BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 845: The Slow, Steady Way to Make $50K Per MONTH with Rental Properties w/KC Massie

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

How many rental properties would it take for you to become financially free? Five, ten, twenty, one hundred? And once you know how many you need, how long will it take you to get there? KC Massie reached financial independence in his thirties after eleven years of slowly, quietly, and strategically building a repeatable rental property portfolio that rakes in over $100,000 per MONTH in rent. Yes, you read that right—six figures a month!  KC didn’t do anything spectacular to achieve this feat. He didn’t raise any money from friends or family, buy a thousand units in a year, or use risky debt. Instead, KC did things the old-fashioned way—slowly building a portfolio of rental properties, consistently buying every year, and making the most money he could at his job to fuel his purchases. Fast forward eleven years, he has complete financial freedom and has enough money to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. In today’s show, you’ll hear about KC’s repeatable path to real estate wealth, the surprisingly ordinary methods he used to build a BIG portfolio of rental properties, and why he encourages EVERY real estate investor to start “building quietly.”  In This Episode We Cover How KC built a $50K/month rental property income stream in just eleven years The “limiting beliefs” you’re telling yourself that stop you from achieving financial freedom Working with your spouse and why you WANT them included in your rental business  Why getting better at your job is the fastest road to early retirement  How KC doubled his portfolio overnight with one very smart move  Why you MUST start “building quietly” if you ever want to become wealthy  And So Much More! Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-845 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 845. Every week is our goal to bring you these stories, the how-toes, the information so that you can make smart decisions in today's current real estate market. We hope that by listening to Bigger Pockets, you can grow your knowledge base faster than Taylor Swift's bank account. Now, if you're wondering, where are David and where is Rob? Well, today is substitute teacher day. If you grew up and went to high school or middle school or elementary school in the 80s and 90s, today is the day where the bell rings, your teacher's not in class, the door swings open, and that big boxy TV rolls through on the cart with a VCR.

So we've got myself, Andrew Cushman, as your coach here. And of course, Matt Faircloth. How you doing, Matt? I'm great, Andrew. It's great to be with you today. And you totally dated yourself like six times in that intro, by the way. Because there are people out there listening right now wondering what a VCR is. You know, I'm just going to own it.

I can't hide the gray anymore, so I'm just going on. Andrew, it's great to be with you today. I'm so grateful that David and Rob left the microphones on for us today, so you and I could jump in and be co-hosts here. Today, we've got an amazing guest, Casey Massey from Lexington, Kentucky. Matt, what are we going to hear from KC today? I'm super excited for today's conversation, Andrew, because you and I have debated for many, many years on which is better to get in a multifamily to do the organic growth method, as I did,

which is to buy a two unit, then to buy a four unit, to buy an eight unit. Air quote, double your portfolio every time you do a deal. You can do it that way or you can just hop directly into the deep end with where the sharks are as well, which is what Andrew did. I guess today did what I did, which is to slowly scale, learn landlording, learn the game as you grow and take a few strategic moments. But she's been able to really, really double down. and triple down and quadruple down in his portfolio through a few strategic moments he's had in his past. And I'm super excited to hear about that and to hear about growing and scaling. And I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to today's story. All right. Thanks, Matt. So, Casey, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you? Doing great. Thanks for having me on the show, guys. All right. Glad to, glad to have you here. So some background for listeners. Casey, you've been investing in real estate. I believe for 11 years you live and invest in Lexington. Lexington, Kentucky. So you're one of the ones who has the advantage of investing in your own backyard. Currently own 121 units across 20 properties. We're going to dive into that a little bit more.

Mostly multifamily. You got the four units, the eightplexes, the 10 plexes, 28 plex, 33 plex. I'm not sure when you stop using the word plex, but they just keep getting bigger. You also have some long and short term rentals, single family homes. Your portfolio currently valued at 12 million. And the most important important piece of that is it's about a $6 million equity position. It's not just about the value of the assets. It's how much equity you have in them. And you are a proud father of three kids. And you manage the real estate portfolio with your wife, who's also named Casey, but spelled differently. So that's quite the background and lots of good info to extract from that. Yeah, we should have her. She's the one that should be on here. She's the brains. I'm the, I'm the phony. Yeah, for the next episode.

They've got most successful, you know, men can say that they've got a very, very good, a phenomenal woman standing behind him that is the wind in their sales. I can say that too of myself. So a super big shout out to the other Casey, Massey, give her a hello from us from the audience at bigger pockets. Quick, just note, you've chosen a phenomenal market. That is a Lexington, Kentucky is one of my favorite markets in the U.S. as well. Derosa, my company is heavily invested in Lexington as well. I can't wait to delve into why you picked Lexington, Kentucky as your target.

So, Casey, we all have these major turning points in our careers. And you had a major turning point back in 2016 where you're already been real estate investing for a bit. But you had a moment. And it's a phenomenal story. I'd like for you to tell it here for the audience of that first turning point you had in your real estate investing career. So I started back in 2012, but was just doing the onesies and twosies and kind of almost

limiting beliefs were kind of controlling what I thought was possible. You know, any of the bigger deals I kind of just wrote, wrote myself off. But my wife and I decided to do something bold and go, went crazy and decide to plan a trip around the world, which was always been a goal of mine. And I just always talk myself out of it. Just, you know, not financially smart. You want to invest your money, not below it on a, on one big trip. But we ended up, I was doing summer sales at the time. And it was really draining on me. So every night I'd come home, I'd just plan another portion of this trip and kind of seeing it all to come together. And then ending our trip, you know, we went all around the world. We went from Dubai to or London, Dubai, Maldives, Singapore, Bali, Fiji, Australia, and then ended in Hawaii.

