BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - He Started with $5,000. Now He Owns 14 Rental Properties (And Quit His Job!)

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

When Niyi Adewole got his first “real” job out of college, he had one goal: financial freedom. But when he asked his coworkers about the company 401(k), he left more confused than convinced. In searching for answers, he discovered a much better path: real estate investing. Then, with just $5,000 in savings, he bought his first rental property—a triplex he house hacked to cover his mortgage. That first property snowballed into the next one, and in just six years, Niyi quit his W-2 job. Today, he owns 14 properties, including small multifamily rentals, Airbnbs, and even a self-storage facility. His portfolio generates more than enough cash flow to live on, but instead, he continues to funnel everything toward the next property. Niyi’s story is remarkable, but he didn’t go from earning a $55,000 salary to financial freedom overnight. In this episode, he shares how he sacrificed, hustled, and stacked promotions at his W-2 job to get to where he is today. The question isn’t if you can do the same. It’s will you? In This Episode We Cover How Niyi scaled from $5,000 in savings to 14 rental properties (and counting) The playbook that allowed Niyi to quit his job and go all-in on real estate The immeasurable value of working with an investor-friendly agent A profitable investing strategy that doesn’t involve tenants or toilets Buying a house with low money down and having tenants pay your mortgage And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1306⁠. 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 went from a $5,000 down payment to financial freedom in just six years. In 2015, Niyy Adewale asked the finance guys at his office to explain how a 401k works. And he left that conversation even more confused. But Niyy soon found an investment that made way more sense. It was a triplex that he could live in in Louisville, Kentucky. That property cost about $190,000, but Niyy only needed about $5,000 to buy it. And that was convenient because, well, it was almost every dollar he had. He moved into one unit, rented the other two units, and went from paying $12,000 a month in rent to living for free.

From buying that first property, it only took Ney six years to replace his W2 paycheck and move into real estate full time. He didn't start with any family money or any other advantages. In fact, Niyy watched his mom lose their family home in the 2008 crash. but that's why he was so determined to build wealth that he could control. Today, Ney is sharing the entire journey, how he scaled from one house hack into a portfolio of small multifamily properties, how he kept investing through several cross-country moves, and how he built the multiple income streams in real estate that helped him buy back his time.

By the end of this episode, you'll see. There's no magic to investing in real estate. It's just a formula that started with one $5,000 investment. What's going on, everybody? I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And today, I've got an investor story with Mr. Niyiyahawale out of Atlanta. So let's bring him in. Niyi Adi-Awale, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, my friend. Come on now. Thank you for having me here. This has been integral in my investing career, and so it's an honor to be here. Well, we are glad you're here. And let's start off by just having you give us a little bit of background about how you got into this whole real estate space. So we're going to take it back a little over a decade to 2015. I was just getting into my first

career outside of college, which was medical device sales. And I wanted to be smart with the money I was starting to make. I wanted to know like, hey, where can I put this where it can grow and start to earn some income? And so I went to my finance guys that, you know, I sat next to and played fantasy football with and asked them like, hey, how does this whole stock market thing work? Right. I've never had a 401k before. I've never done any of this before. Can you just coach me through it? And they tried to simplify it, but at the end of the day, I left slightly more confused than I came in. I was like, okay, let me just put this into like a target fund or whatever, right? But when I started doing my own research, I came across certain books like rich dad, poor dad, and things that nature. And it got

me excited about real estate. And then I found the Bigger Pockets podcast. And in 2015, I listened to, I don't know how many episodes, but there was one in particular that caught my mind. And I I remember this specifically. I remember the exact episode. It was episode 60 with Serge Shoe Krat, where he was talking about buying small, multi-family homes. I listened to that once and just could not get it out of my mind. Listen to it two or three times over that weekend and set in my mind that was going to get started in real estate invested. So you listen to some podcasts. You got excited about real estate, but what actually turned it into action? Man, so started to hear about that house hack strategy. And then I got promoted. in my job. So when I first started working in 2015 as an intern, I was making like 55K annually and living in Chicago, which is semi expensive. And so that money was getting spent. Yeah, absolutely. And so what I did is I got promoted and actually moved to Louisville, Kentucky. And at the time, I could not pick Louisville out on a map. I actually thought it was where Louisiana is. I'm like,

