BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - How Dave Went from Broke, Living in Grandma’s Basement to Rental Millionaire

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

This investor started with $0 in the bank, waited tables to buy rental properties, secretly moved into a retirement community to save money on rent, and borrowed a down payment just to get into his first home. Now, 16 years later, he’s financially free, has surpassed the millionaire mark, and never got caught in the “buy a hundred units” trap.  This might be one of the most intriguing guests we’ve ever had on the show. He went against all odds to build wealth that a job couldn’t take away, found “secret” rental units everybody overlooked, and even reverse-engineered government documents to find out where the next prime rental property location would be, so he could buy exactly where the demand was going. Some would call him a genius; others, a pioneer. But we just call him the man with sandwich crumbs on his shirt because today we’re finally sharing the Dave Meyer origin story, and a lot of it we didn’t even know. In This Episode We Cover How to go from broke twenty-something-year-old to real estate millionaire before you’re 40  You don’t need a down payment? How to partner up to cover your first real estate investment  Sneaking into a retirement community to pay lower rent (worth the risk?) The secret rental units that most people overlook (Dave and Henry have found them) The best rental ever? How to use local government data to pinpoint exactly where to buy  Moving abroad while managing rental properties? How Dave kept his rentals running while in a different time zone  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠ttps://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1249 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

Today's guests started with literally zero dollars in the bank, weighted tables, and secretly moved into a 55-plus retirement community to save money. I am not kidding. He bought his first property in 2010 with a loan from a partner because he couldn't afford his share of the down payment. Now, 16 years later, he's achieved financial freedom with a rock-solid rental portfolio built entirely on his own terms. Wait.

Is this story sounding a little bit familiar? To me, it sounds a little familiar to me, yes. What's going on, everybody? Henry Washington here, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We bring you an investor story every Monday on the show. So you might be wondering why there's no guest here today. And that's because Dave Meyer is our guest. And we are going to be hearing about his investor story from 2010 to today.

Dave has told pieces of the story before, but not in a few years and definitely not to me. since I am the new co-host, that's what we're going to do here today. We're going to go full into this journey. We'll talk about the hidden unit he found on a mislabeled MLS listing, his 100% success rate on cold calling, which is impressive, and how moving to Amsterdam forced him to become a much better investor. And Dave, I've also got a couple surprise questions for you that you may not see coming. Okay. Well, I am coming prepared to answer any and all questions you have for me. Well, let's get started. And let's start off this episode the same way we start off every investor story. And that's by asking, Dave, what were you doing when you first decided to get into real estate? I got started in real estate

about six months after I graduated college. I had moved from New York to Denver, sort of just on a whim to ski and wound up waiting table. Yeah, I mean, that's what I wanted to do. For vibes. You moved for vibes. Yeah, but I mean, I was looking for a job, but it was 2009. It was at that point the worst job market since the Great Depression. I wound up waiting tables, but I was, you know, looking for a sort of corporate job. But I had always wanted to do something entrepreneurial throughout college, even in high school, even in middle school. I had started small businesses and always trying to make money for myself. And so I was open to the idea and looking for.

side hustles, as they're now called, and a friend of mine introduced me to real estate, and that's how I got into it. So like similarly for me, my father was an entrepreneur. Now, he never talks to me about entrepreneurship. Like he wanted me to go the normal corporate route, get a job, climb the ladder and all those things. But he always had a side hustle or a gig. And so like, that's where that seed was planted in me. But like, why do you think you were so entrepreneurial minded? Necessity, I think. I think. I think. Honestly, I didn't grow up poor, but when I was like 11 or 12, my parents went through a couple in a row, like pretty big financial challenges that lasted a decade. And so like my family's finances just kind of like got turned upside down.

And it just, if I wanted money starting in middle school, I had to earn it. And I don't know if you know this, but not a lot of people hire middle schoolers for real job. I walked dogs. I shoveled snow. I tutored. So I was just like always doing that kind of stuff. And I did it throughout high school. And like I should say that one of the financial issues my family face is like after the dot com boom, my dad lost his job and was out of work for like two or three years. And his smart dude works works hard, had recently gotten promoted. And I just remember seeing that like so many people do and being like corporations will throw you out. in no time. And I just, for a long time, I think it got sort of ingrained in me that you can't trust a job. And I wanted to just do things on my own. And it's tough because corporations are very good at trying to make you feel like you're a part of some family. But trust me, if it's in their best interest to let you go, they will. And if you leave, they'll have a cake and then somebody will be in your seat in a week. Right. Everyone's replaceable. Yeah, 100%. And I don't blame them.

