BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 198: Financial Freedom Through Small Multifamily Rentals with Eric Bowlin

Episode Date: October 27, 2016

How many rental units does it take to achieve “financial freedom?” Maybe not as many as you think! That’s the topic on today’s episode, where Josh and Brandon sit down to talk with Eric Bowlin, a real estate investor who achieved financial freedom at the age of 30, largely using the “BRRRR” strategy to finance his deals. Eric owns fewer than 30 units but was able to “retire” off the cash flow — and today, you’ll learn just how he did it (and how you can do the same). You’ll also love his tips on how to find great deals on the MLS and how to manage your properties — even if you don’t live close by. Be sure to take some notes on this one — you are going to need them! In This Episode We Cover: How Eric started accidentally in real estate His epiphany moment! What it’s like earning overseas Things that cost him money on his early flips A note on dealing with contractors Why every market is unique How he put together his team Tips for finding contractors How many units he has now How to systematize your business Using the BRRRR strategy How he finds his deals How to tell if a property has tenant problems His best deal ever His most recent multifamily property And SO much more! Links from the Show BRRRR Strategy BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Blogs 4 Reasons You’ll Never Find a Good Contractor (Insight From an Investor/Contractor) (blog) BiggerPockets Pro Replay BiggerPockets Pro BiggerPockets Forums Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing Josh’s Twitter Account Brandon’s Twitter Account BP Podcast 007: Making Appraisals Work For You with Ryan Lundquist Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Successful Landlord by Maribeth Perry The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy Tweetable Topics: “I just realized, I wanted people coming to me to pay me versus me trying to get money for somebody else.” (Tweet This!) “I didn’t know about financial independence when I first got started.” (Tweet This!) “A person only earns plus or minus 10% of what they think they’re worth.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Eric Eric’s BiggerPockets Profile Eric’s Twitter Profile Eric’s Website Eric’s BiggerPockets Author Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show, 198. I don't know. I just realized I wanted people coming to me to pay me versus me trying to go get money from somebody else. So that was the epiphany. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from. BiggerPockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. House to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, man? Not much.

How are you doing? I'm okay. You're okay. Yeah, you've had a fun... Why are we live in Josh's living room right now? I'm breathing. I'm breathing. You're alive.

You're alive. Bruce, Baba. Good. What's been going on in your life? You have a fun story to tell. I don't have fun story. Oh, right. Yeah, fun would be the antithesis of the story.

I think it's fun being 2,000 miles away. It makes me laugh. Yeah, well, you know, so last week, we're having a great week at work and doing our thing and receive a phone call at it around 4 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, telling us that we have to evacuate the building immediately due to a health and safety issue. And I was befuddled. I thought it was a practical joke. I said, surely you just actually, I said lots of swear words.

I was like, no. You swearing, no. Yes. And anyway, we were told to evacuate due to a health and safety issue from our landlord. And so we did. And they've been renovating our building. And it turns out in so doing, they came across some asbestos, another unit, well, downstairs. And so we, yeah, we had a vacate and we have no office right now.

We are homeless. We found a temporary space. Today's Tuesday. That was Friday. So it's been a crazy few days. I have been very busy. And suffice to say, this has been a bit of a challenge. But here we are recording the Bigger Pockets podcast.

Of course, we are here in Denver. We found a co-work space, I believe, that we'll be working out of until this whole situation could be sorted. But you've got to be nimble. You've got to be able to transition your business when things come up. And that's exactly what we've done. and we're up and going. So it's been a crazy three days.

It feels like it's been a month. Well, I'm glad you're okay. Yeah. Sorry for the long-winded intro, but yeah, it's a crazy situation. Yeah, it sounds like fun. Thank you, for you. Speaking of crazy situations, let's get to today's quick tip. You didn't see that coming because I didn't tell you the crazy situation.

No, this is a quick tip. Just from a story from my own life this week, we had a property that we went, looked at. the owners were asking $159,000 for this property. And we looked at it. We thought there's no way this is worth that. It sat on the market for six months, finally came off the market. We offered them 70. And we negotiated and got $77,000 on their contract.

So my quick tip today is you don't know people's motivation. So don't feel bad about offering. If it's really worth a low amount and that's where it makes sense to you, offer that. Like we ran our numbers and like using the bigger pocket as a rental property calculator. And we ran our numbers. We came up with a number that worked for us. And my max was 80. I said, at 80, I can make a profit with this.

No more. And we offered them 70 and we negotiated 77. And so, yeah, don't feel bad about making low ball offers. You know, I'm not saying to be weird about it, but, you know. So what do you say to somebody who says, well, isn't that taking advantage of the seller? Isn't that you being a snake, a slime ball? Isn't that you being a terrible person? I mean, how could you do such a thing?

Yeah. And I think the answer is, I mean, it sat on the market for six months and nobody wanted at the higher price. Like the market determines what a property is worth, and the market determined it was not worth what they were asking. So I offered them the number that made sense for my business, and they had the choice to accept it and deny it or reject it and they accepted it and they worked for them. They'd actually care about the money. They're trying to retire. There's some health issues.

They want to just get done with it. And what actually convinced them at the end, this is just a cool tip. What actually convinced them was we said, and remember, we can close this thing next week. This is a three month process, two months process. We're not going to do a bunch of fancy loan things. Cash next week, done. and lady said, really? Oh, that sounds great.

That'd be great with this. After six months of being on the market. And I think that's, you know, this is the longest quick tip ever. This is. You know, I think that's typical. I mean, for somebody who's new, they don't necessarily realize that people find themselves in particular situations from time to time. Things happen, whether it's these folks who just want to get out, a landlord who's

got a property, they're just suffering and suffering from, I've been there, right? or somebody going through a divorce or a death in the family. And for them, they want nothing more than to move on. And so, you know, they have a right to accept it. They could have counted you and said, you know, we'll give it to you for 90 or 100. And you would have said no and you guys would have parted. But the reason they accepted was it worked for them. You were the guy who came in at the right time.

