BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Financial Freedom in 11 Years Thanks to This “Perfect” Rental Strategy

Starting point is 00:00:00 The perfect burr. You may have heard of it, but only a few investors have ever actually pulled it off. Today, we're speaking with one of those investors who not only executed a perfect burr deal, but pulled out an additional $50,000 more than what he originally invested. Hey, everyone, it's Dave Meyer here. I'm the head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets and the host of the Bigger Pockets real estate podcast, where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate. And today's has done just that. We've got an investor story with a guy named John Kessler from Baltimore, Maryland on deck for you. And one thing I really like about John's story is that his investing career has three distinct stages. If you've listened to any of the shows recently where we've

Starting point is 00:00:52 had Chad Carson on as a guest, most recently episode 1072, you'll hear Chad's framework, where he talks about having a starter phase, a builder or growth. phase, and then at the end, sort of a harvester phase. And John's career follows this framework and path. In his first six years, he acquired five properties. Then in the next five years, in his builder phase, he scaled up to 19 units, including a wholesaling business. And that's when he did that burr deal, where he was able to pull out more than 100% of the capital he invested. Now, 12 years later, John has achieved financial freedom and is investing more passively. So he's He has time to spend with his family.

Starting point is 00:01:37 So as we hear John describe how he built his real estate business, I encourage each of you to listen and think about which stage of investing you're in right now and whether you're prioritizing your time and your money accordingly or if maybe you need to readjust. All right, let's bring on John Kessler. John, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thank you for joining us. Absolutely. Excited to be here.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So give us a little bit of background. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you first started looking into real estate in the first place. What I think was like 10, 11 years ago now. Yeah, it was a while. So my background is I'm in tech. I still have a full-time W-2 job, married father of three.

Starting point is 00:02:20 So, you know, real estate's not my full-time thing. It has always been a side hustle. But got my start a little bit by accident. You know, my first experience with an investment property was it was a primary residence that I turned into a rental a lot of necessity. So what happened was in 2006, I bought my first house for myself. Okay. And I was a single guy at the time. And it was this little two bed, one bath, 900 square foot house. And it was plenty of room when it was just me. But six years later, married, we have a one year old. We have another one on the way and we're just outgrowing it. So yeah, the wife and I decided it was time to upgrade.

Starting point is 00:02:55 And the problem is in 2008, there was a little bit of a real estate correction. Heard about it. Yeah. Yeah. I was so far underwater on that first property. it just would have completely wiped out my down payment. So the only option was to give being a landlord a try. And that's how I kind of got my start. Wow. So you are the prototypical, we call them accidental or reluctant landlords. Like you never sought out being a landlord.

Starting point is 00:03:22 You didn't come to this by financial freedom. It just was necessity. Yeah. Do you mind telling us a little bit about that primary residence? What did you buy the property for in 2006? Yeah. So this should give you an idea of how inflated prices were. So I bought that house for $150,000 in 2006.

Starting point is 00:03:42 I financed 100% of it, which is something you could actually do at the time. It's not always cracked up to be. It actually wasn't that good of a thing. Two years later, after the crash, I think I would have been lucky to sell it for about 90,000. So I was underwater about 60 grand, which was almost 50% within two years. Wow. Sorry to hear that. So fortunately, it sounds like, though, when you were looking to buy your second primary residence in 2012, you had saved up enough money that you could put your down payment on this new primary, but you had to hold on to the other one because you don't want to have to come out of pocket to pay the bank, right?

Starting point is 00:04:19 Yeah, yeah, that wasn't a choice. Like, I could have sold it and been homeless or go back to renting or I could have bought a house. There was no in between. So what was that like, becoming a landlord with a young family? and working full time. I got really lucky in hindsight. Looking back, knowing what I know now, my original tenant was really easy. It was a friend of her friend. You know, she kept the place nice. She paid on time. She only called when there was like a real issue. So she honestly really helped me forget that I had this rental property. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Zero cash flow. I was

Starting point is 00:04:51 renting it out for pretty much what the mortgage was. I was fine with that. I wasn't trying to make money. I was just trying to kick the can down the road a few years and then, you know, figure it out. Well, it sounds like that worked and you were at least able to kick the can down the road. How did you go from this sort of accidental landlord position to actively trying to grow business? Yeah, so I still didn't really have any intention of being a real estate investor. But about two years later in 2014, I had managed to save up some money again. And the, I don't know, kind of fear of being a landlord was gone, even though I didn't have a ton of experience.

