Second time's the charm: successful house-hacking
First house; I purchased a 3bd, 2bath house in San Diego, California with a VA loan in 2016 and invited 2 of my friends to move in with me and split the cost of the mortgage. Although this was a great learning experience, I still paid about the same as them so not a true househack.
Second house: I purchased a 4bd, 3 bath in Oak Harbor, Washington with a conventional loan in May of this year. I've rented out the extra 3 bedrooms, one to an acquaintance fron San Diego, one from craigslist, and one as a referral from a work colleague. Mortgage is $1950, rents($750x3=$2250), I include all utilities so at the end of the month I'm paying less than $150 to live here.
Thoughts: Friends can be hard to rent to but it's not impossible.
Even though I wasn't able to truly house-hack in San Diego, purchasing the house stopped me from throwing my money away on someone else's mortgage, as well as introducing me to the idea of real estate investing. It also allowed me to build equity through appreciation!
The future:
My friends in San Diego are currently moving out of the house, I plan to sell and use the (large) appreciation to buy 2 condos as rentals in Oak Harbor in 2019, as well as another single family house with the va loan (0% down), which I will move into and house-hack.
Thank you BiggerPockets for the wonderful service you provide!