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The first property Jeff White and Suleyka Bolaños bought was a piece of work. It was a fourplex that they planned on house hacking, meaning they'd move into one unit and rent out the other three."It took us three months before we could fully move in," White told Business Insider. The renovation process "was like having two full-time jobs for both of us."Looking back, "we could have done a lot better," said White, who is now a real-estate agent and helps investors in the Denver area find properties. "I've looked...

Retiring in your 30s is far from simple, but Jeff White and Suleyka Bolaños did it by simplifying.They had a clear goal — early retirement in 10 years — and a clear plan: add one rental property a year to their portfolio. And they committed to one strategy: house hacking. By renting out parts of the houses they lived in, they could offset their housing costs and free up extra savings."All we wanted was one deal a year — it wasn't like we were looking for 10 — so it...

Caleb Hommel and Chuck Sotelo knew little to nothing about real estate before investing in their first property. They were only teenagers, after all."We had no experience," Sotelo told Business Insider. "We didn't have any credit, we didn't have any money, and we didn't really have any connections."The friends, who met on the first day of high school when they sat next to each other in a pottery class, started discussing buying property during the pandemic. At the time, they were enrolled in two different junior colleges, but remote learning...

Since 2017, Jeff White and Suleyka Bolaños have moved homes once a year.They've shared walls with neighbors in duplexes and triplexes, and shared common spaces with roommates in single-family homes. They've lived in a basement unit and a tiny home.The moving process is now "a one-day thing," Bolaños told Business Insider. They pared down their belongings to the point where, "when we would move, we just basically pack up our room."White and Bolaños own each of the homes they've lived in. They're using a strategy known as house hacking, in...