158. How I Turned $5,000 Into a Six-Figure Check Without Ever Paying My Own Mortgage!

🌟How to Live for Free: The Power of House Hacking🌟

Welcome to the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Webinar! In this session, host Niyi Adewole breaks down one of the most powerful wealth-building strategies available to everyday people — house hacking. From eliminating your largest monthly expense to building a serious real estate portfolio, this episode is packed with real numbers, real stories, and a clear roadmap to get started.

🔥 Quote of the Day: "The only difference between what you're currently doing and a house hack is ownership."

💡 What This Means: Most people are already sharing a building with others and splitting the cost of living — that's essentially house hacking. The only thing missing is that they don't own the asset. Once you flip that switch and become the owner instead of the tenant, the same living arrangement that was costing you money starts building your wealth instead. 

🎙️ What You'll Learn:

1. What House Hacking Actually Is: Niyi defines house hacking clearly — living in a property while renting out another portion — and breaks down the multiple ways you can do it.
2. The Louisville Triplex Story: How Niyi went from paying $1,200/month in rent to getting paid $50/month to live, by purchasing a $190K triplex with just $5,000 down using an FHA loan.
3. FHA vs. Conventional Loans: Understand why owner-occupant financing is a massive advantage — lower down payments, higher seller credit limits (up to 6%), and more flexibility than traditional investor loans.
4. Multiple House Hack Styles: From roommate hacks in Boston, to condo ownership, to a luxury short-term rental setup in Atlanta — Niyi walks through every stage of his personal house hacking journey with real numbers.
5. The Compounding Effect: See how doing just one house hack per year for 3–5 years can build a serious real estate portfolio, just like Niyi's client who acquired 8 units in under 2 years.

🏡 Key Takeaways:

➤ You're Already House Hacking — you just don't own anything yet. Flip the script and become the owner, not the tenant.

➤ You Don't Need $50K to Start — Niyi started with $5,000, and that investment turned into a six-figure check four years later.

➤ Define Your Win — whether it's a triplex, a condo with a roommate, or a luxury home with a short-term rental suite, if you're paying less than you are now and you own the property, you're winning.

⚛️ Why This Matters:

Housing is your single largest monthly expense — most people spend 30–60% of their income on it. A well-executed house hack can cut that in half or eliminate it entirely, freeing up hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month to invest, save, and build long-term wealth. Niyi's definition of wealth isn't about what you flash — it's about how long you'd survive if you stopped working today.

🗓️ Tune in every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern! Don’t miss out on our journey toward financial freedom through smart investments.

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 Our Links

➣ Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083... 

➣ Peer Space Host Referral Link https://www.peerspace.com/referrals/g... 

➣ AirBNB Host Referral Link https://www.airbnb.com/r/niyia41 

➣ Ekabo Home Network (IG, Youtube, Email) https://linktr.ee/ekabohome

Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.

Transcript

Welcome And Weekly Format

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group Podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work pride and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions, and keep the momentum going.

The Live For Free Challenge

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And so I'll start with this. What if I told you you could live for free? What if I told you you could eliminate your single largest monthly expense with one decision? What if I told you that the same decision could turn your biggest bill into your greatest wealth-building vehicle? Here's why I know this works. I lived it. In 2016, I was working for a medical device company that was in the Fortune 500, but I started there as an intern, literally started from the bottom. Around that time, I started listening to podcasts like Bigger Pockets. I got back into reading and picked up Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Richest Man in Babylon. And books helped rewire my mindset around money. But here's the thing: they told me what to think, not how to start. When I got promoted, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky and became a device rep out in the field. And I found myself a brand new, amazing apartment. It was a two-bed, two-bath right next to the pool. And I was paying about $1,200 a month. And everybody who came over said, Wow, this place is amazing. I can't believe it's so affordable and cheap. But when I sat down and actually looked at my budget, something hit me. It wasn't gas eating up my paycheck. It wasn't food. I could have literally eaten out every single day of the week and it still wouldn't have touched what I was paying for rent. Rent was my largest expense by far on a monthly basis. And that's when I came across a term that changed my life.