And it's one of those moments where at the very end of the trip, my wife and I were sitting on the edge of the big island of Hawaii. we were looking over the volcanic rock and it just it just hit it hit me that limiting beliefs control so much of what we do and we always talk ourselves out of some big stuff that we're able to do and as i was sitting there looking over the ocean you know i just was brought to tears able you know having that feeling of accomplishing something that most don't get to do but then sitting there and seeing it come to fruition just changed my whole outlook on how i approached business, how I approach real estate, even my own family life, but sitting there with my partner in life and knocking, you know, checking off this bucket list that I thought might not ever be

possible, just really set the tone for the next few years of my investing career. It sounds like we should do a separate podcast episode on your travels because you named off about 18 places I still want to get to. So, sounds like to sort of recap that you, you, you, took the leap and actually went and did the epic bucket list trip that many people, you know, either can't do or even when they can, they still don't do it. So kudos to you for doing that. And it sounds like, you know, taking that trip actually led to a huge turning point in your life and in your real estate investing career. So we are going to get back to that in just a moment. First, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors. Running your real

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dot com slash bigger pockets. All right, so we are here with Casey Massey, and he just told us about a life-changing trip that not only changed his life, but also was a huge turning point in his career. However, we are going to take some time to travel back a few years to the beginning of his $12 million portfolio because it didn't start right at $12 million. So Casey, tell us about the first deal. How did you find it? How did you buy it?

What gut you started on this now, $12? million dollar investing journey. Well, it was back in 2012, and I was actually trying to figure out how to show my girlfriend at the time that I was serious. And I was like, what a better way to show her I'm serious other than buy a condo right down the street from her parents' house. And, you know, I figured if things didn't work out with her, then it was still going to be a good investment. And so I did, you know, did the 20% down just because that's what somebody had told me, said, hey, when you buy a house, you got to put 20% down, it'll save you money. So I did that. It was actually a owned property at the time. And fortunately, it did work out with my wife. And, you know, I think it was a

very good decision to buy that condo. So it's just a town, just a town home. Now, was that a house hack? You've rented out a couple of bedrooms. You know, big shout out to Craig Kruelap's book on house hacking on living in a property and having tenants help you pay your own overhead, your living expenses. So that was great. The 20% that you had to lay down on the property, because somebody else told you you should, right? Where'd you get that from? So I was in a commission-based job. It was 100% commission,

and the pay structure was actually fortunate for investing because we'd get half of our pay throughout the summer, and then half of the pay would come at the end of the year. So you get this check, you know, substantial check if you do well, and you don't want to just blow it on dumb stuff. So I said, well, let's get a lot of this back out of my bank account so I don't spend it in the wrong places. and put it into house. And so it was a $200,000 condo. I put, you know, 45% or 45,000 down.

In Casey, I'm sorry if you mentioned this and I missed it. How did you find that deal? Was it just sitting on the MLS? Yeah, it was just on the MLS. So you can start a large and successful real estate investing career by buying something off the MLS. There are deals on the MLS sometimes, Andrew, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's also a good point is a lot of us, I know I saw it this way when I was getting started is we feel like, oh, I have to get the most amazing deal ever just to get started in real estate. And while you do want to be careful and not just go buy anything, it doesn't have to be a home run to get started. It just has to be something that works. And Casey, you did a great job of just doing something and buying something. And, you know,

I'm guessing you probably didn't have a vision of I'm going to buy this condo and then be talking to Matt and Andrew, you know, years later about my $12 million dollar portfolio. But you took the first step. And then the next. next step, you know, showed up and all that. So from there, you went on to buy mostly small multifamily, right? Like one or two a year, you continued to fund them through, through sales earnings from your job. And then I guess sounds like buying it towards the end of the year when you got your bonus. So let's go back to the 2016 turning point. We understand Casey played a big role in that change. Could you elaborate a little more on that? Just collaborate. Casey's your wife.

So you married someone with your same name. For goodness, I can't believe with that. Let's live with that. That must be like in your world. When people say, hey, can I talk to KC? Which KC? Right. You've got, there's two KC's in your household pronounce exactly the same. I know spelled differently, correct? Yeah. No, I mean, initials are KC and then the other one's KC. So you can pronounce it differently, but it is hard. It takes a train to here. I get it. I get it. You guys must have a lot of fun with that. So take us back to the cliffs of Hawaii looking at the volcanic rock and the ocean and the big epiphany that you had about. I just want to tell you how moving that was, by the way, about you realizing that you wanted to tour the

world, so you did it. And so now it's like, well, I want to scale up and build a real estate portfolio. And so, aha, epiphany. So what was the decision that you made and your next action there on the cliffs of Hawaii, 2016? So sitting on the cliffs of Hawaii, it really, it hit me deep where, you know, because I think I only had like 10, 15 units at the time. I didn't have a whole lot. All my growth really came from that point on, 2016 through 2021 is where I made a big push. So it was, it's one of those feelings you can't really put into words, but it was the sense of accomplishment on, you know, not, not it wasn't like a challenging thing. It was just overcoming the fear, I guess is the best way to put it, like overcoming the fear of doing something that