I'm looking around for it. Like, where the heck is Louisville? And when I saw Kentucky, I was a little bit disappointed. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Louisville was a lot less expensive. There's a bit less to do or less distractions out there. And so I was able to actually go get my first house hack when I moved there in 2016 where I bought a triplex for 190K, live in one unit, rented the other two out and essentially live for free. So that was your very first real estate deal was a house hack, Louisville, Kentucky. Triplex. Did you just find it sitting on the market? Yeah, it was on the market. I was looking to find a quote unquote you know, investor-friendly realtor. I messed that up initially. But I still was able to buy a deal.

And at that time, I thought I was overpaying. But looking back, I mean, I wish I could buy 10 of those. I assume since this was on the MLS, it was pretty much turnkey. You just had to move in. Correct with some caveats. The thing about Louisville, Kentucky, anybody that's been there or seen the Derby, most of these homes were built in the early 1900s. And so, Henry, I don't know if you're still working with 1900 homes. But I try not to. Yeah, I try not to now from experience. that I didn't know and I bought a bunch of these, but that one had so many weird quirks, right? It was like one of the units where they couldn't put HVAC into it. So I had to figure out like a mini-duck system and every winter the pipes would freeze. So I had to get like a space heater

for this one area. It was a lot going on. But I went from paying $1,200 a month, right, to now saving that $1,200 and living for free. And when I moved out, was able to actually make income on that. And that opened my eyes to a new world that I didn't know it's possible. This house hack, did you use an FHA or a conventional loan? I went FHA with it. So three and a half percent down. So what did you end up putting down? And then what were your rents in the units?

Yeah. So my total amount was about five grand, which was everything I had saved up for my money. So it was a lot of money to me. I was like, dude, this is everything I got. Let's hope this works. And when I moved in, the mortgage was 1350. And that's including everything, right? The insurance, all that stuff.

And the two rents of the other units was $1,400 total. And so I was in the positive, call it $50 if you had no expenses, and that was a win. So people talk about house hacking all the time because of the power of the strategy. But just the fact that you get your mortgage covered is only 50% of the benefit of house hacking. The true benefit of house hacking comes from you continuing to pay rent. You just pay it to yourself. That allows you to save up what you need in order to continue to invest. So was that what you were doing with that, with that now windfall of cash that you didn't have to pay rent with?

Yes. And what you said is 100% the key. It's are you willing to have delayed gratification and sacrifice now for the future? And I think that my background and what happened to me financially in the past is what allowed me to not even have a question on that. When I came up, right, I had a single mother that raised three boys by herself. I was the last one, right? And, you know, in the 0708 time frame, Like right before that, my mom bought a family house. We're all going to live there. It was amazing. It's like, mom, how'd you even afford this? And it was answered in 08 when we had to short sell that thing and to clear bankruptcy. And so I've seen financial struggle and I've seen what it's done to our family. And so when I was getting into medical device and all this other stuff, I'm like, dude, I want to be financially free because it just means so much to me and to be able to help our family kind of see that there is another way. And so, yeah, I was saving that money and I was still doing a good job at work to where I got promoted in,

less than a year after I purchased that home. And I actually got moved up to Boston with the same company to move into a higher risk, but higher reward medical device opportunity. Sure. And started closing some deals up there and doing a similar thing with a house hack up there as well. So if I'm hearing you, you moved to a whole new market after you did your very first deal, which in a lot of people's perspective would probably be a little frustrating because now you've, you've just, you found this market where you could buy good deals, you got a great deal. And if you want to start growing and scaling, now you don't live there anymore. So how did you go from like one house hack in Louisville to a much more expensive market and being able to invest? Did you still invest in Louisville or did you

pivot and invest in Boston? When I moved to Boston, you're spot on. That cost is way and above. I didn't even realize Boston was that expensive. It's like top five in the country. I was like crazy expensive. Yeah. Because I've never been there before. So, when I'm like looking at it, I was getting a promotion to where, hey, you're getting, you know, a 20% raise in your income. But when I looked at the cost of living, it was actually a 40% decrease. I'm like, right. I can't even afford to go get my own apartment. And so I delayed gratification, right? And I said, hey, I only want to have 25% of what I'm making on base, not commission, go toward living expenses, right? And so I ended up doing a house hack, but not in the traditional sense. I didn't buy anything. I just had two roommates in an apartment. And we all. rented it together, right? And I was able to save significantly on that front. You did a rental house hack. I did that too. Did you? Yeah, not because I was in the real estate. I was just broke. Hey, both work. It works in the way. Up there, I was just like, hey, man, I got to save somehow. Is this expensive?