And they just wanted to get the hell out. Yeah. Yeah, they wanted out quick. So, again, go make some offers, guys. There you go. Make it happen. Cool. there are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance,

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All right, guys, so this is show 198 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 198. Before we bring in today's guest, guys, if you have not left us a rating or review on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, wherever else you are listening to this, or if you have not subscribed to the Bigger Pockets podcast, please jump in there and do that. Obviously, subscribing helps you and leaving us ratings and reviews helps us. So we definitely appreciate that. Let's get to the show. Today's guest, Eric Bolin. Eric is a real estate investor living in Texas, investing in Massachusetts, which is kind of the opposite of what we hear from a lot of people, you know, living in a cheaper market, investing in a more expensive one. We're going to get into that. But the coolest thing, he's built a lifestyle of financial independence at the age of 30, which is great. He owns 26 rental units. And he built it up through the Burr method, which we'll talk about. He's done lots of random strategies in there as well. But good guy, great story, very motivating. So definitely pay attention.

There's lots of cool little tips in there. So let's do this. Let's bring him on. What's going on, Eric? Welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here. Hey, thanks for having me, Josh. It's good to be here. Yeah, yeah, it's good to have you. So I met Eric at the financial bloggers conference, FinCon, just a few weeks ago. And I was totally impressed by his story and the things that he's doing some really kind of unique things. So Eric, I'm excited to dig into that today. So why don't we begin there at the very beginning? How did you get into this real estate thing? What's your story? Yeah, so it's actually kind of interesting. I got into real estate by accident, actually. I was in grad school where I met my wife. And we just wanted to buy a home. And around where I went to school, there's only multifamilies, but we wanted to be close to school. So we ended up buying a multifamily house. And that's how I accidentally became a landlord, I guess. And so I had an epiphany. It didn't take very long.

Basically, long story short, someone knocked on my door pretty late at night to pay me rent. And I took the rent, sat down, and I'm like, this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life. So I ended up. They rent at odd hours from strange people in your house? I mean, that's, that's not an epiphany. I want, hey, Josh. Hey, Josh, you sleeping? Hey, hey, I want to pay you some grit.

That's kind of how it happened. Well, I don't know, I just realized I wanted people coming to me to pay me versus me trying to go get money from somebody else. So that was the epiphany, not that it came at 9 o'clock and I was trying to watch TV with my life. You know, that wasn't the good part. That'd be fun, though. I mean, we can have a party, right? There you go. No, I actually remember that very first time I ever got rent also.

Like my very first rental house was a little duplex. And yeah, I remember my mortgage was $6.20 a month and they paid me $6.50 in cash. And I was like, holy. It was that same epiphany. Like, this is life-changing stuff. But it's so simple. But it's totally life changing. And it changed my life just like yours.

So very cool. Hey, Brandon. Yeah. Did they come and bang on your door? They probably did, actually. Hand it to you in the house. Everybody sucks at being a landlord in the beginning, don't we? All three of us, I'm sure, sucked at being landlords in the beginning, but you get better over time.

Well, the problem was I was living in the same building, right? So they just walked downstairs, right? Yeah, so, but anyway, so I was in grad school at the time, and then I ended up deploying over to Afghanistan for a year. And then I came back from Afghanistan and had a lot of money. I had about $100,000 that saved up all that over there. Well, wait, so you're in the reserves, right? Is that right? No, he's in the I get rich while.

fighting the bad guy, these army. How do I join that one? Pay me $100,000 a year. Well, I'm an officer in the National Guard, so officers get paid a little bit more than enlisted soldiers. So I came back, and then plus we're living for free at home. You know, the tenants were paying the mortgage and stuff. So when you put that all together, I had a lot of money.

That's awesome. Unfortunately, Army didn't give me the whole $100,000. That would have been great. So I had about $100,000. And when I came back, you know, everybody after a year, overseas is coming back and they're buying nice stuff, cars, partying and spending all their money. I bought a flip and I actually dropped out of my grad program at that time. I bought a flip. Yeah. And so that's what kind of got me started. And I've just been growing ever since.

But yeah, that's how I got started in real estate. So you're kind of the sucker, right? I mean, you're this guy who, like, you dropped out of grad school. I mean, you spent money on a stupid flip. I mean, like, that was dumb. I mean, you could have a cool car right now. You could have a Tesla. Come on. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I could be working right now for somebody else. Absolutely. That's awesome. All right.

So let's walk through that mindset back then. I mean, when you were first, I want to go even before the flip. So back to the house hack. When you decided to buy a multifamily, how many units was it? Do you say three? Three. Okay. So you're living in one unit, renting that out, thinking, you know, this is pretty awesome.

What made you want to then shift from that over to, I'm going to go buy something, the flip. How did that transition go in your head? I didn't even know what financial independence or any of this stuff was when I first I started. Originally, my plan was to sell that, move out of that crappy neighborhood, and get a decent house and be a normal person, right? So, you know, that epiphany, that night when I got that rent, really changed my whole mindset. And then I started researching. That's actually about 2010-11 is when I actually found bigger pockets. And I started looking up how to make money doing this or how to do this with real estate.

And it just kind of progressed slowly, especially when I was overseas, that whole year with nothing to do. I mean, I was doing what I was doing over there, but on my free time, I had nothing to do, but think about what I want to do when I got home. So there's a lot of research going on. And so I spent that time just learning everything I could about real estate. So is that something that I guess I'm just kind of thinking about this? You're over there in your downtime while you're not serving and protecting. You know, you're pondering. And, you know, we've got a lot of people out there across the world in different places that are sitting and pondering.

when they're not out there putting their lives on the line. Is this something like that people talk about? I mean, are you guys talking about, you know, hey, I'm going to make money when I get back. I'm going to buy fancy cars or kind of what's going on there? Overseas, what's going on in our. On the mindset. Yeah, in terms of like, you know, the financial stuff.

Yeah, so absolutely. So it depends on who you talk to in what level they're at and what they want to do in life. But everybody's talking about what they're going to do when they get home, you know, whatever their plans are, it's normal when you're away for so long. I came up with a lot of ideas, different business ideas that I wanted to do. And the real estate thing was in the back of my head the whole time. And that ended up being, well, one, in my mind, just, you know, when I came back. But yeah, it's actually very, there's a lot of anxiety, believe it or not, because you have

all these dreams and goals that you want to do, but you can't do any of them. You're just stuck for that period of time. So you're just kind of being anxious about what am I going to do when I get home? Obviously, that's what you talk about. You have nothing else to talk about. And for anyone that you, anyone who is overseas, though, there is an opportunity, right, with real estate. I mean, now that you've been doing this, you know, if you have an opportunity to go in before you get deployed or anything like that and actually pick up some rental properties, I mean, in theory, you could even run a rental business from overseas, right? I mean, those guys doing that.

