How I Made $22,000 From My Guest Room: The Sneaky Duplex Explained

We're so excited to invite you to the new Open House Education online community, where women come together to get creative with real estate. We’re all about house hacking, sneaky duplexes, and buying with friends—and you’ll get access to live events, workshops, and a network of like-minded women who just get it. JOIN WAITLIST  

Doors are open November 12th-22nd, and I’d love for you to join us and start making your real estate dreams happen. Make sure to hop on the waitlist for access on the 12th.


Kristina, discusses the innovative concept of 'sneaky duplexes'—a strategy that allows homeowners to convert parts of their homes into rental spaces, thereby making their properties more financially viable. She shares her personal journey of navigating the real estate market, the challenges of managing a rental space, and the importance of community support among women in real estate.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sneaky Duplexes
04:01 The Concept of Sneaky Duplexes
10:37 Navigating the Housing Market
15:18 Managing the Sneaky Duplex
22:27 Community and Collaboration in Real Estate

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the open house podcast where women talk real estate. I'm Christina Moderas and today I'm going to dive into the sneaky duplex. This is a creative strategy that helped me and my partner stay in our dream neighborhood while growing our family. And it's a story I think you'll find inspiring, especially if you're looking for new ways to make real estate work for you. And if you want to make your home a true investment because just owning a home does not make it an investment. And I think this is a huge misconception. So this is a term coined at Open House and I was just in an episode of House Hunters where they talked about it. So I know people are going to start Googling what that is. Before we dive in, I want to remind you that we are officially ready and opening our online community doors next week. So between November 12th and 22nd, you can join the other 100 women who are interested in creative real estate. Yes, there's already 100 women in the group. I started this in August, talked about it in other podcast episodes before. So if you have any questions, feel free to email me at Christina at openhouseeducation.com. And if you've seen my new website, you know the vibes of this community. This is not your typical real estate investing group. In fact, I really don't like using the word investing because it can sound like icky and negative. The women in this community are excited about real estate and are at all very different stages. So they have the same values though. They're kind, empathetic, and want to support and help each other. And this is a nationwide community. And we even have some women who actually live out of the country. there as well. It's kind cool to see that perspective. So like I said, you can be at any stage of your real estate venture. We have women in there who have never bought a home before and also plenty of women who have bought one, two up to a few properties. One lady even owns a boutique hotel. So there's a lot of creative, cool real estate projects happening in there as well that women are talking about. And that's why I think this is such a great place to find a real estate partner. and it will feel very natural. We are all already talking and collaborating in there and finding our people, so to speak. And our community manager, Katie, told me she was recently talking with a member about how their romantic partners, though incredibly supportive, they often get a little like whiplash from their constant flow of real estate ideas. I can definitely relate here. And you know, we feel lucky to have partners who don't diminish our dreams, but they don't quite see real estate the same way that we do. They're supportive, but maybe don't dive into the details or excitement like we do. So it's been such a game changer to create a space where our enthusiasm doesn't feel out of place. A community of women who are just excited as us to pick apart ideas and figure out ways to make something that often feels impossible actually happen. So being surrounded by others who share that same mindset has been really empowering. It's not just about celebrating wins, it's about finding people who understand the thrill of exploring every like, what if together. When I was single, I also wish this had existed for me because my close friends at the time were not super into the possibilities of real estate yet. And honestly, like a lot of them now, they're like, cool, real estate, but they're not like... super excited about diving into projects and all that. So, you know, we often have to seek that out elsewhere. So anyway, if this resonates with you at all, go check out more about the community at openhouseeducation.com and join the waitlist. And you can officially join next week between November 12th and 22nd. Okay, I'm ready to talk about sneaky duplexes now. Okay, so let's go back to what is a sneaky duplex. So, you know, this involves converting part of your typically like a single family home into a rentable private space and often by adding an exterior entrance to a spare room. So it's a way to create a separate living area without needing to purchase a multi-unit property. And I currently do this in our house, but I wanted to kind of talk about how I even got there to even like utilizing this strategy. So I'm gonna kind of go back before I even started. our sneaky duplex. So when I was 25 years old, I bought a house with my sister and I, you know, I think I, had actually bought one other house before with a friend, my friend Brent, but you know, that was not in the city that I lived in. It wasn't in Austin. It was