the best case. And If you can then invest a little bit of money, make the kitchen nicer, make the bathroom nicer, add another bathroom, add a bedroom, you know, legally. You know, if you can add a little value, that also like obviously creates, you know,

SPEAKER_03:

makes a more

SPEAKER_01:

valuable property.

SPEAKER_03:

So we've talked a lot about the positives of this thing. It sounds good. It sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a cool tool to use for a lot of different people. What are the cons? Are there any big like glaring like this might be something that you really need to really consider for your your day-to-day life if you decide to go this route

SPEAKER_01:

yeah so it's it's a great question i think you now have a tenant right and in an apartment building or you know the unit you're renting that's 24 7 if their heat goes out at 3 a.m right you have to fix the heat at 3 a.m and especially if you're going to try to manage it yourself you know that's the most cost-effective way you just directly manage it but that means you're the maintenance person your support your you know you're the support line they'll call you they text you and you live next to them and they're going to see you all the time you know like hey that leak is still going on you know in the roof like hey you know so it can be like quite uncomfortable it can be quite annoying yeah and you know yeah you just now have to live you know next to or near you know effectively your customer so i think that's probably the main thing uh and you know i think the other is like you know this by itself is probably not going to make you rich you know you have a big loan on the property sure sure it's worth three hundred thousand dollars but your loan is for you know 285 of that so you know it's not it's not like you don't you're not all of a sudden own a three hundred thousand dollar yeah So there's that. But yeah, I think the main thing is you now have a customer that lives right next to you. They're gonna have maintenance issues that could potentially be 24-7. People can trash places. You guys know, you've talked a lot about the horror stories of managing property. So if you have a bad tenant or a building that's falling apart, it can be painful.

SPEAKER_00:

Would this be considered house hacking? Because I know it's like some people who Airbnb a room out of their house, for example. Like they've got a basement room or something else. Is that kind of in the umbrella of house hacking?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think Airbnb and the short-term rentals have opened up kind of a whole new world where if you're traveling or if you have a space or a room that you can rent out, again, legally check your regulations, blah, blah. But a place that you can rent out legally on an Airbnb or a short-term rental site, I think that's a similar thing. And that's potentially opened it up to a lot more people where you just have a four-bedroom house and you can rent one room occasionally on Airbnb or something. So yeah, which I think is smart. Again, it's the same problem. you have to manage, you have to be checking in, you have the same potential issues, but if you can make 10 grand a year or five grand a year from rent, that could be- Yeah, it's a constant flow of income.

SPEAKER_03:

Imagine doing the trifecta, right? You get it all. You buy the duplex, right? You rent out one of the units to somebody that you know. You have roommates in your room that you can also have pay you rent, and then you have a shed out back that you convert into a luxury weekend Airbnb. Do they call that in the in the industry, the ultimate hack. That's a supreme hack. The supreme hack. That's like the matrix. You basically just have it, you know. Exactly. Numbers swirling around your head. You can see through time. It's perfect, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I think, you know, another version of this too is there are a lot more There are more areas that are allowing like ADUs, if you've heard that term, like an accessory dwelling unit. So for example, in like California or Houston, Texas, you have single family areas. They're pretty low density, you know, big lots of land, but now they're allowing you to build an accessory dwelling unit. So you have a big yard on the back of your yard. You can build like a one bedroom, little, you know, tiny house and potentially rent that house. Barn dominium. Remember we

SPEAKER_03:

talked about that? You could build a mini barn dominium house in the backyard. That's

SPEAKER_01:

cool. And rent that out. And you know, you took a little zero yard and now you have a rental unit there.

SPEAKER_03:

Can you house hack in the big city? Like, I mean, we talked about like having like a rural area or a duplex or whatever like that, but like here in like a highly populated sky rise place like a Cincinnati or a New York or wherever, it's like certainly must be harder.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think, you know, I think there are versions of, you know, investing in a condo and fixing that up and renting it out. You know, a friend of ours did that, basically had a condo and then, you know, lived there for a year and then rented it out. So I think you can do that in more of like a high-rise condo setting but I think the true hack of like you live in one and rent out the other one like it's pretty rare to be able to buy like two units as part of like a building condo okay applies a lot more like a standalone building that has two units already in it

SPEAKER_00:

okay yeah I guess my first landlord, I think that's pretty much what he had a property. And then he made like the first level, like a separate unit, like through construction and stuff. So I guess that was technically house hacking. Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_03:

So what's the biggest mistake you often see first time house hackers make? Is there like, you're like reaching through the, you're like, I wish I could have just told you this. Don't do this one stupid thing. Is there anything that jumps out at you when you see people go into it for the first time?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think the idea that like this, alone will make you rich. I can think of a friend of ours who was doing this and renting out properties and was like, okay, now I can own this building forever. But at some point you're just kind of managing tenants and you have this asset that if you sold it, you could put whatever$50,000 or$100,000 of cash in your account. I think people are romantically attracted to owning real estate and having that for a long term and that by itself will lead to wealth. And it's more like a good investment strategy rather than like a wealth builder, I would say. And so like once you do the house hack, I would say like you want to try to add some value, redo a kitchen, redo a bathroom, pay down the mortgage, maybe replace the roof, like, you know, add some value to it. And then for me, like, I don't think you then probably want to own that property forever. Assuming you want to like try to build some wealth. If you're just trying to like save for retirement, then sure, just own it for 30 years.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Patrick, you got any questions for our My friend John here.

