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House Hack Calculator

Live in one unit, rent out the rest. Enter price, financing, and rents to see your effective monthly housing cost — and whether your tenants cover it entirely.

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Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.

Your house hack

01Purchase

The price of the whole building, your unit included. Enter the down payment in dollars or switch to a percentage — living there is what qualifies you for the low owner-occupied minimum.

Purchase price?

The price of the whole property — every unit, including yours.

$10K$50M

Down payment?

Owner-occupied allows as little as 3.5% down.

$15,750 of home price

0%100%

Loan amount $434,250 · 3.5% down

02Mortgage

Use an owner-occupied quote, not an investor rate. A longer term lowers the payment your tenants have to cover.

Mortgage interest rate?

Use a current owner-occupied quote from your lender.

0.1%25%

Loan term (years)?

30-year terms are typical in this market.

Tap to edit

540

03Units and rent

Count every unit or rentable room, including the one you live in. Only the ones you let out earn rent — check comparable listings for what one brings in.

Total units (or rooms) in the property?

Count every rentable space — including the one you'll live in.

Tap to edit

How many will you rent out?

You occupy the rest. Your own unit earns no rent.

Tap to edit

Monthly rent per rented unit?

What one tenant unit brings in each month.

$1$500K

Tenant rent $3,000/mo from 2 units, before vacancy

04Running costs

Monthly property tax, insurance, maintenance and shared utilities, excluding the mortgage. Vacancy is applied to the rented units only, never to yours.

Total monthly operating expenses?

Property tax, insurance, maintenance, utilities. Exclude the mortgage.

$0$500K

Vacancy allowance?

Applied to your rented units only. ~5% is a common baseline.

0%40%

05Your rent today

What a comparable place would cost you to rent. The results set your effective monthly cost against it.

$0$500K

Your Effective Monthly Housing Cost

$1,012/mo

$3,862 out − $2,850 tenant rent from 2 rented units

Mortgage (P&I)$2,962

Operating expenses$900

Tenant rent after vacancy−$2,850

If you move out (all rented)+$413/mo

vs renting a comparable placeSave $788/mo

Cheaper than renting. You don't live for free, but you pay less each month than you would renting a comparable place — while building equity.

Rent Math (Rented Units Only)

Gross rent · 2 rented units$3,000

Vacancy at 5.0% (rented units only)−$150

Your 1 unit — no rent, no vacancy$0

Effective tenant rent$2,850

Your own unit is excluded from income and no vacancy allowance is applied to it — you can't lose rent you were never collecting. Calculators that skip this overstate both your income and your losses.

Financing

Loan amount$434,250

Down payment$15,750 (3.5%)

Investment loan would need25% down

Pre-tax figure. Excludes appreciation, principal paydown, and tax treatment. Owner-occupied financing typically requires you to live in the property for about a year — check your loan terms. Estimate only; consult a licensed professional.

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How it works

Enter price and financing

Input purchase price, your low owner-occupied down payment, rate, and loan term.

Split the units

Set total units or rooms, how many you'll rent out, and the rent per unit. You occupy the rest.

See what you actually pay

Get your effective monthly housing cost, whether you live for free, and cash flow if you move out.

How house hacking actually works — and the math most calculators get wrong

A house hack is a property you live in that also pays for itself. You buy a duplex, triplex, or fourplex, occupy one unit, and rent the others — or you buy a single-family home and rent out spare bedrooms. Your tenants' rent offsets the mortgage and operating costs, so the question isn't “what's my return?” but “what do I actually pay each month to live here?” That number is your total mortgage payment plus operating expenses, minus the rent your tenants pay. If it lands at or below zero, you live for free.

The low down payment is the whole point. A pure investment property is a non-owner-occupied loan, and lenders price it accordingly — you need a large down payment and you get no low-down insured option. But because you live in a house hack, it's an owner-occupied purchase. FHA financing allows as little as 3.5% down; owner-occupied conventional can go to about 5%. Same building, same rent roll, a fraction of the cash. That single distinction is why house hacking is one of the few realistic entry points into rental property for someone without a large pile of savings.

Your unit isn't a rental — so don't treat it like one. This is where popular calculators quietly distort the numbers. Your own unit produces no rent, so it must be excluded from income entirely. Just as importantly, it must not have a vacancy allowance applied to it: vacancy is a haircut on rent you expected to collect, and you were never collecting rent from yourself. Counting phantom rent on your unit inflates your income; applying vacancy to it invents a loss on income that never existed. Both errors skew the result, sometimes in opposite directions, which makes them hard to spot. This calculator counts rent only from the units you let out, and applies your vacancy percentage only to those units.

What happens when you move out. The house hack has a second act. Once you leave, every unit can be rented, so gross rent jumps and the property becomes a conventional rental — with vacancy now correctly applied across all units. You keep the owner-occupied loan you originally qualified for, which is why this strategy compounds so well. The calculator shows that fully-rented scenario next to your live-in numbers. From there, run the deal through the cash-on-cash return calculator or the rental property ROI calculator to see how it performs as a pure investment.

The honest downsides. You live next to your tenants. You hear their music, you share walls and often a yard or laundry, and you are the person they call at 11pm when a pipe goes. That is not passive income — it's a job with a discount attached. Owner-occupancy loan programs also typically require you to live in the property for around a year before moving out, so read your loan terms rather than assuming you can leave whenever you like. Small multifamily inventory is thinner and can be harder to finance than a plain single-family home. And the leverage that makes the low down payment attractive cuts both ways: with little equity, a non-paying tenant hits your own housing budget directly, not some abstract return figure. House hacking works well — but it works because you show up.