this other city. It was that property felt more of like we were testing it out, learning a lot. We renovated it, but I was like, I really want a house to live in and know, Austin at the time, I mean, even now, was pretty expensive for me. I was 25 and I had just started working for myself. I didn't have a W-2 job. And so I ended up buying with my sister. She lived in New York City at the time. She was 23 and she worked in fashion. She lived in New York City. you know, like she couldn't buy a house there at that time. I don't know, you know, it's very expensive to buy in New York City. That wasn't an option for her. So we decided to partner. She was a 10 % owner on that property. So she had the W-2 job. I had the experience. I brought in the majority of the cash. And so we bought this house as a three bedroom, one bath home. I even refinanced this a couple of years later, pulled her off the loan and I pulled some money out of the property. And my monthly mortgage after doing that is now a little over $2,000 a month. So it was a great purchase. Did I mention we bought it for $280,000, which at the time, you know, by myself, I couldn't, I wasn't getting approved by lender for that much. I think I got approved for 200. And if I had bought by myself, I would have ended up buying like a condo with an HOA and still paying like To me at the time, like 2000 just to pay for me was too much. I think my rent was crazy at that time. was like $750 all utilities and I had one roommate and she paid the same thing. So was like so affordable. I had to make buying a house like really make sense for me. So anyway, I bought this house with my sister. She's very much like a silent investor and still is. After I think I like literally a week after closing on my home, I was like in the process of moving into it and I met my now partner Eric on Bumble. know, within, wow, this was like so soon, I feel like within like six months, he moved into the house with me. And we you know, I had not planned on that I had not really foreseen that because I was kind of with the other rooms I was I had. roommate and I Airbnb'd one of the rooms so it was like chaos in that house but I was desperate to keep my mortgage to 700 a month or less. So we did that together for I think like a year we had like one roommate rotating kind of like they stayed for three months then left after doing that for a year we were like okay no more we're not doing that and after let's see you know we went through COVID together and just living in this house with our little dog and our cat and my partner Eric has a lot of projects like he is Mr. Fix-It which is great but also that comes with a lot of things and you know we lived in this little shoebox home 880 square feet one bathroom it was it was a test of a relationship we had a lot of tests in our relationship we also started businesses at the same time together like different businesses, but at the same time, all while living in this tiny house. And wow, we made it guys. But anyway, so we, you know, wanted to grow our family and I really wanted to stay in our neighborhood. But prices were so much more expensive than when I had bought that house five years ago. So when we decided we were ready to like go house hunting, we knew we needed to get creative and bit scrappy if we wanted everything on our house hunting list. So we went out specifically looking for a house that we could house hack in some way and just to give you some just like numbers of what we were looking at like if we wanted to stay in our neighborhood which was in a very good like central area we were probably gonna have to spend and like have you know not have like a super fixer upper home. We debated that we were like, do we get a fixer upper home? But I think at that time I was like, we've done this, like I have gone through my fixer upper era and I think I just need something that is moving ready at this stage of my life. I was like, working on my business a lot, prepping to have a baby. So fixer upper wasn't really looking like it should be in the cards for us at that time. So when we started looking at newer homes that were than one bathroom, more than like 1300 square feet, we were looking to spend probably like 600 to 2 million dollars. The 600 was more of like a fixer-upper smaller. So we knew that we had to house hack because we did not want to spend like what like 7,000 to 10,000 dollars a month on a mortgage payment. Going from 2,000 to that like 2,000 a month on a mortgage to that much was like shocking to me. So we did end up buying a new build house and you know, I'm recording in this house right now. We live here and we found a house that had a guest room at the front of the house. So it was a two, it's a two story home, three bedroom, three bath. And that was perfect for us because we were like, you know, we will have our room, a nursery and then this like sneaky duplex. the bottom floor that you know if we're not renting it out we can have guests stay there. It also has like a flex space, two flex spaces, one that is now my partner's office and I have one that's my office. So it really worked out for us and we did like go back and forth about this house for about probably three weeks because we were like it's so expensive but also like it makes sense and I have was really hesitant about a new build. because I'm like, I want character, I love the character, I don't want a white box. But this did check off a lot of our boxes. yeah, so we ended up buying it. you know, what we did was, so the front of this house, this little room, we sectioned off, so there was a window in the front of the house where that room was. So we turned that window into a door. and we have like a sliding glass door there. And then we added a bookshelf door. So we bought like a Murphy kit, like