BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - From Zero to $8,000/Month Cash Flow in Just 2 Years (While Working a W2)

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Growing to $8,000 in monthly cash flow and 35 rental units—all while working a W2 job?! Just two years ago, today’s guest knew nothing about real estate investing. But he found a deal and brought it to someone with money, and this single move launched his investing journey. Want to do the same, starting from zero? Then you don’t want to miss this one! Luke Tetreault was miserable at his W2 job. When he had finally reached his breaking point, he decided to take a swing at real estate—and at first, it wasn’t pretty. Without any investing knowledge or experience, Luke found his first property on Facebook Marketplace and didn’t even have the money to close it himself. So, he reached out to an old contact, who ended up funding the deal. Over time, he grew his network until he had contractors and private money lenders for all his deals! He started with a single-family home, but his most recent deal? An 18-unit mobile home park he bought with creative financing. Stick around as Luke teaches you how to find off-market deals no one’s looking for, use your everyday hobbies to build out your investing team, and scale your portfolio starting with little to no cash! In This Episode We Cover How Luke scaled to $8,000 in monthly cash flow and 35 units (in TWO years) Boosting your cash flow by pivoting to another investing strategy Buying an 18-unit mobile home park with zero money out of pocket Creative ways to find off-market real estate deals at a deep discount Two signs you’re ready to leave your W2 job for real estate investing Leveraging your own hobbies and passions to build your investing team And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1219 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

Hey everyone, Dave here. Happy holidays from all of us here at Bigger Pockets. To wrap up 2025, we're sharing a few of our favorite episodes from across the Bigger Pockets Network this year. Today, it's an investor story from Real Estate Rookie that was originally published back in April. So you can enjoy this episode. It's Ashley Kerr and Tony Robinson speaking with investor Luke Taitro.

And I'll be back with new episodes of the Bigger Pockets podcast starting January 2nd. This is The Real Estate. Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Care. And I'm Tony J. Robinson, and let's give a big warm welcome to Luke. Luke, thank you for joining us today, brother. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. So, Luke, you work as a welder for your full-time job, but you've told us you don't love your job per se. So how did you land on real estate for your next steps for financial freedom? Well, I think it kind of started with it was a little bit more than a dislike of my job. I found myself pretty, pretty miserable. Just kind of disappointed in myself how I kind of ended up where I was at in life. I always felt like I should

be doing something a lot bigger, a lot more, and I just never felt like I quite fit in with the guys I was working with, you know, the long 60, 80 hours a week we were working. And, you know, before I knew it, I was 25 years old. And I'm like, I started welding straight out of high school. and go to college, just went kind of straight to work. And I just felt like my life just kind of snapped and all of a sudden, all of my younger years are over and I'm just not really getting anywhere. So that's kind of how I kind of started thinking outside of the box, getting out, you know, what am I going to do? And real estate kind of fell into my lap because it was, I had one mentor in my life and it was my best friend growing up's father. He was a custom home builder. He had,

A few single family rentals, and it was just kind of always topic of conversation. I can remember when we were younger just, you know, he was going to pick up rent or he was going to fix a house. I don't think I really took much to it, you know, when we were in high school. I was 18. You know, our mind was on some other things. And, but I think that kind of ingrained somewhere in my mind, you know, I always kind of knew I could fall back on that. So I think once I got to almost a breaking point of where I needed to make a change, you know, I called him up.

We had a quick phone call, and I was like, yeah, let's now or never, let's just try it. I'll find a deal. And I kind of made an agreement with him where he'd essentially be my first private money guy. And I ended up finding the first deal. It kind of all just snowballed from there. I want you to take us to see your first deal, Luke, because I'm told that you found your first real estate deal on Facebook Marketplace, which is almost the quote of like finding a a deal on Craigslist, right? So walk us through how you found this deal. It gets even better than that

