Don’t Buy, House Hack

John Harcar (00:01.271)
Hey guys, welcome back to the show. John Harcar here, your host. I’m here today with Eddie Ruettiger. And what we’re going to talk about is don’t buy a property, house hack your way to ownership. Guys, here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate professionals, investors, service providers, 2 to 5X their business by providing resources and tools to help develop the business you want to develop and live that life that you want to live. Eddie, welcome to our show.

Eddie Ruettiger (00:29.294)
Thanks for having me, it’s great to be here.

John Harcar (00:31.285)
Yeah, you know, I’m super excited to talk about the house hacking thing. I’ve heard a lot about it. You know, I think, you know, in our pre talk, we kind of said how we wish that’s how you would have started. But before we get into all that, tell our audience about yourself, right? How did you get here? Where are you from, et cetera?

Eddie Ruettiger (00:49.102)
Well, I am the Designated Managing Broker of Exit Real Estate Specialists located in Joliet, Illinois. We serve most Joliet, Plainfield, Sherwood, so the southwest corner of Chicago, if anybody knows where they’re at. I got here because of my mom and my great aunt. I was 23 years old, still living at home. I had a full-time DJ business. yeah, great job when you’re 20 something.

John Harcar (01:13.591)
Cool.

What kind of music did you spin?

Eddie Ruettiger (01:18.934)
I spun a lot of progressive, a lot of like dance and mashups. I did just about everything. We went into, we did bars and stuff. We also did a lot of corporate events and weddings. So, you know, so it was a lot of top 40 and mixed, mashed, all kinds of stuff. So it was great, but I was bored because, well, yeah.

John Harcar (01:23.84)
Okay.

Very cool.

John Harcar (01:32.897)
Okay.

John Harcar (01:38.636)
Sure.

John Harcar (01:43.105)
Bore, being a DJ?

Eddie Ruettiger (01:46.254)
You do your set on Saturday night, all right? You do your set on maybe a bar on Thursday night, maybe something on Friday. And then I wasn’t, I had nothing to do Monday through Friday. I’m watching reruns of 90210, you know, I don’t know, was the Sunburst channel or something. I can’t even remember. And my mom had just got remarried and they were selling her townhouse and we were moving over.

John Harcar (01:57.713)
Right, I can see that.

John Harcar (02:07.881)
Hahaha

Eddie Ruettiger (02:15.436)
with my new stepdad and we turned around and my great aunt has always had a real estate license. My great great aunt out of nowhere shows up to show the house. And you know, we come from a very workaholic blue collar family, you know? So my aunt’s like, why are you home? Why are you not at work? I’m like, because you’re either at work or you’re at school. One of the two, there was no exceptions. And I’m like,

John Harcar (02:27.127)
Hmm.

John Harcar (02:31.383)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:35.831)
I’m a DJ. Right. Right.

Eddie Ruettiger (02:44.558)
Aunt Donna, my clients are taken care of, I’ve got nothing to do. And she starts to finger wag again, you need to get into real estate, you’re a good people person. And I’m like, and I started looking into it and it dealt with law, it dealt with marketing, it dealt with people, it dealt with all these concepts and all these things that really excited me. So sure enough, I went and I went to take my tests, got in the class, took all my classes. My class day to…

John Harcar (02:51.559)
okay.

John Harcar (03:04.663)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (03:14.435)
to the test to get out of class was 9-11.

John Harcar (03:17.911)
Eddie Ruettiger (03:19.992)
We go to class and everybody’s freaking out. The second tower had already been hit. I very rarely remember. Now keep in mind, I’m 20.

John Harcar (03:26.839)
Mmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (03:31.478)
at this point. And everybody is in their 30s with kids and all of this stuff. So they’re all sitting there going, I gotta go get my kids from school. This they’re panicking. Some guy even said, no, this is an all right out attack on us. There’s missiles that’s been launched. They just haven’t disclosed. Yeah, it was that kind of morning. The teacher was amazing. She goes, everyone stop. We have a snow day.

John Harcar (03:32.853)
Okay.