SPEAKER_00:

No. You took a while to think about that. That's good. No, yeah. I think you covered pretty much most of my questions. Okay. How do you think you would do, Patrick, as a house

SPEAKER_03:

hacker? Professional house hacker, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00:

How do I think I would do? I mean, like, it was always kind of, it made sense to me to get a duplex, live in one unit, rent out the other. I didn't know that was called house hacking. I just thought that was called buying a duplex. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

again, like the special house. hack is if you can do that with an FHA loan and get a$400,000 property, which that number sounds impossible to buy for most people, but if you only need$20,000, which is still a lot of money,

SPEAKER_00:

you

SPEAKER_01:

can imagine saving your way to get there. And that's a hack to, oh, you are now literally a multifamily real estate owner, and it only took$20,000. So I think that's the hack.

SPEAKER_03:

And you might have clarified this with the FHA, but for everyone listening, you can really only utilize that once Right. Or is that something that you can do multiple times with the FHA loan? Like, could you theoretically get one as your first property and then like use another FHA loan for another property

SPEAKER_01:

down the road? You then have to live there for a year. OK. And then I believe if you sell the property, there's some like lockout period where, you know, a period of time where you can't do it again because, you know, they're not trying to like build real estate developers. They're trying to build like homeowners. Yeah. How

SPEAKER_00:

does one get an FHA loan? Is it a pretty easy process or are there like a ton of hoops?

SPEAKER_01:

It's not a ton of hoops. It's basically a government program administered by banks. Gotcha. So like there are, you know, they have to be like an FHA registered bank and there's, you know, certain banks that will specialize in that. But yeah, basically a government program administered by like any or a lot of like local banks.

SPEAKER_00:

And would most like first time home owners be able to get approved for one? pretty easily? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, their intent is to encourage, you know,

SPEAKER_00:

home buying. So for people like me and Zach, who've never owned property before, but like want to in the next few years, like an FHA loan is a very real thing that we can like realistically have. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, you know, the main thing is you just need a lot less

SPEAKER_00:

cash. Yeah. I mean, it just sounds, now are like the interest rates like a lot higher on FHA loans? No, I think they're competitive with like,

SPEAKER_01:

you know, your normal mortgage rates. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Sounds too good to be true. That's what I'm saying. What's the catch? The government's like, come on, Zach, come on,

SPEAKER_02:

Patrick. The government wants us to do well.

SPEAKER_01:

First time home buyer. I think that's really the intent. But yeah, I think the main thing to look out for, which is true for any rental, is just like having good tenants, right? Like a bad tenant can ruin your life, especially if they live right next to you or below you or whatever.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, you've had experience with this. How do you maintain a good tenant-landlord relationship?

SPEAKER_01:

I think even if it's someone who seems nice and whatever, you put them through the normal screening. Yeah, for sure. They apply, credit check, all that. You have a proper lease. You can evict them if things don't go well. I do think in my experience... you want to be friendly and like, Oh, someone's a little late on rent and okay, they can pay it, you know, but the more you kind of let that stuff go, the worse it gets in my experience. So

SPEAKER_02:

for sure,

SPEAKER_01:

uh, you know, it's just an agreement and you know, rent is due at the beginning of the month and there are quiet hours and you know, whatever you want to put in there. But, um, yeah, I think your life is a lot better if you like kind of enforce the lease, I guess. Okay. And screen up front, you know, cause it's, once you get someone down there, like that's a different situation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Maybe one of these days we'll have to bring you back on the pod to talk about an in-depth on doing applications and getting a tenant screened. I feel like that could be a good thorough discussion that we could have. Like the whole onboarding a tenant process. Yeah, right,

SPEAKER_01:

right, right. Yeah, that would be good.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, cool. Any other tidbits of wisdom that you feel like sharing before we wrap this bad boy up?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I think that's it. I think... If you're looking to buy your first property, you're looking to buy your first home, I think this House Hack FHA is a good way to do it. And it really just comes down to what's the goal. Do you want to be a real estate developer? Do you want to build for retirement? And I think that really is going to impact how you view buying property. But yeah, if you're looking to be an investor, if you want to build some net worth, build some retirement, I think property where people pay you makes sense. For sure. But owning a primary home is just a great way to be happy. But those are two separate things.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Cool, cool. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that is a wrap on our deep dive into house hacking. Real estate strategy is part investment, part lifestyle shift. And email questions at TheRentishPod if you've done the Ulta hack. What did we call it? Mega hack? Ultra. Ultra hack. The Matrix hack. Yeah, the Matrix hack. If you've been able to accomplish the Matrix hack, please email us. John, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Do you want to tell the folks where they can find out more about you and about cohorts?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I run a community, basically a real estate operator and developers and investors uh it's called cohorts so join cohorts.com and then i'm on all socials linkedin twitter at john j blatchford can you spell cohorts.com yeah so it's join cohorts.com join c-o-h-o-r-t-s.com

SPEAKER_00:

join cohort i thought you were talking to join the entire site join cohorts.com but it's join Join cohorts.

SPEAKER_03:

Patrick, we're trying to inform the audience, not confuse them. No, I got it. I got it. All right. Well, whether you're splitting a duplex, renting out your basement, or just listing a room, house hacking can be a smart way to lower your cost of living and start building equity. We've learned that with John today. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Rentish Podcast. As a reminder, we can be found at The Rentish Pod on Instagram, email questions at therentishpod.com. And yeah, give us a rating, a review if you're on Spotify, five stars if you're on Apple Podcasts. podcast or any other podcast service. Go ahead and slide that scale all the way up to 10 or however far it goes and drop us a comment. Tell us how much you're enjoying the show. And I've been Zach. That's been Patrick. That's been John. And we'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, guys.