Yeah. And then to your point, I had just bought down here and I knew that neighborhood. I used to run around the streets and kind of understood that block. And so I continued to invest down there. And the next deal that I bought, it took about 18 months to close some deals and get enough money, but I end up buying 12 units at one time, three quadplexes from one owner that was literally three doors down on the side street adjoining. Because I knew that neighborhood, and that's what I did. And I did it through a partnership as well with family to get the rest of the funds. Okay. So you moved out of your house hack. I assumed you kept it and you rented the unit out that you were living in. So now that thing is cash flowing because you are already making money to live there. So now you've got one cash flowing asset.

then you rent hacked in Boston. So you decreased what it would cost you to live there. And your very next deal wasn't in Boston. It was actually a set of multifamilies from a Louisville, Kentucky owner. Now, was this somebody you knew already? Or was this a deal you went hunting for? It was one where I connected with an investor-friendly realtor. And she has now been my partner for many, many years.

and we partner our other stuff together. But it was through her network. It did hit the market, but it was 500K to buy 12 units. And I was like, hey, these numbers make a lot of sense. There was a lot of work that needed to happen in the house. Structurally, roof, siding. There was a lot going on. But that was the next deal that kind of got us going.

Okay. That's a lot of units to buy when you're not there. So how did you get your eyeballs on all of these units to determine what you were buying and if it made sense? Man. So it was leaning on her. her to go in and do videos of every unit, which she did. And then once we're able to get under contract, during that due diligence period, I did fly down to go and see these units. I realized there was a lot of work. But looking at what I was pulling in on the house right next door that was

semi-updated with our management, I'm like, man, we can do this. Now, I quickly realized that when you're dealing with, because some of the tenants were Section 8, some of the tenants were like a whole bunch of other different housing pieces. It was a different class than what I was used to, which was mostly students renting the other place out. And so that was a learning curve. But I just kept trying to automate as much as I can within my systems. And then I used and leaned on that realtor to help me lease up different units. But it still was a struggle. Looking back, if I did that again, I probably would not have bought that deal. It was a hell of a lot going on. Right. That was that why they were selling it for so little. But it taught me a lot and it helped me get to where I am today.

Now, how did you finance this deal? Was it like a construction loan where you were given some of that? renovation money or were you funding the renovation out of your pocket? Henry, you're now getting into the mistakes and you have an eye for it. So keep in mind, the first deal I bought FHA, right? 30 year financing. And I'm like, okay, this is smooth. When I was running these numbers up front and this is really green of me, right, having listened to all these podcasts, I was running it on a 30 year note. I'm like, these are three quadplexes. It's going to be 30 year. This is great. And then I get hit with the realization as we're getting past due diligence. This is a commercial loan. I've never done a commercial loan.

20 year I am. It's 20 year. That changes the numbers significantly. I'm like, hold up. This is completely different, right? And it's like a five-year balloon to where, hey, you've got to either refinance or you got to sell this thing, you know, five years from now. So that completely changed up the numbers.

And I warned a lot of people of that now, like, hey, commercial's different. That five year you're looking at versus the fourplex are not the same thing. These are two different things, right? So we financed it with a commercial loan. And then I just paid for the repairs out of pocket because I was starting to to do well in the job. And this is what I'd say to anybody that's thinking about, hey, I want to move into full-time real estate investing. You absolutely should use the job that you have as a business partner to help you ease into it. I would not just jump ship. You should use it to help you ease into it

because it was only the grace of God and having that job that helped me be able to keep these properties long enough to where it actually made sense and finish all these renovations. What I just want to reiterate for people is me used a commercial loan. And typically, commercial loans are amortized over a shorter period of time. So when you're underwriting deals, it helps to know what kind of financing you're going to get. I like to use a lot of local community banks and construction loans. And so I underwrite my deals with a 20-year am. And also, you're right, you have to understand what that balloon term is. So typically it's going to have what they call them adjustable rate mortgages. That means your rate will adjust after the adjustment period.