What House Hacking Means

SPEAKER_01 1:43

And that term is house hacking. So I wanted to find what house hacking is before we dive into how it changed my life and what it can do for you. And so house hacking means that you live in a property and you rent out another portion of that property. There's many ways to do a house hack, right? One of the ways is if you buy a duplex, triplex, quadplex, live in one unit, rent the others out. Another way is to buy a single family or a condo and rent another bedroom out. Another way is to rent a room inside somebody else's house to lower your cost of living. All of these are considered house hacking. And here's what people don't realize is that you're already house hacking, even if you weren't using the term. You just don't own anything. When you rent an apartment, you're one of hundreds of people that are sharing that building that the landlord owns. You pay rent and they build wealth. Now imagine flipping that. You own the building, everyone else pays rent to you, and you live there for free. That's the only difference between what you're currently doing and getting into house hack is the ownership. Who owns all the benefits that are coming with that? And here's where it gets powerful the money that you were spending on renting now goes towards saving for your next

First Triplex And FHA Play

SPEAKER_01 2:51

investment. And so when I understood this concept, it burned in my mind for about a year before I took action. And at 24 years old, I actually took everything that I had saved up, which was roughly $5,000, and I put that down on a hundred and ninety thousand dollar triplex. I used an FHA loan, which allows you to put down three and a half percent, and I negotiated for the seller to cover all of my closing costs, which is roughly about three percent of the purchase price. And so I walked in with just a down payment, I moved into one of the units, and the other two units were bringing in roughly $1,400 a month, and my mortgage was just $1,350. And so I essentially went from paying $1,200 a month to live in a dope apartment to now owning a triplex, eliminating that biggest expense. So I was not paying $1,200 a month, and I essentially was getting paid $50 a month to live where I was, and so that's a $1,250 swing to where I could now save $1,250 a month and put it toward the next property. And so when you talk about some of the benefits, I really want to work through the numbers

The $1,250 Monthly Swing

SPEAKER_01 3:52

here. So I'm gonna share my screen and we're gonna start to dive in. And if anybody has any questions, go ahead and hit it in that QA. This is like my first time working a webinar, so we'll get better over time as we do this. But when you look at this, right, and you can see my screen. Here goes what I was doing before. So before I was renting and I was paying $1,200 per month for my rent. And then when I switched to house hacking, my mortgage was actually higher at $1350, but my tenants were paying minus $1,400. And so I really was a positive, it's a negative, a positive $50, which is when you put these two together, a twelve hundred and fifty dollar swing, which is amazing. Oh, this is negative and this is positive. Yeah, a twelve hundred and fifty dollar swing when you put these two together and kind of see what was going on there because we eliminated

Investor Math Versus House Hack

SPEAKER_01 4:40

this piece. And so when you look at what it would have looked like from a house hack versus an investor, right? And I'm gonna show you this. So I gave you the numbers, right? This property and this home was a hundred and ninety thousand dollar purchase price, 190 and please excuse my chicken scratch. 190K. An investor, at least in the traditional sense, would have had to put down 20% on that property, and 20% of this would have you at $38,000, right? To go and buy that property, and then they would potentially have to cover their closing costs, which is another three percent, which is just under call it, you know, six thousand dollars, right? So uh roughly six thousand dollars they would need to cover in closing cost as well, really, yeah, six thousand dollars. And so fully to get in this, you're gonna have to pay forty-three thousand. Now I don't know about you, but at 24, saving up 43,000 was not even an option, right? It didn't even seem like it was real. I was barely making over that, right? When I when I was an intern, I think we made like 60,000 a year, and so I would have definitely it would have been a struggle to save this much. Saving the five grand felt you know monumental with all the other bills that I had coming in. And so saving 43,000 would have had me waiting for a very long time. So that's what an investor typically has to pay. The benefit of a house act is when you're gonna go buy a primary home to live in, mortgage companies and the government loves this because you help drive a little bit more of the GDP in that neighborhood and and that gross value in that neighborhood because you're gonna shop in the same neighborhood, you're gonna go buy gas in the same neighborhood, you're gonna support the local community, and so the government gives you a break when you're putting a down payment on a property and they make it a little bit easier for you to do that. And so, with me using that FHA loan, I was able to put down three and a half percent, which was roughly five thousand dollars, right? Maybe a little bit more than that, but that's what I had saved down, and then I got some money from the seller. So, roughly five thousand dollars is what I put down, and then I was able to get the seller to cover my closing cost, right? So, this is closing cost, closing costs were zero, okay. And so my total was literally five thousand down to move into this property, and I was able to then go from paying twelve hundred dollars a month to rent to now paying nothing and actually being in the surplus by fifty dollars, which actually brought me some dollars, which is cool. Now, bottom line, government and lenders want you to buy a primary home, they incentivize it. House hacking lets you take full advantage of that while building your investment

