BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - $65,000/Year in Cash Flow From a 100% Remote Real Estate Portfolio
Episode Date: August 31, 2026In just under six years, Bryan Field built a 100% remote real estate investment portfolio producing over $65,000 per year in cash flow. He bought properties sight unseen, chose markets that made the m...ost money, and routinely reinvested his home equity. He started with zero real estate experience, and his first real investment went way over budget, but he bounced back and has already replaced a sizable chunk of his salary. Stuck in San Diego, Bryan knew he wanted to invest, but not in the million-dollar houses around him. The best bet? Move to a cheaper market (Arizona), buy a home, and try to invest there. A HELOC-funded house flip with a friend turned into a six-figure renovation, but they both walked away unscathed. After returning to San Diego with his newborn son, Bryan was determined to invest somewhere affordable, scalable, and profitable. Over the next few years, Bryan bought duplexes in South Dakota, seller-financed portfolios in Arkansas, and short-term rentals in Virginia. He used equity to make down payments, moved markets when he found better deals, and now makes over $5,000/month on his rentals alone, living in Southern California and investing from thousands of miles away. Priced out of your market? Feel like you’re boxed out of investing? If you’ve got a laptop, a phone, and some starting capital, you can repeat Bryan’s process! In This Episode We Cover How to use home equity (via a HELOC) to buy your first investment property Choosing a market with the best cash flow potential (and tenant pool) How to find seller-financeable rental property deals even in a market you’re brand new to Buying investment properties sight unseen confidently when you’re hundreds or thousands of miles away The creative investment Bryan made that is not a rental property but is in real estate And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1324. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You can build a salary replacing rental portfolio all from your computer.
That's what Brian Field did, buying rental properties throughout the United States
in markets that made the most cash flow.
His portfolio of less than 10 rentals produces over $65,000 per year in pure profit,
and he never even saw most of his properties before he bought him.
Brian wanted something that could help replace his 9-to-5 job in the healthcare industry,
but buying rentals in San Diego was not going to come.
at it when the average home price is a million dollars. So he went where the deals made sense.
Arizona, South Dakota, Arkansas, Virginia. He's done long-term rentals, short-term rentals,
and even seller financing to buy six units with just $53,000 in cash. The best part, he did it all
while working from home. The key to his income-producing rental property portfolio, a type of
financing that many homeowners in America have access to right now. Let's hear all about that
and more as we jump right in.
What's going on, everybody? I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
And today's guest is investor Brian Field from San Diego. Let's bring him on.
Mr. Brian Field, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Thanks, Henry. Good to see you. Happy to be here, man.
Why don't you give us some background? Tell us what you were doing before you got into real estate.
Yeah, before real estate, I've had a pretty lengthy career in healthcare staffing,
so placing travel nurses across the country. And so I've had probably about a 10-year
career with two or three different companies doing that. And it's certainly gotten me in a position
to be able to buy real estate and jump that, make that leap. Is that how you got exposure to
real estate investing, like placing travel nurses and other people's investments? Or was there
something else that kind of gave you the bug? The bug was wanting to get out of the general
nine to five workhorse and, you know, find alternative investments, avenues, things to get me out of
W-2 income and corporate employment. So I stumbled across bigger pockets, you know, on online rabbit
holes and found an interest for real estate. And so I started my learning journey, all the
podcast books, et cetera, while I was still working there. And then once I started investing,
I was like, I put two and two together. Like, hey, maybe this travel nursing could be a good
niche for what I'm doing. What year was it when you started like learning and research?
2017, 2018, and a couple years down the road, we bought a primary house and used that to fund everything
else that we've got. Did you buy that primary with investing in mind? Did you plan on it
always being an investment down the road or did it just happen that way? Well, the story with that
was my wife and I were living in San Diego, priced out of the market based on what we were earning.
We had some friends in Arizona, so talking to him about, hey, I'm interested in real estate investing.
You're interested in real estate investing.
We could work remote with our W2 jobs.
So we actually were like, let's go plant roots there.
Let's buy a primary house.
And then from there, we can sort of pick our neighborhoods and work with our friend out there to flip houses, buy rentals.
