Jonathan and Katelyn DiGioia’s East Point Duplex

Georgia native and IncDev alumnus Jonathan Digioia is a self-professed nerd. A transportation engineer by trade, he spends his days thinking through systems and processes, and he’s invested in best practices for city planning.

“I want to help do things well and do things right as far as designing places goes,” he says.

Jonathan learned about IncDev through a member of his church who had attended a workshop and thought it might be up his alley. At the time, he’d never done a development project, but he and his wife Katelyn were starting to discuss buying their first home. They initially intended to purchase a standard, single-family home, but attending the workshop opened their eyes to other possibilities. 

“I think it kind of helped cast a vision for us for what we could do with our home choice and how we could make it something that is a good thing for us financially,” Jonathan says.

The IncDev philosophy resonated strongly with the couple, who are active in their church and committed to living out their faith by helping to build strong communities.

“There’s a passage in scripture that talks about seeking the welfare of the city you’re in, not just for your own good, but for the good of others, whether they’re believers or not believers,” Jonathan recalls. “That’s a principle I and others in my church had been trying to work out. What would that look like in a practical way? The workshop helped us think more deeply about that.”

For the DiGioias, it looked like a one story, 1700 sf duplex in the city of East Point, GA, just outside of Atlanta. The couple had been renting in the old fourth ward neighborhood in Atlanta, but it was too expensive for them to buy a house there. They were looking for something near the Atlanta midtown and south metro area. Jonathan would need to be near the MARTA train line for work, and they wanted to be in a location where their future tenants would have easy access to the community. East Point is walkable, near transit, and affordable. It was the perfect fit.

In many ways, the house seemed too good to be true. But when they began assessing necessary renovations, reality set in. Given that this was their first time buying any property, Jonathan says their biggest struggle was figuring out how much the needed repairs would cost and whether or not that was a dealbreaker.

“The repairs it needed were more like a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing, and not just one major repair,” he explains.

Armed with the knowledge they’d gained from IncDev, Jonathan and Katelyn worked out the math and bought the house through a traditional mortgage process. They started renovations in August 2018. This was all new to them, and on top of it, Katelyn was expecting their first child. Things were hectic, but the DiGioias were confident that it would all work out.

“IncDev gave us the tools to think about how the project would make sense for us financially. The pro forma process was a helpful way to see the numbers work and know that we were making a prudent investment,” Jonathan says.

Jonathan, Katelyn, and their new baby moved into their 1000 sf, three-bedroom unit in October, and all renovations were completed in December 2018. They began searching for a tenant for the remaining 700 sf, one-bedroom unit. Jonathan says they advertised on a number of websites and quickly found a great tenant through Craigslist. He credits the ease of finding a tenant to the lack of diverse housing options in the area.

“This is a great neighborhood, but the rentals available are mostly single-family homes,” he explains. “If you go toward historic downtown, you’ll start seeing more apartment builds and houses with ADUs, but especially on our block, that’s not really available.”

Going to an IncDev workshop and completing their first project gave the couple the small development bug and they want to develop two to four more residential units in the near future. 

“We think that someday it would be cool to be able to invest in a small mixed-use building in downtown East Point,” Jonathan says. “IncDev showed us so many opportunities for future growth. This was just us getting our feet wet!”

Katelyn and Jonathan’s duplex has enabled them to embody the IncDev philosophy and benefit both personally and financially.

“This is a way that we can be positive members of the community by being good landlords and offering good, reasonable housing to people,” he says. “And having this rental income from our house covering part of our mortgage cost made it feasible for Katelyn to be a stay at home mom at this point in our lives.”

Through small development, the DiGioias now have the freedom and ability to do what is most important to them: living out their faith in their community and making the best decisions for the people they love.