a Murphy door kit. And my partner being handy, he was able to just like build that out for us. But the door was still pretty expensive to buy, but it's, we saved some money by him just building the kit. And what else did we do? We just put a little mini fridge in there. We put like really nice sheets and parachute like ropes from parachute and like I made it really classy in there. So it was like a very nice hotel room. And so our goal from the start was we wanted to make around $2,000 a month in that room to go towards our mortgage payment. And you know at the time this is when like the housing market was booming. So Airbnb was doing well. The housing market was crazy. So at the time I was like, no problem, we can make this $2,000 a month. so our mortgage is still not the cheapest. Without our sneaky duplex, it would be $6,100 a month. And on average this year, we're making about $1,700 a month with our sneaky duplex. So that brings our payment down to $4,400 a month. But we get to live in a 2,000 square, well, it's actually a little, it's like, 2200 square foot home in a super walkable area. It's close to downtown and it's I think this is like the best part. It's within a mile from the majority of our friends with kids and that has been a game changer. I've been talking a lot about community and commune living and like although that's not exactly what we're doing here. It does feel like that because my friends who live like 30 minutes, even 15 minutes away, I don't see them as much. like community is so important in general, but especially when you have kids like to have your friends around you, my God, and family if you have it, and we don't have family in town. So this was so important to us. Yeah, so this is the most I've spent in rent or mortgage ever, but you know, we live in a super expensive city now and Eric and I were like, maybe this doesn't make sense for us. But then we started looking at rents in the area and they were just as high. So, you know, this is just how we're making it work for now. If we wanted to, you know, move further away from the city or our friends, it would maybe be a little bit cheaper. But, yeah, that's not that wouldn't be great for personally my mental health. Like location has always been something I didn't want to sacrifice on. And, you know, ever since I was doing this in my early 20s and that's never changed. Yeah, so I feel good that we're at least not paying the full interest part of our payment each month. And throughout my 20s and honestly, until like two years ago, I lived in fixer-upper homes and I lived pretty uncomfortably. So these next five years, for me, it feels really good and right to have some comfort at our home, especially with a new baby. But everyone, you know, is at different stages of their life. And you can use a sneaky duplex in many different ways. I'm just sharing an example of how even in my 30s and with a pricier home, you can still house hack and not have a true money pit when it comes to owning a home. Because I think people just think like, they bypass the price, they bypass what they're putting down, whatever. They're like, well, I own a home. So that's like. true asset. And that's not always the case. You have to make it an investment. You have to make it an asset. I also really like to preach that this is not passive. Like when you're going to buy a house and you're like, I want an investment and I think this will be a good passive way to do so. This is not this is not right for you. Like just know that going in that you really do have to kind of work with real estate and get creative with it. Okay, so I wanted to kind of go into our Seegi Doog situation and how we manage it because Eric and I manage this ourselves and I have been a member of Airbnb like I joined when they first started so I have been on there since 2012 I so that was when I was really well I was 22 and I was living in a five-bedroom house like renting and I remember our our AC payment was like $500 a month because this house that we were living in was so old and we used to rent our couches on Airbnb and I really met like the coolest people that way that one person who still who like we still keep in touch with and they live in Mexico City anytime we're over there we like hit them up and it's just yeah it's great anyway but that that was like my scrappy days so I've been on Airbnb a while, so I kind of know the lay of the land, if that makes sense. And I've set it up where we have auto messages going out and I'm very quick to respond to people. So we have really good reviews. We actually have 91 reviews right now, I think, and they're all really good. think we've had, I just actually posted about one review that we got recently that was like a four star review but instead of five and but they like said some some things in the review that i didn't love i was like i wish you had just told me about it instead of like pretending everything was okay but that's you know that's that's part of the territory too so if you're like not wanting to deal with that you have to consider the cost of hiring a property manager if you have a sneaky duplex in your house which might just not be worth it. You have to like look at all those costs. So Eric typically will clean the room and he used to have a very flexible job just recently. His employer has required him to come in three sometimes more days a week. So what a bummer. feel like a lot of companies are doing that now and it's very annoying. anyway so now he does clean it still but we do have a trusted company that we will hire who deals with Airbnb specific cleanings like short-term rental cleanings. So when we need it, we just like request a clean and they come and they, you know, put all the products back. Like if we have a little coffee pods and everything. So