So we ended up buying that primary to go out there purposefully for real estate investing.
Tell us about the numbers on that.
what that first primary look like. Yeah, so we bought it for $3.95. We had been making offers really
sight unseen from San Diego with a realtor. People were waiving all the contingencies, all cash.
We were up against a lot, but we managed to find one. So we bought it for $3.95. We waived appraisal
and inspection. And yeah, it was a nice starter home, three bed, two bath, $1,800 square feet.
1990 build, so pretty good shape. You know, it's interesting hearing.
stories like this because, man, you essentially uprooted your life, moved to a different state,
bought a house almost sight unseen. You never saw it in person. You saw pictures and videos.
And you did it all with real estate investing in mind. So once you got to your house and you got
settled, how long did it take you before you actually bought a actual investment?
It took about a year of us being there before we bought our first investment. So while we had that
whole year to save up our cash. We were also in this incredible equity ride that the Arizona
Phoenix market saw. So our house a year later praised for 550. So my wife and I and our friend and
his wife, we both pulled out Helox on our primary residence. At the time, we could do like 90 or
95 percent of the value. So we had these massive, each of us had like 100,000 in Heloc.
funds that we could access. And so with that, we combined forces and we bought a flip.
Awesome. Yeah. So tell us about that deal. What did you pay for it? What did you have to put into it?
Yeah. So we bought it for 345. It was on the other side of Phoenix in a little town called Sun City.
So while we were investing in our own backyard, it was still an hour away from us. We did a full gut renovation.
we turned an office into a bedroom, new flooring, new kitchen, new bathrooms, picked out all the tiles. All in all,
we probably spent 130,000 in renovation and holding costs. So it was a pretty big one.
Where there problems or mishaps that popped up that really taught you something along the way,
because that's a big renovation for a new investor. Yeah, I think there were certainly some missteps,
right? So one thing that comes to mind is the idea we had versus the idea the contractor had.
We wanted to be very hands on and choose all of our finishes and pick out the color coordination of how everything looked.
And our contractor was builder grade was going to do very basic, basic, basic.
And so when we started getting into change orders, that's when we started budding heads.
and we didn't expect to have any change orders.
We thought, okay, here's the price that he quoted us,
and we could go pick within that price,
and that just didn't turn out to be the case at all.
So lesson learned to make sure that you find a contractor
and that you guys are both an understanding
of the type of work that you're going to be doing.
So, yeah, lesson learned there,
but certainly a fun one to go for our first deal.
135.
So I assume that's not what you originally,
budgeted. Did you go over budget because of the change orders or did you end up pretty close?
Oh, we went way over budget. We were probably in the 75, 80,000 range.
Okay. Renovation probably ended around 90 to 100 and then the extra holding costs,
utilities, things like that. So definitely went way over what we had envisioned.
Kind of what you're talking about with the managing the expectations with the contractor.
Like honestly, that's, you know, a simple communication issue. We make a lot of assumptions as investors
and contractors also make assumptions.
And so I think the more open communication that investors can have with their contractors
on the front end, the better you're going to be.
Usually when I work with a new contractor, those are a lot of things that we're talking
about on the front end.
As they're giving me a bid, I expect and tell them, hey, I need you to tell me what your
assumptions are with this bid.
Is this bid assuming we're using a certain type of?
flooring or a certain type of tile, is there a variance for me to change it? And when I do the scope of
work, it might say LVP flooring. And then at the end of that, I'll put who's responsible for picking the
materials, right? So we say it on, so I'll put my name, LVP flooring, Henry. That means I'm going to
pick the flooring. And so I can at least have a budget to go pick what I want based on that bid.
So that way I know if I pick something that's more expensive, then my bid is going up from the
beginning. But man, it's saved me a lot of time and effort, just putting the who's responsible for
making the selection. Because, yes, I want to pick what style floors we use. I don't want to pick
the drywall we use, right? Like, I need you to go pick that, right? So having that conversation on the
front side really helps clear a lot of those things up. All right, those are great lessons to learn
on a first deal, because you got to remember your first deal isn't just about profitability.