because the top off the fact that it was off Facebook marketplace, I set my now fiance to go walk it because I work a lot, so it's hard for me to be free during the day. And she's never done one construction job. She's never bought a house before. She has zero real estate experience. So she walked it. She's like, oh, I guess it looks all right. And I negotiated. with them over Facebook Messenger because they didn't want to take a phone call. And I bought it sight unseen to kind of make things a little more interesting. And to not even talk to the person either that you won't take a phone call. Oh my God. So I guess let me just ask. Like Luke, did you not at any point feel that this might have been a scam given that Facebook marketplace

didn't want to talk on the phone? Were you worried at all about that? Honestly, I had like 20 mutual friends with them. So to me, that was a real person. So I didn't know them personally, but I was like, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be legit. And she showed up. They were there when she was there and they walked through it. There was a tenant in there. So she was like, her first experience of tenant, she's walking over all their stuff. They're kind of like walking them through with a homeowner. She said it was just wild. And yeah, we decided to go through with it. So let me ask you this for like your first stuff. as okay, you guys negotiate through Messenger, you have a deal.

What's the next thing that happened? Did you hire an attorney? What are those next crucial steps to actually close on the property? Luckily, I kind of really leaned on my mentor there because, you know, he's been doing, he's been in real estate for 30 years. And so as soon as we agreed on a price, I just kind of went to him. And, you know, he sent me to his attorney. they drew up all the paperwork. I didn't know what I was looking at. I barely even read the

contract if I'm being totally honest. And we just bought it. That was kind of how it was, I don't know if it was ignorant, me being naive or just ready to go. I don't know, but luckily it worked out. And, you know, Luke, obviously you're in a unique position because you had this mentor, right, someone who had a lot of experience in real estate. And for a lot of the Rikis that are listening, you may not have someone like Lucad that can kind of hold your hand and guide you this process in real life right next to you, but there is a way to kind of create your own board of mentors. And I think a lot of it starts with building the right team to support you. So for me, the folks that really helped me early on were my agents and my lender.

And they were kind of my conduit to introduce me to the other people that I needed to meet. So for the rickies that are listening, use the bigger pockets agent finder, use the bigger pockets lender finder to get connected with folks in your specific markets that are already working with real estate investors and can hold your hand to say, hey, you found this amazing deal, Luke, here you need to go talk to you next. So just trying to make sure that for the brinkies that are to listen, you understand what those options are for you as well. So Luke, you find this deal. I guess give us the numbers on it. What did you end up buying it for? And how did you know that it was actually a good deal? So they had it listed for like 85 for N. I

I think. And after, I mean, I really just kind of took it upon myself to comp a property. So I went on Redfin and all the soles. And I was kind of doing the whole debang. And I figured it'd probably be worth right around 120, 1.30. And it didn't need much work for what it was, I mean, from the pictures I saw. So I figured my original plan was I was going to be the one to fix it up along with my mom. does she helps us do stuff and my fiance so um i figured we could fix it up pretty cheap i budgeted

for 20 grand and um i was like you know after kind of listening to your guys's podcast and to some other people i was like you know we could refi out um and then move on to the next one and that's kind of how it went we ended up putting a little over 20 grand into it and um we got it rented i took it to the bank and they appraised it at like 135 one 135 33 somewhere in there. And I pulled out as much as I could. I paid him off. We profited a little, took home a little less than 20 grand. And we were off to the races, I guess you'd say. That's awesome. What a killer first deal. Yeah. It was at the time, I didn't know that because I had done so little research and stuff. But now, kind of where I'm at now, it's, yeah, it was a

pretty good one. So with that property, you ended up renting it out. What were the rents? What was the cash flow. Yeah, so we ended up now it's run it for like 1350 and it cash flow is about 400 bucks a month. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. With no money into the deal. You pulled all your money back out. Yeah, yeah. It worked out great. This might be one of the best first deals, Luke, that we've heard on the podcast. You found it in a very unconventional way, messaging someone on Facebook. You had a private money lender line up the whole thing. You estimated 20K in rehab. You actually spent 20K in rehab, which isn't normal. You refinance, pull cash out, and you're still cash flowing several hundred dollars per month. That is amazing.