Starting point is 00:05:25 It now seemed like an option. And I was already putting money in the stock market through a 401K through work. And I still didn't know what I was doing, but I knew enough to be able to look at 2014 prices and say, if I just bought a similar house but rented it out for the same amount, instead of breaking even, I'd be making, I don't know, maybe four or 500 bucks a month. You know, there's something here. Because prices were still below where they were in 2006. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:51 Yeah. So I called the realtor who sold me my second house because I knew that he had been a landlord just from talking to him from when I bought my second house. And I asked for his advice, you know, what to buy, where to buy. And he helped me find something. So, that's great. Yeah, it was even in the same neighborhood as the first one. Turns out I kind of got lucky with that location. Second one was a three-bed, one bath town home, same neighborhood. And it was turnkey. It was fully renovated. Nothing high end, but it was, you know, well maintained. It was fine. Move and ready. Great. And I paid $108,000 for it. That was a purchase price. And how did that landlord experience compare to your ideal tenant?

Starting point is 00:06:27 in the first one. I got lucky again, but in a different way. Still didn't know what I was doing. Didn't have good tenant screening in place. And I moved somebody in who, on paper, I never should have placed. Luckily, they didn't really cause damage to the property. They didn't mess it up, but they did stop paying rent pretty early on. So I got to go through that experience. Was lucky enough, I didn't actually have to evict them. They moved out willingly, but got the other end of the spectrum with that second tenant. Man, so why did you keep going after this? I'm always curious to hear these things because everyone takes lumps early in their career. It just happens. I'm always just want to understand sort of the mentality that you approach because you had a bunch of other stuff

Starting point is 00:07:06 going on. You had a couple of challenging situations early on. What drove you to build and scale from here? Well, I'm not just saying that because I'm here, but shortly after buying that second property, I stumbled on the Bigger Pockets podcast. I feel like I started to get a real education there, started learning a little bit more about how to all the stuff, you know, manage a property. I got exposed to the Burr method and that kind of just opened my eyes to what is actually possible. Honestly, it's not that dissimilar story that we hear a lot. Myself, I didn't know about Bicker Pockets. I did my first two deals and was managing, like, seven units at that point before I really

Starting point is 00:07:46 discovered the podcast or working at Bicker Pockets. And then it was like, oh, my God, I have been doing everything completely wrong. But luckily, I was still, you know, turning it. a profit, doing okay, having done everything wrong. And that was pretty exciting to me that, like, man, I can get so much better at this. And thankfully, I did. So it sounds like discovering the Burr method is sort of what put you in another gear in your investing. Is that right? Yeah, it was a combination of that. And it was also the fact that I had this family now. We actually have three kids and we kind of had them back to back to back. So there's maybe a four-year gap between

Starting point is 00:08:22 one and two. And I was working a much more demanding job than I am now. And I spent a lot of time in the office away from the family. And it really started to bother me that I didn't have more time with them. So between that and listening to bigger pockets, I started to plan an exit strategy, so to speak, which didn't quite work because I'm still, I still have a W-2 job. Now it's kind of by choice, not because I have to. When was this? Around 2018, I felt like I had enough capital built back up to try it again. And this was my first attempt at a burr. Same neighborhood, another three-bed, one-bath townhome. This one really didn't need a ton of work, mostly cosmetic. I bought it for about 92,000. And at the time, I was still doing a lot of the work myself, but I think I put maybe