I could easily talk myself out of both, you know, you can do it with investing, you can do it with, you know, taking a new job, you can take it with, you know, a big trip that you probably should save the money on instead. But that, I can't put a quantitative value on that experience. And, you know, it was moving for me at the time. And oftentimes when I tell the story, I can't even like get through it because it's just, it's a feeling that I'll never forget. And, you know, just looking at my wife and being like, wow, you know, wow, like we did this. And it, one, I was exhausted, you know, 31 days on the go every three to four days. We're, you know, getting on another flight and how many different issues we ran into. My wife, we just found that she was

pregnant right before we left. And so it was a whole lot of feelings, a whole lot of emotions, but it really helps you find a new gear. And so that gear kicked in, you know, after, after that. So what's your next move? So you're back from, you're back from Hawaii. you've got a big context shift. You're thinking bigger. You've conquered the world, conquer the mountains of Hawaii. You get back. What's next? I got to get better at selling. You know, we've got to get better at sell. So I really started studying and focusing. It wasn't like, hey, I want to get better, you know, I want to buy more houses. It was like, I want to get better at whatever I'm doing. And I want to not, anything that scares me, I want to figure out how to do it.

That makes sense. Before we get too much further down, down the path, I want to circle back can kind of wrap up the story of sitting in Hawaii. Like, how did, you know, after that moment in Hawaii on that trip, how did Casey influence your real estate growth after that once you got back? Like what, you know, you mentioned limiting beliefs many times and I'm glad you're doing that because that's something all of us struggle with in different degrees. Like what maybe limiting belief did she help you get past so that it made some. such a, made that such a turning point in your investing career.

She, she took the, took the reins and just ran with it. She read a book, was the book on property management, I think Brandon Turner's book on Britain and Heather. So she read that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, that one.

And so she, I've never read it, but she read it because she saw how bad I was doing. That's honestly what happened. Like I was, I was working a normal, you know, my job. and I just would get like calls about people not being able to pay or, you know, hey, I want to pay later, this maintenance problem. And so I started just sending them to her. I was like, hey, I can't call this person back right now. I'm in the middle. Where can you call them? And so she started doing it. And she was like, wait, this person hasn't paid for 45 days. And I'm like, yeah, I guess not. Like, they'll get to it. They're always good for it. You know, I'm just like trying to

help them. And she, she's like, you're, you're handicapping them. You're setting them up for failure. You're going to think that's normal and you're allowed to do that. She had like the mom mentality where like you have to kind of have some discipline. And so I said, well, if you can do better like, you know, I'm all ears. Like I'm not doing very good. I think I had like 12 or 15 units. And so she read the whole book and just took over. And it made it to where I was like, wow, if I if we know what we're doing and we have systems in place,

you can really make money from being a landlord. You know, I'd always heard you could, but I was just like hoping it was working. I was like, as long as I can pay my mortgages and have some left over, it's hopefully working. So before she got involved, before Casey got involved, I was just hoping that it was working. As long as I had more money in my account going in and going out, I figured I was in, you know, doing okay. And so once she took over, we really got the systems in place that showed exactly how profitable a house was or profitable a deal was. before that I was just kind of winging it. And I'm really big on faking it, you know, fake it till you make it.

And I was just doing what the pros told me to do and hoping I didn't mess up too much along the way. And if I messed up, then it would be a learning experience. You know, someone told me once where you don't, you know, you win and you learn. So you don't win and lose. You win and you learn. So that's, you know, really I took that to heart. And I said if I'm messing up, hopefully I'm falling forward instead of, you know, failing and falling backwards, you know, hopefully I'm failing forward. Well, first of all, it's very,

it's very tough to fake property management. You're either do it or you don't. It's like a Yoda, do or do not. There is no try. You don't, you don't try to be a good property manager. That's it. It's just one or the other. That's what a compliment on the, just the concept of it, of investing with your spouse. That's something Liz and I did in the very beginning when we first got started in real estate. And I commend Casey, your wife, for seeing there was a gap in your business and her being willing to step into it as a spouse to say, okay, this is our, maybe one of our weaker points in this business. So I'm going to step in and really learn how to do this by reading Brandon and Heather's book and learn how to become a phenomenal property manager and perhaps

take that off your plate so that you could focus on scaling, which I really commend her for being willing to do that. And I also just want every husband and wife combo listening right now to take note of the way an effective husband. husband and wife can work as a team and, you know, having each other's back. I just can't tell you how many times, you know, other investors or people that want to invest in real estate are like, I wish I would do it if my wife was on board or it would be so much easier if my wife would support. She fights me on it. And it's like, my wife just honestly, she trusted me at first. And she saw that there was a need. And most successful business or

entrepreneurs, they see a problem and they have a solution. And so she was that solution in our own you know, atmosphere in our own, in our own world. And she said, hey, I see a problem and I can be a solution. So yeah, it's, I know, people always ask me, what was your most important hiring? And I like to tell me, is I hired an incredibly smart, hardworking and supportive wife that, uh, I would not be here talking to you, uh, if I didn't do. And it's kind of seems like all three of us did that. So I don't know if there's a theme there. Maybe there should be a bigger pockets dating app coming out soon to help investors looking to get into the business, find, uh, like, like, like my, like minded partners. All right, so Casey helped you realize that you could handle more.