John Harcar (03:50.901)
Wow, yeah that sounds a little doof-da-ish.

Eddie Ruettiger (04:00.664)
You’re all expected to be back here in two days. Unless I call you. So we came back two days later, everything calmed down, we had a better idea, took the class, turned around, took my boards and my actual start date for the association is Veterans Day. So my anniversary of being a relator is Veterans Day.

John Harcar (04:09.751)
Sure.

John Harcar (04:20.151)
Oh wow, okay. That’s interesting. So you had a family member who you knew was in real estate, but you haven’t seen forever. All of shows out of the blue and then now you’re taking a test. That’s awesome.

Eddie Ruettiger (04:30.946)
Yeah, yeah, seriously. So I mean, she’s the one that pushed me in and my mom supported me. And then within a year I was buying my, I bought my first, my own hot place. So, I mean, so when I bought my place, I needed a bed and a garage because I was still DJing. Yeah, I was doing real estate Monday through Friday. All right. And then I’d show maybe a Saturday morning, maybe mostly on Sundays. Most people didn’t want to see us house on Saturday.

John Harcar (04:41.547)
Awesome, okay.

John Harcar (04:51.158)
Hmm.

John Harcar (05:00.62)
Bye.

Eddie Ruettiger (05:00.642)
because they had family and kids and stuff going on. We’re going, was, so I would go do my event, come home, sleep four hours, get up and go show at nine o’clock in the morning. And that was, that was just it. And then, you know, I just slowly started developing, you know, my database and my clientele and my reputation just to being honest, straightforward, you know,

John Harcar (05:07.543)
Hey, you gotta do what you have to do sometimes,

Eddie Ruettiger (05:29.548)
looking to protect my client’s interest. That’s always been my motto. All right. My belief is that I don’t care what house they buy as long as they buy something that’s happy, that makes them happy, fits their needs, is not going to put them in a financial burden. And then last but not least that they buy it through me because that’s how I get paid. That’s how I make a living. So, I mean, I always told my clients, you know, my job is to be your negotiator.

John Harcar (05:44.705)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:49.365)
That’s how you make a living.

Eddie Ruettiger (05:57.614)
All right, that’s really why you hire a realtor is you’re not hiring them to find a house. We can find them all here. You can find them all there. You’re hiring a professional negotiator. All right. And with that being said, I always said, look at Michael Jordan, greatest basketball player of all time. He still had an agent that negotiated his contracts with Nike, with the Bulls, with everybody. that’s what you’re doing.

John Harcar (06:08.331)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:19.393)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, smart man stays in his lane. Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (06:26.232)
and that’s what you hire me for. So yeah, so I got into it, did great. My first little place ended up becoming my rental when I got married to my current wife. And you know, it’s been awesome for us. It’s been great. The trick I wish I would have done is the house hack that we’re gonna talk about in a bit. So.

John Harcar (06:48.065)
Perfect, perfect, okay. So how long were you still juggling the DJ and the real estate thing?

Eddie Ruettiger (06:54.414)
I was juggling DJing and real estate for a couple years. And then when the great recession hit, believe it or not, the DJ business went down because I was a top end, high end disc jockey. were charging at the time anywhere from 1200 to $1,800 for an event. And we had all these people that got laid off and a bunch of people were coming in while I’ll do it for a hundred bucks an hour. So four or five hundred. So that about

John Harcar (07:13.303)
Hmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (07:23.446)
my head built my real estate reputation that I was the expert. So those phone calls started growing and coming in. And then I slowly got more involved with the real estate. I’m actually the past president of my local association, realtor of the year for my local association. And I was a director at the state level also. Yeah.

John Harcar (07:30.167)
Perfect.

John Harcar (07:43.777)
Wow, congratulations. So you took real estate and ran. I mean, you found a lane that worked for you you ran. Congratulations. That’s awesome. And I like the way you talk about how it’s kind of putting that seller first, right? And getting them to where they need to be because that’s a lot of things that maybe are missing in people’s repertoire. So now, are you just doing traditional real estate? Are you buying and flipping houses? Are you holding rentals? What does that type of you or your business look like?

