It’s no secret that affordable housing is becoming harder to find for many young professionals, especially those who recently graduated from college with a pile of student loan debt. However, more young professionals are discovering a path to homeownership while kick-starting their real estate investing portfolio: house hacking.
House hacking is a real estate investment strategy where you rent out part of your main residence to cover housing costs, such as mortgage payments. This is a great strategy investors can use to afford their first properties, especially if they have the freedom to live anywhere in the country.
With that in mind, I wanted to highlight a handful of prime entry markets where house hacking can lead to homeownership and real estate income. These markets are still affordable—with median home prices less than the national average—and are also experiencing solid job growth and price appreciation. After all, just because a market is affordable doesn’t mean it’s a good place for your first investment.
Selecting the Best Markets for Your First House Hack
For this analysis, I incorporated median home prices and rental data from Zillow. I also retrieved job growth data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I’ve seen a lot of other news sources discuss “affordability” without taking property taxes…