Investing in Real Estate WITHOUT a W2?

Ashley:
At just 20 years old, our guest is already making big moves. He’s managed to buy three properties in just two years. His story proves that age is just a number when it comes to building wealth through real estate. He’s learned a ton in a short time, and now he’s here to share the strategies that helped him fast track his success. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just getting started, there’s a lot you won’t want to miss. So keep listening. This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with Tony J Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And today I am super excited to have David Sladewski on the podcast. Hello, David. Welcome onto to the Real Estate Rookie podcast brother. Excited to have you.

David:
Hey, thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.

Tony:
So what we’re going to cover today is building capital to invest at a relatively young age how to break into the market today, even with all of the different kind of challenges that might be going on, and then things to avoid if you’re considering rehabbing. So David, again, super excited to jump in here, man.

David:
Yeah, no, I’m grateful for you guys having me. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Ashley:
David, before we get into all of your accomplishments, what made you even decide on starting to invest in real estate?

David:
Yeah, so when I found out just about real estate as a concept to even make money as a real estate agent or investor, I was 17, I was in California living with my brother and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I did know I wanted to be financially independent, financially free, and he actually is the one who taught me about real estate as a whole, and I just dove in from there.

Tony:
I want to ask, because you are a relatively young investor and there are a lot of folks listening right now who even with maybe more life experience, maybe with more years of work experience, more capital saved up, they still haven’t been able to pull the trigger on actually getting that first deal. So just at a high level, what do you think it was that gave you the confidence to say, Hey, I can actually do this thing?

David:
It was really just taking a risk on myself, taking that bet on myself. Growing up, we weren’t the wealthiest growing up. I was borrowing gas money from my dad just to even get to listing appointments when I became a realtor. And it really was just that bet and risk on myself to take that risk, buy my first property and learn through my first property to help me grow in the future and have a long journey of a real estate investing ahead of me.

Ashley:
Do you think that becoming a real estate agent helped you take action sooner into your real estate investing?

David:
Yeah, I mean, it was the biggest thing. That’s why I became a real estate agent. It wasn’t because that’s my passion, it’s become my passion, but it wasn’t I want to be a real estate agent when I grow up. It was I want to become a real estate investor, have financial. So becoming a real estate agent really allowed me, number one, to build wealth. I mean, that was the biggest thing coming from no money to what’s a career I can get into at 18 to build the most amount of wealth I possibly can with no ceiling attached to me because of my age and allow me to invest in real estate. And that was, it’s in my mind a real estate agent. The people I’ve networked with, my mentors every day I come to an office with millionaires through real estate and just asking their advice at 18, 19, 20 has been insurmountable to my life so far. So becoming a real estate agent, just being in a career parallel to real estate as an investor was insurmountable to my success. And it’s what’s allowed me to make that first move. Buying my property, I had the guidance and the mentorship.

Ashley:
There’s no better way to learn about real estate than to get paid to learn about real estate. And that’s what happened to me. I didn’t know at the time that’s what I would get out of it, but when I switched from being an accountant to working as a property manager, I learned so much and I was being paid for it. And I probably wouldn’t have known about real estate investing unless I had surrounded myself with those people in that realm.

David:
That was a hundred percent it for me too. It is just that my idea at a young age, I had the idea that I am young and I’m naive. I don’t know what I’m doing. So where is a place that I can be surrounded by people that know what they’re doing have made money and what I want to do. And just being an agent was the clearest, least resistant path to get there. And again, yeah, like you said, I can make money to learn about real estate and build connections and just be involved in everything.

Ashley:
So when you’re talking about building out your goal for real estate, and you talked a little bit about how becoming an agent was going to help you build capital to reach that goal, how long did it take you to actually purchase your first investment after you really started to dig into the research of investing?

David:
Really shockingly, not long at all, right? So I told you at 18 I was borrowing gas money just to give you, I had a 22-year-old car that I was driving these listing appointments on. When I say there was nothing, there was nothing. So that was the day I turned 18. That’s when I became a real estate agent. And six months, seven months later, I bought my first property and it took again, the mentorship that allowed me to do that, right? The idea is that I don’t have to do this all on my own. So it didn’t take very long at all, and it’s the way I did it. There’s so many options to dive into real estate, especially having little to no money, obviously, yes, you need money to buy real estate and you should have reserves and all that, and I do, but it didn’t take very long because number one, the way I did it. And number two is just the support and connections that I had through my career.