And you can negotiate that period. Sometimes they want to do it in three years. Sometimes they'll lock you into five years. It depends on the deal. It depends on your credit. It depends on the institution. So when you're underwriting a deal with a commercial loan, you want to make sure that you at least are paying attention to what interest rates are doing.

Because if rates go up and you get stuck in a place where you now either have to refinance, you could be forced to sell because you can't refinance and the numbers make sense. Can you tell us a little bit about like, what each of those units were renting for versus what you were servicing the debt for. Yes. So each of the units when I first purchased it were renting between 450 and 650. And it was under market rent at that time. I'd already boosted the rents for my units, which were the same size to 850 a unit, 900 a unit. So that's where they were rented for. So I was like, hey, man, there's a lot of spread here. But there was a lot of work to get it there.

And then the debt, it was around $6,000 a month. That's pretty solid numbers. 850 times 12 units. That's about $10,000 a month. And if your debt service is $6,000, that's a pretty solid cash flowing deal that you bought from somebody who was your boots on the ground. And it's interesting that you've mentioned her a few times as a partner. So I'd love to dive into like what these next deals look like and how you structured

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I think that's a phenomenal way to get started. Gave you the proof of concept. Job throw you a curve ball, good curve ball, promoted you, moved you right out of the place where you bought your first duplex, but that didn't stop you from continuing to buy there, ended up buying 12 more units there, and then found yourself in a position to sell some of those properties to move into a, let's call it a larger opportunity. So why don't you tell us about this townhouse development deal and kind of how you structured that? Absolutely. And so you're spot on. We bought that 12 unit. And then over the next couple years, all the way up until, call it,

beginning of 2021, I bought more triflexes, duplexes, and just got better at identifying deals. We got to like 30 units. I just kept anytime I saw, and it was all within a mile of each other, most of them on the same street. So I kept seeing the opportunities. And now I know the I was like, hey, I'm buying that, buying that, buying that, and more came. And so this opportunity, my realtor, who I've been working with this whole time, my investor-friendly realtor, she owns more real estate than I do, right? And so she's been living in this town and this neighborhood for over a decade, and she kept driving by this land that this owner's trying to sell themselves. It was 11 acres of land in Taylor'sville, Kentucky, which for anybody that's listening is about 30 minutes

south of Louisville, Kentucky. And it's one of the best school districts in the metro. So her kids go to school there. She's very familiar with the area. And so that was kind of our end with the knowledge. And the cool thing about this land is most land is zoned agricultural out there. But this one, the owner went through the two-year process of getting it switched to B2 commercial, meaning you could build literally just about anything over there. And so we had a game plan to build townhomes, as well as storage with storage being the first piece. And she brought me in to have the conversations with the owner, which took about six months to negotiate actually buying that land. But once we bought it, we kicked off ground quickly on the storage, which cost about 2.2 million to build.

And we just are 50-50 partners is how we split that piece up. I made her the managing member because she lives there, has all the contacts and things that nature. And then we just, we work from there. Wow. So that's a, that's a heck of a leap. I understand you got up to 30 units in Louisville. But 30 units of kind of, you know, buying existing and renovating is a whole. different ballgame than ground up development. So you mentioned townhomes and storage. So did this

property, did you build both or did you buy it with the intention of doing one and did another? One than the other. We haven't done the townhomes yet because that's not something we can do out of pocket. This is more of a syndication that we got to work on. Okay. So we bought the land officially in like middle of 2022 and we broke ground for the storage in 2023, finished it in 2024. We're now at like 75% occupied. I love storage now. It's amazing. Literally, we're running it with one VA and one handyman in like a text group chat, which is

awesome. Okay. So you build for 2.2. So what's that put you in terms of like what's your debt service on that versus what are you bringing in from a money perspective? Because you said you're what, 75, 85% occupied? So we're 75% occupied. Last month we brought in a little bit over 15K.