Looking back now, it is pretty funny that it all worked out that way. Luke, I have a question about your friend's dad being the private money lender. Does your friend invest at all too? Or is just something that you've done? And I guess if your friend has and why hasn't he with his dad's help? No, he does not actually. and I don't know why. Me and him kind of, as, you know, once high school hit, me and him kind of went two different ways.

He was a great lacrosse player. He went out. He actually won a couple national championships. Unfortunately, it came from a little different family, and I went right to work after high school. So I think we just kind of had different mindsets. I think he's kind of back in town now, and I'm sure he'll eventually get into it. But I also kind of, his dad helped me, I mean, to this day, I love him. And I call my dad.

But he built his portfolio, brick by brick, cash, save up cash for the next house. Like, no banks involved, no nothing. So when I started kind of going this route, it quickly turned into him calling me crazy. That was the one and only deal we've ever done together. I just find it interesting because my stories started out very similar where I started working for my childhood friend's father as doing helping him with his real estate as a property manager. And I, you know, he was my first mentor, but my first deal, I actually partnered with his son. So my friend growing up and we did our first deal together. And kind of my pitch was

like, look what your dad is doing. We should do that. We're going to take a real quick break about when we come back, Luke, I want to hear more about your journey and how you were able to scale so quickly to 35 units in two years. We'll be right back. As a real estate investor, the last thing I want to do, or have time for, is play accountant, banker, and debt collector. But that's what I was doing every weekend, flipping between a bunch of apps, bank statements, and receipts, trying to sort it all out by property and figure out who's late on rent. Then I found Baselain, and it takes all of that off my plate. It's Bigger Pocket's official banking platform that automatically sorts my transit.

actions, matches receipts, and collects rent for every property. My tax prep is done, and my weekends are mine again. Plus, I'm saving a ton of money on banking fees and apps that I don't need anymore. Get a $100 bonus when you sign up today at baselaine.com slash BP. The Cashflow Road Show is back. Me, Henry, and other Bigger Pockets personalities are coming to the Texas area from January 13th to 16th. We're going to be in Dallas.

We're going to be in Austin. We're going to Houston, and we have a whole slate of events. We're definitely going to have meetups. We're doing our first ever live podcast recording of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And we're also doing our first ever one-day workshop where Henry and I and other experts are going to be giving you hands-on advice on your personalized strategy. So if you want to join us, which I hope you will, go to biggerpockets.com slash Texas. You can get all the information and tickets there.

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So, Luke, you've had your first successful burr that you completed. What is the next move for you? What did the next couple deals look like? We kind of just kept the ball rolling with the next one. I found, honestly got another house off Facebook marketplace. What market are you in, Luke? We wouldn't mention that. What market are you in?

I'm in a small market outside like Rochester, Syracuse area of New York. Kind of in a bunch of, we've kind of stuck to the same. smaller towns and I don't know if that plays a difference but I've bought quite a few deals off Facebook marketplace we kind of went walked it same deal it was disgusting so this was a lot different where we were going to be getting into some real rehab on this one and I bought it for 40 grand we put another 40 into it and at the end of it ended up appraising for like 145 so that was another great one but it was a lot of learning lessons along starting to work with contractors because after that first deal, I didn't really mention,

but halfway through it is when I started kind of building some relationships with contractors with guys that do stuff because, you know, I got about a month in to me doing the work after I work. And usually I don't get out. We usually start working around 5 a.m. I work till 5, 6 o'clock at night. So by the time I get over there, it's 7 and actually productivity-wise, you're probably only getting an hour and a half of work done the night. And after about a month of that, I sat down with my fiance and I'm like, this isn't going to work. This isn't scalable. This isn't repeatable. I mean, it's just, and I'm miserable. It sucks. And so we started finding people. So then they kind of finished up that first one for us. Then we kind of rolled them into this