Eddie Ruettiger (07:47.661)
I did.

Eddie Ruettiger (07:51.319)
I

Eddie Ruettiger (08:13.844)
I am just holding rentals right now. I’m holding just one. There would have been more, but we talked before, I got really sick about four years ago and I was paralyzed for about two weeks with Gillian-Barre syndrome. Doctors were amazing. We went into Chicago and to Loyola and they got me back. I’m walking, running, riding, doing 10 mile bike rides with an eight year old now. I mean, so it was amazing. So that kind of put…

John Harcar (08:22.529)
Yeah.

John Harcar (08:36.555)
God bless you.

Eddie Ruettiger (08:41.41)
some things on the back burner when it came to investing, but we do have one unit that I am just the investor. I don’t manage and I recommend when you start getting into it that, you you may need to manage your first or your second, but as soon as you can do it, I recommend getting a property manager. You don’t get the midnight phone calls cause the water heater went out and it’s leaking in the basement. You don’t have to deal with,

John Harcar (08:50.986)
Okay.

John Harcar (09:05.643)
Yep.

Eddie Ruettiger (09:08.908)
My garbage disposal went out, my refrigerator went out. That’s the property manager’s job. Your job is an investor. You write the checks and you collect the checks. Now you got to get the right property manager because you want to make sure you get one that’s going to basically run it as if it was their own property.

John Harcar (09:13.643)
No.

John Harcar (09:17.633)
Correct.

John Harcar (09:25.429)
Right. And that was going to be a question I was going to ask. How do you pick or what suggestions do you tell people, hey, if you’re looking at a property manager, make sure you ask this, this, and this.

Eddie Ruettiger (09:36.6)
So the three questions I want to know is, are they going to nickel and dime me? Okay. How do they do their inspections and how often are they inspecting the property? Okay. And of course what their costs are. All right. So I need to figure that out really quick. The first thing is the nickel and diming. All right. I don’t want someone that’s going to come in and go, well, the blinds are broken and the lever on the blind was broken.

John Harcar (09:56.887)
Mmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (10:06.21)
We got to buy all new blinds for the place. That’s, you know, a thousand dollars. Well, no, it’s not a necessary part of the property. The tenant can their own curtains. OK. And we’re seeing a big trend in our market, like the refrigerator. OK, like I had a refrigerator that just went out and I did supply it. But there’s a big trend in our market where a lot of landlords are not providing appliances anymore. So that’s

John Harcar (10:07.977)
You

Yeah, it’s not necessary. Yeah.

John Harcar (10:18.508)
Yep.

John Harcar (10:33.053)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or at least not refrigerators. I mean maybe the stove. Yeah, but not refrigerators Or yeah or washer drawers

Eddie Ruettiger (10:38.626)
Yep, and not washer and dryers. may have the hookups, but yeah, I do have washer and dryer and I have a good tenant there. So we kept and went with another unit. Mainly because I do have a scratch and dent location that’s in our town and I can get phenomenal deals on appliances there. So that’s one of the things you look in. But that’s the thing you want when it comes to those repairs.

John Harcar (10:52.567)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (11:00.967)
Yeah, right.

Eddie Ruettiger (11:08.13)
that property manager going in and doing fixing it right away. That’s the first thing. It doesn’t matter how it got broke. Get it fixed. Yes. Afterwards, was this a maintenance issue or was this a tenant damage issue? They need to figure that out and determine that to see are we charging the tenant or is this a maintenance issue? And that should have been maintained. All right. I knew the refrigerator was older. I knew it was going out.

John Harcar (11:15.191)
Get it fixed, deal with it later.

John Harcar (11:37.079)
Mmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (11:37.194)
It was a maintenance issue and we took care of it and you know, and besides I never liked the refrigerator anyways. So it was a side by side. I can’t stand side by sides personally. Yeah, so we got a nice old school fridge in there. Still want with the ice maker because she’s like I do use the ice maker. I’m like, all right, because it was an extra like 25 bucks for the ice maker. I mean, so you know, you want to be cost sound, but don’t be cheap.