And she, you know, sounds like helped get you past some limiting beliefs, helped you see some things that maybe you weren't doing as well, which, you know, that's just a note. It doesn't have to be a spouse. It's really hard for any of us to see our own weaknesses and just to have somebody else to look at you and who is willing to candidly tell you like, hey, you could be doing this better. It is incredibly helpful. So, but I'll ask what, no, if I, you were living in Utah at the time, correct?

And all right, so you were doing some long distance investing in Lexington, and then you decided, hey, let's just go ahead and uproot ourselves and move to Lexington, Kentucky. What initiated that? What led to that? By the time we're done with this, you'll figure out how to say Lexington, Kentucky. It's a tongue twister. Am I going to get a bunch of DMs? And we'll have to practice that one. But no, no, Lexington is where I'm from. I was born and raised and I love it. But we were actually living in Utah. My wife's from there. And so she actually brought it up to me to move back because she was doing the property management thing from Utah. And she said, I think that one of the last straws was we had to send an HVAC company over to an apartment that was complaining of no heat. So we sent an HVAC company by and they came, they called us up and said, yeah, it's working

great. They had it on, they had it switched to the cool mode. And that's why the heat didn't come on. And so we paid like, you know, 150 bucks for someone to go. go out and switch the heat, switch it to heat. And I was like, okay, it would make a lot more sense to be closer, little stuff like that. But yeah, so that was kind of the kick this way. There you go. And so you're back to Kentucky now, which is a market that I'm very familiar with. My company owns quite a bit in Lexington as well. Maybe you have to own there to be able to

say it. Maybe that, maybe that's what the term is. Because once you buy in Lexington, then you'll be able to say the name, right? But what you move your wife and now family at the Lexington, Kentucky, you achieve some consistency, right? Now, she's running the property management side of the business. How did the sales side of your business go so you can generate some income to continue to grow your real estate business? So what I, so the approach I took was directly into my sales. It wasn't necessarily, hey, I want to do this better at real estate. My wife was really taken over that. I was just trying to find deals. And most of what we found, I think, you know, of the 20 we own now, I think 16 were on the MLS. So it wasn't like they were hidden deals or wholesale deals. It was all

MLS stuff. But to go back to the sales thing, I just tried to eliminate any variables. Anything that I could control, I wanted to control it. So, you know, mindset being one of those. But with sales, it's very inconsistent, right? It's a roller coaster. You know, you get some really big days or, you know, really big weeks, months, and then you go, you know, usually go feast or famine. But my idea was let's get rid of all the inconsistencies so we can be as consistent as possible. So I, I would typically sell one to three a day where, you know, over the course of a whole summer is a really big summer. But, you know, you might have another guy selling five or six or seven in a day. but that's because they were really riding the waves where I was just like trying to keep it flatline

as possible, just not get too high with the highs, too low with the lows. And I tried to, we really applied that to real estate because when it rains, it pours. You can get a lot of problems all at once. You know, all the air conditioning go out at the same time, all the plumbing problems at the same time. And so you can really talk yourself out of doing more stuff if you go off a motion. I just tried to eliminate as much emotion as possible. So, Rooka, just for relatability to the audience, what were you selling?

Home security. So door to door. So it wasn't the most glamorousome job, but it was door to door for five months out of the year. You know, there's an old adage, if you serve the masses, you'll eat with the classes. And the home security is something everybody needs. It's not hundreds of thousands of dollars to price it. So you're selling something that a lot of people need and are willing to use. So I think that's great.

And it sounds like you were doing very well at it. Yeah, it was actually, it was a home automation too. So you can kind of do it in some really nice neighbors. It's not just security, but it was really neat. You could do everything from your smartphone. What if your CRM actually did the hard work for you? I know, crazy. Reis simply lets you pull seller lists, skip trace them at no cost,

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property's potential meets unlimited financing. And Casey, it sounds like not surprisingly, you have one of the characteristics that we regularly see in successful real estate investors, and that is this, the relentless persistence, consistent execution. Could you give some, like, specific, you know, specific examples of, like, How did you optimize your real estate business or real estate investing for consistency? It could be software. I mean, it could be, you know, rent club. What are some specifics that you put into effect that made things better for you?

So tenant communication is a big one just so your phone's not going off like, you know, all the time. So we use buildium. Buildium's a software. You know, there's Appfolio, Buildium. We've used rent ready for a while when we had a few smaller units. Once we got bigger, we switched over to building them. And it really helped kind of keep things organized so you don't, one, forget maintenance requests. Two, you have documentation of everything so you can actually show you're doing your job.