Starting point is 00:09:05 $7 or $8,000 worth of materials in it. Oh, that's not bad. I mean, for a cheap house, you know, it's still a lot, but it's not bad. Yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't bad at all. And it appraised for about 125 when I was done. So I ended up being able to pull out a little bit of my capital, not all of it. And you got hooked. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That proved the concept to me. I was ready. So, I mean, it was later on that year. I did my second one. I got a little more aggressive. I also hired a general contractor because it was taking too much of my time away from the family to do the work myself. So I finally started hiring people. But it's kind of beneficial, right, to do it yourself a little bit at first, because then at least you know what you're looking for and what some of the pitfalls are going to be

Starting point is 00:09:48 and where the challenges lie. Yeah. And I also quickly realized that I really wasn't saving money doing it myself because how fast can a contractor remodel a bathroom versus me? It's going to take me three months of weekends. And if I had just worked my regular job, I would have came out hugely ahead. Yeah, you only save money doing things yourself if you're actually good at it. You're not good at it. You're losing money and time and efficiency and you're not scaling. We've talked about it many times on the show, but it's worth repeating as many times as is necessary. Only do these things yourself if you are confident and able to do them. Yeah, I agree.

Starting point is 00:10:24 I mean, even now, like, you know, I'm in tech. I'm pretty good with a lot of different tech-related things, and I still outsource a lot of tech aspects of investing to other people. All right. I want to hear how you scaled up to your next burr, John. But first, we need to take a quick break. We'll be right back. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo?

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Starting point is 00:14:13 Make it happen with PropStream. Welcome back, everyone, to the Bigger Pockets podcast. We're here with investor John Kessler talking about how he went from accidental landlord to doing his first burr. So back to your story, John, you did your first burr, you did it yourself. What did you do next? How did you sort of develop a more scalable business model for yourself? So what happened? I did two burrs. They were both off the MLS in 2018. I was able to get most of my capital, maybe half the most back out. And in 2019, I had this idea in my head that I had to do a perfect burr. So I started passing on deals where I was going to be leaving capital in. I just wanted to accelerate the velocity. Kind of had the opposite effect. I think I was being too picky. I just want to explain to everyone, John, before we do what a perfect burr is. So burr stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. basically you buy a property, you put additional capital into it to improve that, you rent it out

Starting point is 00:15:15 and get a stable tenant in there, then you refinance it. And why you refinance it is to pull some of your capital out. Ideally, you're able to take out at least your renovation costs, maybe some of your initial down payment as much as possible. And the term quote unquote perfect burr is when you're able to take out 100% of your equity. So if John on a deal was to invest a hundred grand in both acquisition costs and renovation costs. Then when he did a cash out refi, after doing the renovation, should he be able to take out that $100,000, that's a perfect burr. Sorry, John, just want to explain that, but please go on. That's what I thought I had to do, because I didn't really have a clearly defined goal. And I just started to get obsessed with this

Starting point is 00:16:00 concept of a perfect burr. So it took me a while. It took me about seven or eight months to find another deal that I thought worked. I actually took an assignment from a wholesaler. This is the first wholesale assignment that I ever took. This is a wholesaler I met at a meetup, and this was kind of a sign of the times. Shortly thereafter, I found out that I was not going to be able to close on that anytime soon because COVID happened. And this was a foreclosure auction deal, and they put a moratorium on foreclosures. So I didn't know when I was going to be able to close on this deal. I had this contract and it was just kind of held in limbo indefinitely. And did you have earnest money down? Yeah. I put down, I put down a pretty sizable deposit. It was about $13,000 actually with the

Starting point is 00:16:42 title company. Oh, wow. And so that was just sitting there. That was just sitting there with the title company in escrow. And I was also responsible for the property taxes of the property until it closed, until it was ratified. Oh, no. Okay. Well, that deal actually turned into one of the best deals I ever did because of the moratorium. Tell me about it. I want to hear that. I was not able to close on that property for two years. So that's how long the moratorium lasted.