All right. And the note on this is around 12k. Okay. Yeah. You're doing all right. Yeah. You're doing all good. Because people don't realize the maintenance is not the same as like a single family. There's not as many things to break. There's expenses and maintenance, but not like there's no toilets, right? It's a different ballgame. So that's pretty solid. Yeah. And the key to storage, and this is what we learned early on because the first couple months of leasing up were rough because we were at market value. But the key to storage is just look at the big guys. You got to really slash early. So there's a lot of discounts that you give early. And you make the price a lot less than all the other. But the cool thing about it is we built into our system that every six months that somebody's with us, it's a 5% increase. So you go from 100 to 105, six months later, 105 to whatever 65% of that is. And long story short, it ramps up quickly. And we have most of our people that have been with us for over two years. Because once you get a storage unit, you tend not to leave.

I know. I tend to get more. It's funny because you can't see my office. But there's a wall right here on the other side of this wall is a fence. And on the other side of that fence is my storage unit that I have at the storage facility. And I said my storage unit. It's now units. I've got three of them now because it just said, you just keep.

Yeah, they got me. They got me. They got me. Well, that's really cool, man. Thanks for taking that tangent with me and telling me all about this storage deal because, you know, I'd like to live vicariously through other people and their deals. But, you know, storage is a commercial deal and you started off in residential. Did you completely stop doing residential while you focused on this storage or were you still

trying to grow like a single family residential business at the same time? Absolutely. Residential is my bread and butter. That's where my full comfort level is. And so I continued investing there. And a lot of the selling that I did in Louisville was to continue investing where I moved to with the next promotion, which is Atlanta. So at this point, you've pretty much sold off your Kentucky portfolio, except for now. you've got the storage facility.

And you now wanted to start doing deals in Atlanta because that's where you've got some roots. So what kind of deals were you looking to do in Atlanta? So I ended up getting the most expensive house I've gotten to live in. It was a $670,000 single family with an in-law suite in East Atlanta Village, which if anybody knows is an awesome part of Atlanta. A decade ago, this is where Gucci Future and all these guys used to grow up, right? But it's been completely changed over.

And so I bought there. And with that house act, I wanted to try something different, right? I had a one bed, one bath in-law suite. And I knew that it could rent for about 15, 1600. And I felt comfortable with that. But all my friends who I've been talking to and other investors I met were talking about this thing called Airbnb. Like, hey, man, try out the short-term rentals. It actually works. And so I said, you know what? I'll try it here. It's one bed, one bath. If it doesn't work, I'll go to a long-term rental. And so I did it. And instead of 1,500 a month, I was pulled. pulling in 2,500 a month on average. And some months I was doing three grand. Yeah. I was covering most of the mortgage because, you know, you got a 3% interest. I was like, this is amazing.

Man, that's super cool because that was like Airbnb golden era back then. It was still new. There wasn't a lot of regulation. People were all over Airbnb. So that's great. But what I like about this strategy, and this is what I think people should try now, is it was a pretty low risk strategy for you to try Airbnb. and B because it's already your mother-in-law suite and you can already long-term rent it, right?

I think where people get into trouble with short-term rentals is they buy something where it's short-term rental or busts, right? It just, you can't sustain it unless you rent it on short-term rentals. So you were increasing your cash flow. You lived in the big house because you said, I'm done, I've, I've delayed my gratification as long as I would like to delay it. I would like to be gratified now. And so you got your house and you did the short-term rental in that space.

I assume that gave you proof of concept. So did you do more short-term rentals in Atlanta? Absolutely. Right? From that one, when I started seeing the numbers coming in, just the first three months, I immediately went out and bought a full-on house. I bought a full-on house that was maybe two blocks away and made that a full-on short-term rental. And then I started talking to others that were doing it.

I got into managing a few investors that I was partnering with as far as helping them with their flips, like lending money for some of their flips. I started managing some of the ones that they kept for short-term rentals. And I was able to grow it from the first one being purchased in 2021 to now, today I have eight short-term rentals and I have a management company that manages about 25 all around the city. And that's, you know, from a one-bedroom all the way up to a 10,000 square foot mansion. And so it's been incredible. but to your point, you cannot do basic short-term rentals.