John Harcar (11:43.415)
I don’t like side-by-sides either.

John Harcar (12:00.661)
Right.

John Harcar (12:06.985)
Sure, sure.

Eddie Ruettiger (12:07.202)
You know, so, so yeah, so that’s the biggest thing is how they’re evaluating the, the property and the damage. So that’s it.

John Harcar (12:15.019)
That’s incredible. And that’s great information for any of you guys out there that are listening that are thinking about rentals. That’s big. And having rentals my own, I definitely appreciate that. Maybe we should have known one or two of those things before I started. So you have this one rental. Are you looking to expand? Are you looking to grow your portfolio?

Eddie Ruettiger (12:35.032)
I am looking to expand, but the second hurdle that came up was I’ve been in real estate since 2001. Last year, I decided instead of buying another rental, I decided to buy my own franchise and we opened Exit Real Estate Specialist instead. So that property has been put on hold as we grow the real estate, but I’m looking to definitely in the next couple of years to start taking on more rental property because again, I’m not.

John Harcar (12:51.604)
Awesome

Sure.

Eddie Ruettiger (13:04.236)
The landlord, property managers, the landlord. And I have a great one, let me tell you, my property manager is awesome. So I’m just the investor. I just got to come up with the money. So once we get the office up running at all cylinders, which we got a lot of things going on here, then yes, we’re going to be looking at buying into more units.

John Harcar (13:05.367)
Mm-hmm. If you got it, if you got the right wand, yeah. That’s awesome.

John Harcar (13:16.0)
Yeah.

John Harcar (13:27.243)
So that the business is taking the time and capital now, but once that’s all stabilized, then it’s time to start building the portfolios.

Eddie Ruettiger (13:34.444)
Well, and here’s the thing. One thing to keep in mind too, especially if you’re younger, you’re Gen Z and you’re listening to this, this is when the house hacking is going to come into play. The reason I was able to open this office was because of the rental. Because I wanted to make sure we had cashflow. So I went to a bank and I found a bank now that’s very hard to find this. All right. You got to look mostly smaller mom and pop banks, know, your local banks, you’re not going to get it on your national chains.

John Harcar (13:43.937)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (14:03.745)
Credit unions maybe.

Eddie Ruettiger (14:05.294)
Credit union might do it also, but I was able to get a line of equity against the rental property. So we have a line of credit for the office against the rental property because that was a request from my wife. She’s like, I wouldn’t rather not do the line of credit against our personal property. I’d rather do it against the rental property. And I said, it will cost us more at a higher rate. And she goes, I don’t care. I’d rather not put my personal house at risk.

John Harcar (14:12.407)
Nice.

John Harcar (14:19.084)
Hmm?

John Harcar (14:35.191)
Sure. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (14:35.33)
Which makes complete sense, I don’t blame her. So, I mean, so another reason to have rental property and have assets is because when you have an opportunity that comes in front of you, like I did to open this franchise, yeah, you’ve got assets to leverage. yeah.

John Harcar (14:48.075)
You have something to leverage.

Yeah, that’s a great, great point, man. That really is. mean, that’s like you said, it’s a great way to be able to move the needle forward. I have in those assets. Now let’s talk about what we, know, our theme of our show is the whole house hack thing, right? And I’ve heard about it. I know it’s been a while, but you know, to folks that don’t know, you know, what is a house hack? Why is it beneficial and how can it help people get into real estate quicker?

Eddie Ruettiger (14:59.245)
Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (15:15.246)
So when I was looking for my property to start with, all right, I was looking for a place to sleep, a bedroom and a garage. Cause I had $50,000 in DJ gear. I had about three systems. had, if anybody knows anything about sound, I had six 18 inch subwoofers. I had four 12 inch tops and two 18 inch tops and all.

John Harcar (15:43.265)
Cheese.

