How one couple 'house hacked' their way to early retirement in 6.5 years

• Jeff White and Suleyka Bolaños went from a $1,500 mortgage to living for free by house hacking.
• The couple grew their portfolio gradually, buying one property a year since 2017.
• In 2023, their rental income surpassed their salaries, and they retired before 40.

For years, Jeff White and Suleyka Bolaños felt limited by their PTO policies.

"Anytime that we would want to go travel or road trip, or we'd get invited somewhere, what's the first thing we would do? 'Oh, let me see how many PTO days I have left,'" Bolaños told Business Insider.

White, who had two weeks of vacation throughout most of his career in corporate finance and accounting, said he never even used all of his allotted days: "In those 17 years of working a W-2, I never took more than a week off because I'd feel guilty."

Now, after years of unconventional living and sharing space with roommates — the Denver-based couple has moved once a year into eight different house hacks — they've fully replaced their salaries with their rental income, quit their jobs, and have "PTO for life," said Bolaños.

From a $1,500 mortgage payment to living for free in their first house hack

White first learned about the concept of "house hacking," which involves renting a portion of your home to offset or eliminate your mortgage payment, from a book he picked up in Barnes & Noble called "Build a Rental Property Empire."

One paragraph in particular caught his attention: "All it said was: 'Buy a two- to four-unit property, live in one unit, rent out the others. You could take your housing down to zero and live for free.' And I was like, 'We could totally do this.' So I run home and tell Suleyka," recalled White.

For her, "It was a no-brainer," she said. "I was on board."

The couple was hesitant to give up the home they owned at the time — "it was a beautiful condo with a spiral staircase and a duck pond, high ceilings, and big windows," said White — but it wasn't conducive to house hacking, so they planned to sell and use the proceeds to fund a down payment for a multi-family.

Once they committed, their immediate first steps were to attend a real estate meetup in Denver and find a realtor who worked specifically with investors.

In 2017, they closed on a fourplex. It needed more work than they were prepared for.

"It took us three months before we could fully move in," said White, who described the renovation process as a second full-time job.

"We walked into cockroaches, mice, mold, and squatters," added Bolaños. "There were like eight people living there that we had no idea about. These people had been paying the previous owner cash, and they didn't even know the place had sold. It was a whole situation. That was our first eviction."

After months of living in Bolaños' sister's basement while renovating, they moved into one of the units and filled the unit previously occupied by the squatters. The other two units were already filled with tenants.

"We were so green in the whole thing that, nowadays, if we were to start all over again, we definitely would have never bought that fourplex," said Bolaños. "At the end of the day, it did end up working out for us, but it was definitely a really rough start."

The rental income completely covered their mortgage payment, meaning they went from paying $1,500 a month for their condo to living for free.

Expanding gradually: One house hack a year for 8 years

While their first house hack presented various challenges, White and Bolaños emerged from it feeling encouraged. They achieved their goal of eliminating their housing payment and used their extra $1,500 a month to save for the next house hack.

Their goal with the second was to live for free and cash flow, so they tested out a different strategy: rent by room. In 2018, they bought and moved into a single-family home with a with mother-in-law basement apartment and filled each bedroom with tenants. They also filled the unit they'd been living in in the fourplex.

After house hack No. 2, they said they were cash-flowing about $500 a month.

"By the third, we had started to develop our systems," said White. They knew exactly what type of properties they were looking for — move-in ready, rather than full fixer-uppers — and had experience with a few different rental strategies. With their third property, a duplex, they did rent by room with the upper unit and rented the bottom unit to a Section 8 tenant.

"We went from living for free on the first one, cash flowing $500 on the second one, and then $1,000 on the third one, and then $1,500 on the fourth one," said White. "We were getting better and multiplying — and that's while living there. It's even better after moving out when we can rent our room or space."

Since the couple was buying owner-occupied investment properties, they could get in with a smaller down payment than if they were buying a true investment property. That's because lenders see investment property loans as riskier than primary home loans. They put 5% down on each property, said White, "and interest rates for house hack No. 1 to five were all between 2.75% and 4%, so obviously that helped a lot."

The one catch with owner-occupied financing is that you have to live in the property for at least 12 months. That's why White and Bolaños stuck to a once-a-year expansion schedule, almost to the day.

"On day 366, or right before that, we were ready for the next one," said White.

Retiring before 40

Consistency paid off sooner than the couple imagined.

"2023 was a big milestone year," said White. "That was when it just hit. It wasn't like we planned it, but that was the year where it hit and exceeded both our W-2 salaries."

At that point, they'd been house hacking for about six and a half years, were both in their 30s, and had the freedom to walk away from their day jobs. Their goal all along was to hit financial independence, but they assumed it would take closer to a decade.

It helped that they made short-term sacrifices that lowered their cost of living, in addition to increasing their income with the rental properties. White, for example, sold his car to free up another $700 a month and relied on public transit and rides from Bolaños to commute to work.

"Certain days, I'm sure I was thinking, 'Why do I not have a car right now? It's 5 degrees and snowing. I'm sitting by the light rail,'" he said.

Bolaños, whose guilty pleasure is concerts, cut out that spending category for years.

"Those sacrifices, though, make it that much sweeter now," she said.

Since quitting work in 2023, the couple has continued to expand their rental portfolio. They've held onto all of their eight house hacks except the first — they used a 1031 exchange to replace it with two other rentals — and are looking for their ninth property in 2025. They plan to hit 10 house hacks by 2026. BI reviewed settlement statements to verify their property ownership.

"We did things that most people won't do. That's what sped us up," said White. "Most people don't want to live in basements. Most people don't want to live with roommates. They want their own unit in the duplex, or they want to take two years to buy instead of one. We did eight in seven years, so we were super consistent, willing to downsize, be flexible, and live with less stuff."

It helped knowing that their sacrifices were temporary.

"It's a one-year commitment," said White. "I think people get too hung up on, 'I don't want to live in that part of town. I don't want to live in a duplex. I don't want to live in a basement.'"

Pick a strategy and try it for a year, he said: "Maybe being a landlord is not for you, maybe house hacking is not for you, but what's your worst case? You reduce or eliminate your housing costs for one year."