This is, you know, initially it was basic because I didn't know any better, but over time, having talked to the right people, gone through the right courses, now we're doing luxury short-term rentals where it's fully differentiated and full of amenities. So you've now built an income stream outside of the properties that you own, plus you you were building your own short-term rental business. And it sounds like there wasn't too much of a lift to bring in that income stream because it's work you're already doing. 100%. And you get paid for managing short-term rentals way more than you can long-term rentals.

Long-term rental management is between 6 and 8%. You know, maybe 10% if you're, you know, a higher-end one. For short-term rentals, it's between 18 and 35%, right? And we charge 20%. And so it made a lot of sense for me, like, okay, if I'm going to put in the time and effort to build out kind of an organization to manage all these, which we have now, I want to make sure that we can get paid money that makes sense. And that actually is what accelerated my timeline of being able to leave the W2 a lot sooner than I thought I would. It was having this management that I never thought was going to come into play. I thought it was just going to be my real estate and maybe the realtor thing. But that allowed me to leave a lot sooner. I chuckle because you're saying the thing that all real estate investors realize at some point. It's interesting because we all get into this business because we're like, cash flow.

If I get enough cash flow for my portfolio, then I don't have to work because my cash flow replaces my income. Right. Like that's the dream when we all get started. But then you start owning properties and you realize I don't want to do that because if I live off my, hey, cash flow is hard to live off of. But then we also realize if I pull my cash flow out, I can't do more deals as fast. And I like doing deals. Right. And so what a lot of investors do and they realize is like, yeah, I still want to leave my day job, but I don't want to touch my cash flow.

So now I got to go find another income stream that I can leverage these real estate skills with that bring in the money. And then I can quit. So for me, that was flipping. That's what my flipping is what caused me to be able to leave my W2, not my rentals because I didn't want to touch my cash flow. For you, it sounds like Airbnb management, right? So now you're managing short term rentals. That brings in an additional income stream. you keep all your cash flow from your rentals in your business.

So are you comfortable sharing like how much money are you typically bringing in a month in the short-term rental management business? From the management side, on the low months, somewhere around 10, 11K, on the higher months, like summer months where you start to get, you know, like the World Cup and these type of bookings, we've crossed the 20K threshold. Yeah, man, hey, that'll replace a day job. Pretty smooth. I like that.

I like that. All right. We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. learning more about investor Niyy Adwaleh right after the break. One thing I've learned from studying successful real estate entrepreneurs is that they build systems. The problem is most of us don't have developers sitting around waiting to create custom software for our businesses.

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on Hulu on Disney Plus. All right, we are back on the Bigger Pockets podcast. Let's jump back in. That's awesome, man. And I like that you found a niche within real estate to start bringing in additional income. A lot of people either do what I do or flip houses or they become an agent and start helping people from that perspective.

Have you, did you take a foyer into being a licensed agent and making money that way as well? Absolutely. And that's my full-time thing now, right? is agent plus manager these short-term rentals. And it was a couple things that came together that made that happen. So I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent, right? Let's hear it. So I moved in the full-time real estate as a real estate investor, agent, and property manager in August of 2022. I left my W-2 and made the full-time jump. And it was a couple things. One, the short-term rental management income was coming in and that was something I didn't, you know,

count on to my agent business because I had a niche that I focused on, which was being investor friendly. I had been an investor for seven years, right? That's all I knew. So I knew how to run numbers. I've made my mistakes, took my lumps. And so I helped other people get started or other investors keep buying. So that was starting to take off. And then we were kicking off, right, the build for the storage, as well as we still believe we could build 105 town home. So we're starting to talk to other investors, and I didn't want them to question my ability to be focused on this if I'm also working a full-time director role in a W-2. Not to mention, I didn't actually like that last role. So all these promotions were amazing. The last one I had in Boston was awesome. You mentioned that

you got into flipping because it fit more of your personality, right? Yeah. And it got to the point where I was so busy working around the clock, both as an agent, as a manager, and as a full-on, you know, director at this company that I felt like I was going to drop. the ball one way or the other. Like I'm going to miss a meeting some way somehow, either for a real estate client or my director role. And before that happened, I sat down to the numbers, talked to my soon-to-be wife, and made the decision to move into full-time real estate. Yeah, man. And I want to say something here. Like, as many investors that come on this show and say they have a real estate license and they help other investors, I still think there is such a huge opportunity for more of that.

