Hi guys, I'm Ravi! I'm 23 years old and I've been thinking about moving to Chicago for about a year now. I wanted to live closer to where I work, and enjoy the great benefits of living in the city. I looked into getting a condo but after some more research into that, I found that it wasn't the best decision with lower appreciation potential and high HOA fees. I was ready to rent in the city, but I kept looking for an alternative. After a lot of research and careful thinking on what I want out of this, I landed on the house hacking strategy. I started taking this seriously around August of this year.

My initial goal to move to Chicago has lead me down quite a rabbit hole haha. Over the last few months, I’ve learned so much: how to walk through a property, what are the right questions to ask, local zoning rules, renovation costs, the weirdness of the Chicago market, lending options, and what actually makes a 2-4 flat offer work. And of course shelled out a paycheck's worth for inspection reports to tell me things I should've caught!

I'm still at the start of this journey but it's been super fun and stimulating and of course pretty stressful. I'm incredibly grateful for all of the kind and helpful people on the internet that have helped me so far. I wanted to shoutout Jodi Taylor for her mentorship and for creating the Chicagoland Real Estate Hangout discord channel, and Micah White and the folks over at the Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast for their amazing content. 

I look forward to connecting with you all and sharing my experiences as I continue my journey.