First-Time Home Buyer? Go Ahead and Get Two

Seventeen years ago, when I was midway through my relatively-short engagement, my fiance and I started shopping for a house. We knew we'd be living close to my recently-widowed mother, so the radius would be tight to my hometown.

As my soon-to-be husband and I flipped through printed ads for local homes for sale, my mother pored over the offerings making general comments on this house or that one. When she announced that she had found "the one," we took a look. It was not what we had been considering. The blue, vinyl-sided house with white trim and a farmer's porch, located in a dense suburban neighborhood, was a two-family.

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