Ashley:
Well, David, you’re definitely holding us in suspense here, but how did you do it?

David:
Yeah, I know. I’m waiting for that golden question. So my first property, I was eager to buy a property and I’ll tell you the mistakes and the successes I made, but I was so eager to buy a property and I really just wanted that title of buying a property at 18, which is the dumbest way to buy a property just out of eagerness and wanting that title. But that’s my story, so I just want to share it. And the way I was able to buy a property at 18 is the income was no longer an issue. I was making a good income as a real estate agent. I did everything I could. I mean, I was working 12, 15 hours a day just trying to, number one, learn the business to get the capital. So the capital ended up not becoming an issue. I knew I had the repertoire to make income as a real estate agent.
It was financing what loan officer is going to finance to an 18-year-old self-employed kid who was making 10 grand a year ago, a year. I was making 10 grand a year a year ago. So no lender even gave me the second thought to look into anything for me. So I knew that was my problem. I needed to find a partner, a person that could get the financing, and I needed to offer them some sort of value so that they would want to work with me. And I started reaching out to a few people and my stepbrother was actually interested in investing in real estate. So I talked to him and we sat down, we formulated a plan, we shared what’s my value, what’s his value? And it’s changed and it’s grown throughout the years of owning this property. But his value initially was he can get a loan and my value was my connections, the income, we were taking less risk if a major expense happens because we’re both 50 50 partners.
Those were the value propositions, and that’s how I was able to buy it. He bought it as FHA loan, three and a half percent down, and he decided to live in it for one year. And we bought a duplex in Shaker Heights, which is a really hip area of Cleveland, the market I’m from. And we bought a duplex, FHA, he moved into one unit, we rented out the bigger unit. He lived in it for a year and a year later we ended up renting out the other unit that he was living in. And it’s a good cash flowing property. Equity has gone up over the past two, three years, and it’s worked out very well. But I looked at what was my issue, what was my value and how can I solve my issue, solve my problem to get my first property at 18?

Ashley:
And I feel like you solved a problem for your brother too.

David:
That was the other thing. He was nervous to jump into the game. Thankfully, I’m so grateful he trusted me at 18. I don’t know how that happened, but he did. He took the leap of faith and yeah, that’s what he decided to, yeah, he needed me as well, as much as I needed him, and it’s been a great partnership for the past couple of years so far.

Ashley:
Stay tuned after a break for more from David on how he was able to finance his first deal at just the age of 18.

Tony:
Alright guys, welcome back to the show where we are joined by David. You said the big keyword there, David, which was partnerships, and I was like looking behind. We’re going to see if I had our partnerships book, but some of you guys may know Ash and I co-wrote the book on real estate partnerships for BiggerPockets, and you literally just described one of the key reasons why exploring partnerships might be something worthwhile for folks because David, you had the desire, you had the skillset that you were building, you even had some cash coming in, but you didn’t have the ability to go out and get the loan. Your brother on the other hand wasn’t doing the research. He wasn’t knee deep in the world of real estate investing, but he saw the value in it, but he had the ability to get approved for the mortgage. So you guys are like a match made in heaven because it’s complimentary skill sets. And like you said, you’re sharing some of that risk, sharing some of that financial responsibility. Ashley, I know you did something similar on one of your properties as well, and yeah, maybe walk us through how you leveraged partnerships with a family member as well.