Absolutely. I didn't know that then. But, you know, now I live in Texas. I run all my properties in Massachusetts. So absolutely you can do it all from a distance. You just said you live in Texas, but you have property in Massachusetts. That's like opposite of what most people do, right? Because properties I always here are expensive in the Northeast, but in Texas, you know, properties are cheap.

So I heard that right, right? You didn't mix that up. Yeah, absolutely. And you live in Texas and you, okay, yeah. So we're going to talk into that. But before we get into that, let's go back to the flip. That very first step. Was that a living flip or was that like, I'm going to flip this house and fix it up, sell it?

That was a, I didn't live in it. I bought it in 2012 and I flipped it over the course of a few months. I had contract years, everything, just like your door normal flip. It wasn't great. I didn't make a ton of money. I made a few thousand dollars, but the way I like to look at it is if you can go to school and someone pays you to go to school, then that's a success. Yeah.

So that's kind of the way I look at that. Love that. Yeah. Do you remember what you paid for it or what you sold it for? Like what price range was that in? I bought it for about 110. and I sold it for 200, 210 maybe, but the big thing was there's about a $25,000 or $30,000 septic system that had to go into it.

So it ate up a lot of the money. Did you know that when you bought it? Yes, I knew about the septic system. Okay. But there's a lot of little stuff that popped up. There was some, there's a little bit of insect damage that had to get repaired that we didn't catch up front. Would that be termites?

I can't remember if it's termites or ants, but it wasn't huge, but it was just like a lot of the little unexpected stuff like that. So actually, one of the big things that cost me a lot of money was the contractor. I didn't vet them out very well in all the things that they were doing. And one of the things that got me was the floors at the end. They didn't do a good job on the floors. It went up on market because I had to travel for something. So it went up on market before I got to actually see the floors.

And all the people that were going to bid, I thought would bid high, they didn't want anything to do with the property because the floors weren't the condition they needed to be. So even after I redid the floors finally and got it. you know, nice, the people who would have paid the top price didn't want to come back to the property. So, lesson learned. Yeah. How did that end up happening? I mean, it was, was that because you were away or missing out of seeing the end result on the floors? That was just because you couldn't see it. Right. So, yeah, that was because I couldn't see it. I trust them that they could do the floors based off of some work that was done somewhere else. Yeah. But I actually went over to China.

My wife's Chinese. We were having our Chinese wedding. So just the way the timeline worked out, I was overseas when it went on the market. And so, you know. Right on. So for somebody who is in the middle of a project that does have to go overseas and has somebody else manning the project, what would they do in a situation like that now that you are more learned and experienced? Well, now I have another layer in there.

So I have somebody who works for me who can go inspect properties and such. So that wouldn't happen now. I just trusted the contract that it was done. Then they went up on a market. Yep. Now I have somebody who can inspect and say, hey, you need to fix this before we put on the market and delay putting it on the market by a few weeks if necessary. So verify, trust, but verify, right? Absolutely.

You know, one thing you said there about having that extra layer in there, like, that is one thing in my life that, I mean, totally changed the last, like a year or so of my investing was having that, I never had that layer there. And I'm not that good at dealing with contractors. I don't like confrontation. But as soon as I got that layer there, somebody else to be the bad guy or to yell at people that, I tell them what to do, they go tell some. somebody else have to do, instantly my entire business changed. So I just recommend that people out there, like, there's so many good reasons to have that. It doesn't have to be a full-time employee either. It could be a family member.

It could be a partner. It could be, you know, somebody working five hours a week for you. But just have that person if you need it. I agree. As soon as I got somebody to yell at Brandon all the time, that wasn't me, my life got so much better. So much better. That's fun.

I definitely better. Anyway. Well, it's true even with tenants, collecting rent or dealing with tenants. Yes. have somebody else to point out and say you're there saying this or there's a layer in between you so they can I can be the bad guy and they can just relay the news or however you want to work it. You don't have to feel bad about telling them pay me or I'm going to evict you. Yeah, when you have somebody else being the bad guy, you can make a clear like non-emotional,

you know, like right now, like I've said this before, but like my mother-in-law answers phones for our company. We hired her very part-time. All she does is answer phones and shows units. But because of that, like she's always the person talking to the tenant. So I can tell, I don't hear the emotional side of it. She just tells me the facts and I tell her what to do about it. And it works out so good.

And yeah, definitely, definitely a great tip there. And this is how Brandon deals with his mother and monster-in-law. That's how I did. She's nice. She is amazing lady and she's a much better handling tenants than I am. And it's not like full-time. Like when I was, like I couldn't afford a full-time person when I didn't have enough units. And so I just found somebody who wanted to work five or ten hours a week.

Okay. Let's do it. Hey, Eric, so let's go back to this Texas, Massachusetts thing. I mean, again, you know, people live in L.A., New York, Boston, you know, they say, I can't afford it. And they look for a smaller, less expensive market. You did the opposite. Why? Well, I lived in Massachusetts.

I grew up in Massachusetts. I spent my first 29 or 30 years there. Go mess. So I just bought property. I'm just going to ignore that. So I grew up in Massachusetts. I spent my first 29 or 30 years there. And so I just bought properties that made sense for me at the time that I can manage directly.

And then I moved to Texas a couple of years ago. And my plan originally was to get involved in real estate here in Texas. But I started looking at the numbers. And I realized the properties actually didn't earn as much money here in Texas as they do in Massachusetts. So for me, I just kept buying more in Massachusetts. The difference, though, is in Texas, people mostly invest in single-family properties because they're very cheap per square foot. But up north, nobody, it doesn't make sense to buy single families. I own only one of them just because I fell into it kind of.

All minor multifamily. So I wouldn't invest in single families where I'm from. Right. So are you talking two, three-fours? Are you talking like larger, well, mid-sized multi-five plus? Small multis. Everything I owns five units or less. Okay.

Okay. Well, as I said, I think that brings up a good point, too, that, you know, people say, you know, I can't invest in real estate in my area. And I think that the more appropriate statement there is I can't invest in a certain type of real estate in my area. Like you said, yeah, maybe single family homes don't work in one area, but they do another. Maybe multifamily work in one versus another. You just got to figure out what works in your neighborhood. Or they just have to, you know, like delay instant gratification and, you know, save a little bit more so that they've got the down payment or they can find partners and things like. that. I mean, you know, there's deals to be had in all sorts of markets, inexpensive and expensive, but it's how are you going to do it, right? Yeah, I hear that all the time for the Bay Area, right? People like, well, I live in the Bay Area, I can't invest. And my response is always the same. You're saying that there's no real estate investors in the Bay Area. There's nobody invested in real estate in in the entire Northern California. That's amazing. Like, of course there are. It's just there's a different way to do it. You just got to figure that out. Yeah, absolutely. What you might read about or the way that everybody else is doing it in Dallas is not going to work for you in California

or in Massachusetts. You have to adapt your style or your investment strategy to where you want to invest in. Yeah. Yeah. Which is actually one of the reasons why I love, I mean, I love being a co-host here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. And I love listening to episodes of like this podcast because, and I'm sure a lot of you guys can identify listening to this because like you hear how it works in Texas and Massachusetts and Bay Area and, you know, Minnesota, Washington, whatever.