Rent collection, people can pay online. You can do your leases online. I don't know how landlords did it back before, you know, smartphones and, like, like all this technology because my phone is my office, right? Like I can literally do everything from posting an apartment for rent to, you know, accepting, doing background checks, everything right there on your smartphone. I just, the mom and pop landlords, you know, back in the 80s, I just, 90s, I don't know how they did it.

I would have gone crazy. So, Casey, you know, going back to the, you know, relentless persistence and consistency is being the thing that really delivers results. your company, you know, you told us the strategy of how rather than going out and having a big day like everyone else and selling five or seven systems, yeah, and then they take a few days off, you just did, you focused on maybe one or two a day. And what did that lead to in 2019? Yeah, 2019 was an awesome year. So I really was focusing on sales. And I was really just getting better each day at eliminating all the distraction because there's so much distraction from social media. to, you know, what does this person have? I don't have that. You know, people get caught up and keeping up with the Joneses. And so I, even with sales, that happens because I want to have a three or four day every single day. But I just, I kind of just put my head in the sand and just went to work. And so I was actually able to sell an account every single day, which doesn't sound like much. But

when you do two every single day for 150 days, you sell over 300 and you're the top of the company. and then you have the best RMR and you have the lowest cancellation rate because you just perfect your systems down. They actually end up, it's weird for me to say, but they actually had an award, which I didn't know about, but they created an award called the Kevin Massey Award just because I led every single category that year. And it was really a cool experience, but it wasn't something I expected. I just wanted to do the best I could at each.

So now that's a real level up. You didn't just win the award. You were so far above that they created an award on your behalf. And that's pretty impressive there. It was weird for me. It was a very uncomfortable thing. But at the same time, it was like, it's rewarding to see. It's one of those moments where it's like, wow, actually, you know, I could focus and achieve, right?

Focus and achieve. You know, too many times we get distracted by all the things that could go wrong instead of just doing it. So do you keep in touch with the people that accompany and whoever wins you? the award, you're like, hey, you got the KC award? I'm that guy. I'll sign it for you, right? That's great. That's great. We should all aim in life to have an award named, an award or a street named after us, Andrew. So, so Casey, that's awesome. I see that a culmination happening here, right? Like there's going all the way back to you sitting cliffside with the other KC, then to her stepping into really owning the property management side of the business. You really master.

during the sales process so much that they name an award after you. Incredible. Going back, going forward here, you've then decided through all these iterations to really double down your real estate portfolio and start taking down larger deals. So talk us through that, talk us through what that looked like felt like as you decided to really scale up into into larger and larger apartment buildings. So yeah, so when I, I'd always get notifications of everything. And I didn't really have a realtor that was sending me stuff. I just got notified. on LoopNet, it's a commercial property site that just post usually bigger things. I don't even know why at one point I subscribed to get notifications there.

And I saw two small apartment buildings, 30 units, basically 30 units each, got posted. And so I was like, heck, let's just call the listing agent and experiment a little bit. Because I knew, you know, $4 million, I wasn't going to come with $800,000 to the table, you know, 20% down on this. and really, I didn't think I had a chance to even look at this, but something like a voice or something in my own head said, hey, if you don't go look at this now, when are you ever going to look at, you know, you're never going to go look at a deal of that size if you don't start somewhere. And so I went just for kicks and giggles to go see it.

So that's another strategy. kicks and giggles just do it. KC., it sounds like you just up and called the listing broker for these things with, you know, no, you didn't have a year of preparation. You were just like, hey, let's just see what happens. One of the, I think the biggest and most common challenges people have when they're trying to make that leap to, you know, hey, I've been talking with real estate agents about single family and twoplexes and fourplexes to, oh my gosh, now I got to call a commercial broker. And, you know, what do I say? What if I say the wrong thing? how did you overcome that? Like what, this is briefly, what was that conversation like? And, and, you know, how did you get past the, because it didn't sound, doesn't sound like you, you know,

hired a mentor and went to three boot camps. You just did it. So how did you get past that hurdle? And what did you say? What did that conversation sound like? Like, how did you get that broker to take you seriously as a newbie? So I'm a big believer in like, you know, if we search in the right places, you know, things, things will work themselves out, like if we're actually doing our best and, you know, being a genuine person, honest, all those things. I feel like karma is a real thing. So I, you know, I'd really been searching, trying to find something to level up and to get more serious about real estate. And so when I, I called him, I just was straight with him. I was honest with him. I was like, hey, like, you know, it's just me. I don't even know, you know, if I have a chance at buying something

like this, but I want to come see it. And I think it's, you know, it's a good looking property. he actually ended up, he was the broker, the real estate agent, and the owner. So he kind of, it worked out where I didn't know that. But when he took my call, he was like, okay, yeah, come. I'm doing a showing at this time. You can tag along. And so I went, showed up with my janitorial key belt on my jeans. And I'm walking around with like, you know, attorneys and doctors.