Ashley:
Yeah, so I did almost the exact same thing, David with my sister. She bought a property as a duplex with an FHA loan, and they didn’t require me to go onto the loan, but we were 50 50 on the deed. One thing that was different was that I did pay the down payment, and since we were family, I could write her a gift letter that I’m gifting the $14,000 I think it was to her for the down payment, the closing cost, and that she did not have to pay it back, which she didn’t because for that $14,000, I was getting 50% equity in, I think it was like $143,000 property she was purchasing. And she ended up doing, I think 5% down on it. If I would’ve went and bought that property at the time, I would’ve had to put 20% down. This wasn’t a property that I could get seller financing on.
I didn’t have any private money lenders at this point. I definitely didn’t have 20% that I want to give up without draining my reserves. So this was a great opportunity for me to get in with little to no money. My sister was just fresh out of college, didn’t have the money yet to purchase a property, but was starting her first job. So it was really a perfect scenario for each of us, and it’ll really be a long-term play. So for my sister, very short term, she pays I think $45 a month for her utilities after the person that lives below her pays for all of the expenses. So she really has no cost of living as far as living housing expenses on the property. And she’s lived there, I think six years now maybe. And then my long-term play is, I don’t see any cashflow now, but eventually if my sister comes out of the property, we’ll split the cashflow or when she decides to sell it, we’ll split 50% of the proceeds of the property. So I love that you were able to make that happen with your brother too, and to do that. I think a really big thing too is that being forward with whoever you’re doing the loan with too, as to what is happening as far as the ownership of the property too.

David:
Yes. Yeah, I would’ve to agree. Yeah, it really allowed us both to break into buying properties and learning together. I mean, I did so much research beforehand, but I don’t know what I don’t know. And the only way to learn it is to ultimately do it. You could limit your risk, but you have to jump in and do it to learn everything. So that was the biggest thing for both of us is we gained the knowledge we’ve learned just through the partnership together, and now we have a cash flowing property that has loan pay down benefits, and it’s a wonderful thing now.

Tony:
So David, I think one of the big questions we get from folks about partnerships is how exactly was it structured? So maybe walk us through the intricate details of how you put that partnership together. Was there paperwork involved? Did you guys talk about worst case scenario if someone wants out, but just kind of give us the ins and outs of how you actually structured that partnership?

David:
Yeah, we could have done that better, right? I mean, moving forward we would’ve spelled out a lot more things, but how we worked it out initially was 50 50, all expenses. So down payments 50 50, everything’s 50 50. He’s obviously a hundred percent on the loan, but we did what Ashley did, had the deed 50 50 as well. And we had an agreement on the side that we both had notarized and just had for ourselves about everything that we just spelled out 50 50 in all expenses. And if someone wants out, then they have either we talk to each other about selling the property, and if both teams are on board, then obviously that would be the option or the one person has to pay out the other person. And a lot of it’s trust with family, which I don’t recommend. Even if you’re with family, spell it out, spell every bit of everything out moving forward. That’s how we would do it. And that’s what I mean. We’ve grown together and thankfully we’re both like-minded and want to protect each other. No one’s out to get someone, but always spell everything out. So that’s how we’ve arranged the setup as of right now.

Ashley:
David, what was the point in time where you decided you were ready for the next deal and what did that look like?

David:
Yeah, I was always looking for properties and just finding ways to buy them. I had my set buy box, I knew exactly what I wanted and I knew where I wanted to buy it, and I’ve stuck to that buy box to this day. It’s basically location, condition, layout. These things very important to me when buying a property. And I was always looking for just a deal, and I knew the second it popped up, I would find a way for it to work out. I never looked at what I had now and tried to sort what can I buy with what I have now? I just looked at what’s realistic, what’s attainable, what can I buy? I don’t have everything figured out now, but when I find that property, I’m going to figure out a way to buy that property, whether it’s another partnership or if I have to solve another problem for someone else to whatever it is, I’m going to figure out a way to buy that property.
And it eventually came up, I was 19, still living with my parents, and I was making decent money. I wanted to move out, just got a girlfriend. I really wanted to move out and just have my own independent life. And I found a property, couldn’t believe the deal. I looked at it, wrote an offer same day. And how I purchased that one, it wasn’t an emotional decision. It was very educated. I did a lot of research beforehand as to how my next property was going to look. What I wanted to do was I wanted to move out, but I also wanted to buy a property that was extremely safe. So me being a year, year and a half in as a real estate agent, I know my income goes, I mean, it’s like a roller coaster. It goes up and down. So I wanted to buy a property where if I couldn’t afford it for whatever reason, I could always move back into my parents or whatever it is, and I can rent it out. So I actually bought a rental, a single family rental that I knew I could at any point I would live in, but at any point I would turn it into a cash flowing rental. And that’s exactly what I did.