Your first deal is about learning how to do this business. So you paid three, four,
You ended up at about 130 on the renovation. What'd you sell for? Just under 500 at 497.
And if my math is right, it shows that you were profitable, maybe not hugely profitable, but profitable. So what were you able to walk away with, net profit?
It was around 25,000 split between my partner and I, and we just kept it and sat on it and we're hoping to roll it into another deal.
All right. First flip, I'm going to call it a success, man. Made a little bit of money, learned a whole lot because that's a big renovation.
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All right, we are back on the Bigger Pockets podcast with investor Brian Field, who just told us about his successful first flip with a pretty hefty renovation price tag.
But you made money, you learned a lot along the way.
So I'm assuming you wanted to repeat that process.
But what actually happened next?
Yeah.
So as life happens, my wife and I had our son and we ended up going back to San Diego,
where we were still priced out of the market.
So the good news is we ended up renting out that primary.
So we technically had our first rental after the flip.
And we were cash flowing like 750 bucks because we had that interest rate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So and rents were skyrocketing because people were, you know, not able to buy house.
houses because of all the competition. So move back to San Diego, had a rental in Arizona,
and our course of action sort of led us to out of state where we could buy some more cash
flowing assets at a little bit lower of our price points. And so we started researching where to
buy and ended up getting our next couple of rentals that way. What went into your evaluation
of markets to consider to even invest out of state? Because I guarantee you there's people listening
right now who are in San Diego who want to invest out of state and are not quite sure where to
start. So this is going to tie back into my corporate W2 job in healthcare staffing. So COVID was wild.
We were working with hospitals across the country. I could see all the travel nurses going to
all these different places. My wife also worked in the industry. And so that's what fueled our
market exploration was where are we sending nurses and kind of the aha moment for.
For us, my wife had this account, a hospital in South Dakota.
She was booking a lot of nurses there, and they were canceling because they couldn't find housing.
So a light bulb went off.
We started researching, you know, how can we invest in this market to provide housing for nurses that don't cancel and they can go serve the patients and be a win-win, right?
So that's how we got into the exploration of the different markets was where,
where are the nurses going outside of California and more of the affordable markets?
First of all, that's really cool. It's really smart thing to do because you're leveraging your
expertise to try to pick a market. And in terms of affordability, what did that mean to you?
Like, what did a property cost in that market? Yeah, so we bought our first duplex there,
$130,000. $130,000? Is that like a duplex that needed a ton of work? Or is that like a duplex that's
turnkey. It could have been lived in right away, but we renovated it. And we actually did a partial
burr. So it worked out in our favor. And, you know, I think 1.30, what did we put into it?
Another 30 or 40,000 and just the flooring, kitchens, paints, fixtures, a lot of the basic stuff.
Yeah. And then we reappraised for hire, took out some cash and ended up renting it out.
Sounds good.
Like buy something for 130, spend 30 on a renovation and then rent it out.
But you didn't live there.
So what was the process like of even finding contractors and managing a renovation from that far away?
Yeah.
So I've always been about referrals, right?
So I naturally, when you're looking for investment properties, I'm on Zillow, right?
And I'm looking at places.
And I'm thinking the numbers, right, look okay.
but I'm not sure.
And so I just called a couple different real estate brokers,
started telling my story, telling them what I wanted to do,
narrowed it down to one or two brokers
and had them both looking for deals for me.
And they helped it pencil and make sense.
And so from there, that person also ended up having a property management leg.
And then they had a ton of different contractors.
So really it was the broker agent that referred us to everyone we needed out there.
So you paid,
130. You put about 30, 35 in it. So you're all in 160, 165. What kind of rent were you getting out of this
thing? So they were both two bed, one bath, and we got about 900 a unit for those. So 1800.
That's a solid deal, man. It's a solid cash flowing deal. Now, you place travel nurses. Did you not
want to do a furnished rental in this? So this was the caveat that we learned after doing the renovation.
the realtor investor realtor was like, you know, you could get really good rents for this
completed unit for a long-term tenant.
And you don't have to do the management headaches of every month or three months turning over a new
tenant.
And you don't have to buy the furniture.