Starting point is 00:17:09 And it was lifted in late 2021. And between 2019 and 2021, property values went up significantly. And interest rates dropped. So I had that under contract for $120,000. This was a single family detached. And it was a four bedroom. And I knew that I could turn it into a five bedroom. which is really good for voucher programs, which I do a fair bit of.

Starting point is 00:17:33 I closed on it. I actually got a private loan from a coworker. He lent me around $190,000 for the purchase. So I was actually able to take about almost $50,000 cash home from the closing table from the purchase. I did my remodel. The remodel was about $45,000. So I used pretty much roughly the cash I took home. And then when I placed the tenant and refinanced it, it appraised for $3,000.

Starting point is 00:17:59 What? So, yeah. So I pulled about $50,000 out of it more than I put into it. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was incredible. And that's a 30-year fixed. It's a 4.5% loan. A monthly payment with taxes and insurance is $1,600.

Starting point is 00:18:15 Wow. And today it's rented out for about $27.50 right now. Oh, my God. Wow. They need to come up with a word other than perfect bird because that's better than perfect, right? Yeah. Just pulling 100% out is not perfect. If you can, there's a more perfect version that you have invented, John, by taking out 50 grand more than what you put into the deal.

Starting point is 00:18:36 That's incredible. Yeah. All you need is a pandemic and, you know, to delay closing by two years and it's easy. I mean, how worried were you during those two years, though, were you seeing the property value go up? Because, I mean, like, starting like midsummer 2020, things were already starting to go a little bit crazy. Originally, I was a little grouchy that my, you know, my $13,000 earnest money deposit was tied up. And I was also frustrated because it had taken me so long to find a deal that I thought was good enough. But I moved on to other. I didn't wait for that to close. I moved on to other deals.

Starting point is 00:19:07 But then as time went on, I just got more and more excited for this deal just because I saw these numbers. Yeah. I was like just making money. I didn't even own the property. It was fantastic. Yeah, that's unbelievable. Wow. That's pretty cool. I just want to take a, you know, a little detour here because I'm curious about the philosophy, looking back on it. Do you regret waiting to try and find a perfect burr? Or would you have been better off, like, just doing some solid deals and not holding out? I believe I would have been better just doing solid deals and holding out. And I had no real reason to wait for a perfect burr. I just got it in my head that that's what I needed.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Yeah, yeah. It was actually an episode of Bigger Pockets that kind of got me unstuck. David Green was talking. And this wasn't even the subject of the episode. He just, you know, how was your weekend? And he's like, oh, yeah, it's great. I just got an appraisal on one of my properties. I'm only going to leave $12,000 in it. And I thought to myself, wait, wait, you can do that. That's allowed. Like that it wasn't perfect. It's the money in the deal. Yeah. I just needed to hear like an expert say it's okay. Of course. And then I sat down and put pen to paper and actually what is my goal? And then I realized I could afford to leave a little bit more in some of these deals. Absolutely. And the reason I bring it up is because I hear this mentality a lot these days because Burr is harder. It's always going to be harder when you're not. And this just. rapidly appreciating environment and honestly unusually rapidly appreciating environment that it's always going to be harder to be able to pull 100% of your equity out. But I've done a burn last year. Like I still think they could work. I'm not a perfect one. But I guess I've never really seen

Starting point is 00:20:45 that as my goal. And I witness a lot of investors sort of falling into a similar trap that you did, John, where it's kind of like you're expecting this perfect situation where in today's day and age, you might just need to be a little bit more patient for your second deal or your third deal and just like do the deal that's in front of you. It's not for everyone. Some people might want to hold out, but I do witness a lot of people sort of wanting to hit that grand slam, but might be missing triples or home runs, you know, in the in the meantime holding out for those kind of deals. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think it gets easier as you accumulate more rentals and get more cash flow. It gets a little easier to not pull off your capital back out.

Starting point is 00:21:28 That's true. Like once you have more irons in the fire, if you will, you know, it's not like you need to get 100% out so you can do that second deal to do that third deal when it's your eighth deal, your 10th deal. You know, it's a little bit easier to just slow down. That's definitely true. So in the meantime, John, like when you were doing, you were waiting for the moratorium to come up, were you doing any other deals? Yes. I did one more off the MLS later that year. And that one was a perfect burr. Nice. Two. Yeah. I mean, there were some that went the other way, too. So they're not all. They're perfect. Good to know. Yeah. Yeah. So that was my last deal that I ever did on the MLS, even through today. That's when I realized I could start to leave a little bit more money. And I wanted to try to accelerate.

Starting point is 00:22:09 And even though I'm off the idea of doing a perfect burr, I still saw the MLS as being a little too competitive. So I started networking with wholesalers a bit more. And one day, I put a post on Facebook and this investor group for locals, just kind of describing what I was looking for. And within, I would say, 10 minutes, a wholesaler replied with a contract, he had signed less than a half hour before I made that post. And I ended up taking three assignments from him in less than a month. Wow. So it's a very well-timed, kind of fortuitous Facebook post. So these were for Burrs? Yes. Okay. And how much better of a deal do you think you got because you went with a wholesaler than for buying an MLS deal? So what happened was, actually, let me ask you this. You probably know where I'm going with this. Across all three deals,

Starting point is 00:22:52 how much do you think I paid an assignment fees total? I mean, just guessing based on what your deals were costing, I don't know, 20 grand across the three? I paid $80,000 in assignment fees, eight zero across three deals. And I wasn't upset about it, but I was jealous because they worked. Like the numbers worked. I was able to pull out a lot of my money on all three of these deals. I was actually happy that this wholesaler made this much money off of me because I figured he was going to keep bringing me deals. Like, this is great. To be candid, I've never bought a deal from a wholesale. I've looked at a lot of deals from wholesalers.

Starting point is 00:23:27 But I was figuring with the price point of the houses you were looking at, you know, you're paying five, 10 grand, maybe per assignment fee. I don't know what his secret sauce was. He was getting incredible deals, incredible deals. Like these were so far below what they could have sold for in the MLS. It was incredible. I mean, to be fair to the wholesale, you were willing to pay up a average $25, $27,000 per assignment because the deal was still so good that it was worth it even when you were paying that large assignment fee.

Starting point is 00:23:59 I mean, that is correct. If that wholesaler is creating value and you're willing to pay for that value, I mean, why not? Absolutely. And I really did get probably more than half my capital out on each one. Like this was working. I would have kept buying them from him, but we just never made another one work. So those were the only three I bought from him. But when I saw those assignment fees, I thought, I don't really know how to go get my own off-market deals.

Starting point is 00:24:20 But for $80,000, I bet I can figure it out. So that's what I started doing. I hopped on bigger pockets and I just found someone who kind of owned a direct mail company. And I reached out and got their advice. And I just started sending letters like a couple months later. So you were basically like, yeah, this was great. I found these three great deals. But I'd rather do these deals and not pay $80,000 for it.

Starting point is 00:24:42 Okay. Well, that's good for you. I'm still waiting for the part of this story, John, where you work less because it seems like you just keep taking on more and more stuff. Yeah, the way I went about it was definitely not the ideal way if you're trying to work less. I did it the hardest way possible. All right. Well, I want to hear more about how you started a wholesaling business, but we do have to take another break. We'll be right back.

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Starting point is 00:28:43 Welcome back, everyone. We're here with John Kessler. When we left off, John was telling us how he had just paid $80,000 in assignment fees for three wholesale deals that he purchased. But then he was motivated to, sounds like you started your own wholesaling company, right? John, tell us how you went about that. Yeah. So again, I just didn't know what I was doing. I went on bigger pockets. I found someone running a direct mail company. I had no particular reason for choosing direct mail. I was just aware of it. The popular strategy. Yeah, we hopped on a call. He kind of gave me some advice and I just started pulling data and sending mail. And at the time, I actually did not intend to be a wholesaler, but once you start marketing, you never know what you're going to get. And people started calling

Starting point is 00:29:27 with properties that didn't fit my particular criteria, but you don't want to waste marketing dollars. So I ended up starting to do some assignments too. Okay. So yeah, originally you were just looking for yourself. You just wanted to deal flow for your own properties. What were you looking for? More burrs? Yeah, more burrs. I was just sticking with what I knew, the neighborhoods I knew. These little three-bedroom townhomes seemed to be working out really well for me. So that's all I was mailing. It was a pretty small amount of records at the time, maybe 800 letters a month. Okay. And it was working. The phone was ringing. How long did it take you for the phone to start ringing? I mean, probably the day the mail hit, it started ringing. What? Okay. Wow. I mean, there's a delay between when you

Starting point is 00:30:05 send letters and when they land, but it was less than a week after I put my order and I just started getting calls. And I got my first deal within a month from that first batch. Wow, that's fast, because they talk to a lot of people who do this direct to seller. And usually it's, you know, three months, six months, nine months of grinding. So just for ever listening, that is normal. It is normal for it to take a while. And that is something you need to know is that you might not hit it immediately. Are you still doing this? You still running the wholesaling operation? Not the same way. So, and it was similar to when I first tried out Burr and it worked, you know, I tried direct mail and it worked and I got hooked and I just started throwing gas on the fire kind of going faster than the system. Well, I had no systems. Faster than I should have based on what I had in place. And I was in such a hurry. I started just jumping from marketing channel to marketing channel and just throwing more and more marketing dollars in it. And it was working. It just wasn't optimized. So it was very labor intense. And I was doing all aspects of it. I didn't have any. Any real help with it.

Starting point is 00:31:06 And you were still working full time, right? Correct. Working full time. Still have three school-age kids at home. And I wouldn't recommend anyone else do it the way I did because I was definitely burning myself out, you know? Yeah. It sounds a little bit like you were sort of getting away from the original intent of starting

Starting point is 00:31:22 this business. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I was working all day, family in the afternoon. And then weekend, I was on the phone, looking at properties, managing contractors. I was still self-managing my rentals. After a while, I hired a property manager, and he also helped me with construction management. So that did help me free me up quite a bit, but the amount of marketing I was doing at the time was still a lot.

Starting point is 00:31:45 So I did that for about two years, and I scaled from five units to 19 units over those two years. Yeah, and I also wholesaled a few dozen contracts, and I tried to do a few flips along the way. Those didn't go great, but I tried it out. And early 2023, I finally realized I need to pump the brakes. I'm burned out. Also out of money, which is important, too. Yeah, it has a way of slowed you down when you run out of money. But it sounds like you were ready sort of mentally to slow down.

Starting point is 00:32:18 Yeah, I was ready to slow down. It was hard to go from being that active to nothing overnight. So it kind of took me a while to kind of figure out how to relax. And that was in 2023. And I still wanted to do something, but I wasn't sure what that. next step was going to be. So what I ended up doing was I started to focus on more passive avenues and partnerships where maybe I can lend my expertise in money but not my time. And that's what I'm doing now. So just to give you an example, I'm still wholesaling, but I'm doing it with partners now.

Starting point is 00:32:50 I was just sending mail in their markets and the leads would go directly into their systems and they would take it from there. I was passive after I sent mail and we would just split it on the back end if it worked out. So yeah, that's generating more active income for you on top of your W-2. I mean, 19 units, an amazing accomplishment. Congratulations. Are you feeling good about that and sort of just sitting on those right now? Yes, I am. I mean, if I come across another rental that works, I'll buy it. I'm just not out there aggressively looking. I still, you know, talk to wholesalers and evaluate deals. It's just, you know, rates are in the mid-to-high sevens right now. It's just hard to make things pencil out. And I've also learned that expenses on these rentals are a lot higher than I

Starting point is 00:33:31 ever anticipated them to be. So I'm even more conservative in my cash flow estimates than I used to be. Yeah, I think that that's very wise. Do you think that's just because of the nature of the homes that you're buying or just all rentals? I think it's probably both. I think people have a tendency to underestimate, but these houses are also 90 to 100 years old. So there is CAPEX. It's also what I would consider maybe a B-minus neighborhood. And I also deal with a lot of voucher in Section 8 tenants, and I'm not saying that all voucher tenants will beat up your property. But in my experience, the average voucher tenant is a little rougher on your property.

Starting point is 00:34:11 You also have those annual Section 8 inspections, and you have to fix more things than you would with a market tenant. So that kind of thing all affects the bottom line. So how are you feeling then about your portfolio right now? You set out to earn some passive income to spend more time with your family, Do you feel like you've achieved that? I do. You know, the original goal, even though I didn't go about it, a very smart way,

Starting point is 00:34:33 was to get to a level where if we had to, we could live off of passive income. And we're there. I could today stop working and just live off the cash flow. It would not be a lifestyle that we wanted. We would have to budget, you know, all that stuff. But we could do it if we had to. That's amazing. Congratulations.

Starting point is 00:34:51 That's so cool. Thank you. That is a very comforting feeling just to know. It's almost like I have a second adult in the house working full time. So that's how it feels. So to help our audience level set and set expectations, how long did it take you from starting as a somewhat accidental landlord to be in that place of comfort that you're in now? I would turn the clock back to the second rental.

Starting point is 00:35:16 That's when I found bigger pockets. And that's when I first had the idea that I was going to achieve financial freedom from this. from that second rental, it's been exactly 11 years. From the first rental, it's been like 14. Unbelievable. Good for you. Well, I did this math recently where I was talking about almost anyone, if you just are diligent about it, regardless of sort of your income level, if you really stick with

Starting point is 00:35:38 it, like 10 to 15 years is a realistic time frame for people. And it sounds like you've sort of fallen right into that time frame as well. And I don't know about you, but for me, that time frame went very quickly. I don't know for some people have seen. like, oh, I can't wait that long. But it's fun. It's engaging. You know, it's busy, but it's absolutely worth it, at least in my opinion. Yeah, it was, it was very stressful at times. And it was a lot of fun most of the time. I had a really good time doing it. That's great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, John. Before we go, any last thoughts or ideas about what the future holds for you

Starting point is 00:36:12 and your portfolio before we go? Yeah. I'm pivoting, like I said, more passive direction. And the future is probably going to be a lot of syndications as a limited partner doing that through a self-directed 401k now. And I really like just receiving a check and not having to deal with tenant issues. That's a lot of fun. It's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's kind of the traditional sort of arc of an investor, right? Like you do all this active stuff. You try a lot of things. And then 10, 15 years in, you're good enough, you know enough to be able to do these LPs, passive investments. I started doing it, I guess,

Starting point is 00:36:47 exactly 10 years into it. And it's pretty great. I really like having a balance. Yep, likewise. Have you done any yet? I did. I just put some money into one. It's my first one, probably about five months ago from a self-directed 401K. And so far it's working out. Multi-family. Yep. Commercial multifamily. It's out in Indiana. Oh, cool. Awesome. Good luck to you. And yeah, if anyone wants to learn more about syndications passive investing, we don't have time to get into it now. But Bigger Pockets is a whole podcast called Passive Pockets. You can check out if you want to learn more about that type of real estate investing. Well, John, thank you so much for joining us, sharing your story with us, and best of luck to you as you transition to a more passive investor.

Starting point is 00:37:29 Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me. This was fun. Absolutely. And thank you all so much for listening. If you want to apply to be on the show, just like John, go to Bickerpockets.com. You can fill out a form there. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Starting point is 00:37:43 and you may just be selected to join me here on the podcast to talk about your real estate investing journey. Thanks again for listening. For Bigger Pockets, I'm Dave Meyer. We'll see you next time. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value, in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full-service, turnkey investment company,

Starting point is 00:38:16 handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more.

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Financial Freedom in 11 Years Thanks to This “Perfect” Rental Strategy

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