next one. And immediately, that didn't work out. So I was on the hunt for contractors. I found some more they came in and we ended up doing the property pretty decent. They weren't the best to work with, but it was kind of one of those things where I couldn't be too picky because we had the house, we had to get it done. But yeah, we ended up getting it done. We rented it out to an attorney. And that, come to find out, cash flow a good $40 a month. When I ran my numbers, those are not the numbers I budgeted for. I thought I was going to be like the other one around three, 400 bucks a month. And I had made some mistakes. I missed a couple. This was a different town, and taxes were way higher for whatever reason. And I just, I skipped it, honestly. It was just me not

kind of doing my due diligence. So that was kind of an I oak earth to where we got it running. I was pumped. It was an attorney. She was great. And then we started kind of paying everything. And after like a few months, I'm like, this thing is, we ended up turning that one into an Airbnb now, actually. Interesting. So you guys pivoted the strategy a little bit. And since you made that transition, what has the cash flow look like on that one? That one on average does like a thousand bucks a month. Yeah, that's amazing. All right. So to take it from 40 to a thousand. What a drastic change in cash flow by making transitioning that strategy. How much more did you have to put into the property to furnish it and things like that? Not much. I mean, we spent, we, we, we, we,

only spent like five grand done getting it's a small little two bedroom so we kind of we definitely went the cheap route but i mean it looks great and um it does really well in the area it's the number one here bnb you said something that there was like pretty amazing so we got to pause in this look right because you you said that you were netting 40 bucks per month as a long term you transition to short term and it went from 40 to 1,000 right so that's an additional 960 dollars I'm breaking up my calculator here. That's an extra $960 per month in profits, right? So $960 over 12 months is $11,520.

You said the investment to get that additional revenue is only $5,000, right? So if we take our profit of $11,520, divide that by our investment of $5,000, we get a cash on cash return of 230%. The reason why I point that out is because there are a lot of people who are, listening that already have properties that much like yours aren't meeting their initial projections, but instead of focusing on buying the next deal, sometimes you can get a much better return by reinvesting into the properties that you already own. And that is an amazing proof of concept because you invested $5,000 and got a 230% return. Could you have put that money into a different

deal and gotten a 230% return? Probably not. But going back to your story loop, because I think it's amazing. I just want to make sure I have your stats right. 35 rentals, 13 flips, AKM monthly cash flow in two years. It's not entirely correct because we have a few things that are under contract to sell and buying, but it's right in there, yeah. Generally speaking, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think the biggest thing is I can't even wrap my head around that level of activity in such a short timeframe. So what, like, how were you able to scale so quickly? What was kind of of like the secret sauce that allowed you to move at such a rapid pace. I think it was a mixture of just my mindset mentality and kind of really reflecting on the deals

we've done and kind of looking at those, how we did them and how can we kind of do them again. So I was just kind of going back to where we've originally talked and where I was in life. I just, you know, I was ready to get out of it. And I'm the type of person that, you know, once I kind of reached that point, Like, I'm just, I don't care. Like, I will go and I'll make it work. And so I kind of had that mentality. And then once I did the first deal with my buddy's dad there, I learned that that was an option.

And then obviously exploring all the forums and YouTube and, you know, podcast and stuff, learning about private money, different ways to get money. I actually went out and joined our local country club to try and network. And that's where I found. a couple of guys that I do all my deals with now. What a great idea. Like, I know our local country club, I mean, it's out on the sticks, but that's like, it's like $100 a year for a social membership.

If you don't play golf and you just want to go and be a social member, like, what a great investment. That was kind of where our head was. And that was why we joined. I like to go off, so, but we, I didn't need to, you know, necessarily join the nicest place in town. But me and my fiancee kind of talked about it. And we figured it would be, it would probably be good for business. And it definitely has been. Luke, let me ask, right? So you joined the country club. First, what was the cost?

It's like $3,500 a year. Okay. So not a small expense, but definitely not a major expense either. But that's what somebody would pay on a mastermind. Yeah, exactly. Even more than that in a lot of situations, right? So $3,500 for the year, you join, you're a member now. how do you go from I signed up to getting to the point where the folks who are in this country club are actually lending you money? Because like are you just going in there handing out your business cards and I'm Luke, give me your money. I'm Luke giving me your money. Like what is the what are the actual conversations look like? Well, so luckily for me, I kind of have a foot in the door because I'm very good at golf.