So we were like, oh, we were super happy and excited to place travel nurses, but it just
penciled out more for us to do long-term tenants at that time after the renovations.
And it was, you know, hands off.
She was going to be the property manager.
So we just ended up taking that route.
And it was probably for the better, too, that we didn't have to invest the extra in the furniture and all that.
I like that.
I like that you evaluated it.
After you bought it, you didn't just throw furniture in there and hope for the best.
You said, hey, long-term tenants, I'm going to get good enough rent.
Your cash phone.
That's awesome, man.
Great deal.
And way to pull off an out-of-state renovation while you're living in San Diego with a wife and a new baby.
That's impressive on its own.
So what did you do next?
Did you keep buying in South Dakota?
Or did you move to somewhere else and buy somewhere else again?
Yeah, I think I took a chapter out of your playbook, Henry.
And I've listened to you guys for so long.
I know you're in Arkansas.
I had been listening.
I started looking in Arkansas.
Your Fayetteville market was a little bit overpriced for me.
It's expensive.
It's getting more expensive.
I got to shut up.
I keep talking about it.
prices keep going up. Yeah, you had mentioned, though, I think it was one of your podcasts about
sleeper markets and you guys kind of pull data and you had mentioned Jonesboro, Arkansas.
You actually led me to invest in Jonesboro, Arkansas. All right. So let's hear it. Jonesboro,
Arkansas. What did you end up looking for? And then what did you end up actually buying?
I was looking for small multifamily. And I was specifically trying to get seller finance deals.
at this time.
Okay.
I wanted to use a combination of our helock and, you know, seller financing because interest
rates were at this time back up to the six, six and seven percent, I believe.
Yep.
So nothing was penciling super great via traditional financing or DSCR even.
So I made a ton of calls.
I was cold calling owners of buildings via LLC search online.
I was Google mapping buildings that I saw.
multifamily and finding out their LLC and calling them and saying, hey, I'm looking to invest.
I was wondering if you had anything you're potentially trying to offload. And after a couple
hundred calls, I found an agent investor who was willing to sell or finance me some of her
properties. So that's exactly what happened next for us. So that's super cool, man. I love that you
picked up the phone and you made calls and you landed something. So talk us through.
what that deal looked like that you landed. Yeah, so luckily an investor-friendly agent who owned
many of her own properties. And so she had some stuff that she was trying to offload so that she could
move on to her next project. And she helped package a few properties that she was willing to get
rid of. We discussed seller financing pretty early on. Since she was an agent, it made it easy for me
to be like, well, I'm looking for this, this and this. And she was like, oh, we do seller financing
all the time. So she packaged a couple of the properties together. It ended up being three single
family houses and a triplex. It was about $53,000 down. So it makes the property values
all together, $530,000.
Did you go out there and look at these properties?
Like, because this is a market you've never been to, right?
It's not even a place you have ties to.
So what, like, how did that process work?
I did not go out there.
I think what put me a little bit more at ease was that this person was also an agent.
And so there's a bit of that like trust that kind of has to come with being an agent.
And I don't know if you'd call that a fiduciary or whatever, but right, there has to be some level of trust with.
that person, they're an agent, their license could be at risk, et cetera. So I trusted, and I got
videos and pictures, and I did inspections on all the houses. After everything came back, I felt
comfortable. We were mostly occupied at that time, too, with tenants in place. So I was cash flowing
day one as well. So it all just worked out that way, but not a whole lot of negotiating back and
fourth. She had a good term sheet. I adjusted it a little bit and we met in the middle and again,
10% down. Our interest rate was about 5%. And we were cash flowing a couple hundred dollars a door for that too.
What did your debt service or your monthly payment end up being? And then what were you bringing in
monthly? So we were gross in about $3,800 total between all those units. And then my monthly mortgage was
about 1900 that included taxes and insurance. Awesome. Yeah, so we were we were cash flowing after
saving for reserves and maintenance and everything about, you know, a little over $12, $1,300 a month
on that deal. Sounds like a great owner finance situation. If you want owner finance folks,
Brian just gave you a formula. Coal call high equity owners and just talk to them. If you do it
over and over again and you start building some rapport with the people you're on the phone with,
you might land yourself with a deal. That's awesome, Brian. So this is what? The third market,
you've got a formula that's working. You just repeated this process again in Arkansas, right?