By RealCost Editorial TeamReviewed by RealCost Editorial TeamLast updated September 5, 2026 with September 2026 data

House hacking's advantage is the financing, not a trick of arithmetic: an owner-occupied loan at 3.5–5% down instead of a much larger investment-property down payment. At the Freddie Mac 30-year average of 6.71% (week of September 3, 2026), the mortgage on that same low down payment is still the largest line in the owner's monthly cost — this walks through a full worked example.

A full worked example, at today's rate

A $420,000 triplex, 5% down ($21,000), financed at the Freddie Mac PMMS 30-year fixed average of 6.71% (week ending September 3, 2026). The owner occupies one unit and rents the other two at $1,400/month each, with 5% vacancy applied only to the rented units, and $600/month in operating expenses across the whole property.

Against a comparable market rent of $1,900/month for a similar unit, that's a monthly savings of $1,383 versus renting the same space outright — the number the calculator's monthlySavingsVsRenting output is built to surface, because “what do I pay” is a more honest comparison than any return-on-investment framing for a property you also live in.

What the same numbers say once you move out

Once the owner leaves, all three units rent, and vacancy applies to all of them rather than only two. On the same property: fully-rented annual gross rent = 3 × $1,400 × 12 = $50,400. At 5% vacancy, effective gross income = $47,880. Net operating income after the same $7,200/year in operating expenses = $40,680. Annual debt service on the unchanged $2,577/month mortgage = $30,924, leaving $9,756 a year — about $813/month — in cash flow once the owner-occupant is gone. That comparison, live-in cost against fully-rented cash flow, is why house hacking is often framed as a two-act strategy rather than a single number.

Two IRS mechanics that apply once you're renting part of your home

The rented units of a house hack are a depreciable rental asset under the same rules as any other rental: a 27.5-year straight-line recovery period with a mid-month convention, per IRS Publication 527 and Publication 946. Only the rented portion of the property and its share of the building basis qualify — the unit you personally occupy does not get depreciated as a rental.

If the rented units run a paper loss after depreciation, Publication 527's passive activity special allowance can matter: up to $25,000 of rental loss (or $12,500 married filing separately and living apart) can offset other income for an owner actively participating, when modified adjusted gross income sits at or below $100,000 ($50,000 MFS) — phasing out at 50 cents per dollar of MAGI above that and disappearing entirely above $150,000 ($75,000 MFS). It's a meaningful benefit for a first house hack bought on a modest income, and one the fully-rented cash-flow scenario above doesn't capture on its own.

Methodology

The worked example follows this calculator's own module logic exactly: vacancy applied only to rented units, standard 30-year fixed amortization at the Freddie Mac PMMS 30-year average for the week ending September 3, 2026, and the fully-rented comparison recomputing vacancy across all units. Depreciation and passive-loss-allowance figures are IRS Publication 527 and 946 as published; no state tax rate is assumed.

Sources

Freddie Mac — Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) — accessed 2026-09-07
IRS Publication 527 — Residential Rental Property — accessed 2026-09-07
IRS Publication 946 — How To Depreciate Property — accessed 2026-09-07

Owner-occupied vs investment financing: $450,000 triplex

Loan type	Minimum down	Cash required	Mortgage insurance
FHA owner-occupied	3.5%	$15,750	Available
Conventional owner-occupied	~5%	$22,500	Available
Investment (non-owner-occupied)	20–25%	$90,000–$112,500	Not available

Living in one unit is what qualifies you for owner-occupied terms. Minimums shown; lenders may require more. Illustrative only.

Frequently asked questions

What is house hacking?

House hacking means buying a property you live in and renting out the rest of it — the other units of a duplex, triplex, or fourplex, or spare bedrooms in a single-family home. Your tenants' rent offsets your mortgage and operating costs, reducing what you pay each month to live there. When the rent covers everything, you live for free; when it more than covers it, the property pays you.

Why does the owner-occupied down payment matter so much?

It is the whole advantage. A pure investment property generally requires a large down payment — and no low-down insured option. Because you live in a house hack, you qualify for owner-occupied financing instead, which allows a far smaller down payment and typically better rate pricing. You control the same building for a fraction of the cash, which is why house hacking is a common entry point into rental property.

Should vacancy be applied to the unit I live in?

No — and this is the single most common error in house-hack math. Your own unit produces no rent, so it contributes nothing to income. It also cannot suffer a vacancy loss, because you were never collecting rent on it in the first place. Applying a vacancy allowance to your own unit invents a phantom loss on phantom income. This calculator counts rent only from the units you actually let out, and applies vacancy only to those units.

What happens when I move out?

Once you leave, every unit can be rented, so the property becomes a conventional rental: all units produce income, and the vacancy allowance now applies to all of them. That usually raises gross rent substantially. This calculator shows that scenario alongside your live-in numbers, so you can see whether the property still cash-flows after you're gone — which matters, since you keep the low-down owner-occupied loan you originally qualified for.

What are the downsides of house hacking?

You live next to your tenants, which means noise, shared spaces, and being the person they call when something breaks — it is not passive income. Owner-occupancy loan programs also typically require you to live in the property for around a year before you move out, so check your specific loan terms. Small multifamily properties can be harder to find and finance than single-family homes, and if a tenant stops paying, the shortfall lands directly on your own housing budget.

How little can I put down on a US house hack?

FHA financing allows a minimum 3.5% down on an owner-occupied property, including small multifamily buildings you live in. Owner-occupied conventional loans can go as low as about 5%. Either is dramatically less than the down payment required on a non-owner-occupied investment loan — the same building, a fraction of the cash, purely because you live in one of the units.

Related Calculators

Cash-on-Cash Return Calculator

Return on the cash you invest.

Rental Property ROI Calculator

Full deal analysis once you move out.

FHA Loan Calculator

The 3.5%-down owner-occupied route.

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