Sam Wegert
Sam Wegert has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Co-Living & Cash Flow: A Game-Changing Real Estate Investment Strategy with Sam Wegert
Sam Wegert explains how he converts single-family houses into co-living rentals with up to 10 rooms, and why the numbers beat traditional rentals. He walks through room-count formulas based on square footage, the membership-agreement legal structure he modeled after PadSplit, tenant vetting, and the systems that keep homes safe, quiet and clean. He also shares lessons from building and exiting a chain of martial arts schools.
Key takeaways
- Room count follows square footage: roughly four rooms in a 1,500 sq ft house, with one more room per additional 250 sq ft, up to 10 rooms at 3,000 sq ft. Keep bedroom-to-bathroom ratio at three to one or better.
- Instead of leases, Sam rents the property to an LLC and signs membership agreements with residents, a structure copied from PadSplit's legal model. He says a true membership organization can be exempt from fair housing restrictions and removes members for trespassing, though some states are clawing this back.
- The three things you must deliver to scale co-living are safe, quiet and clean: background checks, door locks, no weapons in common space, headphone hours after 10pm weekdays and 11pm weekends, and paid professional cleaners on a checklist residents can opt out of for a fee.
- One recent house that would rent for about $2,400 on the open market fills at $8,550 and leased up in 30 days. Sam and his students buy mostly off the MLS at near market price and still target 15-25% cash on cash.