Are you laughing at Josh that? I said Massachusetts. I struggled with that word, all right? I saw your face. Yeah, you're like, all right? It's a weird word. Come on. It's like saying rural.

You know, it's funny here in Texas, almost. Nobody can pronounce Massachusetts. Most people call it Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Wait, wait, how do you say it? How do you officially say it? Massachusetts. Massachusetts.

That's a word. That's good enough. There's a term that we in New York lovingly call the people from Massachusetts that I won't say because I'm about to lose another segment of our population. But most people do not fit that terminology. This is a good New York, Massachusetts robbery. But people from New York love Massachusetts and people from Mass. Love New York.

Just love to hate each other when it comes to sports. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. And I love the idea because we talk about this all the time, right? I mean, you know the market where, you know the market where. you are back home in mass, right? You know that market. You grew up in that market. You get it. You understand it fundamentally. And so, yeah, just because that's, you know, not right near where you are,

the one advantage that you go in with is market knowledge. And so we typically will say, hey, for newbies, try to stay close to home. But really, the reason for that is primarily that market knowledge. It's also proximity allows you to go and swing by and see it. So let me ask you about that. you've got a team on the ground that can be your eyes and ears, yeah? Yep, absolutely. Small team. I do have a team, though. Cool. And how did you put together that team? What does that consist? What does that look like? Who takes care of things for you when you're not there? So the people that are relying on the most right now, I loosely call them my property managers. They're actually tenants. They're still tenants in mine. And it didn't ever intend for them

to be property managers for me. It just started off as like, hey, can you replace a carpet for me? can you know the the wife does cleaning she does cleaning stuff on a sign i'm like can you clean this do this turnover for me can you clean this apartment and then slowly over time just they were very capable and good at that so i tried something else they're good at that too and just kind of grew over time that's how i got them you know and then as far as trades people plumbers electricians growing up an area i know a lot of people that i can just give a quick phone call too yeah yeah and they could take care of that stuff so that's i developed my team kind of organically just naturally over time, just kind of the way of our cup.

I love it. That's great. How many units are you up to total now over there? Hey, really quick, before you go there, Brandon, I just want to add a point because we do hear this a lot from, well, we hear about it on the forums a lot, and a lot of new investors will do it. They'll, you know, be like, oh, well, you know, the guy who lives in a unit seems like he's handy. I'll let him fix something in my property. And I just want to warn newbies, like, you know, you probably want to hire a, you know, look, what you're doing, worked out for you, but do they have insurance? Do they have, you know, are they bonded? I mean,

if something happens to these tenants while they're working on your property, you're in trouble, right? I can go into a little bit more detail for you, why I hired them in the first place. And no, that's fine. And I'd love to hear it. I just, I just want to kind of give this as a general warning to new people because, you know, people are going to hear it and be like, oh, okay, well, I've got, maybe I could find one of my tenants to fix something. I agree with you 100%. The only reason why I did it is because in Massachusetts, it's on a licensed contractor and I was insured.

So I could hire him as a subcontractor and cover him under my own insurance. Awesome. And I only hired them at first because I was actually in a bind, the guy that I was supposed to do for something that didn't show up. So I just, you just happen to mention it. So I call them. But you're absolutely right. If I didn't have the insurance and the other things,

I probably never would have gave them a chance. Yeah. And I wasn't trying to call you out. I just want people to be aware that, you know, there's a potentiality for getting themselves in trouble. Absolutely. It's a great tip. And plus, if they're your tenant, if the relationship ever breaks down, you're going to

probably end up having to evict a tenant. So you always have to worry about it. My lead contractor I had for probably five years was also my very first tenant I ever had. And he's the one that, uh... This is the one that burnt down the house. Yeah. Well, you know, he accidentally burned down the house when we had to evict him. And so I lost a tenant.

I lost my contractor and I lost my house all in the same day. It was fantastic. Ironically, as we talked to Eric here, that happened last year at FinCon. It did happen last year at FinCon. Yeah. So now it's been a year since then. But yeah, anyway, so I mean, I don't regret working with him over those years. But, I mean, he was a licensed bonded contractor as well.

And so I think there is value, you know, if you have a tenant going and doing like a random tenant, hey, can you go take care of this roof? You know, go sweep the roof off of stuff. He falls off breaks his leg. Now you're in for, you know, some serious trouble. Absolutely. It happens a lot. It does happen. Yeah.

So anyway, just be careful. out there, but there you go. All right. So how many units are you up to total now? I'm at 26 units. I just closed on five units last week, actually. Congratulations. That's awesome. So you're at 26 units and you started 2012. So it's about four years. You've kind of built up a pretty nice portfolio. Yep, that's about right. I bought my first one was in 2009, right at the end, three units that we lived in. But I didn't buy my next property until 2012. So there's a couple of year gap in there. Cool. Now, you may. mentioned earlier, like, you kind of off the cuff or whatever, something about not working for somebody

else anymore. Does that mean you don't have another job? Like, this supports you financially, like, like, 100%. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you achieved financial freedom through rental properties, which is, I mean, the goal of most of our listeners here. And you did that just by picking up just rental properties, small multifamily properties, manage them correctly, and just kind of grow in your portfolio. Absolutely. So I just, I was in real estate full time. I was buying property, working on some flips. I was doing some side stuff as a realtor, as a contractor, just trying to make some money, related to real estate, but not just on my investments. Right on. You're right. So the latest synergy. So I'm already doing one thing in real estate. Another thing just kind of makes sense.

I already know about it. So it's easy to make some money on it. And when I achieved financial dependence or financial freedom is actually, I was financially free before I realized it, but I was working so full time in my business and working on the properties and stuff that I was spending all my time doing it. When we moved to Texas and suddenly had to have somebody else manage everything for us is when I realized, I actually don't need to work. That's awesome. Hey. By moving is, even though we had already had the income necessary to be there, we didn't realize it until I was forced into it. Then that's when I said, we're free. We're financially free now. That's cool. That's cool. Hey, Brandon, there's a pretty nice place to live here in Denver.