So when I go and sign up for like leagues or tournaments, everybody wants to be on my team. And that's not cocky at all. It's just. No, no, no, no. I love the honesty of it. Just the reality of it. Yeah. It would be the literal opposite for me.

Like, no one would want me on their team if we were golfing because I am terrible. So I'm glad you had that working for you. Yeah. So, and that's kind of how I've met so many people because I would just get, I started to get random text messages like, hey, you know, there's a tournament going on next Friday. Would you want to go? So because of that, I've just met like the biggest roofer in our town. I know him.

I have a cell phone number now, so he does all of our roofs. I met a guy who owns a couple big fence companies, so they do our fence. I mean, like, just all these relationships that have come of it, it's just, it's worked out great. Tony's literally looking up golf lessons right now. Not golf lessons, but I'm looking up our local country club right now to see. Like, I've never even looked into it before. But how cool to take something that you enjoy doing, that you love doing, and turning it in a way to network and, to make those connections.

And that's just kind of what I did. Whenever we play, I just would make a point of talking about what I had going on. And I've learned that guys with money, you know, everyone kind of thinks the same. Like, everyone's trying to make money with money. So they hear of a young kid who's hungry who's doing deals. They're not afraid to throw them $100 grand. And you're good at golf, so you must be press-ready. Yeah, of course.

I guess, Luke, one final question on that piece. Was it a very direct ask on your part after you had built these relationships to go to some of these folks and say, hey, you know, I'm in real estate. I've got this deal. Let me know if you're interested. Or was it more, I guess, kind of the inverse where they were like, hey, Luke, if you ever have anything, let us know. I work with three main guys now, and two of them came to me. And then the first guy, I actually printed out the entire deal. I brought it to his office where he works. And we kind of sat down and went over all the numbers. and I kind of sold them on the deal. And since that, now that I have, it's been a lot easier now that I have stuff going on and kind of people know what I'm doing. And that was like the biggest thing I preached to anybody I talked to

was I wouldn't ask for any money that I couldn't pay you back, whether this house burned up in flames. And I truly met that. And I truly would never borrow money unless I had a way of getting them paid off in other deals or in other equity lines I have. So being very open and honest about numbers and kind of where I'm at. And then in terms of structuring these deals with the various partners, was it all private money? Were there equity partnerships?

Again, how are you actually structuring the relationships on these different deals? So we do a very basic, depending on who I work with, it's either 10 to 12 percent. And it's just a flat 10 to 12 percent interest, whether I have the money out for a month or a year. And it's a year. I always cap it at a year. So that's how I've done every deal. I haven't done any equity positions yet. I'm looking at some bigger deals that we're trying to possibly talk about that.

But as far as everything I've done with them, it's kind of been smaller stuff where we buy it, we go in, we fix it up, either sell it or refi them out and get them out of it pretty quick. Now, you mentioned some bigger deals and you've got your rentals, you've got the flips that you've done. So what are these bigger deals that you're looking at? I just closed on a 18-unit mobile home park. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. That's been a pretty big learning curve.

Is that in New York? You did close on it in New York? Yeah. Yeah. It's like 45 minutes away, so pretty local. Then we have a couple larger apartment complexes that we're looking at as well, but nothing official on those. So let me ask when you're looking at these bigger deals,

what has been the difference between looking at, you know, the single-family property you're buying to rent or flip compared to like the due diligence per se on a larger multifamily property. Oh, it's leaps and bounds different. I'm learning now that, you know, so I don't want to sit here and act like I know what I'm talking about because I don't feel like I do. Well, yeah, there's just so much that goes into them. So many more tenants in it. I'm in New York.