Eddie Ruettiger (15:44.0)
all the amplification to go with it. I mean, I, we had, I had to get up. So I had this all in a rental unit and it went like, I was going in and out and it was in a rental storage unit. I was paying like a hundred bucks a month. And my thought process was, well, I’ll get my own place with a garage and I’ll save that money, which was great. What I should have done is house hacked. I should have left that in the rental unit.

John Harcar (15:46.327)
Thanks

You had to get up. You had to get up.

Eddie Ruettiger (16:13.76)
not worried about it, went and bought a two to four unit via FHA, lived in one of the units, because that’s one requirement for FHA. You’ve got to live in the unit, got to move in within six months, got to live there for a year.

John Harcar (16:19.009)
Mm.

John Harcar (16:29.111)
huh.

Eddie Ruettiger (16:30.56)
And then I would have been taking in, ideally you get a four unit. That’s the ideal. And then you’re taking in rent on the other three units and you are then living in the third unit, mostly rent free. You you should be really close to, you know, with a four unit actually bringing in a small amount of income.

John Harcar (16:36.342)
Right.

John Harcar (16:54.665)
Nice. So that’s the hack.

Eddie Ruettiger (16:55.79)
That’s the hack because you can buy it three and a half percent down and then after 12 months You look to do it again and buy another unit FHA three and a half percent down

John Harcar (17:08.863)
and then move into that. So you kind of like moving, moving, moving every year.

Eddie Ruettiger (17:10.466)
You have to move into the next unit. You keep moving every year and you got it, cause you got to move into that next unit.

John Harcar (17:17.335)
How does your wife feel about that?

Eddie Ruettiger (17:18.892)
Well, my wife won’t do it. This is something that’s why I said this is when I was young, it would have been great to build that thing that, you know, assets and to have that. Because if you do that just two or three times, you’re talking you got eight to 12 units, you know, in our market, those buildings are worth 400 to 600,000 each, depending on where you’re at. So you’ve got instantaneously.

John Harcar (17:24.863)
Billy Rory on great, right? Yeah.

John Harcar (17:33.068)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (17:43.649)
Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (17:48.45)
you know, probably better than $10,000 a month coming in in revenue. All right. In gross revenue. One of the two of the things I do recommend, you know, I said that first one you might have to manage yourself, but if the numbers are there, get that property manager because then the other three people in the building don’t realize you own it because they’re always dealing with the property manager.

John Harcar (17:53.419)
Yeah.

John Harcar (18:07.884)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (18:15.884)
Mmm.

Eddie Ruettiger (18:16.642)
because otherwise they’re knocking on your door at midnight because of this or because of that.

John Harcar (18:21.767)
Okay, so you’re still doing a property manager for the other three units sans the one you’re living in. Hmm, okay.

Eddie Ruettiger (18:27.744)
I would do a property manager. And let them be, again, let them be the landlord. Lord, you’re the investor. And then the other thing is putting the property into a land trust or most likely put it into an actual LLC business. That would be the other recommendation because then you can mask who the ownership name is. And again, because if they look online, they won’t see that you’re the owner of the property.

John Harcar (18:47.061)
Right.

John Harcar (18:51.831)
And then they see, hey, Eddie lives right downstairs. the owner. Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (18:56.832)
And so then you can turn around and you again, they just think you’re another tenant. So as you’re walking in and out and they’re like, yeah, the landlord didn’t do this the other day, blah, blah, blah, blah. Really? man, this landlord, I don’t know about this. And then you can call your property manager up right away going, hey, can we get this fixed? You know what saying?

John Harcar (19:16.067)
Mm-hmm. That’s an incredible that’s an incredible point most times of your folks I’ve heard that maybe of house hack You know, they have been that landlord because it saves them the cost they they’re able to do the repairs. They’re right there It’s like why do I need to hire someone to come in? But I love the fact of what you’re saying has that whole separation, right? You know, just why we probably put our properties in LLC do things in land trust is for that separation and or protection

Eddie Ruettiger (19:40.91)
Yeah, I mean that’s the thing. It keeps you private. It keeps you being able to do whatever you’re doing and living your own life. And again, you don’t have to deal with the annoying little things that drive most people out of this business. I mean, we hear it all the time. Oh, I had 20 units at one point and I just got tired of the phone calls. I’m like, why are you, at 20 units, why?

