I am currently looking for multi-family homes for myself to house hack someday soon I hope. The problem is I cannot find what I am looking for in decent areas I want to live in. All the multi-family homes I see are not in the most desirable neighborhoods. I was really hoping to find a triplex or a 4 plex in a decent community, but I cannot find any. Should I pass on house hacking?

@Tony Marcelle this is often times an issue, especially if you are not in a big city. Most areas keep the multifamily away from the single family homes. If you find that there just aren't any areas where you could possibly live, you might consider doing live in flips instead for a while. I personally have done this twice here in Riverside, IL. You buy an undervalued home, fix it up, and then either cash out refinance or sell to access your equity. I have used that equity to buy several apartment buildings locally in Berwyn. 

@John Warren I have never heard of that before. Do you live in the home while doing this or is that just a term used for flipping owner occupant homes even if you don't live in it? My concern would be where to get the money for rehab if I do not have money out of pocket.

Originally posted by @Tony Marcelle :

I am currently looking for multi-family homes for myself to house hack someday soon I hope. The problem is I cannot find what I am looking for in decent areas I want to live in. All the multi-family homes I see are not in the most desirable neighborhoods. I was really hoping to find a triplex or a 4 plex in a decent community, but I cannot find any. Should I pass on house hacking?

A variation on house hacking: Buy a house as an owner occupant in a neighborhood you want to live in, live in it for 12 months as required by the mortgage, then buy another house and move, renting out the prior one. A friend of mine calls this the "Nomad" strategy, and it's the method I'm using to build my rental portfolio. The math is amazing on it, and it's very simple in execution compared to most strategies.

Right now, I buy new construction homes to do this in, in nice neighborhoods. And the long-term math still works very well, even with new construction.

@Jassen Bowman That sounds good, but my intention is to move in a multi-family home with the intent of using tenants rent to pay off my mortgage and expenses which is the main purpose of house hacking. That is what attracted me to the idea of house hacking.