Got a whole team set up and Podunk and, you know, come on out. Well, that is, I mean, the truth is, like, I've been building my business so that I can, you know, eventually, if I needed to move, I could move because I got, you know, people in place. And, you know, that I think that's important whether or not you plan to move or not try to systemize your business so that you could. So I think that's fantastic. And I'm assuming also, Eric, you're not living like, you know, in a million dollar mansion. I mean, maybe you are, but like you're probably living pretty fundamentally. I wish I was. Yeah.

But, I mean, like, you're living, you know, responsibly, I guess is the word there, right? The nice thing about Texas is I can live with a way better standard of living here than in Massachusetts. So I moved out of a house that we owned and we moved into an apartment complex in Texas when we moved from Mass to Texas. And the rent here is pretty cheap and the amenities are amazing. So we have a great lifestyle now for a fraction of what it costs in Massachusetts to do that. So we live better. Hold on, hold on, because I'm confused. You're a landlord, but you're renting?

Yeah, absolutely. Just because I love the area, that's all. That's awesome. I was not actually going to make a smart-ass remark. I think it's great. I mean, yeah, you're living off the problem. I mean, you got the income off of real estate. You know, if you'd rather rent than buy, then rent out.

Find the place that you want to be and do what you've got to do. Our dream right now, what we're trying to, what we're aiming for is we want to travel some. So my wife's Chinese, and we're planning on heading over to China for about six months next year. Nice. we want to travel around and be free to pick up and move and go somewhere for a few months and come back, especially our kids are very young. So, you know, owning a home and living in the home makes you a little bit more stuck to where you are. So, you know, four or five years from now, we'll probably buy another place and live in it.

Yeah. For now, though, we want to be, we want that freedom. Cool. That's awesome. Hey, so, you know, 26 deals, 26 units. You know, you started with 100 grand, which, you know, it's a large amount. amount of money for a lot of people. How did you get there? I mean, how did you parlay the first couple deals, you know, to the next deals and the next deals? How did you accumulate and work the

financial angle on the growth of your business? Right. So what I was doing at the time, it didn't even know it is you call it the Burr strategy now, right? Back then, I don't know if that term is even coined. That's what we call it Burr. So I, you know, so after the first flip that I didn't really earn anything on, I then went and bought a four unit. property, which is probably the best deal I've ever made in my whole life. And this is one of the reasons why I love Massachusetts. If I could digress for a second. They had it listed for about 150,000, but it had four deadbeat tenants.

One was a heroin addict. It was all the worst people you could imagine. But in an okay place, okay area, just it was mismanaged. And the landlord couldn't get them out. So they just sold it. I got it for $75,000. You know, I just came in. I evicted everybody.

and I turned around and making a ton of money off of it. So in these landlord-friendly states, those type of opportunities exist if you know how to deal with tenants. But anyway, so I paid cash for this property. Did a little bit of work, about $10,000 or $15,000 worth of work. And it appraised out at about $180.

So when I refi, I put like $30,000, $40,000 in my pocket, which then allowed me to go to my next property. It continued doing that. That is the power of the birth strategy, which stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, for those people. I've never heard that term before. Just the idea of those fixer-up or rentals.

And I did a webinar on that last week, actually, here on Bigger Pockets, or was it two weeks ago? Something like that. Anyway, we had like, I think 5,000 people total between the live webinar and then a few people in the replay, ended up watching that thing. It was just crazy popular topic. People love that. So if you're a pro member, you can go watch the replay of that because we have the pro replay

room. All the past webinars are there, biggerpockets.com slash pro replay. And if you're not a pro member, sign up at BiggerPockets. dot com slash pro or just go to biggerpockets.com slash webinar and you can listen to any of the upcoming webinars for free obviously. Yep. Yep. All the webinars are live and free to come watch live every single Wednesday. So good stuff. For the newbies. So I had a lot of cash from my deployment, but I've done it also when I was running multiple projects. You can do that with hard money as well. So if you borrow some hard money or private money, you can do the exact same thing. So you don't need a ton of money

in order to be able to do that strategy for the newbies out there. Awesome. It's true. That's true. Now, the danger with hard money, of course, I mean, I've done it as well. The danger is if you get a hard money lender who's like, you know what, I'm only going to give you six months on this loan. You know, sometimes it's not enough time to rehab it and then try to get a refinance and you can get some trouble. I just tell people, if you're going to use hard money, just make sure you got at least a year, you know, a loan with that.

And a lot of hard money lenders will do one year, some will even do two. And then give itself some room there. So, cool. with an option to extend sometimes they'll extend it for you. And I think the key really with the birth strategy, I mean, the biggest thing is finding the best deals you can. I mean, you really need to find a great deal

so you have room so you can build the equity. You got to find a good just as good of a deal as a house slipper does. You don't have to necessarily find better, but you've got to find a good deal just like a housewipper is going to do it. So let's shift and then talk about that. How are you finding these deals?

Are you MLS? Oh, nice transition, man. Thank you. You like that? I'm working more. So I just find deals mostly through MLS. I mean, I've had some one-off type, just other, you know, random stuff that came up. But most of it's through MLS.

And I really search for stuff that's mismarketed, where the realtor puts it incorrectly into MLS. And, you know, a couple examples of that. Like a single family house with the in-law apartment built onto it listed as a multi-year-old family instead of a single family, like those sorts of things. So that's kind of stuff I'm looking for, mismarketed. And what I really like buying is the properties that have tenant problems. And you can always tell the tenant problems when, you know, there's only one picture of the property. It's on the outside and there's none on the inside of the unit. That is such a good tip. Like I never even thought about that before, but it's true. I look for those as well because I just kind of assume on the MLS that

there's one picture, they couldn't or didn't go inside for some reason. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that tip. And in landlord-friendly states, the landlords probably want to get out of that property and they're willing to make a deal just to walk away from it. Well, let me ask you about that. So are you looking at any SFR? Are you looking at just any property that has one picture, usually the outside, that's your signal that there's a problem with the property, whether the property looks like crap and its owner-occupied or the property's got a bad tenant? Right. So in Massachusetts, I don't do any single family, so I'm never looking at a... Oh, that's right. That's right. My bad.

