4 Cities Where You Can Live for Free in 2025

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the best ways to “live for free” is a strategy almost every successful real estate investor uses at some point in their journey: house hacking. You’ve probably heard of it before—house hacking allows you to significantly reduce (or eliminate) your mortgage/rent payment, so your housing cost hits rock bottom or even zero. This helps you save more money every month, invest faster, and reach financial freedom after a short (but worthwhile) period of sacrifice. Which US markets are best for house hacking, getting a great job, and paying next to nothing for housing? We’re presenting four of the best house hacking markets in the country, some of which you’ll probably be tempted to move to. These markets all have lower home prices but respectable wages, things to do, and great rents for you to collect. Who better to judge these markets than the man who wrote The House Hacking Strategy, Craig Curelop? Data scientist Austin Wolff is pitching these four real estate markets to Craig and Dave as the house hacking duo votes on whether they’d move to that market to house hack or stay put where they are. In This Episode We Cover: How to reduce (or eliminate) your monthly mortgage/rent payment with house hacking The different levels of house hacking (comfort vs. profitability) What makes a market worthwhile to house hack in (it ISN’T just about the money) A mountain biking capital with booming job growth and low home prices A “smart-grid” affordable city close to two major markets Great jobs, an excellent airport, solid schools, and strong growth from this underrated southern market Buying a house for under $300K in this city with a sports atmosphere And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Join the Future of Real Estate Investing with Fundrise Grab Craig’s Book “The House Hacking Strategy” Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area The 10 Best Markets for Your First House Hack Connect with Austin Connect with Craig Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (01:57) What is House Hacking? (05:11) Should You Move to House Hack? (07:51) 1. Fayetteville, Arkansas (11:59) 2. Chattanooga, Tennessee (15:39) 3. Charlotte, North Carolina (20:08) 4. Indianapolis, Indiana (24:56) How to Start House Hacking Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1077 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	These are four cities that you can live for free in 2025.
0:04.4	Today, we're talking house hacking.
0:06.5	You buy a multi-unit property and your tenants drastically reduce or maybe even completely
0:11.3	eliminate your own living expenses.
0:13.7	The thing is, it doesn't work everywhere.
0:15.7	So you have to pick carefully and stick around because in today's episode, we'll tell you
0:20.8	where you should be
0:21.5	looking.
0:26.9	What's up, everyone? It's Dave Meyer here on the Bigger Pockets podcast, and today on the show,
0:31.6	we're talking about where to house hack. And this question is a little bit trickier than it
0:37.0	might seem and a little bit trickier than it
0:39.3	used to be. Because you've got to pick a market that has strong fundamentals for real estate,
0:43.9	but also you got to pick a place that you actually want to live and work. And when you do all that
0:49.7	calculation, often it's a smaller cross-section of cities than you might think. But we've done that research
0:55.9	for you. We've crunched the numbers and we found four really solid markets for house hackers in
1:01.2	2025. We're going to share them with you today. Joining me on this episode, we have two guests.
1:06.5	We have Craig Kirolop, who's a former BiggerPockets employee who achieved financial freedom,
1:11.3	mainly through house hacking.
1:12.8	And now he's an agent and investor, both in Colorado and in Idaho.
1:16.2	And we have Austin Wolf, who's a current Bigger Pockets employee and data analyst who has
1:21.1	house hacking experience himself.
1:23.7	Austin, thanks for joining us here today.
	...

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