I mean, yes and no. So we did buy another duplex that we did Burr in Arkansas. Okay. Okay.
So that one, you know, we bought it under value. We did put another 30, 40,000 into that and then did a cash out refi. So that brings our total in Arkansas up to seven units. Okay. So purchase price was what? We bought it for 115. It initially appraised for 135. So we had equity on the purchase. Okay. So you're all in, again, similar to your very first deal, 165. And then you refinanced. What did it appraised for when you went to do the refy?
207. Okay. So you're able to pull out a good chunk of your money and do a traditional
bird deal. We pulled out probably just over our renovation cost out. So we still had a couple
thousand left in the deal, which was equivalent to our down payment. Great bird. All right. So I've got
questions on why you decided to shift to a new market once again. But I want to talk about that
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see the Bitcoin disclosures at Cash app slash legal slash podcast. All right, we are back on the
Bigger Pockets podcast with investor Brian Field, who lives in San Diego, decided to invest in Arizona,
did a flip, went back to San Diego, picked an out-of-state market, why not South Dakota, did some deals in South Dakota, and then decided, you know what, Arkansas sounds awesome, did some deals in Arkansas, and after you successfully pulled off a couple of deals in Arkansas, you thought, you know what, let's change it all up again. So what did you do next? I was doing everything I could to help my wife retire from her job. And, you know, it made sense for us.
to keep those properties, but look into a higher cash flow play, short-term rentals,
everybody knows what those can do. And we found a new market and invested two short-term
rentals in Norfolk, Virginia. How did you end up with Norfolk, Virginia, as your destination
for short-term rentals? I took a look at my living situation in San Diego and said,
what coastal markets are like San Diego, but don't have the same house price tags.
So I started looking everywhere from Florida all the way up the East Coast.
And I learned through that exploration that Norfolk has the largest Navy base, I believe, in the world.
They sure do.
And I learned that Norfolk had prices in the low 300s.
And so that made the cash flow light bulb just tick off in my.
brain. I did some research, air DNA numbers, pulling out just random addresses that were listed for sale
with this pencil, with this pencil, and things were cash flowing really, really well. So I just
decided to make the move there. All right. So tell us about the first deal you bought in Norfolk.
We had a opportunity to buy a single family house, turnkey, fully renovated. And it had our
been operating as a short-term rental. We hired an interior designer to actually go in and we put
wallpaper up. We did some cool artwork and things like that and really revamped the inside, but leaving
like the core furniture inside. Yeah. And so we bought that for a 325. I used a straight DSCR loan on that.
And it's cash flowing net, about 25,000 a year. So almost 2,000 a month with some seasonality.
Man, that is phenomenal.
What a great short-term rental deal.
And you still got it.
It's still operating and it's still killing it.
We bought one more, the same exact style as that house.
Same price range, turnkey, not furnished, but we went in furnished it.
And then, you know, now we've got two identical within a mile going on short-term rentals out there in Norfolk.
All right, man.
Brian, this is a really cool story.
I love that you definitely aren't afraid to take a very educated risk.
Sounds like you've been great at doing your homework in selecting markets.
Sounds like you've been great in building out-of-state teams, managing renovations out-of-state.
These are all things that people who want to get into real estate investing think about that scare them away.
And I love that you have executed these things and executed them successfully.
this is all something that anyone can do with the tools and resources that are available
out there for us right now, especially now that we have AI that can even help us even further.
So tell us what's next.
Are you going to continue to grow and expand in any one of these markets?
Or have you done something else?
We actually did make a very big pivot, but a parallel one to say the least.
Okay.
So being born and raised in San Diego still somewhat.
priced out of the market because all of my investments are, you know, out of state and back down to
almost no cash reserves or savings. I started looking into small businesses, but I wanted to stay in
the real estate niche. I found a home inspection company here in San Diego that was for sale.
And that's what was next for us is we recently on New Year's Eve of this year closed on a home
inspection company locally here in town. So now I'm the owner and operator of a small business that
is in the real estate niche. Man, that is really cool. Congratulations on that new business venture.