Ashley:
That is so amazing and such great advice to have a second exit strategy that is separate from what the main purpose of purchasing that property is for. So we just did a flip that’s about to close, and when we bought this flip house, we said, okay, worst case scenario, we can bur it. The numbers will still work, and we can rent out the property if we cannot sell it as a flip. And I think that is such great advice to lower your risk as to having those options in place.

Tony:
I’m curious though, David, in terms of the financing piece, were you able to get past that hurdle because now you had a little bit more experience in the job, or did you have to source some creative way to solve that issue as well?

David:
So that was a big fear of mine, right? Was struggling to find financing always. And that’s where becoming a real estate agent and for the people listening, you don’t have to become a real estate agent. I would just recommend, if you’re looking to do what I get into something parallel to real estate, whether it’s lender title, whatever it is parallel. But for me, the connection I made as a real estate agent, I’m obviously talking to hundreds of lenders nonstop, and I’m constantly sharing my story with them of what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to build, where I’m at with it. And one lender really liked me and took me and sat me down and worked out a legit loan program where I was able to get a conventional loan. It took a lot of effort on his end. He had, I don’t know exactly what he did, but he was willing to put in that effort for me upfront to have a future relationship with me buying properties. And we’ve been working together ever since. But I knew I had one option of A-D-S-C-R loan or a non QM loan, which I did not want to do because it’s higher interest rate, higher everything, higher risk. So I was really trying to get that conventional loan, and that’s how I did it, just through the connections I made as a real estate agent.

Ashley:
Once again, great advice,

Tony:
And this is something that it took me a while to understand. As a new real estate investor, I just assumed that every bank offered the same thing, that every lender offered the same thing. There was a standard suite of loans and you had to pick from that standard suite. But the truth is, every single lender, every single credit union, every single bank, they all have slightly different loan products that they’re able to offer. And their process for choosing who gets approved for those types of loan products are different. So one bank may look at David and say, you are not someone that we can lend to. Someone else may look at David and say, you are the exact type of person we want to lend to. So it very much differs from person to person. And I love that you said, I’ve been able to talk to over 100 lenders through the course of being an agent, and all you needed was one out of 100 to say, Hey, we can actually get this deal done for you

David:
And Tony. I mean, that’s a good thing. I didn’t even realize it until a year and a half in to being an agent. I was like, oh my gosh. They all offer different products just because working with buyers who didn’t get pre-approved with one mortgage company, we would immediately switch ’em to another one and all of a sudden they’re approved. So it opened my eyes to that could be the same thing for me. And believe it or not, that second property I bought in escrow, so when I had the offer accepted, it fell through three times with three different lenders before I was able to talk to and find that fourth lender. So I mean, I was left and right battling for 45 days, tooth and nail, trying to get my offer. I have an signed offer accepted from the sellers, but no one’s wanting to lend to me right now, and I have the income. It was driving me nuts. So thankfully I was able to get in touch with that one lender and I figured it out.

Tony:
Alright, guys, we have to take our final app break, but stick around to hear what market you shouldn’t be sleeping on in Ohio right after this. And look, if you need help finding a market, you can go over to BiggerPockets dot slash find a markets to learn more.

Ashley:
Okay, let’s jump back into today’s episode. David, what ended up happening with this property? Did you live in it and all is well? Did you have to turn it into a rental? Give us the outcome?

David:
Yeah, so I lived in it. Everything was perfect. We actually fell in love with this home and we fell in love with the neighborhood. So me, I’m actively trying to buy properties in this neighborhood now because I’ve learned it now. I’ve lived in it. I know the neighbors, I know the neighborhood, and I’m trying to buy everything up, but everything was all as well. We only moved out because we wanted to buy this flip, and I’ll get into the flip in a second, but that flip, I ended up having to move into it just to again, lower my risk and all that. But yeah, everything worked out great and once we moved out of it, it served its purpose. Once we moved out of it, it turned into one of the best rentals I could ever imagine. I am still to this day in awe with the rental outcome of it, because I was expecting one rent and I was like, I’m happy and content with $1,200. We ended up getting $1,400 on a house that was $130,000 to buy, and it’s right by the lake. And I was like, I couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t believe this to this day.