And, you know, there's one guy there in scrubs and he's a doctor in town. And so they're like, who are you? and I'm like, they're like, are you maintenance? And I'm like, no, I'm just, I'm just tagging along for the tour. And so I end up, you know, looking at a few units, taking some pictures and videos. And I went home. I was like, oh, that'd be awesome to buy that. But I just, I don't, I'd have to sell a few things to have $800,000. And I told him that. And he was like, well, you know, call the bank, call the lender. They actually did something unique for me when I bought it where they took less down. And I was like, okay, I'll call them. You know, I'll have a, you know, it's always good to make.

make new contacts in the real estate world. And so I called the lender and he was like, well, we would consider 10%. But I don't think they would have considered that had I not started with those duplexes, fourplexes, triplexes, and shown some success there. And so once they saw like, hey, he can do it, you know, they offered 10%. And then I was able to, you know, do a few things to make that happen. So two things I want to highlight there for everybody. Number one is, that's another obstacles, oh, how do I do this without a track record? Well, Casey, you didn't have a track record for a 30 unit property, right? But you had a track record in real estate. You had a track record in something. And so, you know, track record can be, you know, a good performance in your job, but just shows that

you've been doing something. So that's number one. And kudos to you for not limiting to yourself to, well, I can only buy eight units because that's what I've done so far. Second is, you know, you've talked about fake it to you make it. And that's a really kind of. thing that you hear nowadays, but it's important that you, what you're doing is not faking it, right? Like you're, you're being, what you just told us is that you were transparent with that broker. You told them, hey, it's me and I probably can't buy this, and but I still want to look at it anyway. And so, you know, that is the right way to do fake it to you make it. It's not lying to people. It's not presenting yourself as someone different than you are. It's just taking the action

as if you had already made it and being transparent about it. And I have no idea if this is true. You can debunk me right now, Casey, if you want. But I'm willing to bet that one of the reasons that guy wanted to sell to you and work with you is because he probably felt like he could trust you. And most people want to work with somebody who comes across as genuine, transparent, relatable. And then also, again, most people who are, you know, higher up on the ladder and they see someone who's really making an effort to climb up to go from an eight unit to a 30 unit, they are happy to say, you know what, this guy's working hard and he's doing a good job. I want to help them. I'm willing to bet that part of the reason you got that deal is because who you are and how you

approach that conversation. You weren't faking it. You were just putting yourself out there and say, I'm going to do this even though I haven't made it yet. And so kudos to you for making that happen. So yeah, it was actually really neat when I sat down at the closing table with him. I asked him, I was like, why did you take my offer? He said, I just believed you. He said there was, because there was a couple other offers on it. And he said, I just, I believed you when you said you would be able to close. And the crazy thing is we actually had to do a triple close. I closed on, I had to sell one property. Then we closed on this one. And then he had to close on something he was buying. He was 10.31 want to exchange it into it. So we had to close three days in a row. And there was a lot of things

that could have happened. But we ended up making it happen. So it was wild. Yeah, that's, that's awesome, Casey. And I just, I want to like just give my perspective on faking it till you make it. And in some ways, you're actually convincing yourself that you can get it done, right? And by you convincing, like, listen, I can do this. I can figure it out. And this is maybe you from the cliffs of Hawaii talking to yourself years later. And knowing that with enough determination, just like you decided to tour the world, you said, this is what I want to do, and I'm going to figure this out. So this deal, this 30-some unit in Lexington, Kentucky is almost like a tour of the world, but you said, you know what, I'm going to go in and figure this out. And I do believe that

a lot of times the universe tends to conspire around confidence. And you walked into that deal, I'm going to figure this out. It's what I want to do. And all of a sudden, before you know it, the bank saying, well, we would take 10% down. And you do have other deals with equity. And the broker believed in you. And it's all because through that confidence you had by telling yourself that I can figure this out, you did. And I think a lot of times people think that actions over time lead to confidence. But it's actually the way, it's other way around. They just decide to be confident about something. And the actions you need to take will automatically become more logical and follow behind. it. So kudos to you, man. So now what? You've got this, you've got this 30-some unit under ownership. Tell us a little bit about the deal now that you own it, even with a little bit higher debt on it at 90% down or 90% loan. It seems like it's still cash flowing. Tell us about that deal. And then tell us about what's next for you and your wife out there on Lexington. So yeah, so we bought it in 2021. So it was, you know, during COVID and rents were, I felt like low. And so I felt like we could raise them pretty good. without doing a ton of work. They had managed it pretty well, but I did see some holes where we could improve on management.

And so we just ran with that. But I told my wife, and she was just kind of like, you did what? We only had like 50 units at the time. And we went, you know, doubled that overnight. And so it was, it was uncomfortable, right? Like most things that we that are worth, you know, I heard a story once where it said, you know, nobody gets embarrassed when they do a, you know, bench press and they fail on number 10 or 11 or 12. You know, usually you go to a failure and you feel good about it. You know your limits. You know where you,

you could go to. But I feel like in life, a lot of times where we go to a failure, we get embarrassed and we kind of shut down and we close up shop because we found our failure where most of the growth happens at that failing point. And so there was a lot of things we did wrong when we first took over. but we found our limit and found where our holes were and where our weaknesses were and what we need to focus on. And so it was the best thing that could have happened to us. We actually ended up from that same lender ended up refinancing about two, just about $2 million worth of other property that were on arms with another local bank that were,

you know, they were comfortable. They were five and a half percent, but they were getting ready to expire in like three years. And I was like, well, let's go ahead and refinance and take everything to this bank. And we got, we took everything over there and ended up getting 3% on, we ended up getting 3% on all of our existing property. Plus our, this new one we just bought was at three, three and a half, you know, three and a quarter or something. And so it was a very, those things that kind of domino into place, but because we found our weaknesses, we found where we need to improve and we found solutions for those weaknesses. but you know, you're asking what's next.