Like, I own businesses, too. Like, I understand you have to make these decisions. I just realized, I guess, at a young age, like, I want to be making the decisions. If I own my own business, then no one can fire me. And that was just always really appealing to me. At 22, though, when I was starting real estate, I wasn't thinking, oh, I was going to just go start some huge company. I was just kind of like, I want sort of a side backup thing going on in case, you know,

I can't find a job or someone fires me. So you had the entrepreneurial seed planted. You had the entrepreneurial spirit. And then you said someone introduced you to real estate. What did that look like? The way I remember it is I was going skiing with this guy who lived across the hall for me. Good dude. But like not someone who you would go out and be like, this guy's got it all together.

And at this point, like he was doing it with his girlfriend at the time. And I feel like we all knew these couples when you were like 23, but like they were the worst couple. They were always fighting. You knew that it wasn't going to work out, but they were just crushing it on rental properties. And he was telling me about it when we were skiing once. I was like, man, if this guy can do it, I can definitely do it. And I had actually started working one of the multiple jobs I had at the time in addition to waiting tables that I was cold calling for a tenant rep, a commercial broker. And I was just kind of like asking her a bunch of questions.

and I started to figure out that I thought I could do this. And it just gave me the confidence, just learning a little bit and getting some validation from some people I trusted and was working with that this was a good idea. I kind of had a similar epiphany. Mine was just because I kept seeing people online that were doing this. And I was like, if they figured it out, I got to be able to figure it out. Yeah. But then I had to like set a goal because I didn't really know where to start.

And so my original goal was to buy one house a year for five years. once you decided like, okay, if this guy can do it, I can do it and I'm going to go all in. Did you have a goal in mind? Not really. To be honest, I just saw this as a side hustle. At that point, I was just, I was trying to do two things. I guess I had some short-term goals, but nothing big. The first was pay rent. I know that sounds silly, but I honestly wanted 300 bucks a month in cash flow,

400 bucks a month. That was like pretty meaningful to me at that point in my life. And then the other point was at 22, I could see if I buy a property now, even though I had three partners, you know, as a four-way split, if I pay this off by the time I'm 52, I'm going to have a nest egg. And that was the only tangible savings account I had at that time. I could not save money based on my income and what my expenses were. And so I thought if I buy this property, at least I know I'm saving up a bunch of money and I'll have something. in my 50s. And that was sort of the other thing that motivated me. You did say you were waiting tables. That doesn't tend to make you a ton of money. So how did you buy your first deal? That is true. It wasn't making a ton of money. Actually, I tell a story and it's true. Like, I mean, I had a bank account, but like all the money I had was like in my nightside drawer. Like that, I had zero dollars. You just kept money in a mattress? Basically. I got paid in cash.

every day, which is weird, but they did pay us in cash at the end of every day. And that was just, I just lived, you know, day to day on that kind of thing. So I, I had to partner with people. I wound up finding three different partners. One was a family member. Two were friends. And the total we needed, closing cost reserves, down payment, I think was a hundred and four thousand, because I, I'll tell you why I remember that number, because we split that four ways. but I did not have $26,000. Like I had no dollars, basically. And so what I wound up doing was taking a loan from one of the partners for my part of

the down payment. I paid them, I think a 7% rate on that. And then I managed the property. And so I was getting 10% of rents to manage the property. And I used that income to pay off the loan that I got for my portion of the down payment. So if you're following this, I was really stretching myself to figure out how to do this. But it's how I got in the game. I mean, even with that, I was still making a couple hundred bucks a month, not in cash flow,

but from property management. And that's honestly one of the major things that was motivating me is because that was the immediate return that I was getting. I mean, you call it stretching yourself. The kids, I believe, call this hustling. Yeah, it was. You hustled your way into a deal. 100%.

I would do anything to get into this first deal, and it worked. Okay. So tell me about that deal. What was it? What was it was? What was it was a four unit? You see this a lot in Denver. You see it a lot in the Midwest.