One Year Rule And New Options

SPEAKER_01 6:59

portfolio. And the cool thing about house hacking is you only have to live in that home for up to one year. You sign a document saying that you intend, and that's the keyword, you intend to live in that home for up to one year, but there's certain reasons where maybe that's not possible. So, for example, when I bought this triplex in Louisville, I lived in there, right, for roughly six months. And then I got promoted by a job to move to Boston. Boston is definitely more than 50 miles away, it's like a thousand miles away, right? And so when I made that move, it was six months in. Hey, I gotta take this role. And so I was able to move a tenant into my unit and still continue to own that property. And that property was one of my best performers early on because of when I bought it and and just you know how much it could bring in. When I moved that tenant in, it was bringing in 2200 on a 1350 mortgage. And eventually, when I did sell the house in 2021 to buy more real estate, it was bringing in 2850 on a 1350 mortgage. And so when you look at that piece, that's one reason you can move is for a job promotion. Another reason is if you're getting married, right? Another reason is if you just recently had a kid or there's been, you know, some change in the family recently. These are all valid reasons for you to have to move a little bit early. For example, I still do house acts to this day, and now you know my wife does it alongside me. And one of the things that we did is just before we got married, while we were still both single, we both purchased individual properties, right? That we moved into because we were still, you know, separate from that standpoint. And then once we got married, which definitely wasn't a full year later, we just purchased a property together as well. That we were able to do the same thing, lower down payments and kind of make it happen. And before the FHA was the only way to get, you know, less than five percent down on a property multiple times or not multiple times, less than five percent down on a property, you know, at least your initial time or on a primary. But recently, I want to say it was like November of 24 or something of that nature, they've now changed the rules. And so you can get a five percent down conventional loan on a personal property once a year, and so you can house hack many, many times for literally just five percent down. When you look at the closing credits, right? With the FHA loan, you're actually allowed to get more credits. If you're gonna buy that property as an investor, the maximum amount of seller credits you can get is two percent, right? With that 20% down conventional investor loan, the max you can get is two percent. Whereas if you are gonna go FHA, the max you can get is six percent. And so that six percent can do a couple things. One, it can cover your full closing costs, right? So closing costs are usually around three, you know, maybe to five percent if you're paying like some extra points and things of that nature. And with six percent in closing costs, you can pay extra points to get the interest rate down and lower your overall monthly payment and make it an even more favorable deal. And so when you look at the long game on that triplex, I mentioned how much it was renting for for when I moved out and and what I got it up to. I actually ended up selling that house in 2021 and I sold it for 310K, walking away with a six-figure check, having never paid the mortgage myself, right? So, this is just something that saved me money. When I moved out, it made me money over the years. It continued to increase from a month-to-month standpoint and how much money it brought in. And at the end of the day, it gave me a six-figure check, which is much more than I was actually making when I initially bought this house. And so that is the power of house hacking. It allows you to get into a property a bit earlier and it allows you to be able to then turn that property into a money generating asset for you over time, and that's that's kind of what we're going for. And so, you got to define what your win is when it comes to a house hack, right? Not every house hack looks the same. That Louisville triplex was one type, but the real question you need to answer is what does a win look like for you right now? And the way I would start is how much are you currently paying for rent or for housing and use that as your baseline, right? And so, for example, I told you I've done multiple different house