Only two families, two units and up. And most of the time, three, three units and up because two units don't always work out there. And, I mean, there's a lot of signals. So when you look at the MLS, you can see if there's information missing or incorrect somebody other signals. So it might say we have five bedrooms of one bathroom, but it's listed as a two unit. So clearly they're missing a bathroom on there somewhere. So, you know, there's some mistakes. And those mistakes pop up a lot when either they get converted from a single-futable.

family to a multifamily and no updates are made. So maybe there's a work that's done without permits. The listing agent can't get into the property, check anything and they just say screw it, put whatever comes up from the tax records. So there's a lot of little subtle things that you can look for. Nice. That's great. Great tip. Love that. Are you finding things, you said mostly MLS looking for the mismarketed and the tenant problems, but you also had intonated that you had other techniques. Are you doing any kind of mailing? Are you doing any kind of driving for dollars or finding these good deals in any other way? Now that I moved to Texas, I do have my property manager. They do send me some word of mouth stuff because they're really connected into the neighborhoods

that I'm looking in. So that's popped up. One of the most interesting things they ever did, though, is I became a state-appointed receiver for a property. For anybody who doesn't know what that is, when properties get foreclosed on or not foreclosed on, they get a base. and they fall into disrepair of the state can step in and put the property into receivership and force repairs upon the property. So I got I picked up one property that way. I've actually foreclosed against the bank and wiped them out of their position and took it. Really? Right. You foreclosed on, they explained that.

So what happened? By the way, for those of you listening, Eric's got a big old smile happening right now as he tells this story. This is the best deal ever. So, so in receivership, basically, at least in Massachusetts, I'm sure something similar happens in different markets, but the bank sends out foreclosure notices against these people. And this is the one single family that I own. The owners vacate the property because they know they're going to be foreclosed on, but the bank, for whatever reason, doesn't foreclose it on the property. And they leave it there

in their shadow inventory. So it's a property that's not foreclosed on, but not occupied. And as you guys know, it only takes a couple of years before they fall into complete and under disrepair. And you get one little leak in a roof and the property gets filled up with mold. So, I mean, the state steps in with the health code and says, you need to maintain this property up to the health code of our state. Either the owner does it, which won't because they left or the bank does it. Who won't do it because they don't own it yet.

So they appoint a person to go do these repairs and you get a super lean position on the property, which wipes out it's above everything except for taxes or city taxes. But funny enough, the bank. banks usually pay the city taxes before foreclosure. So I just wiped the bank out, took it from them, basically. Wow. So what did that look like from a financial standpoint? What were the numbers? Okay, so I put about $60,000 worth of work into a property and I foreclosed on it for just the cost of the work that I put into it. And it was worth it. It's worth about $140,000. I needed some structural work, which is one thing I specialize in. So I needed all new lolly columns and the house

needed to be jacked up a little bit in the middle. They had all rotted out of the supports. So does that. It needed the kitchen was falling apart. We need a whole new kitchen. The whole yard was overgrown. So like I had to get, you know, people in there to just like take out like weeds that became trees. Nice. I mean, it was pretty extensive. That's cool. That's awesome. It's unique. Yeah, nobody's ever talked about doing that way before. So. Yeah, that's cool. Sweet. Hey, one more thing, too, you just mentioned there, as part of your story, you said you specialize in foundation stuff or structural stuff.

You said you were a general contractor licensed in Massachusetts. Did I say that right? Massachusetts. Yeah, that's right. You were a GC there. I mean, is that what you, like, focus on? Are you just buying rentals or, I mean, properties with problems like that? How do you become a specialist in foundation issues?

That's a really good question. So I realized really early on, especially after I got my license as the GCC, that foundation stuff or not necessarily the foundation, but the supports underneath. That's really scary, but it's actually really cheap to fix. But you pay a lot to fix it because you need someone who is not scared to do the work. Yeah. I know that in my area, yeah, a bad foundation can, I mean, like, you can drop the price of a house 50 grand if it's sloping wrong. And they're not that complicated, but I have the same problem.

I can't find people to do the work because everyone's afraid of it. But I know that it's not that difficult because there's a few guys that just do it just fine. They'll do it in two days and make themselves 30 grand to do two days of work. And I'm like, are you serious? Like, I should get into that. Absolutely. So, like, if the house is sagging and the supports in the center are rotted out because in Massachusetts, we have a very old inventory.

A lot of houses are 100 years old plus. So, you know, it's not hard to jack the house out, make it pretty much level. And then tossing lollie columns, which costs under $100 each, you put six or seven of those. And the house is nice and straight and will last another 100 years. So for under $1,000, you can fix this house or this property, but you're going to save $25,000 off of the asking price for it. That's amazing. Bada Bing. All done.

Beautiful. Cool. All right. Well, let's, you know, I want to shift gears and head over to the world famous fire round here in a second. Before we do, I just want a last kind of follow up question. So you've got the fiveplex you just closed on, right? Do you mind if we just walk through just for a second, how you found it, how you fired it. how you financed it and kind of what the numbers kind of look like, just so people have an idea

of what you're doing nowadays? So this is a five-unit, a multifamily. It's mixed use. It's got one commercial space in the front. I picked it up for $132,000. The reason why it's so cheap and nobody would buy it, it was on the market for about six months, is because the previous landlord had, it was in the family for three generations. And the rents are about half of market rent.

And he refuses to raise rent. So on a five unit plus, it's the prices based off of the, you know, the cap rate in the rents you're getting and such. So it's basically worthless at those rents. And I know I'm going to double the rents. So I don't mind to purchase it even at $132,000. And so it probably needs about $20,000, $30,000 worth of work to get it to the level that I want it to be. And then I think when it's done and once I raise all the rents, it'll be worth about somewhere between $225 and $250. That's awesome.

And I'm assuming then you go refinance it at that point, put it in something long. term? Is that the goal? Right. So probably in a year from now. This one, I'm going to do it slowly because it is occupied right now. So I'm just going to do one unit at a time over the course of the next year. Sure. And it just raised one unit at a time. And then a year from now, I should be able to refinance, get my money out.

I love it. Nicely down. Sounds great. Good strategy, that burr. That burr. Yeah, I know. I came up with that. Yeah.

It's good stuff. Yeah, he invented it. I invented it. I invented it. I'm the guy that invented it. Yeah. Bigger pockets. invented the burst yet. No, no, no, there are no secrets. We invented nothing. Just put a name. We label things.