John Harcar (19:57.207)
You

John Harcar (20:04.171)
Mm-hmm.

You should be having a manager anyways.

Eddie Ruettiger (20:09.93)
Yeah, get a property manager. Don’t deal with it. Sit back, relax and, you know, take in the money and look how to reinvest. Look, you should be looking for your next target. You shouldn’t be doing out there making the plumbing repairs. Making the plumbing repairs is not making you money. Making buying the next unit is what’s making you money. And that’s that’s the thing. And so you do this for three or four units on this has

John Harcar (20:21.27)
Yeah.

Eddie Ruettiger (20:39.278)
house hacking aspect, and then at some point, you go buy your single family house. You go buy your, maybe it’s not your forever house, maybe, you know, but it’s gonna be your five to 10 year house that’s gonna have the bells and whistles that you’re looking for personally. And you know, that’s gonna be the avenue that’s going to set you up because now you’re living off of assets.

John Harcar (20:45.324)
Great.

John Harcar (21:03.413)
Right. That’s that. And that is so I mean, I hope everybody that’s listening kind of wrote a lot of that stuff down because that is some golden nuggets. Tell us a little bit about what your current business is now. I’m sorry. Not what your business now. You mentioned you do like a radio show, I think you said.

Eddie Ruettiger (21:05.368)
So.

Eddie Ruettiger (21:21.964)
I do. It’s called Get Real with Eddie. We’ve got a website, getrealwitheddie.com. And it is a local radio show that we do every week on 1340 WJOL, based out of Joliet. And we record this down and put this out onto YouTube and onto podcasts. So you can pick up the YouTube channel or the podcast at getrealwitheddie.com.

John Harcar (21:49.161)
Awesome. Is there anything else you want to share? Any tips to, and I have to ask Eddie because of the last name, my family, my family is a Notre Dame fan. Any relation to Daniel Rudy Rüdiger?

Eddie Ruettiger (21:56.482)
I know it’s

We are related, it’s like a really distant cousin. I mean like fourth or fifth cousin, but there is a relation there. And I was talking with one of my aunts the other day. I guess she’s got the family tree going and I wanna see it, cause I wanna see the whole spread of the Ruttiger clan, because it’d be just really interesting to see. But there is a relation, yeah.

John Harcar (22:25.971)
Okay, yeah, and like I said, I know you probably get asked that a lot.

Eddie Ruettiger (22:30.71)
I do, I know his younger brother the best. His younger brother owns a local gym and was really big into weightlifting and got a bunch of weightlifting titles and does a lot of the high school around here go to him if they’re in football or in wrestling. Actually, one secret is most of the younger brothers, they’re all school teachers and a lot of them are wrestling coaches. if you, Rutiger around here is a really big name in the wrestling.

John Harcar (22:45.614)
huh.

John Harcar (22:54.756)
really?

Eddie Ruettiger (23:00.308)
aspect.

John Harcar (23:01.207)
Got it, okay. Why? Hey, once again, I had to ask just because the whole Notre Dame relation with my family and all that stuff. But I love what you talked about today, you know, and I love the whole house hacking. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, I know you’ve plugged it before, but how is the best way if they want to reach out maybe to talk about that house hacking, maybe they’re in Illinois and they have a house they want to sell?

Eddie Ruettiger (23:22.412)
Yeah, they can give me a call or a text at 815-823-5478 or they can always check out my website, yourdwellings.com. And again, if they wanna go check out and subscribe to the radio show just to get all the stuff, because we’re doing a lot of regional and Latin national data, some local data too. But if they wanna get that, it’s getrealwitheddy.com for the radio show website.

John Harcar (23:47.479)
Sweet, and we’ll put all that out in the show notes, guys, so you’ll able to see that. know, Eddie, thank you again very much for joining us today. I hope everybody learned some stuff. I know I did. And we’ll look forward to seeing you guys on the next show. Cheers.