Ashley:
Steven, what neighborhood is this in?

David:
This is in the North Willoughby, north Menor area. It’s a suburb of Cleveland. The great thing about Cleveland is it’s still super affordable and you have a major lake that is the size of an ocean for people. So this neighborhood is North Willoughby, north Manor. It’s like an older cottage type home or cottage type neighborhood, and it’s walking distance to the lake and was, I mean, it was an incredible buy for us. So yeah, again, 130,000. It cash flows like crazy right now.

Ashley:
That is so awesome. Dave Meyer and I just recorded an episode. I’m not sure when it will be released or if it’s already been released by the time this is, but you can find it on the BiggerPockets YouTube channel or on whatever podcast platform you listen to. We did an episode about called Lake Effect Cashflow, and this was a term that we heard coined by Henry Washington, and so we did a whole episode just breaking down, I called it the Rust Belt as to properties saying areas in cities that were in the rust belt. But really we went through and we did some market analysis on some of these different areas, and wow, there really is some great cashflow potential there and just you have the beauty of the Great Lakes too, and fresh water sources always added value.

David:
It still blows my mind. I mean, I know we have some really cold winters up here, but it is just being that close to the lake. I mean, we would walk our dog down to the lake every day, and I can’t stress 130,000. So even at 130,000, I was still trying to lower my risk by making sure it’d be a rental, and thank God I did, because it really made me aggressively go after that house and living in it. We’ve put maybe 5K into it just doing basic cosmetics, light fixtures, minor stuff, and it’s helped me out immensely just moving forward, allowing me to take that risk for my next property. I have the cashflow. So it’s been a huge benefit and success for me.

Tony:
What year was that purchase for the one in Willoughby? 2023. That was just recently, right, and $130,000 purchase price. That’s insane, man.

David:
It was late 2023. It was actually, I actually closed on it on Halloween, so it’d be a year ago coming up, so I closed on it on Halloween.

Ashley:
Oh,

David:
I didn’t know if that was bad luck or good luck, but I think it might’ve been good luck.

Ashley:
I’m about to close on Halloween on a house I’m selling next week, too.

Tony:
That’s funny. We bought our primary residence on Halloween. We moved it on Halloween.

Ashley:
Oh, really? Yeah.

Tony:
It’s got to be a good date and good luck. Yeah, cool. So David, you go through this property, you kind of do the move in situation. Then you also mentioned there was a flip that you had to get down with as well. I guess walk us through that deal a little bit.

David:
Oh boy. Yeah, that flip has been such a stressor, and I’ll tell you guys my mistakes just so no one make these mistakes again. But I run a six figure business as a real estate agent, very grateful for it, and I decided having no contracting experience, I have no idea what I’m doing with a hammer that I could flip a house, I can learn it. I could do the YouTube college course and I could flip a house with how busy I am.

Ashley:
So you’re saying as the contractor?

David:
Yeah, yeah. I was like, I could be the contractor for this, and absolutely I cannot be. So we have had to readjust and readjust throughout that flip. And thankfully, I will admit, a lot of it’s luck. A lot of it was being strategic about how we bought it, why we bought it, and having those exit strategies that gave us the mobility to kind of be flexible. But we have had to adjust. It’ll actually, the flip will be officially done. We’re still living in it right now, but it’ll be done in three weeks. So we’re crossing our fingers there, but I can go into that deal if you would like.

Ashley:
Yeah, just give us a little rundown of the other things that happened to it and lessons learned for someone else to

David:
Yeah. So I started out with buying it and moving into it. I decided to do that because even though I had the capital to buy it just as an investment, if you move into it, as you guys know, lower interest rate, and I could be flexible on the down payment, so I could do as low as three and a half to I could do whatever I want. Basically, with the down payment, I decided to do 5% down to give me as much flexibility and capital during the rehab because I also knew I’m going to mess this up, and I’m just trying to be prepared for when I mess this up, I don’t know where it’s going to be, but I’m going to mess something up.

