When Michael and Monica Tesoriero started looking at houses last year, they were set on a single-family in Medford – until they saw how little they could get for their money. “After seven months of looking,” says Monica, who works in finance at Harvard University, “we came to the realization that most houses in our price range in Medford needed too much work.” On top of that, Michael, now a chef at Boston College, had not long ago endured a frightening 14-month period of unemployment. If one of them got laid off again, they figured, it couldn’t hurt to have a little extra money coming in every month. “Nowadays we have to consider the possibility that one of us might lose our job,” Monica says. “What would happen then? Do we lose our house, too?”
In this wobbly economy, the first instinct for home buyers in the Tesorieros’ situation might be to downsize their dreams from a single-family to a condo. But that’s not what the couple did. Instead, they bought a 2,700-square-foot two-family in Revere and became landlords. “We decided it would be a better investment for us,” Monica says, “and would give us the possibility of having rental income.”