My friends and I were just totally fed up and we weren’t going to keep waiting to do it the traditional way.
Perhaps the traditional path to home ownership just wasn’t in the cards for us anyway. I don’t know that the idea of saving and saving until your 50 to buy a house is a sustainable model. And besides, I was sick to death of lame heating and cooling in my apartment while building zero equity. So to get out of this continuous loop and the weak residential HVAC, we had to get creative. That’s just what we’ve done as myself and three other friends bought a house together. We bought a big three story home so we all have a floor for our private living space. The couple got the bottom floor and the two bachelors got the top two floors. There was some remodeling that had to be done to make the place livable. Yet, it was the HVAC equipment change that actually really helps all this work. We ripped out the central air conditioning and replaced it with a series of ductless heat pumps. So we all have our own thermostats and can track our expenses for heating and cooling as well. Each floor has two ductless heat pumps and we have another pair of ductless heat pumps in the shared kitchen and common area. That means I finally ditched the weak residential HVAC and I’m now building equity as well. I’m super pleased with just how everything worked out and I just love the quality heating and air we get with our ductless multi split situation.