We're marketers. That's it. Right there. Just yesterday I was watching a P90X video or not P90. It was like some like beach body commercial infomercial because that's what I do when I'm bored. And so I'm watching this infomercial. And they were talking about like this thing called like, I don't know. It was some kind of workout thing like jump stacking or whatever they call it. I don't know. And I was like whatever they were showing was something that's been around for thousands of years. People have been doing the same thing. They put a new term. on it, marketed it all over the place, and now Beachbody invented this brand new exercise technique. And I'm like, but that's what good marketers do. So, when I was in college, just real quick, it's funny. The guy that was that ran a gym, and he was kind of like my personal trainer too. And it was back when CrossFit was starting to become really popular. And he's like, you know, this guy's like 50 years old, 55 years old, the most in-shaped person I've ever met him all life.

He's like, I remember when CrossFit just used to be called exercise. CrossFit is another perfect example. Yeah, it's really good marketing. They know the label things. Very cool. Awesome. All right, well, cool. Yeah, let's shift gears here and head over to the world famous Fire Round.

It's time for the Fire Round. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered.

Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's NR-E-I-G.com slash BP pod. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while

or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins.

If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist,

like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there. Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations. So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way

to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip. Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memories somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there. Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so easy.

If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations. So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip.

Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memories somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com. slash host. All right, let's get to these fire round questions. Of course, the fire round for those people unaware are questions that come directly from the bigger pockets forums. These are free real estate forums, the largest real estate forum online. You can go jump in and ask questions all the time. And guys like Eric are in there answering your questions. So we're going to fire a few of them at you,

Eric. Number one. Biggerpockets.com slash forums. Thank you, Josh. You can get to them. There are thousands of new posts a day on the forums. and it's amazing. So let's get to that first question now, Brandon. All right. There's a question. I really like this. We've asked this a few times on the fire on because people ask it a lot in the forums.

The market seems pretty high. Should I be adjusting my strategy for a potential like collapse? I think the official words they used was should I be adjusting my strategy now because of the economic forecast. What do you think? I don't know what other people should do, but I can tell you that I am doing that. So this particular property, I've probably said, spent five or six months before I really jumped into this. I mean, I was looking at properties for about that period of time. Normally it doesn't take me that long to find it. I wanted to find

something that was about 50% under market value because I think if there is going to be a correction of 10 or 20% in the next year or two, I don't know the numbers, but if it was 20%, I'm still positive after raising the value. So it was really hard for me to find this particular deal. And that's I'm hedging myself for the next year too. Nice. Right on. And if you did know, you would obviously tell us all what's going to happen, right? Absolutely. If I had that sort of insight, I would. We're just short the market when it happens.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Next question in the fire round. I have an 11-year-old water heater servicing 20 units. There are no problems currently, but I would just rather not have it go out on a Friday night or Saturday night. So the question is, do you schedule just... change out on water heaters where do you just wait till they die? I love this question. That's a great question. I do not schedule water heaters, but I do save for them just for when they do go.

Okay. Got it. On that particular thing, I just, you know, because there's been times where a water heater supposed to last five years. Yeah. And it goes for nine years. If I had, I would go through two water heaters in the time that I, you know, so I can save that money and put it towards other things.

So it's, you know, but then again, it is 20 units. So maybe you don't want 20 angry tenants at the same time. That's true. Fair point. Fair point. All right. Number three, I'm looking for a mentor to teach me how to invest. How do I find one?

How do you find a mentor? So I found a mentor. I actually had a family member who does real estate. So I started with her. And then also real estate investor meetings. I find that a lot of real estate investors are pretty open with the information they have and are very willing to teach you a lot of what they know, you know, just by going to those sorts of meetings.

And almost every city has, you know, real estate investor meetings. So that's where I will start. Nice, nice. And you could find meetings like that and others at biggerpockets.com slash events. That's biggerpockets.com slash events. We've got tons of events put on by our local folks around the country. So last question on the fire round. Brandon gets these really short ones.

I get paragraphs. I like to hear you read. Yes. Well, I'm writing out. We should have you record the audiobook for the ultimate beginner's guide to real estate investing. This is a fantastic idea. Are you calling me out? I'm calling you all publicly.

Yeah, because we might have that on Audible. I mean, it's a free book. People can download at BiggerPockets.com slash UBG, but why not have an audible version of it? Read by Josh Dorkin. If you guys want Josh to do that, tweet Josh at J.R. Dorkin at Twitter, at J.R. Dorkin, and let him know you want to hear him

and his sexy voice reading the E.G. You guys hold on while I send that tweet out real quick. You do realize that I'm still getting knock-knock tweets from like podcast 7 or something. Brandon tell people to tweet me knock, knock. We should start that back up again. You guys, if you guys want to tweet at J.R. Dorkin, just tweet them knock, knock. Also, that's good.

All right. And if you want to tweet Brandon Turner, just tweet Brandon at BP. It's Brandon ATBP and tell them to stop picking on me, would you? All right. Just so Eric's not left out. Eric, what's your Twitter? It's at Eric J. Bolin. All right.

At Eric J. Bolin. Yeah, tell Eric what an awesome guy he is. There you go. All right, last question. I don't know what you said. I'm not listening. All right, last question. We're done.

Let me finish this. Finish it. All right, here we go. I'm renting out the second half of the duplex I just bought to House Hack. I have a great prospect, a business guy who's moving to Chicago, but he only wants it for nine months. Do you think it's worth it to accept him and find a new tenant in nine months, or should I keep looking for a longer term tenants? There's a couple variables. So it depends on your financial situation, how bad you need the cash flow right now.

So I would evaluate that first. I need the cash right now or no, can I wait? So that's the first thing. And the second thing is a lot of landlords will raise the rents if you do short-term leases. So if it's nine months, you could say, all right, you do nine months, but it's going to go up 75 or 100 or whatever dollars. So I'm going to lose a month's rent in nine months and have to get another person. But I can make up some of that or all of that by just going ahead and renting it to you at a higher rate. There you go.

There you go. All right, that wraps up our fire round questions. And, of course, if you have more questions for guys like Eric, jump into the forums, biggerpockets.com, says, forums. So now, let's finish this thing up with the world famous. Famous for. All right, these four questions are the same four questions. We've been asking for almost 200 shows. And we're going to throw them at you now, Eric.

So number one, what is your favorite real estate related book? All right. Well, I know everybody says it, but it's rich. poor dad. So moving on. That book literally changed my life. But for a real real estate book, I have this one. I've had it since 2009.

