Durham-based real estate investor Avery Heilbron owns 5 properties on his own and co-owns one.He afforded his first place by house hacking and says it's"the most inexpensive way to buy real estate."His starting salary was about $65,000 a year, he told Insider. That's a little more than the median U.S. salary, which theToday, Heilbron is in a much better financial position than the average American.
Today, he owns five properties on his own — two in Boston, one in Durham, North Carolina where he currently lives, and two Airbnb-specific properties — and co-owns a multi-family. That can lower your upfront costs significantly, especially if you live in a pricey market like Boston, where Heilbron was living when he bought his first property:"The houses in the area were half a million to a million dollars, so a 3.5% down payment was obviously much more attainable, at around 15 to 25 grand, compared to 20% down, which would have been somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000.
Heilbron, who rented an apartment before owning, went from spending $1,100 per month in rent to living for free and profiting $300 a month. That $1,400 swing helped him save up for his second property, which he bought less than a year later, in May 2020. It's how Heilbron financed his first Airbnb property in Pinehurst, North Carolina. He wasn't as interested in buying an Airbnb-specific property as he was in getting the lower down payment. Turning the home into a short-term vacation rental was more of a by-product, he said:"With a second home loan, you can't rent it out as a long-term rental because you have to stay there some nights of the year, but you can rent it out on a short-term basis.
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