So there's so many tenant laws. And like I'm learning for this mobile home park. I, the bill, there's a seven, there's also a seven unit apartment building on the mobile home park that's condemned that we're starting with. And one of the apartments, I was like, we're kind of doing our walkthrough and all of their stuff was still in there, but they were gone and supposedly moved out. Well, I'll come to find out they did move out, but all their stuff's there. But in New York, technically, I still have to go through an eviction process. If I don't, they can sue me for getting rid of their stuff. So it's kind of like one of those things where I wouldn't have thought

that would be a big deal. I wasn't totally. about the tenant. I was told it was a condemned building by everyone I talked to, co, the previous owner, and now I'll come to find out we might have to go through this process. Which do you even know where to find the tenant to serve them or anything? I got a number, so I got to make a few phone calls and hopefully I can offer them a little money and get out of there. So look, super excited to hear about this 18 mobile home park property that you just purchased, I think the biggest thing for Rickies that are listening is probably the thought of like, how do you actually put the funds together to buy something this big? So what approach

that you take to buy this mobile home park? Was it creative financing, seller financing, private money? What did you do to take this deal down? Yeah, so this deal was a very odd situation how the whole thing happened. It was actually, I saw it for sale on Craigslist about a year ago, actually. So we go from Facebook Marketplace to Craigslist. It's even worse. So I talked to the guy. I talked to him for a few months, and it was always odd conversations with him. It was just, he was super squirrelly.

You know, there'd be one week where he's like, I need the money. I need the money. Let's sell it. And then I wouldn't hear from him again for a couple weeks. And same kind of cycle. And eventually I just kind of gave up on it, moved on. And then, you know, a couple months ago, I saw it listed on the MLS. And I'm like, oh, you know, and they wanted a ton for it, so I didn't even bother.

Kind of moved on again. And then I was talking to one of the guys I do deals with. And he was kind of talking about how he's foreclosing on a property up in Addison. I'm like, is that? And I asked, and sure enough, it was the same deal. He was actually holding the note for this mobile home park. So I started kind of talking to him. He gave me the whole rundown.

It was not the best situation. a bunch of back taxes, bunch of back utilities, nobody's gotten paid in years, and the whole town wanted them out. So I kind of talked with a seller. I kind of talked with the lender, and I kind of was the middleman,

trying to wheel and deal. It kind of whizzled my way in there. And so the agreement I came up with the lender was, you know, if I could get him to just sign the property over me, can I just assume the debt? and you'll start getting paid and we can all move on. You don't have to worry about going through a foreclosure process and, you know, and he already knows I'm good for it.

So he's like, if you could talk him into it, that's fine by me. So then like the next couple months were just me and the seller kind of going back on forth for basically what extra he was going to pocket on top of the soup of the debt. We ended up agreeing on him not getting a dollar. So at closing, I came out of pocket, no money. and I completely assume the debt. We're going to defer payments for a year while I fixed the whole property up, so I don't have to worry about mortgage payments.

The trailer part cash flow is quite a bit of money on its own without the seven unit building in the front. So by the time I'm actually going to have to start making mortgage payments, everything should be up and run it, and it should be a really, really good deal. So, Luke, you don't have any partners on this deal. You didn't even necessarily raise any private money for this deal. You just assumed the note and came with the money.

zero dollars out of pocket. Yeah, exactly. I actually got paid 50 grand at closing because I had him bump the note up an extra 50 grand so I could start rolling some of that into renovations. Luke, you might be the best real estate investor we've ever interviewed, finding deals off of Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. And I love the story, man. This guy just got burned for years from this other person and he's willing to give you an extra $50,000 to take this property. Imagine going to a bank and say, Hey, Bank, give me $50,000 to take over this note. Oh, yeah.

And if they saw a picture of the property, they would have laughed at my face, too. Luke, I got to take you with me and my negotiations moving forward, man, because you got, you got like the gift of gab or something going on there, man. Oh, no. No, I think I'm just lucky. Well, we've got to take our final ab break, but we've got a little bit more to get into here with Luke. But while we're gone, make sure you guys are subscribed to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel. You guys can find us at Real Estate Riki.

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Stop letting outdated lending practices hold you back. That's hostfinancial.com, where your property's potential meets unlimited financing. Okay, welcome back from our break. We are here with Luke. Before we wrap things up, I want to touch on your W2 job. So you were able to actually move your fiancé out of of her normal W-2 to run the business with you. So maybe touch on what she's, you know, helping you do in the business. And then also what your plan is to be able to quit your W-2 job.

