Office-Hacking - Is this Already A Thing?

[Jonathan Bombaci]

Back in 2019, I accidentally house hacked a 3-family. At the time I had never heard the term "house hack." I thought I had come up with a clever way to live for free while building equity. A few years later I found BiggerPockets and quickly realized people had been doing it for decades.

Fast forward to today, and I feel like I accidentally stumbled into something similar.

As our real estate brokerage and property management company expanded, we knew we wanted physical offices in the markets we serve. The problem was I hated the idea of signing long term commercial leases and paying rent... 

Instead, we started buying mixed use buildings.

The tenants help pay for the building, our office occupies one of the commercial spaces, and instead of writing a rent check every month, we're building equity in an asset we wanted to own anyway.

Our latest purchase is a 14- unit mixed use building in downtown Lewiston, Maine with 8 apartments and 6 commercial spaces. We'll use part of the commercial space as our local office and probably lease out some of the extra space as coworking since it's much larger than we need.

One of the unexpected benefits is that these buildings become more than just offices. We host free real estate investor meetups throughout New England, and having spaces we own gives us a place to bring the community together. If you're ever in the area, all of our events are posted here on Bigger Pockets under the Events section. We currently host meetups in Boston, Lowell, Waltham, Worcester, Hartford, Portsmouth, Manchester, the Portland area, and now we'll be adding downtown Lewiston to the list. 

It made me wonder... is this already a thing?

Do other people intentionally buy mixed use buildings to house their business creating an asset instead of a liability? If so, is there already a name for it besides "office hacking"?

I'd love to hear if others are doing something similar or if you've found other creative ways to have your business help pay for the real estate you own.

[JD Martin]

Not necessarily the same strategy but I know someone who essentially turns office space into single and double bedroom apartments pretty cheaply. The wide spaces without support walls and beams makes it relatively easy to partition the spaces however they want. Plumbing and electric are usually the hang up in the process, especially waste plumbing.