It's just to try to be, you know, the best landlord we can to provide a good, clean, safe place for people to live and take care of our, you know, we like to have a communication with our tenants. We like to have a, not, you know, not best friends with them all, but we like to respect them. You know, we get them all Christmas gifts, you know, kind of little things like that. Like not Christmas gifts that are really ornate, but we get them, you know, we make a deal with a local. restaurant or something where they get a free something and we'll give them all Christmas cards and then go cash in for that, you know, go redeem it. But just letting people know you think about them and that they're not just a number is it goes a long way if you do decide to manage your own property. I don't want you to give yourself a quick celebration here because after you bought this

building, you were able to create enough enough income from your portfolio that you did what a lot of folks that are listening to this show want to be able to do, which is. Yeah, just spend more time with my family. Now, I walked away from my other job. But you quit. Yeah. You were so humble, brother, and I love that about you. But you quit your job. You were able to quit your day job that a lot of you spend time with family, you know, really own your calendar, own your time and everything like that. And that's something that a lot of people are aiming to be able to do through real estate investing. But unlike a lot of folks to just talk about doing it, you were able to think a little bit bigger, take some action, take a lot of action, and make it happen. And make it happen.

So kudos to you, man. I appreciate that. I think a lot of people try to do it too early. I think we've talked about it a lot for the past couple years where everyone needs to sprint to where you can retire. And I've seen a lot of buddies try to do that and they've done it too early. And so I stuck on where I stayed because I liked the company I worked for. I liked, I learned how to, I felt like I did pretty good at my job and provided a good service. And so I stuck on as long as I could, probably longer than I needed to until it was uncomfortable where.

I didn't want to be lacking at the real estate, right? So I was, I slowly phased out. It wasn't like, oh, I hit it. I'm done. Peace. You know, I stayed on probably two years longer than I really needed to, but because I wanted to be, you got to build your foundation on a rock and not, you know, Sandy Foundation.

So, so it really let it solidify, make sure we're in a good spot. And then I just, you know, I couldn't clone myself. And so, you know, I had to pick one or the other. It's just so financially speaking, where, where, What does that portfolio put you guys today? So frame of reference for somebody who's like, okay, if I get to 120 units, you know, what does that look like financially? So we bring in about $105,000 a month in gross rents about just over $900 a unit. You know, some of those are one-bedroom units and some of them are three-bedroom units.

You know, we have some on Airbnb, which that fluctuates. But we, about half of that, just a little under half is actually profit. that we get to keep. Once we plan for CAPEX and Brandon Turner's books on investing in real estate does a really good job of estimated for CAPEX. So, you know, we plan for roughly about five grand a month and just expenses, just maintenance stuff that are repairs versus, and then we have our scheduled maintenance, which is like pest control, lawn, you know, snow removal, all that basic stuff. But, you know, yeah, once you manage it yourself, you know, we could, high, full-time management, but we like it. I feel like we do a better job by management,

just because we care more than a property manager is going to care. And we might not do that forever. There might be a time where it's like, hey, we're tapped out. We can't do it anymore. But right now we like to do it. So we're, we're just going to do what we like to do. And I, you know, I think that is what, you know, that's a constant debate, third party versus self-management. And I think your situation is one of the situations where self-manage, management absolutely makes the most sense where you have all your properties in a market that you live in and that you know and you have easy access to. And it's really hard to find good property management for stuff under 100 units. So it sounds like you're setting up really well. So last main

question before we wrap up. We've got the KC and KC Dynamic Duo. What is your real estate career looking like for the next five years? With my wife and I, we're with three kids, you know, we want to have more kids. So that was kind of a goal, you know, to get to where we could spend more time with them. But when it comes to real estate is I have some friends of mine that I really, that they've been wanting to get into real estate now. So kind of it's more of a goal now to get as many people involved as I can. I've never done a partner deal with anyone. And not to say I won't, but I kind of want to help more people that I know enjoy some of the same benefits that real estate's brought me. So, you know, there is a book on the Bigger Pockets Library called Raising Private Capital.

you may want to check out, Casey. I may, a few people have read it as well, and it just, a new release just came out with a forward by Pace Morby, Casey, so you could check that out. It'll teach you how to structure those deals with your friends for win-win situations. Just to mention, you might want to check it out. No, I love that. Actually, your podcast was one that kind of inspired me to think bigger. Because you were in the Pacific North, sorry, not Pacific, the Northeast, right?

