duplex – Francois et Moi

Duplex Growing Pains

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 02:27:43 +0000

Between working from home and a 2nd baby on the way, we’re feeling duplex growing pains! Come see what’s next for our little Tudor duplex! As you guys know our house is a duplex and we’ve been renting out the upstairs apartment over the last 5 years (which I highly recommend!) The rental income paid a big part of our monthly mortgage (and allowed us to put more down each month). It helped us buy in a neighborhood we were otherwise priced out of, and it allowed me to work part time so I could be home with our daughter more. All to say, owner-occupying our duplex has been an awesome experience. However, this year with Ken and I both working from home and preparing for baby #2’s arrival, we’re starting to feel the need for a bit more space. With everything going on, we’ve decided 2020 isn’t our year to pick up and move. Instead, we’re staying put and annexing the upstairs apartment as a cohesive part of our house. Here’s a look at the empty space up there right now. There’s about 800 sf that will work great for our office/guest room, a 2nd family hang-out space, a […]

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I am Landlord: What to Look for When Buying a Duplex

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:00:25 +0000

Interested buying a duplex and becoming a landlord? Let’s talk about some key logistical things to consider when thinking of making the leap. Something you may not know about Ken and me is that we’re landlords. Owner-occupied landlords, to be exact. What is owner-occupied, you ask? All it means is that we own the duplex, live in one unit, and rent out the other one. (We’re on the main floor unit and we lease out the upstairs apartment.) It’s our first home and we went the duplex route not only because it’s a good investment, but we’d been living in apartments since college, and the idea of sharing walls with a tenant isn’t a foreign concept yet. I’ve had a lot of questions on Instagram about how our duplex is set up, so to clarify, there are two completely separate units. The front door opens to a shared foyer and from there the home splits into two separate locking units. Like with anything, there are pros and cons, but overall buying a duplex and becoming a landlord has been a fantastic experience. We’ve been able to pay down more on our mortgage every month, afford to live in our desired […]

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Francois Renovates: Upstairs Apartment

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 20:31:58 +0000

This post is part of an ongoing series, Francois Renovates. Find the other posts in this series here. As you guys are probably well aware by now, our home is a duplex. We own the whole thing, live on the main floor, and rent out the upstairs apartment. Here are the BEFORE shots of the kitchen from the seller’s listing last summer (courtesy of Zillow). That vintage metal wash basin was awesome, but it was standing alone with so much wasted space around it in this big room. Storage space in the rest of the apartment was also lacking, so we knew it was important to capitalize on the potential here, especially if we wanted to attract a good tenant. Oh, and remember the plastic faux hammered tin backsplash that kept falling down in the first floor kitchen? Same beauties were taped to the wall up here too! And now for the AFTER! Needless to say our upstairs renovation budget was quite a bit smaller than that of the first floor’s. (Remember we had just purchased our first home and were renovating the entire first floor as well.) The goal here wasn’t to completely redesign the space, but […]

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Francois Renovates: A Duplex

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 14:45:42 +0000

On Friday, July 17th it became official; Ken and I kicked off our first home buying experience by also simultaneously becoming landlords. Yep, we bought a duplex! As you may or may not know, we’d casually been considering buying a house for several years now, only semi-seriously looking for about a year, and only “let’s-make-this-happen-now” looking for about a month before we found THE place. It became pretty clear to us this year as we hit MLS with our game faces on in May, that we were in the market for a duplex property. With this being our first purchase, we knew it probably wouldn’t be our forever home, so the idea of buying a property that could pay 1/2 our monthly mortgage in the short term, and give us a bit more financial freedom and options down the road, it was a move we couldn’t help but get excited about. The home we landed on is a 1934 Tudor-style duplex that has the appearance of a single family home from the street (a rare gem!). Then as you enter the foyer, the units split off into two. We plan to live on the first floor which has 3 bedrooms […]

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