Boston Roommate And Condo Hacks

SPEAKER_01 10:49

hacks. I'm gonna share my screen. So, when it comes to different kinds of house hacks, that was the triplex, right? So that was one type of house hack where I lived in one unit, rented the others out. When I got promoted for my job, I actually moved to Boston. And Boston, I didn't realize it until I moved there, is one of the most expensive cities in the country, right? Literally, it was top five. There was like Hawaii, Manhattan, LA, and Boston was up there. And I was like, what the heck? Like, this is where I'm moving to. And so on paper, I was getting a pay raise, but like if you actually looked at the cost of living, it was like a 30 or 40 percent decrease from what I was paying in in Louisville, moving to Boston. And so what I did up there is I did a roommate hack, right? I was looking at so many different properties. I knew, like, hey, I didn't want to spend more than say 2,000 a month for my personal rent, at least when I was initially there. And so I looked and found roommate, right? I said, you know what? Like, I'm not gonna get over my head. I want to continue to have money to invest in other properties, and so that's what I did. And so there was a four-bedroom house in Boston, and they were asking $3,500 per month in rent. Now it was a nicer one, right? This is one that was in Jamaica Plains. If anybody that looks at this is from Boston, you know Jamaica Plains or JP has come up a lot, and so what I ended up doing is I took one of the bigger rooms for my bedroom, right? And I took like the smallest room for my office because I had all this equipment and all this extra stuff that I needed to put in there for my medical device sales, and I rented the other two rooms out to roommates for a thousand a piece. I think one of them was paying like $1,200 because he had the biggest room, and the other one was paying like $800 because he had the smallest room, right? So this is what I was had the roommates paying, and then I paid the additional $1,500, and then we split all the utilities, and so this allowed me to all in stay under that $1,500 right route while still living pretty comfortably. And you're fresh out of college, like you're like 23, you know, 24, 25, whatever, 24, 25. And so this is the time to make those kind of sacrifices because later on, and you may be able to hear my son in the background, you're you're not gonna want to do that. Like right now, if I had to go house hack like with somebody in the actual unit, that would be highly uncomfortable. And so my target was to get below that two grand, and I was able to make that happen because I viewed a win as anything less than two thousand per month, whether that be me purchasing something or me house hacking even with roommates. Now, about two years into that, so I renewed for one year, and then the second year I had a lot of success in selling the medical devices, and so I ended up buying a condo and executing a very similar thing. I bought a condo for 400,000, right? And this is up in Boston. I bought it in Manapan, which is coming up, up and coming area. It's like the last city that you have inside of Boston, quote unquote, proper before you leave the city, and it was a three-bed two and a half, right? 2.5. And I moved on up, right? So this was one where I want to say the mortgage was about $2,200 a month, and I had my roommate paying $1,200 a month, and roommate paid $1,200 per month. And so knee's cost was a thousand per month. So I lowered my cost by another $500 while moving into ownership and lowering the amount of roommates from two roommates to one roommate with way more space in that condo. And the less this was even less than I was paying as a renter, I had ownership and a bigger space. And this house hack is where I live in Boston until I actually moved away. And when I moved away, the property had gone up in value by a little over 10% in a short amount of time. I was able to sell it and use that down payment to then get into a different kind of house hack that was more of a luxury house hack

Atlanta Short Term Rental House Hack

SPEAKER_01 14:13

in Atlanta. And so when I moved to Atlanta, I took the money that I made from the Boston property as well as my down payment because I got that back, and I bought a house in Atlanta in uh the East Atlanta neighborhood. And this house was amazing, right? This house was actually pretty awesome. I was making more money, but I still didn't want to pay more than say $2,500 a month, right? And so my mortgage was a little over $4,000 a month. It was $4,200 for the mortgage, right? And it was a single family with an in-law suite. And this was at a time where I wanted to try out short-term rentals. Up until this point, the only thing I had known or done for five years of real estate investing was long-term rentals, right? Usually small multifamilies. I did the condos and kind of just kept ramping it up from there. But at this point, I'd had so many friends that I'd met within real estate that were talking about this short-term rental thing. It was 2021 where these things were ripping. And so I said, you know what? Let me try it here. And the reason I'll try it here is because the rent that I could get for a one-bed, one bath in this neighborhood, based on the the details that I got was roughly $1,500. Okay. And that $1,500 would still have me paying a little bit more than I wanted. It had me paying like $2,700 a month. But I really liked the house. So I fell in love with the house. I'm not gonna lie. And my girlfriend at the time, now wife, fell in love with the house as well. So that was a bit of a contributing factor. But I said, you know what? Instead of taking the long-term rent of this, let me try this short-term rental thing. And if I can at least make this, I'll be happy. Now, what ended up happening is that short-term rental actually averaged for the two years that two and a half years that we live there, $2,500 a month. And so it actually left me paying roughly $1,700 per month, right? Which was a major win. And it got me into the short-term rental game and added another tool to my tool belt. In the fact that now I was like, hey, I can go buy in more expensive neighborhoods where homes are going to appreciate more and just short-term rent it. And so that's what helped me kind of get into that game and build out my whole portfolio there. And now we own eight short-term rentals and manage 25 from a one-bedroom out to a 10,000 square foot mansion. But long story short, this was another type of house hack. I would consider this more of a luxury house hack because that we could definitely do better on numbers. But we had like four beds, three baths to ourselves, and then we had one bed, one bath in an in-law suite basement that they had a completely separate entrance and we didn't see them that was covering most of the mortgage. And so that was pretty amazing, right? And so the universal formula I would give you is that no matter what style of house that you're going for, whether it be a triplex, whether it be a roommate situation, whether it be a single family with the in-law suite or something else, the question you want to ask yourself is can you pay less per month than what you're paying right now and own the property? And if you can do those, I consider that a successful house hack.

