All Forum Posts by: Ebony S.

I'm in Silver Spring, MD and we rent out the rooms in the SFH. More work, but lots more money. Rents are from 700-888 per room. No cable, just Roku and internet. All inclusive. Most rooms are furnished, some are not. There's 8 bedrooms in the house but our county only lets us rent up to 5-6 at a time. Half are 6months or longer long term and the rest are AirB rentals for 31+ days or more. If we rent our AirB rooms for less than 31 days we'll get in trouble with one of the local agencies about "rooming house" issues. We mostly rent to Interns, Fellows, and College/Graduate Students. We have a HUGE demand with a waitlist.

I would go with the basement apartment since I KNEW I planned to sell it later. If I planned to use it as my home forever, then I MIGHT go with the movie theater. 

I have aging parents so even if I didn't want tenants, I could appreciate a separate space for my parents or even a relative or someone like that living in the space (and not so much in mine). Also, some families who buy the house may not want a movie theater, they might prefer an open space for children to play in or something like that.

It's easier to convert an apartment basement to various things than to remove a Movie Theater. A Move Theater will probably limit the number of folks seriously interested in your house when the time comes to sell it.

~ Ebony

Hey there Caleb, Congrats on finding a house you like! I did a 'house hack' myself and it worked out great - but instead of flipping it, we kept it as a rental.

I recently attended a Real Estate Investor seminar thing - one good bit of information I learned was this as per design decisions:

1. Reach out to the local school/college that has an interior decorator program. Their students need internships, photos, and so on for their portfolios and experience. You can have them do your decorating decisions for free

2. Find the nearest New Home builds by some BIG new build companies. You know, like Ryan Homes and those types of folks. Go find one of them and take a tour of their model home. Those companies spend BIG bucks researching what the general public prefers as per decorating and they apply it in their new build homes. Bring a note pad and take notes on their decoration choices. Then just use what they use or as close to it as possible.

Hope this helps!

~ Ebony