Tony:
That’s actually a really smart way to go into it. When we’re flipping properties, you always try and make sure that we have a little bit of, gosh, why is the word escaping me? Yeah, our contingency when we’re doing our budget, because we know there’s something that’s going to happen that we didn’t anticipate this call. So the fact that you baked that in, even maybe if it’s been a little bit of a stressor, it’s good that you did that from the beginning.

David:
Thank God I did. Yeah, because it’s, I’m still going to be profitable on it, and my big thing was my only goal on my first slip. I’ve always wanted to do flips, and I was thinking about them, but I didn’t know how, I couldn’t figure out how to solve my problem, and I knew if I just jumped into it, it would force me to, well, you got to figure this out now because we’re in it. So that’s how I operate. I don’t recommend everybody do it that way, but I decided that I was just going to jump into it, take as many lower my risk as much as humanly possible. So I bought it, decided that I was going to fix it up, which was going to lower my rehab costs and all that. Three months of painting got done. So I was like, I cannot rehab this house myself.
I now have my girlfriend moving in with me, and she’s, thank God for her. She’s trying to help, but we’re living in a dump, and thankfully when we measured each and every room, the listed square footage was 500 square feet lower than when I measured each and every room. So it went from a 1400 square foot house to almost a 1900 square foot house, and I measured it like three times. So my RV shot up after that. I bought it at 1 95. I was expecting my RV to be 2 75. Then obviously the square footage helped me out, and I was like, oh my gosh, we could sell this at 300, 3 15, and I like to go conservative and low, so these are lower numbers. But that was my initial assessment. Thankfully, we found that square footage because with having to hire out contractors, now, obviously the rehab has gone up, but I use the contractors that my investors and other people have used, so they’re trustworthy contractors and got them in there, and now they’re, it’s being worked on eight hours a day and it’s moving along.
Now, the one thing I didn’t realize is as much as I wanted to do it myself, the one thing I didn’t think about was holding costs. If I do it myself, it’s going to take a year, year and a half, I’m going to mess it up. I’m going to have to redo it. I’m going to have to learn it, so it’s going to take a lot longer. Whereas if I hire it out 2, 3, 4 months max, which can completely, I mean, that completely changes your profit. So once I realized that, I started looking at the numbers a little bit differently, and I decided it was definitely worthwhile to do that.

Tony:
Ashley, can I ask you a question? Because David, you mentioned something that I’ve never done before, but Ashley, have you ever actually measured your own square footage of the property to see if it aligns?

Ashley:
No,

Tony:
I’ve never done that before.

Ashley:
I mean, if I am selling a property, my agent comes in and measured it, but I don’t think I’ve actually ever compared if that matches what I bought it for on that listing or my agent. Sometimes she’ll just take whatever was on the original listing, transfer it over,

David:
And that’s what most people do. So I noticed that that one agent, even I do it as an agent, I’ll just take whatever’s on the auto site and I’ll put it in. And so the one thing I realized though is it doesn’t feel like a 1450 square foot high. It feels like a 1900 square foot, and that’s why we bought it. The one thing that I looked at when I bought the house was my biggest things that I try to accomplish is, does the layout make sense? That is everything for me. Layout is huge. Location is probably the biggest thing. And just the neighborhood, does the layout make sense? Is it cosmetic or is it major? And the actual location. So once I looked at it though, I saw that the house had a ton of additions on it, and I was like, I don’t think this is correct at all. And once I measured it, I was like, oh, thank goodness. This is not correct. This is really helping me out here. So it worked out great for me.

Ashley:
Yeah. I’m curious to know if you looked up the county records, if the county records would be correct or not, or if they would show what was previously on it? Yeah,

David:
Yeah, thankfully. I mean, I’m grateful because it obviously allowed me to get a deal that most people passed up, and now every time I go into a house, I’m looking at buying. I am measuring the square footage now just in case. So that’s a little tip.

Tony:
So David, it sounds like you’ve kind of learned some of those hard lessons on this flip, but it’s back on track now. I guess one last question before we move on from that, now that you’ve got the contracting crew in there, how much time do you think it’ll take for them to actually get the job done?