One House Hack Per Year

SPEAKER_01 16:45

We work with clients that are, you know, paying $2,500 a month in rent and they're like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about getting an investment property. And the first question I always ask is, have you thought about doing a house hack for your first one? And is that a possibility? Because if you can do that for your first one, it not only allows you to play offense, but it allows you to pay defense. Offensively, you're getting an investment property, you're putting the least amount down. And now you have, from a defensive standpoint, even less money that you're paying per month. So now you can save up for the next property and do it again if you're able. Now there's a compounding effect that can come if you do this consistently. One house hack per year gets really exciting. You can buy a new primary residence once per year. That means if you're willing to delay gratification for three to five years, you can build a serious portfolio. We have a client that has stayed consistent. We helped him buy a four unit back in 2023. He came back a little over a year later. I want to say it was like you know 14-15 months later, and we helped him buy another four unit. That's eight units in two years, right? One client bought two fourplexes on the same street, and now he owns eight units on the same block. And that portfolio has been his net, his safety net through job volatility, right? He works in the tech industry. There was a time period after he got the second one where he was kind of laid off, right? Before he found more employment and took about like two months, three months, and he wasn't sweating at all. He actually took a vacation a little bit because his his monthly cost was net zero. With these two units, he turned these two eight you eight plexus, two four plexus. He turned two of the units, or maybe even three of the units, into short-term rentals, had the rest as long-term rentals. And so he was not only covering his cost of living, but getting an excess dollar amount to go and live and go and spend and do things with. And so that's one of the pieces that you

A Better Definition Of Wealth

SPEAKER_01 18:22

can do. Now I want to redefine wealth, and I have a different way of looking at it, right? It's probably different than what you see on social media and what people are wearing and and and what people are flashing. And my definition of wealth is a simple question: if you were to stop working today, how many months would you survive? How long could you last before you had to go back? And the answer to that question, once it reaches infinity, to me defines a wealthy person, right? Because if you are dependent on quote unquote active income that you have to be out there going to go get, and that's the only way you're gonna make it month to month, then that's a different scale of wealthy. But if you're able to lower that monthly cost and build the other assets, like the friend I just mentioned, to where now he doesn't have a rental cost, he's got a surplus there, and his other costs are minimal. That's a major win, and you are wealthy. And so your largest expense by far is housing. Most people spend between you know 30 and 50 percent of their check on it, some people almost up to 60 percent. And a house hack can cut that in half and or eliminate it entirely. And so that $3,000 a month rent becomes $500 out of pocket. That's $20,000 in savings that would have lasted six months. Now it lasts years, right? If you're able to cut your expense from $3,000 a month to $500 out of pocket a month with a house hack, that $20,000 can last a lot of time if you have it inside of a savings account. And so I want to recap three things, right?

Recap And Starter Checklist Offer

SPEAKER_01 19:45

You're already house hacking, you just don't own anything. Flip the script, be the owner, not the tenant. The government makes it really easy to start. FHA loans, low down payments, seller paid closing costs, you don't need $50K to begin. I started with $5,000, and now that $5,000 turned into a six-figure check four years later without me doing really anything. Define your win and stay consistent. Whether it's a triplex, a condo with a roommate, or a luxury home with a short-term rental. If you're paying less than you are now and you own the property, you are absolutely winning. If you want help finding your first house hack, my team at a cabo home covers Georgia, Florida, and Texas. Let's talk. Drop your email in the chat. I'll send the house hacking starter checklist for anybody that joined here live. And if you want to go get that, you can go to our website at ecabohome.com, ek a bo home.com. Next week's session is going to be right here in the same arena. We will send out details on that soon. I hope everybody has an awesome rest of the week. And I look forward to being able to dive into more on future webinars. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence.