BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Financial Freedom with Rentals After 3 Years of Pure Hustle

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

After hearing this episode, you’ll have no excuse not to reach financial freedom in under a decade. Today’s guest did it in even less time, scaling up to income-replacing cash flow in just a matter of years, even with a very demanding full-time job and constantly moving around the country. Through pure hustle, Taylor Wing is now financially independent in his late twenties with a sizable rental property portfolio that spits out cash flow to pay for his South Florida lifestyle. He’s got so many tricks to reach financial freedom faster, but his best piece of advice? The number of rentals you own doesn’t matter. Taylor was a full-time military member, serving in the Army for the first five years of his career, bouncing between North Carolina, South Dakota, and beyond. Wherever he was stationed, he began buying houses as soon as possible. That meant Taylor spent almost every hour of the day working, either at his job or on his rental property portfolio, for years straight. Was it a grind? Yes. Was it worth it? 100%. Now, fast forward seven years after graduating from West Point, and his family is financially free. He has his beautiful house on the water in Florida and is spending more time with his new (and growing!) family. Through “rebalancing” his rental portfolio, strategically using “reverse 1031 exchanges,” and other savvy strategies, Taylor is now in complete control of his time. He’s teaching you how to do the same today! In This Episode We Cover Why “unit count” doesn’t matter for financial freedom, but cash flow does  Buying rentals in multiple markets and how to maximize your profit with medium-term rentals  Why every real estate investor MUST review and “rebalance” their rental portfolio (or it’ll cost them) How to do a “reverse 1031 exchange” and move your headache rentals into better cash-flowing real estate The $140,000 properties Taylor is buying today that make $300-$400/month cash flow! And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1147 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 investor started with a single house hack. Three years later, he had more than 30 rental properties and was able to transition out of his demanding military career and into the life he always envisioned for his family. Now, he's acquiring multiple new properties per year, but he spends most of his time leaning into what he calls the Florida lifestyle. This isn't some secret formula that you can't execute. It's the result of following a reliable, sustainable path to investing. Let's hear how it works.

What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer. I've been buying rental properties for 15 years, and on this podcast, we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing. Today's guest is investor Taylor Wing. Taylor started his investing career when he was an active duty army officer, looking for the financial security that would allow him to leave the military when his service commitment was up. He started with just a single house hack and was able to grow his portfolio, to more than 30 units across three different markets in just three years. That real estate investing has allowed him now to prioritize his family's lifestyle, live where he wanted, and to find a new career that's fulfilling for him at this stage of life. Taylor shared some of his story a few years back on this podcast on episode 677, but I wanted to have him back on the show because a lot has changed in his investing since then.

He still has around 30 units, but many of those properties have turned over as he's looked to simplify his investing so he can spend more time with his growing family. He's still trading out and finding and acquiring great new properties every year, but he's found ways to do it with much less pavement pounding than before. These are really important skills that every investor needs to learn, whether you're just starting your real estate and journey, or you're in the harvesting phase like Taylor is. Let's bring them on. Taylor, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thanks for being here. Good morning, Dave, and thanks for having me back.

Yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun. I hope that a lot of you have heard Taylor's first episode. It was 677 back in October of 2022. But for those who haven't yet listened to that one, Taylor, maybe give us a little bit background about yourself how you got into real estate in the first place. Yeah, so just a quick cliff notes on me again, born and raised in California, pretty much straight out of high school, went to the academy up at West Point, was an army guy, commissioned, graduated in 2018, decided to be an artilleryman, went to airborne school, did the paratrooper thing, and then after about five and a half years, exited service. So last time I was on this podcast, I was still in the army, actually, and real estate was my

side hustle, and we were like in a heavy acquisitions mode. Didn't have any kids back then either. So I devoted all my spare time to real estate. And now where we are today is a complete 180. So lifestyle has changed a ton. Of course, we transitioned out of the military, started our family and doing real estate full time. That's great, man. Well, congrats. It sounds like you've made a lot of progress. I'm curious. Going to West Point, were you like originally thinking of having a career in the military, like long term? Yeah, that was, of course, the original game plan going into the academy, you know, trying to make it up the ranks as far as I could. But while it's in the service, you know, I read, of course, like everyone, rich dad, poor dad. Got super heavy into real estate. I found some real estate mentors too and started flipping houses doing burs, doing creative financing, some wholesaling and just kind of fell in love with real estate. And real estate changed my life. So I'm super grateful. I found bigger pockets and I found my mentors. It changed the trajectory. of my life. So instead of doing a career in the military, of course, we did a big pivot. Well,

that's amazing. Well, thank you for your service, but I totally understand, whatever, whether it's military, corporate life, whatever. A lot of people read that book, Rich Ted Portad, get the bug and move into it. But it sounds like you found something you really like. We're going to get to what Taylor's been doing now, but I just want to catch everyone up to what he was doing in the beginning. So what was it like investing while you were still in the military. What kind of deals were you looking for at that point? Yeah. So in the military, we did pretty much any acquisition strategy you can think of. I did house hacking with VA loans, FHA loans, a lot of low down payment options. You know, as a government employee,

didn't make a ton of money back then on a brand new butter bar, second lieutenant. We made decent money, but not enough to just start buying houses like I was. It was probably buying maybe one a month at that point. You were buying one a month? How? A lot of low. A lot of down payment options like sub two seller finance, borr strategy using hard money loans with trying to cash out refinance on the back end. And of course, VA loans are a super powerful tool for all my veterans out there where you can buy property zero down, living it for a while. And then you can either flip it on the back end and pull that equity back out and get it into your next VA loan where you can hold onto it and keep renting it. I still have my very first VA loan locked in like

2.7% interest. Never give it. Now. Now, I, I have so much equity's built up after COVID, but the interest rate is so great. I don't know if I ever want to sell that. So when you were doing this, were you just buying where you were stationed at the time, or did you pick like one hub that you wanted to be investing in? So I actually invested where I was stationed. So I was stationed in Fort Bragg, Fayville, North Carolina. So it was a great rental market, and I love military markets.

So I started investing exactly where I was. And I was real grassroots with it. I was door knocking, you know, I was cold calling. I was boots on the ground. I didn't have much money for a marketing budget. So I was really hustling. My five to nine was really out there getting after it. I bet. Yeah. And so were you renting mostly to other folks in the military? A combination. Pretty much right off the bat, I hired a professional management company because it was just too much for me to keep on, you know, fronting the acquisitions, doing the management and still being in the Army. So I pretty much hired a professional property management right at the

gate, but definitely a lot of military families for sure. And my kind of niche in that market was always been single family homes, three bedroom, two bath, typically, or if not more bedrooms. So it's, you know, perfect for your typical family is kind of what I always like to cater to over there. How long were you doing that when you were actually still in the military building up this portfolio, pretty aggressively? Yeah, very aggressive, really hustling for probably like a good four years. Oh, wow. Okay. While I was in the service. Yeah. And I had a service. So I kind of set a self goal that was like, you know, can I make enough cash flow from this portfolio to match my government paycheck to give me that flexibility to transition out if I wanted

to once my commitment was up? So that was kind of like my challenge I had set for myself back then. And how close were you able to get while you were still in the service? She made a little bit more from the passive than I was making from my paycheck. So luckily it timed out perfectly to where maybe like a half a year after my service obligation, I hit that number, and that kind of gave us that green light to look at our options outside of the military service. At that point, my wife and I were looking to settle down, start a family and everything, too. So the timing really worked out perfectly, and those years of sacrifice did end up paying off for us. Okay.

So that was sort of like just some background. You were on the show back in October of 2022. What year time did you actually transition out of the military? I transitioned out summer of 2003. Okay, so a little bit later. And did you just keep doing the same kind of real estate approach at that point? No, at that point, I did ship. And it was partially because of our lifestyle and also because the market, if you remember around that time. Oh, I remember. Interest rates more than doubled. It got crazy. You know, we got burned a little bit on some

flips that were kind of sitting out there, had a lot of money out there. And so really after, once I transitioned out, I was still doing real estate, but I didn't really quite have a game plan. I got out in like the same month I had my son. Oh, wow. So I moved to Florida got out of the army all the same month down here in South Florida. So I pretty much went straight in a dad mode and the real estate kind of gave us more flexibility to give me that time to spend my wife and the newborn. Well, congratulations on your on your family. That must have been very exciting. How did you pick another market? For me, I always invested where I lived because I like to touch and like to feel like to be involved. And, you know, that might not be the best option for everybody

out there, especially in like high cost of living areas. But I went from Fort Bragg. I moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So I bought a, you know, a good handful of property out there. And then now we moved down here to Florida. And I've been buying stuff around here as well. So I've always invested where I lived. When you went from North Carolina to Sioux Falls, what was different about that market and how do you adapt? So interesting enough, the property value, in South Dakota were actually higher than they were in North Carolina. So the numbers for long terms back then were not super sexy. And we found an interesting niche because my wife was travel nursing back then. And Sioux Falls has two large hospitals, which kind of service almost the

whole state right there in the central region of the city. So we kind of focused on that because there's a lot of travel nurse contracts and that my wife was also being a part of. So we started buying small mom and pop multi-family within a certain radius around these hospitals. And then we kind of really tailored to that travel nurse midterm rentals strategy. So for Bragg, we catered to military family, single-family homes, Sioux Falls, really kind of more smaller apartment mom and pop catering to more of the travel nurses over there. Was that a big change operationally for you going from, you know, doing more of the midterm rental style thing? It was. That's when, uh, I got my wife more involved in real estate, whether she liked it or not.

I finally got her on board. You know, before, it was just me kind of doing it all. And, you know, she kind of let me do my thing. But really that once I got her involved in the traveler's side, kind of more hospitality-based a little bit. And she was a travel nurse, so she knows what travel nurse is want and what they need. So she really helped me. And I brought her into the business on that way.

Cool. Thank you for setting the stage for us, Taylor, and giving us a little bit of background. I want to shift the conversation and talk about when you move to South Florida, what did your portfolio look like and what you've been up to in the last couple of years. But we do need to take one quick break. We'll be right back. Everyone, just a reminder, if you were listening to this, in the next couple of days, Henry Washington and I are doing our cash flow roadshow.

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Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Investor Taylor Wing. Before the break, he was catching us up on his portfolio, how he got started buying while he was still in the military in North Carolina and then in South Dakota. Taylor, you said then, you know, sort of a shift in your life where you were going from being in the military to starting a family, being out of the service, you moved to South Florida. At that point, what did your portfolio look like?

Back then, it was very similar to how it is now, actually. You know, we had roughly around 35 units. We're still around that number now. But what we really focused on now is life optimization and cash flow. A little bit before, you know, I might have been more focused on number of doors, you know, all these other arbitrary numbers that I was tracking. But really, it came down to just cash flow and lifestyle once we had a family because we wanted to make as much money as possible with the least amount of effort possible.

I love that. Yes, don't we all? I don't care about doors anymore. Really, the other metrics, even equity, I know. I appreciate and it helped in appreciation. But cash flow is king right now. So what we did was we kind of strategize. We looked at our portfolio.

We really dove into the numbers, which I didn't really do before. And we were trying to see which ones are really working, which ones are not, which ones are our performers and not. And we just started moving money around, did some 1031 exchanges, got some better properties. And so we're at the same unit count. But I think we've implemented systems to make. it run a lot better so we can maximize that passive cash flow that's ultimately helping us pay our bills and helping us live our lifestyle. Everything you just said we need to dive into because I think

this is a really big topic for investors right now. A lot of people have fortunately, you know, built up some equity, built up a portfolio during, you know, the run up in all these prices. They have a lot of equity. And I get this question all the time. Like how are you rebalancing? How are you thinking about curating? So let's let's talk about that. But first, You just mentioned that cash flow is your goal. You had previously said, though, that you had already replaced your income from the military, which is awesome. What was your new goal and how did you set it?

Like, do you have a specific cash flow number you're trying to get to, or is it just, you know, maximize it indefinitely? For me, it's honestly just maximizing it indefinitely. And I did suffer from lifestyle creep because once I got down here, I wanted to live the Florida lifestyle. You buy a boat? Not a boat yet, but that's in the works, but got the biggest house I possibly could. I'm on the water down here on the intercoastal. We built a pool and everything and did a bunch of upgrades. So we know we're really living the Florida lifestyle. But really just trying to maximize that number as much as we can. But I would say that we hit that level where I feel like we have a foundational level of financial freedom where we feel comfortable paying our like base level expenses.

And so whenever we go out to work, we're just basically helping build that portfolio and saving towards, you know, whatever we want to do next with our lives, whether it's vacations or college funds, really anything. It's just helping us get to that next level because eventually we want to be at a level we're past that. Just we're paying all of our basic expenses to, we're growing and we're really thriving. That's awesome. A very noble goal.

I'm sure a lot of people relate to this. Yeah, real estate, great way to make money. But it is a means to an end. It's like, you know, money in itself doesn't buy happiness, but it can buy you flexibility, which is a great way to get happier in my opinion. So I love that. But let's dig into this idea here of rebalancing your portfolio because this is super important stuff right now.

You had this great portfolio. You said you like hadn't been really looking at the numbers. What were you doing? Just kind of like acquiring great assets and not really thinking about efficiency or like, what did you need to change? I was so focused on acquisitions. I would never pass upon a deal. So, you know, I was buying properties as fast as I could, get as many houses under my bill as I possibly could.

I mean, I would do like a general cash flow. But once you've been operating a property for at least a year, you can really look back at your expenses and, you know, how much you've been spending on the property versus how much income is generating. And kind of just really look down your pro forma's and make those decisions. So it's just something I didn't slow down before and really look at to. optimize. And then once, you know, I slowed everything down and I was able to just look at the numbers and go, okay, you know, it makes more sense. We have a ton of equity here. Why not move into maybe some properties that will perform a little better for us and help us make more cash flow? Can I ask how you logistically did that? Like, do you have spreadsheets or like, what was the

actual process like for doing this? Because I think a lot of investors find themselves in a similar situation that you were in where it's like you buy the deal, you see the cash on cash return that you're projecting, but then they don't actually go back and say, like, am I actually hitting that return? Or like, even if I'm hitting that return, is it as good as all the other deals that I'm buying or all the other deals I could go get on the open market today? Like, what were the actual tools you used to pull this off? For one, we always had QuickBooks, but I'd never really looked at it. But what we did was we actually took some classes in QuickBooks to really learn how to use the programming. And we also hired, you know, a,

great CPA and a great accountant that changed the game for me. Because before I was just paying tax bills and I had no idea why it was that number or how we got there. But now I found somebody that we have strategy calls and we tried to project what our tax liability is going to be and we get ahead of it. So then we start game planning. So when it comes tax season, we're ready for it. So CPA changed my life, you know, a good accountant that sat with us and helped

us clean up our books and help us be able to pull the reports we need per property to really look at and see, okay, which ones are working for us, which ones are not performing as well. So I think those guys are really important to help you get to that next level. I don't think you need to invest a ton of money maybe up front because you're just getting your first couple properties. But once you have a sizable portfolio, those guys are going to save you so much money and they're going to help you make those executive decisions. Absolutely. That's a great way to do it. I think this is probably one of the most underrated things that investors should be doing. I try and do this personally quarterly. I just take, you know, not sometimes I'm not that good about it, but at least

annually, I should say. I try and do it quarterly. But just update what's going on in your portfolio. And I built this spreadsheet. It's actually part of my book. If anyone has read, start with strategy, you will be able to download this or maybe you've seen this. But I created this spreadsheet that after you get that information either from your accountant or if you do it yourself, a way to just sort of side by side look at every property that you have. And I personally like to look at it as a bunch of different levels. So, you know, your equity that you got in it, cash on cash return is, of course, important cash flow.

I like to do two things that I think are super important that a lot of people miss is, one is risk. Like, how risky is this property? Because I want to see, are all my property super risky? That's a problem. Are all my properties super low risk? That's also a problem because I probably missing out on some upside. And the last one I do is how much time each property takes me because there's always a pain

in the butt property. And when you look at these things side by side, you're like, oh, that paint of the butt property is actually making me the least amount of money. Like, why don't I sell this thing? This thing sucks. Or you're like, oh, this one is just amazing. I'm always going to hold on to that. So I really, whatever tool you use, recommend people do this for yourself.

So, Taylor, when you started doing this, what jumped out to you? What did you learn? Yeah. What I learned, like you said, there's some properties that are just a thorn in your side that are just like taking way too much time and attention away from you and costing you way too much money. I had a property. It was a cheaper one, one of the ones I first bought. The problem with it was just not a good neighborhood and just problem after problem. It was just like get somebody in there, they destroy it, turning it over. That's 15 grand again. oh, we got squatters kept breaking in. I gave the property plenty of chances to like, because it was one of the first ones I bought to make it work. But after like two or three iterations

of this and going through maybe two or three different management companies. I love the idea of like giving the property a chance. It's the property's fault. It is kind of true. It's like some properties just they struggle and you just got to get rid of them. And that's okay. Yeah, take someone with maybe a more peculiar set of skills than I had or maybe that was able to deal with a lot more stress than I was able to deal with. So to me, it wasn't worth it. That's one of the ones I liquidated and just moved that money somewhere else. It wasn't worth the headache for me because I have a whole thing I got going on in my life and I didn't want to just be a property manager. Was that hard because there is this narrative in the real estate investing community that's like never sell?

You know, like, I'll just buy and just never sell. Was it hard to sort of shift your mindset? I used to be like that. Maybe like you're taking a step back, right? Like, I, you know, worked so hard to get this property and now, you know, I'm selling it and you're paying, you know, an agent probably. You're paying closing costs. It kind of sucks. But after you see how much heartache you went through and you look over like your statements and you see like how much money that you've sunk into this thing, just rip the bandaid off, man. Yeah, I do it. I think it's, yeah, it's a hard thing because it's a new skill set to learn. You know, like you were mentioning, you were sort of just in acquisition mode. That's a skill that usually, and I think rightfully, people learn first. That's kind of what you need to do. But portfolio management, totally different skill.

And learning how to optimize your resources, optimize your time, that's where I think most investors get to. You get to that point. But you do is a little daunting to learn how to manage. that. I would love to hear how you have gone about managing that and how you've transformed your portfolio. We have to take one more quick break, though. We'll be right back. Managing rentals shouldn't be stressful. That's why landlords love rent-ready. You can get rent in your account in just two days, which means faster cash flow and less waiting. Do you need to message a tenant?

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complete it before the tax deadline. Go to costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report. Don't overpay the IRS. Head to costsegregation.com before April 15th. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with investor Taylor Wing. Before the break, we were talking about how Taylor had started to transform his portfolio. So Taylor, you did this analysis. Great work figuring out properties that were working for you, weren't working for you. How did you go about repositioning your resources and assets into new properties? First of all, it took a lot of retooling for me.

Like you said, it's a completely different skill set. For me and my personality, I much would. much rather be on the acquisition side or on the sales side, chit-chatting with people out in the field, talking to contractors, making things happen. That's just, that's the kind of guy I am. So, sitting behind a computer and having to crunch numbers and look at reports and it's just not as fun for me. So what? I love that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a very analytical person. So it took a bit of retooling, but what really forced me to do that is because, you know, we're looking at how much rents we're pulling in versus the debt service. And, you know, we're like, why aren't our

numbers better than we should be making a lot more money than what we are? Like, where is this money actually going? That's what forced us to really look into this and make those decisions. And when you did that, so like, let's just say you pick a property, not performing. Did you automatically sell all of them? Did you consider refinancing any of them? Or how do you think about that. Yeah, wait a couple options, like you said. Maybe it's like, oh, should we switch, maybe try a short term or a midterm or should we do a cash net refinanced, roll that equity and some other properties. But really, for me, once I figured out how to do a 1031 exchange, that's what really made the most sense, because I was able to get that kind of maybe headache

property, like off of my plate. And I was able to move that money into properties that will actually kind of get us towards that financial freedom number that we're chasing. So for me, a 1031 made total sense. I was able to defer the capital gains on that. So it's a powerful tool. I love the 1031. If anyone hasn't done one yet, definitely look into it. It's not super expensive. I can't remember how much it cost me, maybe like a thousand or 2000, something like that, and was able to save maybe close to six figures in taxes alone. Yeah, it's 20% of the equity that you built up. It's crazy. It's a lot. So it's a powerful tool and definitely need to use it. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're not familiar what a 1031 is. It's a part of the tax code that allows specifically real estate

investors. This is a really unique part about being a real estate investor. If you buy a property, it builds up all this equity. That's great. But when you go to sell, if you wanted to trade out, like Taylor's talking about, without this rule, you pay 20% capital gains on your profit. So if you bought it for, I'll use very simple numbers. You bought it for 200. Sell it for 300. You have $100,000 in profit there. You'd pay $20,000. in taxes, which, again, you know, that's, you made 100 grand, so that's good. But ideally, you want to take that 100 grand and reinvest it into another property, it allows you to keep scaling. And the 1031 exchange allows you to make a tax-free exchange into a, what they call

a like-for-like property. So you take an investment property, you buy another one. There are some time limitations that make it a little bit stressful, at least in my experience, doing it a few times, but it could be very, very worth it. So if you were in this, portfolio management stage of your investing career, checking out a 1031 and using it can be a really, really powerful option. So, Taylor, when you went about selling these properties, were you going to reinvest in the markets they were in? Because you're now across three markets, right?

You're in North Carolina. You're in South Dakota. You're in South Florida. Did you just reinvest in the same market? Or did you want to bring everything to Florida to sort of consolidate? I actually, the opposite. I had properties in Florida. and I moved that money out of the state back to Sioux Falls and Fayetteville.

And the reason being is what was really prices that were creeping up was my insurance costs. My properties were cash flowing initially and then with the rise of insurance costs, which is a problem in our state, you know, it needs to be addressed. It just basically breaking even, or even at a slight loss. So it didn't really make sense for me to hold them anymore. Okay. And that's kind of what I was curious about because you bought a lot of your properties in the early 2020s and it was easier, frankly, to find a lot of deals. It was. So I'm curious, was it how relatively hard or easy was it to find cash-hling deals in the other two markets you operate in? Much easier. I mean, because, you know, the Midwest and in the southeast, it's a lot easier to find cash flow. Just prices of real estate are just not as high as you. you would see down here in South Florida. Florida's been appreciating like crazy, especially after COVID. Our market's cooled down quite a bit, but we're probably going to be competitive

with California soon. I don't know. We'll see. I actually made a whole episode of On the Market, our sister podcast, about Florida and what's happened there the last couple years. From like 2020, and 2023, I think prices went up 50%, which is just absolutely insane. Like, normally that would probably take two decades in a normal situation. And nationally, it went up like 40%, but it was 53%. So yeah, Florida has been, I think, up until 2024, the fastest growing state for those three years. Since then, it's now largely in a correction. But it is, you know, it's been a roller coaster ride, but a lot of amazing appreciation. So when you went to these other markets, though, Is it like on market kind of, you know, stabilized deals that you could buy cash flow,

where you fixing them up, finding off market, how do you go about it? I've purchased most of our portfolio off market, either direct to seller or utilizing connections, wholesalers to acquire deals. There's been a couple deals I've bought on market, but it's pretty rare. It's just so much more competition. Our primary house, though, is a really creative deal how I bought the house I'm living in now. and that was actually an on-market deal, and that's a cool seller finance deal that we negotiated. But for the most part, most of our deals that are in our rental portfolio have been off-market.

Okay, cool. And was it hard to build up that deal flow, or did you have it already from operating there? Yeah, basically by the time, you know, we moved down here, we already had our teams, our systems, connections all set up in the markets that we were previously operating in. So it's easier for me to plug back in, even to this day, That's where I'm still hunting for deals primarily is in those two markets. And so when I find something and when somebody sends me a deal, I'm able to execute on it. How would you describe the profile of your deal today?

Like maybe just walk us through a recent one. Like, what are you buying it for? How much work are you doing for it? And what does the cash flow come out to be? I bought two deals in Fayville last year. They're very similar deals. And prices have increased in that market as well. So these two deals I did, they're both bird deals.

deals. They were both sourced from connections and wholesalers. And basically, I've been buying them probably like in the 140s range. Okay. Maybe in the 130s, if I'm lucky. And on the back end, I'm probably getting them appraised for like the 220 to 240 range. Nice. So I don't, I don't really do huge rehabs. I like to do cosmetic in and out within a couple months. That's kind of how I've done with those last two that I bought. And cash flow is probably like, 300 bucks maybe if you're a lucky 400 that's pretty good though like so what does that come out to on a cash on cash return so 400 bucks a month that's fourish grant a year in cash flow per property yeah and you know maybe 300 bucks isn't life changing but um you know you stack those dominoes up and once you build up

a portfolio and you set those units on autopilot with the property management company i feel like your lifestyle and your your flexibility really starts to change and you can feel that oh absolutely And the other thing that I think a lot of people miss out on is that $300 a month is usually tax-free if you're doing it, right, tax-wise. So that's the equivalent of making $400 a month or even $450 depending on your tax bracket. So it's just another thing to remember is that a lot of times rental income can almost be treated as post-tax income, which is incredible. So you've got to make sure to think of it that way. Yeah. Rental income is the best income.

So if you're buying at $140, how much cash you're putting into each of these deals? total. Usually on the back end, I'll do a cash out refi. And on these ones, I'm not able to pull all of my money back out. But usually my goal is if I can leave like 10 grand or less than there, I'm happy from the front end. Because usually I'll do like 100% financing on the front end. So on the back end, I might have to bring like maybe like 10K to close. Okay. So you have a total of 10k into this deal. And you're making 4K a year off of that. Yes, sir. So that's just a casual 40% cash on cash cash. That's insane. That's what. why I like to, you know, do the burr method and buy low and put in that sweat equity fixing up

the property because you're just cash on cash return is going to be so much greater. I think this goes to say, one, a lot of people are saying are cash flow are dead. Clearly not. A lot of people right now say the burr doesn't work anymore. So what is your message to those folks? I think, you know, it's a lot harder nowadays, which is why I don't buy one a month anymore. but they're out there. You just have to be patient and you got to wait for those deals. But there's those diamonds in the rough out there still. You just got to find them.

So how are you finding them now? Still off market, but like it slowed down from one a month. What is your cadence right now? Yeah. So last year, I only did two in Fayville. Okay. If you're able to even buy, in my opinion, even one a year, you're making that forward momentum still.

It's still awesome. So, you know, again, I don't even care about doors. or anything like that. And I don't compare my portfolio to anybody else's. It's not a competition. It's just all about cash flow and the lifestyle that it's going to create for you. 100%. I couldn't agree more with the philosophy.

Door count is very silly. You know, there are people I know with amazing door counts and terrible cash on cash return. And then there's the opposite, right? There's people with six, five, six paid off properties that are crushing. That's all you need. You know, it's right? Yeah, it's like totally different. I've been thinking a lot more about just starting to pay off properties at this point in my

career. I have to not just being in total acquisition mode. It's great. It's like really comforting for some reason. It is. This has been great, Taylor. Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. Do you have any, you know, last advice for folks listening to this before we go?

Again, you know, a lot of those other metrics don't matter as much. It's all about lifestyle and real estate is a powerful tool. Use it to create the lifestyle that you want. hand it off to a property management company and enjoy the money. You know, it's meant, life's meant to be enjoyed, spend it with your family, spend it with your loved ones, and think of real estate is just a powerful tool to help you get there. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Taylor. I really appreciate you joining us again on the Bigger Pockets podcast.

Thank you, Dave. Thanks for having me. Everyone out there. Thank you for listening. Yeah, we'll have to have you back again, a third time, Taylor. Keep it up. It would be fun to track your progress. Let me know.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. See in a couple of days. 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 Calicokewarm content.

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