David:
And they gave me an estimate, actually this morning. I was talking to them of mid to early November. So we’re just waiting on some countertops and some things like that. Living in a flip is their sacrifices that I wasn’t anticipating, just quality of lifestyle. So it’s not for everybody. Luckily, I am young, so I do have the benefit. I don’t have children or other responsibilities, but moving into a flip, I mean, it’s tough. And this was a big flip, so it’s thankfully starting to get a lot easier and we’re able to breathe a bit more. But yeah,

Ashley:
We actually just decided that we’re going to move into a live and flip. We were just going to flip this property, but we just love it and want it to be our house. So we’re probably going to live in it for two years and then sell it to pay no taxes on the profit. But it’s really hard to decide what needs to be done before we move into the property as to like, okay, we really got two years to renovate it here, but what’s the things that we’re going to do right now going to, before we get into it? So the first thing is ripping out every single carpet in there and putting in new flooring, but, but I’ll be with you, David Liven. We’re already deciding which bathroom’s going to get ripped out first and all that stuff. That’s

David:
Probably the smartest way to go about it. We just moved into it without doing anything. I mean, when I tell you, and they destroyed that house too. It was a foreclosure, and they destroyed it before we got into it. So there was feces on the ground. So I mean, we had to stay in a hotel meantime and clean, just clean the house. It was like two weeks of cleaning, deep cleaning. So as stressful as it was, I’m grateful. I wish I would’ve done it like you did by rehabbing it before I moved into it a little bit. But lessons learned.

Ashley:
Yeah, we’ll definitely be doing some rehab while we’re in it too. Yeah,

David:
Yeah.

Ashley:
Well, David, what’s kind of next for you? Are you looking for financial independence? You had mentioned earlier that being a real estate agent was a wealth building tool for you. Give us what’s your five-year, 10 year plan and what you want to get out of real estate?

David:
So my career as an agent, it takes up, I mean, it’s a full-time job for me. It takes up a lot of time. And my goal with becoming an agent was to become more of a full-time investor. Obviously always hold my license, but become a full-time real estate investor. And that’s probably my five year, 10 year goal is to, as I get more comfortable with, I mean, that’s why I did this flip. I want to get comfortable in that lane. I want to get comfortable with the short-term leasing. I haven’t dived into that yet, but I want to get comfortable with all these different options, see what makes the most sense for me by actually doing it and then diving into it and just in the meantime, building capital over the next five, 10 years, saving it, investing it intelligently, and just growing a nest egg for my future wife, future kids that we can fall back on. Luckily, I’m so young, so by the time I’m 30, 35, hopefully we’ll have a bit of a nest egg, and I could start a family. And I mean, those are my motivating factors and my goals and everything like that.

Ashley:
And David, you’re doing it the right way. You’re living in living flips in the rehabs instead of going out and buying a Porsche to drive around.

Tony:
So David, I guess for, again, a lot of, I think, inspiration that folks should be able to find in your story, but for the people that are listening to this podcast who are maybe still sitting on the sidelines, they’re stuck in that analysis paralysis, what advice do you have for them about what it takes to get started in jumping in today?

David:
Yeah, if you’re nervous to jump in, I mean, that doesn’t go away, right? It’s there. So when you buy your first property, there are nerves. It’s going to be high. There’s going to be ups and downs. It’s really what I look at if you’re looking to buy a property right away, is to look at what you have. What are your resources? Do you have capital? Do you not have capital? Do you have time on your hands like I do? Do you have kids? You have to look at all these different things and see what is it that you have? What is it that you need to get to where you need to be at, and try to solve that problem. Don’t say, I can’t because I have this. I have X, Y, and Z. Say, how can I get that? How can I purchase this? And that’s what I’ve always done that I think I learned it from Rich Dad, poor Dad, the infamous real estate book. And that was the one thing I learned was instead of saying, I can’t because of this situation or this and that, it was, how can I, no matter what it was, calling 200 different lenders or becoming a real estate agent just to get into real estate investing. It was always, how can I solve the problems that I have currently? And that’s my biggest advice.

Ashley:
Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today on Real Estate Rookie. We’d loved having you on the show. Hopefully this is really motivating to others to get started and to make those correct decisions for their financial future. You can find more about David. We will link his information into the show notes, or if you’re watching on YouTube in the description. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony. Thank you so much for watching this episode of Real Estate, Rick.