That's where you guys are. Yeah. So I loved, you know, I listened to that podcast. And it really, I was like, man, I'm thinking too small. Like, he's sitting here just exploding. And so I kind of had to talk myself out of things where I was like, it's not about how many numbers. It's not about how many units. It's, you know, so, but it was very impressive. I loved your podcast. It really helped me think bigger. I attribute a lot of your success here just to you thinking bigger, but then also having the courage to take action on the inner pull that you had to live a bigger life. And, and, you chose to live. you wanted to live bigger, you wanted to have a bigger thing. And he decided to follow that desire and take action on it and look at you now. So I'm super excited to hear what happens to Casey and Casey of Lexington over the next couple of years, man. This has been great. It's been great talking to you. So, and I hopefully will make it out to Lexington, Kentucky,

one of these days. Is that good? I think that that that was perfect. Was that acceptable? Was that acceptable? Okay. I don't say, I don't want to get, don't want to get. Spoken like a Kentucky landlord owner. It's Kentucky landlord. Well done. Mispronouncing. So, you know, a few things that, you know, just to recap, Casey, you know, number one, you know, when we look at like what's led to your success, it's, you know, surrounding yourself with people. In this case, you know, the perfect spouse, right, to help you get past your limiting beliefs.

Consistency. Just not swinging for the fences, not, you know, not actually jumping off the rock in. in Hawaii, but just showing up day after day, putting in the work, doing the things that that pursues results. And by doing that, you know, not only in your sales job, but in your real estate career, you've exceeded, you know, almost everybody else. And I think there's a lot to learn from that. Another one is you didn't do a first deal and quit your job right away and put yourself into a tough spot, you know, and that's something that everybody has to feel out on their real estate journey, but you built a sustainable real estate business, used your W2 to do that.

And then, you know, when you made the big leap to 30 units, you said, you know what, now the W2 is holding me back. And now I'm going to drop that. I'm going to make sure there's a ward named after me. So no one forgets that I was here. And now I'm just going to go out and I'm going to build my real estate business, right? And then also, you know, there's this belief out there that in order to build a real estate portfolio, you have to go.

raise money. You haven't done that. You've taken the, I don't want to say slow because $12 million and however 10 or 11 years is not slow, but you took the slow and steady approach and built it in-house. When you say you have 121 doors, you truly have 121 doors. And that is an impressive feed. So great talking with you. Matt, anything else you want to add before we sign off here? Yeah, well, I just want to underscore one thing there. And that is the power of leveraging your relationship with your spouse. It is not for the faint of heart to bring your spouse into the business. But if you are aligned with your spouse and where you want to go and the benefits you see real estate investing are going to bring you la, you know, Casey and Casey now being able to

spend more time with their kids and their family, perhaps travel a little bit more, all those kinds of things, if you're able to be aligned with your spouse and bring them into the folds of your business, there's so much leverage that they can bring to you. So I commend you, Casey, on being able to do that. And I just challenge the listeners here to consider doing that yourselves as well because it's made all the difference for myself and my marriage and my business as well, too. So, yeah, no, you're, I agree with you 100%, Matt. Like, it's a huge benefit to have someone on your team that's in the,

has the same goals aligned. One thing that I would probably recommend and some advice that I like to give is building quietly. I think a lot of our limiting beliefs come from other people that don't know, or haven't done the research, don't have the same goals. They hear your goals and they shoot them down. And so honestly, I didn't really voice. People knew I was in real estate, but they didn't know what, to what extent.

And I don't even think my parents know to what extent I'm involved in real estate. I told them I was doing a podcast today and they were like, oh, what's that? You know, that's neat. So, but, you know, building quietly because if you're good at something, you'll tell everybody, but if you're great at something, they'll tell you. And so I really, that's a, you know, Walter Payton quote I heard a long time ago. And so I didn't feel like the need to tell anyone what I was doing. One, I didn't want them to talk me out of it.

And two, I didn't want to, you know, come off the wrong way, right? And so now when I talk to people about real estate, it's more to help, help inspire them and try to get them to kind of away from the analysis paralysis type mindset. But yeah, so my wife has really been a huge supporter of that she's the only one that really knows our goals and it's good to have someone that is driven wants to achieve some big stuff. I really like what you said about building quietly. That resonates a lot with me, especially when compared to what you tend to see on social media these days. Kudos to you, Casey. So for those listeners who resonate with your story and maybe would like to get to know you a little bit more or find out more about you, even if you're doing it quietly, how can they reach out to connect with you?

On Instagram, I'm just Casey, M-A-S-S-I-E, Casey Massey. All right, sounds good. Matt, how do people get in touch with you? Folks can follow me on Instagram at the Matt Faircloth. And most importantly, they go to my company's website, just derosagroup.com, D-E-R-O-S-A, derosa group.com to hear more all about our company. All right. And I am only on LinkedIn for social media, but if you connect with me there, that is actually me posting and commenting.

So it's not a virtual assistant or an AI bot. So please do it connect with me there. And then for bigger pockets, please turn into future episodes. Hopefully, you got a lot of value from our conversation with KC. Pretty soon you're also going to be hearing about how to save money on taxes with Amanda Hahn and then unconventional options to help you finance deals. Debt and financing is a tricky subject these days. So we got an episode coming out with Zach Lamaster.

make sure you stay tuned for those. And Matt, any parting comments. God, this has been a great episode, Andrew. I always enjoy, enjoy co-hosting with you. This has been a lot of fun. And if I can have the honor of taking it home today, Andrew, do you mind? Please, please do. Okay, this is Matt Fairclough with Andrew Cushman, the new awardee of the Best Substitute Podcast host ever. The Cushman Award, signing off. 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 Calicoke content, 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.