My story

In my 20s I lived out of a van for about thirteen months. It wasn’t really a lifestyle choice, it was part of a larger struggle of reconciling what I could afford with where I wanted to go in life. I didn’t have savings to fall back on, and at the time I couldn’t see a path to anything better without trying to get rid of my biggest expense (rent). It didn’t really work out.

At the end of the van-dwelling experience, once I had a chance to look ahead, I did the thing accountants do: I started running the numbers on how I could actually get out of my financial hell, and get to a place of financial security. The answer that I kept coming back to was leaving my high cost of living area, and instead of renting buy a small duplex. I could see a narrow path there, if I made a few moves and took some risks (and got lucky). Over the next five years I worked my way from that van to a duplex I live in and rent out today.

How I got from a van to a duplex

After the van experiment I wasn’t ready to give up. I moved across the country to a more affordable area (where homes were accessible on an entry-level income). I got a job, I rented a small apartment for about a year. That gave me a stable base to plan from instead of just getting through each week.

Then I bought a starter home: $185,000, under 800 square feet, in a decent neighborhood. I actually was still in a tough enough position that I couldn’t have covered the down payment alone, so I used a county first-time-buyer assistance program to get in. I lived there about three years, and the equity I built became the down payment on my next place.

That next place is the duplex I’m in now. I bought it with an FHA loan. I live in one unit, rent the other, and run the basement as a short-term rental. Those two units bring in roughly $20,000 to $30,000 a year and cover most of my cost of living here. My monthly housing cost went from about $1,500 to a few hundred dollars.

The whole thing took about five years and two modest purchases stacked on top of each other. There was no inheritance and no windfall, just a public assistance program, a small first house, and a lot of careful math in between.

Why I built this site

Before I bought the starter home, I ran the numbers on hundreds of listings. My realtors and I went to literally over 100 houses/condos/multi-family homes. They probably hated me. But I had no margin for error, and I can do the basic math, and that was the only thing protecting me from bad decisions. I eventually got a sense of a what a deal was in my price range and location, and good at telling which deals actually worked and which ones only looked good on paper. Then I was able to apply that sense to the duplex, for which I was much more decisive (a few months, a handful of listings).

Most real estate advice online skips that part, or hides it behind a course. I’d rather just show my work. So on this site I share the real numbers from my own deals (the purchase prices, the rent, the repairs that went wrong, etc) along with plain explanations of the figures that matter and free calculators that run the same math I use on real listings. My hope is that it is helpful, even for just one person of similar circumstances.

If you’ve ever looked at a listing and wondered whether you could afford it by renting out the other unit, that’s the question this site is built to help you answer. I also will put my thoughts on my experience and tools/tricks that helped me survive and, eventually, thrive.

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