It's called The Successful Landlord. It's called something else. There's a whole line crossed out there, and it says something else there on. I won't say it over the air. That's right. So it's not a book that you buy. It's Massachusetts only, but it goes through all the landlord laws in this state. and, you know, I did cross out the word successful and I changed it with something because I realized at the beginning that in order to be successful as a landlord, I'd have to be an A-hole.

So, all right. Nice. You kind of do. There you go. There you go. I believe that everybody should get their state or municipality-specific book if it exists and know it inside of now. I love that. Love that tip.

Good job. Good job. All right. Well, speaking of the, you know, books. Speaking of favorite real estate books, why don't we talk about our favorite business business. business books. Absolutely. My favorite business book, I have that here, too. The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy.

I do love that book. That is a fantastic book. So I only remember one thing in the whole book, and that sticks with me. He said in it that a person only earns plus or minus 10% of what they think they're worth. I love that. That was one of the most transformational things in that entire book. Why don't you repeat that so everybody can hear it? Absolutely.

So what he said is that a person only earns plus or minus 10% of what? what they think they're worth. Yeah. When I read that, that changed my life. But then he goes on further. There's one more thing he adds on to that. He says, and what you think you're worth is typically what your father made when you grew up.

And that, like, blew my mind because I realized that is what I thought I was worth. My dad made a certain amount growing up. That's the benchmark that I set for myself. And, yeah, mind blown when I read that. That is a great quote. Yeah. Psychologist. If you want to earn more, you've got to feel like you work more.

Yep. And so you've got to change your own mindset first. Yeah. It is not true what they say about you. It's not. All right. Next question. What do you do for fun, Eric?

The thing that I like to do the most is traveling. I touched upon a little bit. I've been a lot of places in a world. And that's real estate opens up that. I get to travel two, three times a year. And I usually go for three or four weeks at a time. So that's what I love to do. Awesome.

Very good. Very good. Cool. All right. My last question of the day. Eric, from all those who give up, fail, or never get started. I think planning sets the successful or those who start from those who don't for a couple

of reasons because a lot of people don't get started in real estate because they're afraid. They're afraid to lose money. They're afraid that they don't know what they're doing. And that's where our plan comes in. So if you have a solid plan walking into it, if you know what the risk are, you know what the dangers are. But if you have a plan to mitigate those risks and mitigate those dangers, then you can overcome that fear and get started.

The people who fail, aside from major market corrections and changes like that, planning will help you make sure that you have enough money, cash reserves. You know, you're doing a maintenance as necessary and such to not fail and so that you can continue to succeed. Awesome. Very good. All right, Eric, before we let you go, man, where can people find out more about you? Yeah, so you can find more about me on my website, Eric Boland.com, B-W-L-I-N, Eric Boland. I have my own blog there and I talk about real estate and financial independence. Cool. And you also, you do blog on the Bigger Pockets blog occasionally. Is that correct?

Yes, I am now a contributor on the Bigger Pockets blog. Just put my first article out this month, actually. That was the one on contractors, right? That's right. Four reasons why you can't find a good contractor. Yeah, fantastic. People love that article. It was great. Yeah. So. Cool. Well, we'll link to that in the show notes at biggerpockets.com. So show 198. And you can also jump in there on the comments, ask Eric questions, talk to them there. see the summary of the show, including the YouTube video, will be there as well.

Perfect. All right, Eric. Well, listen, man, thanks so much for coming on the show. We really do appreciate it. Lots of luck to you as you continue to go forward. And congrats on all the success you've had so far. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

I really enjoyed it. Yeah, this was fun. See you around. Yep. Take care, man. All right. All right, guys, that was Eric Bolin. Big thanks again to Eric.

That was great, man. I love it. Yeah, I really like Eric a lot. I like his story. I like the fact that he's out there, like, getting, you know, collecting units, getting that passive income coming through enough to quit his job, travel the world. I also, I do like his philosophy quite a bit on, you know, it's not, you don't have to buy a house. In fact, just now during this podcast, a friend of mine texted me and said, hey, I want to, I want to buy a house. He lives in Southern California.

I said, how do I buy a house down here in Southern California? You have any tips for me? And, like, my tip back to him is just rent, rent a place. Go buy something elsewhere if you really want to buy something. There's nothing wrong with, with, I mean, there's some good ways to do it in a low, a high. high market like that, but I think Eric's got a very good philosophy there, you know. I agree. Do what you got to do to enjoy your life?

I just love these stories. I mean, the podcast is so much fun because we just hear these different pathways that everyone takes. And I think that is one of the things that makes Bigger Pocket so special, at least for me, is, you know, all these kind of gurus and trainers and all these guys who know everything, you're like, here's my method, here's what you got to do. And what we hear from every single person that we talk to is they've got their own path. They've got their own method.

They've got their own strategy. And they create what works for them. What works for them isn't necessarily going to work for me or for you. And so that's why we harp on this so much is you've got to figure out what works for you. You've got to find the path that works for you. Where you are in your age, in your job, in your financial situation, you name it. And you know, you may not know the right path. right away, but you got to get out there and try, you know? And that's the big difference

that is between the guy who's actually doing it and the guy who's not is the guy who's doing it took that chance. He did it, right? He's like, I'm going to take a leap of faith and this is the path I'm going to take on that first unit and go for it. I mean, it's a leap of faith. It really is. Yeah, I totally agree. But it's nice to hear stories of guys that are doing it. Yeah, for sure. Cool, man. Well, listen, this has been fun. Hopefully I will not be recording out of my house again. For those you watching the video, you saw me disappearing a few times. I got people ringing the doorbell.

I got dogs barking. I got kids screaming. I got all sorts of stuff happening. I love recording at the office. It's great. It's great. Cool, man. Well, good times. Looking forward to it, man, we're down to the final two. Well, not the final two, but we're

almost at 200. So we're getting there. We got a cool show plan for number 200 of you guys. So stick around for that. And if it's out already, go listen to it right after this episode comes up. Go listen to it. We're going to have some fun on it. All right, guys.

Well, thanks for listening to the podcast. Definitely jump on BiggerPockets.com. Create your free account today. And we will see you next time. With that, I'm your host, Josh Dorkin. Sign in all. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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I have, uh, Brooklyn, shut up. That would be my dog. That is my dog in, in the closet, like going crazy while we're trying to record. And yeah, I'm like an abusive dad, apparently. Yeah. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicokech, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.w.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.