when we clean it ourselves, we typically we're saving $60 per clean. Some of the issues that we faced with our sneaky duplex. So We decided against putting their own little mini split in there like the AC so they can control it so prior to them coming I send a message and I'm like Hey, like just a heads up. Let me know how you like your temperature settings If you ever want me to change it, please let me know that hasn't been a problem You know, we we did in that last review I just mentioned we did have someone mentioned it was like a little warm in there and they didn't like that they couldn't control the temperature. you know, something I'm just keeping an eye on. And if I hear anyone else say something about that, I think Eric and I are going to have to have a conversation of like, okay, what do we need to do? But I'm pretty sure adding a mini split in there or some something like a little heater, a little like, I don't know, fan or something wouldn't be super hard to do. Another issue is like soundproofing, right? Cause like we, this room is kind of like right off of our front, our kitchen and our front entrance of our house. So we put a sound, a sound machine in their room that they can adjust as needed. And when Eric was building this like door, he put a lot of soundproofing in like the door as he was building it. So that has been helpful. It's also very helpful that we live in a new house. you know, if you live in an older home and are trying to do this, it might be a little trickier with soundproofing, but I do know people who do it and it's like, it works out great for them. So yeah, those are kind of like the two issues that I was the most concerned about, especially with a new baby with a sound. like remember going upstairs and like putting on YouTube like. sounds of babies screaming and going into the room and adjusting whatever we needed to adjust accordingly. But so far it's been okay. And one thing that did happen, thought we were gonna like I thought we would be making at least like $2,000 a month in this sneaky duplex room, but then the market changed. So yeah, you have to have a plan A, B, C when you're doing things like this, especially if you're pending on lowering your mortgage payment, which I would say don't buy something that you really can't afford without doing the sneaky duplex. For example, we are able to block off all of November to host a friend for that month who he found mold in his house and he can't stay there. So it's really awesome that we were able to provide a space for him for a month. But if we couldn't afford do that we wouldn't be able to do something like that and it would feel kind of it wouldn't feel great you know. So yeah when the airbnb when the housing market kind of shifted and the airbnb market shifted it's more competitive now so we really have to get on there and shift prices a lot and be more hands-on with our listing and that helps us get more bookings but you know originally I had thought like, we'll only have to do this sneaky duplex like maybe 15 days out of the month because we can charge a higher price. So, you know, just account for market shifts and everything because now, you know, in off seasons and also in this like more off season of Airbnb in general, we can't charge as much. And so that means we have more guests staying, less access to that room. So just things to think about. But overall, you know, really love this strategy. I love that we're able to like save some money every month in a house that we live in and make it like a true investment. You know, they're in our community in the open house education community. You know, we are on Slack right now, but we are moving to Circle, which I'm really excited about. Other, there's other women in the group who have sneaky duplexes as well. So Liz just finished up hers by She actually converted her garage into an extra space. So really excited to see how that goes with her. I know she had like a lot of renovation issues, but she's like, okay, I'm ready to get this going. And then Annie actually, she found me through one of my sneaky duplex TikToks and she started doing this as well. So she actually asked her builder to create a spiral staircase into one of the bedrooms. So she could rent that room out as a Sneaky Duplex and I love that. I'm glad she like found this episode or found that TikTok in time and was like, hey, can we do this thing? And then Barrett actually has a Harry Potter themed Sneaky Duplex. So I'll try to share all these listings and the show notes for you because I think it's really cool to see many different examples of Sneaky Duplex and kind of see like maybe what you could do in your own situation. And there are so many other women in our online community who are getting super creative with their homes, just like Liz, Annie, and Barrett. It's been just really incredible to watch everyone take these ideas and run with them and making real estate work for them in ways that maybe they hadn't really imagined before. So if you're listening and this has sparked any sort of inspiration, I'd love for you to join us in the open house education community. Remember, we're opening our doors. between November 12th and 22nd. And this is your chance to connect with other women who are exploring creative real estate strategies. So whether that's building a sneaky duplex or partnering up with friends, buying a vacation home or just like investing in your first property, we're all about support, collaboration and learning from each other's experiences. So if you're ready to dive in, head over to the link in the show notes and join our waitlist. You can also go to openhouseducation.com I can't wait to welcome you inside and see what amazing things you'll do next. So thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.