I want to preface that. None of this would have been possible without her. And I also, my mom used to work for UPS. She would load boxes on the trucks. And she quit and she not works as well. So those two are kind of, yeah, those two are kind of full time during the day, which allows me to still kind of work and pay the bills. And like I've yet to take $1 from anything we've made.

It just all goes right back in. And the only thing we've paid is just my mom and her. And the Airbnb has covered that. So it kind of works out great. And they're able to kind of, so we kind of split the roles where my mom kind of handles project management, I guess you'd say. and then Mal takes care of all the tenant issues, all the legal documents. She's extremely, extremely type A. So it works out amazing for emails, calls.

I don't have to worry about a thing. If I need something, there's an Excel spreadsheet that is updated by the hour. And it just, you know, I'm not like that at all. And I think without her, we really would be in a mass because our numbers would be kind of, I'm just the, you know, I like to be in the front, kind of pushing forward, finding deals, and then luckily she's able to kind of keep everyone organized. And my mom's really got good at talking the contractor jargon. So it's kind of worked out well.

And then what about yourself? What's the plan for you to eventually move out of your W2 job? That's kind of where my biggest, I guess, hurdle would be right now. It's just, it's obviously a scary thing. thought leaving, you know, a good job that pays all the bills and allows us to kind of do this. So, you know, I kind of have, I have worries if I do it too soon. It might really hinder us being able to continue to grow.

But also, I know how productive I can be. So I can only imagine if my two, three hours a day working was 15, you know. So it's kind of one of those things where, like, I'm nervous on it. I don't really know how I should pay myself. I'm afraid to take money from the business. I don't like the thought of it. And so I guess that's just kind of where I'm at currently, is trying to figure out exactly all the logistics.

Do I want to up my flipping? Do I want to just pay myself off a flipping? Should I worry about growing cash flow to kind of get to the point where all my bills are covered? And then I can just not worry from that. And so that's kind of currently where I'm at with everything. Yeah. If I can kind of give you my recommendation, Luke, I think there's a couple of things.

You've built an expertise in a few areas already. The flipping to generate large chunks of cash, which is great. Obviously, you're really good at finding deals in your market that are undervalued and then stabilizing those properties to generate cash flow. So you've got and your ability to raise money to fund these deals, right? So you've got three massive skill sets. flipping for big chunks of cash, buying, renovating for the cash flow, raising money to fund all of your deals. So you've got all of the pieces in place, I think, to lay that foundation to get you

to step away. I think if I were you, the two things I would focus on are one, getting your personal reserves to a point where you're comfortable. And what that comfortable is, you know, what that number is going to vary from person to person. Maybe for you, it's six months of your living expenses. Maybe it's two years of your living expenses. Whatever the number is, just decide for yourself, what number do I want to have in the bank? Not business reserves, but like for Luke personally, right, to cover my mortgage, my groceries, my bills, my fun, just my life. How much do I want to have set aside? Then get your cash flow to a number to say, okay, well, if I know my living expenses are X, maybe you want two X in cash flow, right? Because there's

going to be ups and downs. You don't want to make sure you have money set aside. So I think if you can tackle those two things, getting your personal reserves in place and then getting your cash flow to a point, again, whatever threshold you feel makes the most sense. But if you can check both of those boxes, then it's like, okay, well, I'm almost losing money at this point by not going into the business full time. I guess when you put it that way, I should probably quit tomorrow. There you go, man. Well, Luke, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Rookie. Where can people reach out to you? I'm not huge on social medias, but you can look me up on, I mean, Instagram, it's Luke

underscore Tatro. Facebook, it's Luke Taitro. And Luke, how do you spell your last name for folks? It's T-E-T-R-E-A-U-L-T. I'm Ashley and he's Tony. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, A Real Estate Rookie, and we'll see you guys soon for another episode. 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 Calicoe 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.biggerpockets.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. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.