House hacking. It’s a new-ish term for a practice that’s been around for a long time and it was Camille Hudson’s first step in what has been a remarkable journey. Flash back to 15 years ago: Camille was doing just fine professionally but was bored in her 9-5 insurance job when she bought a three-bedroom townhouse in Hartford, living on the top floor herself and renting out the two bedrooms downstairs. Up till then, she had never thought much about real estate as an investment strategy, but having housemates paying rent? That meant that she was essentially able to live with no housing expenses. That was nice. That’s when she started to get the itch.

Changing course mid-career can be risky and scary and can take time and planning.  And how do you even begin? For Camille, it was by taking a free weekend course offered by a ‘You, Too, Can Flip Houses’ company, the kind you see advertised on YouTube – and nothing has been the same since. She was still house hacking out of Hartford when in 2016 she bought a single family house in Manchester for $88,000 and made what in retrospect were a string of naive and painful mistakes as she worked with contractors (having to fire the first one) to knock down a wall and replace windows and redo everything. It was super stressful but she persevered and sold it for $154,000 having thankfully, maybe miraculously, actually made a few bucks. Camille hasn't stopped learning, or earning since. Each of the next eight flips went better and her margins got bigger, from experience and because she got a real estate license and was able to handle the transactions herself.  And as home prices rose and inventory dropped, she pivoted again, renting and renovating an industrial space on New Park Avenue in West Hartford and turning it into Warehouse 635, an event venue with polished concrete floors, a kitchenette and much more that can fit up to 150 people for receptions, reunions and wherever else one can imagine.

Camille is professionally ambitious, fearless and resourceful but naturally presents as pretty low-key and that was the case as she grew up in Bloomfield, where she danced (ballet) and was first-chair clarinet in the high school orchestra. She went to Johnson and Wales and graduated in 2002 with a degree in retail marketing and fashion merchandising – but the real world taught her that what she was trained to do wasn't what she wanted to do. Neither was insurance, which Camille tried next. In these corporate settings, she was always considered fast-track, management material … but she was privately dissatisfied and restless. Now, she’s happy and busy albeit occasionally exhausted, as on top of everything else she’s working for Berkshire-Hathaway out of its Southington office. But her investments in herself have paid off as she’s now well-connected, with access to money having built strong relationships with satisfied lenders. She’s confident she can open more event spaces around Connecticut and maybe beyond. And she knows the housing market will change, as it always does, which will allow her to resume doing what she likes most – flipping houses.  “I have a very creative mind and that's when I can really use it,” she said. Success breeds confidence and Camille is embracing the changes. She said she’s growing more comfortable networking and connecting (serving, for example, on the board of directors of the Ballet Theatre Company of West Hartford) and noted that running an event space means she’s making lots of contacts. “Things are going really well,” she said. “Real estate is where I want to be.”