There are not enough investor-friendly agents, especially if you can have an entire brokerage under you. Like, that's what you do. You serve investor-friendly agents. Like, it's hard enough to generate leads out there as a real estate agent for people who just want to buy and sell a regular home. Like, that's what 80% of all the other agents are doing. So, like, I feel like if you can find a way to have this, like, concierge service for investors,

like there's so much money to be made. My agent, that's who he mainly serves is investors. And a lot of the agents who work under his brokerage do the same thing. And they do great, man. I think that's such a great niche. I think more people need to see this as a profitable niche. So are all of the agents under your brokerage servicing investor-friendly agents? Or is that like the majority of your business? Absolutely. And Henry, I think you're spot on. It's literally one of those where if you've lived it and you have a passion for this, which I do, I think you should get into it. So I was in sales, right, this whole time. So sales is one passion. And I loved real estate. I was investing this whole time. So now it's marrying the two to where on Sundays, I'm no longer looking at my calendar

like, oh, man, Monday's coming around. I got this call. I'm excited about it. Like, I'm genuinely pumped about it. And so I have 10 agents on my team, right? We started in Georgia, and then one of the agents moved to Florida. And then now we have a person in Texas. So we cover Georgia, Florida, and Texas. 95% of people who work with are. investors and five of the agents that are on my team were first clients that I personally work with to buy one of them by one, another one by three deals, another one by two deals before they moved into getting their license and joining the team. So that's kind of what we do. Man, I love that. I hope other people listen to this and they get motivated and inspired to go out

there and start an investor-friendly agent brokerage because, yeah, it's hard for an agent right now. the market's a little slower, but investors are still investing. So you've got yourself a subset of people who are actually out there trying to do deals, even when the market is slower for the typical home buyer. And for those of you who are interested in being able to find investor-friendly agents, BiggerPockets has a tool that can help you do that. You can go to biggerpockets.com slash agent and submit your information. And investor-friendly agents will literally call you, text, you, email you. How do I know this? because I did it when Dave and I were going to go on the cash flow road show. We needed some investor-friendly agents to show us around. So I went on the tool and used it just like anybody else and got emails, phone calls, and texts from multiple investor-friendly agents literally within minutes. So it is a very challenging part of this business to find investor-friendly agents and bigger pockets doing a lot to help you close that gap. All right, Ney, man, this has been incredible. You've done so many things. It sounds like you've done them.

well. Congratulations on all your success. Can you give us just a little bit of an overview of where your portfolio currently stands today? And then tell us a little bit about what the future may look like for you. So today we have the self storage, which is 225 units. Thankfully, we've completed that at 75%. I can see that's amazing. We still have the townhome project ongoing. We figure out what happens with that. I have the eight short-term rentals that I personally own. We have five long-term rentals in the Metro of Atlanta as well. And I'm at actively looking to buy some more long-term rentals. I think some deals are coming on board that I've seen that I like. Yeah, they are, buddy. And I want to get into more bird deals. I've done a few of

those, right? Like one or two, but now I want to do it on small multifamilies to where I'm going to keep it and hang on for a long time. And then when you talk about the future, I'm just looking to continue growing kind of what we're doing from an investor-friendly standpoint. Because to your point, like, a lot of agents are having issues right now. But investors are still out there buying. I'm still out there buying. Our clients are still out there buying. And this is some of the best buying opportunities that we've seen in years. And so we just recently expanded to Texas and we're working with a client down there to buy their short-term rental. And I'm continuing to expand the team around. But that's what we're working on. Thank you so much for serving the community of investors out there. Thank you so much

for coming on the show and sharing your story. Thank you for being vulnerable with us and telling us about what went well, what hasn't gone well. And congratulations on all the success you've had. Man, it's been a pleasure. And I commend you for all your success. Come on now, Henry, I appreciate you and the whole Bigger Pocket sphere for getting me into this. And I appreciate you specifically for the motivation. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Hopefully it was helpful to you. And we'll see you on the next episode.