Congratulations on the success you're already having in that new business venture. I do have one last
topic that I want to cover with you about your real estate business before we get out of here.
But before we jump into that, can you give us a recap of your overall portfolio?
Leo, how many units do you have where are they situated?
So right now, we stand at seven long-term rental units.
All of those are in Arkansas.
So we have sold the Arizona single family that was rented at one point.
That was where my HELOC also was.
And we sold that Aberdeen duplex to help fund this business and some of those short-term rentals.
So right now, the total unit mix is seven units.
in Arkansas and two units, the two short-term rentals in Virginia.
And as a practice, would you say you like being diversified across multiple markets,
or would you recommend people stay in one market?
We feel super comfortable and stabilized right now.
So the short-term rentals have their peak seasons.
The long-term rentals are kind of the buffer when the short-term rentals have a slower season.
And it's nice to be in a couple different markets.
I would have loved to have held the other parts.
properties. But for us, repositioning and harvesting what was available to us was something that we
took advantage of to get into the business. And I think it's nice to have some diversity, absolutely.
Do you have a total cash flow that your portfolio is producing or it may be broken out by long
term and short term? Yeah. So the two short terms, the big ones are about $50,000 a year net.
So each of those is about 2,000 a month on average.
And then the long-term rentals per month cumulatively on those seven units is about 1,400 a month.
Man, that's awesome.
That's a great, just solid cash flowing real estate portfolio.
The one thing I wanted to circle back on was this tool that you used.
It really sounded like it kind of started everything, which was this line of credit that you had access to.
What do you say to those people who maybe have that as an option or considering that as
option. I would absolutely 100% redo what I did by leveraging my helock with one condition. And everyone
really needs to understand this. If you are not paying down that helock, whether it's your
burr money that's recycling back in and or your W2 job or some other type of income, if you keep
racking up on that helock, you will never get out of it. So if you're going to do it, you need to have
means to pay it back. So for us, the strategy was burr. We took out cash from those refinances. We put it back
into the HELOC to pay it back down. But we didn't have it fully paid down ever. So we also ruled in
our excess W-2 income to help pay it down as well. So that would be my one piece of advice if someone
was going to use a HELOC is to make sure that you have means to pay it down. Realistically,
the smartest way is to flip, pay 100% of it back. If you're burying and you're not paying 100% of it
back, you still need to have maybe, you know, rule in that cash flow or other means of income to make it
paid off. I like the idea of leveraging a HELOC to help you get started investing in real estate.
Conceptually, I think it works. Where people screw up is they don't do enough research about what types of
deals to buy and they go out and they buy a bad deal. If you aren't comfortable enough with the
market that you're investing in to know what a good deal looks like, don't touch your HELOC to buy a deal
because if you buy a bad deal with your HELOC, now you've got to lose money on that deal
and you have to focus on paying back a HELOC. And if you leverage your personal house for that
Helock, you're putting your personal home, your family in jeopardy. So you've got to buy good deals.
But if you can buy a good deal, I think that Helock is a good strategy. And you've got to have
discipline to be able to pay it back. But if you don't have the fundamentals down yet,
I'd encourage you to stay away from doing it until you have fundamentals down and you're more
comfortable. Ryan, this is a really cool story. Thank you so much for coming on the Bigger Pockets
podcast and sharing how you've grown your real estate business. And now how you've acquired
it a whole new business that's in the real estate industry. Super cool. If you're listening and you think
you've got a cool story that you'd like to share on the Bigger Pockets podcast, well, you can head on over
to Biggerpockets.com slash guest and fill out the form. And we may select you to come on the show
and share your story just like Brian here. Brian sounds like you've been a fundamentally sound
real estate investor. You've analyzed markets. You've bought deals out of state. You bought deals
sight unseen, you managed renovations third party while you're, you had a new baby at home.
Like all of these are things that people say they can't do or it's too hard to do and you've done it
well and you've done it with grace. So thank you for sharing that story with us.
Happy to do it. Thanks, Henry. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the
Bigger Pockets podcast and we'll see everybody on the next episode.