It's like these cut up old Victorian homes. So big like three, four thousand square foot house in a really good location, walkable, high demand area for young professionals. So it was someplace I wanted to live. Two, two units and two one bedrooms. bought it for $462. And I think the rents when I first bought them were about $4,000. So not quite the 1% rule, but after really easy cosmetic and just getting things up to market rents,

they were quickly at $6,000. Like within a year, they were at $6,000 in rent. So that was the opportunity I saw in buying that deal and was honestly, I had no idea what I was doing, but was pretty easily able to get rent up to market rate. One more question about the first property. Did you occupy it or any of your partners occupied or was it a pure investment? I had no idea what house hacking was. Like, I am not one of those people who was like an early adopter of bigger pockets. I was just making stuff up. I had no idea what I was doing. But I was like, man, I could live in this unit for less than I'm paying in rent. And so I was going to move in with my roommate at the time. Who was one of the partners? That was one of my partners. And then this is a crazy story. But his grandma had passed away, and she lived in a 55-plus community a little bit outside of Denver. And I see your face where you think this is going, and it absolutely is where it went to me, my friend.

So it was like 2009, and no one, they couldn't, like his family was like, we're not selling this property. No one was buying it. You moved it to a 55 plus community? Yes, we did it in the middle of the night, too, because you're not allowed to move in. And we were like, we're just going to move in into the middle of the night. Did you live there like Anne Frank in secret? Like no one knew. We let we try to.

We lived there secretly for like five days until people quickly realized what was going on. But all the people loved us because we would like carry their packages. You know, we would just do nice things. for the people in the community. We were like, this is going to be three months until we like figure it out. We're going to save up some money. I lived there for three years.

No. More than three years. More than three years. It was basically free. We were just like paying utilities. And funny story, when I first met Jane, my wife, I was living in the basement, my friend's grandma's basement in a 55 plus community

in the excerpts of Denver. And she loves to point this out that she was like truly, a visionary. She was like, I bet you then, and I still fell for you. Lord, she saw, she saw something in you. I don't know. Yeah, it's just some sort of oracle because, yeah, that was ridiculous. As a real estate investor, the last thing I want to do or have time for is to 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

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were making. And so what was the next step? What was the next deal? I didn't buy my next deal until 2014. It took me four years to figure that out. And so that one I did house hack. I was like, I got to get out of this basement. So I wound up buying a three unit one block away from my four unit.

That was like a big appeal to me. I was self-managing both of these. And so I could walk from one property to the other. I love telling this story about finding this deal because I looked for quite a while. to find deals. And eventually I walked into this place. It was marketed as a two unit. It was supposed to be one three bed and one four bed, super nice units. And at that price, I was like walking around this property. It was like, okay, it's pretty good. And then I opened this door and there's a staircase. And I walk up there and there's an amazing, recently built, renovated, permitted one bedroom apartment.

And I'm like, no wonder no one else is looking at this deal because they're just completely mismarketing it. And I wanted a house hack. And I was like, this one bedroom is like a perfect place for me. And so I just tell this story because people think on market deals you can't find. They're mislabeled. They're mismarketed. They're mispriced all the time. This was sort of an extreme example of that.

But that's how I found that deal wound up moving into that and house hacking there for over two years. That's almost exactly how I found my first house hack. Seriously? I did not know that. Absolutely. It was a mislabeled property. A hidden unit? It wasn't hidden. It was there. But it was just listed as a single family home. And there was no mention of an ADU.

And this was before the Bigger Pockets house hacking craze. So like no one called it house hacking yet. But I knew I wanted to live in a duplex. But I was at work. And this is when I worked at Walmart. And I overheard a guy in the restroom just saying, man, I just can't seem to get my house sold. People, they come and they see it. And they just don't want the extra unit.

They just want a house. You just like pop your head over the stall and you're like, I'll buy it. Look, I had some tact. Okay. I waited outside of the bathroom door like a normal creeper. And as soon as he came out of the bathroom, I was like, hey, tell me about that house. And he told me all about it. He gave me his agent's phone number.

I went to look at it. It was just listed as a single family home. She said the same thing. Nobody wants the second unit. And I was like, no, I want the second unit. And so I bought that house and that was my house hack. Oh, that's awesome. Wow, that's great.

I love that. We both had mislabel. Honestly, it still happened. It's still a thing. It's still absolutely happens. It's pretty rare for an entire unit to be missed. But opportunities for lock off to create another unit. people mislabel bedroom counts, people mislabel square footage all the time, like absolutely

these things happen. So just throwing that out there, that those things are possible. Okay, so you bought this house hack. What'd you pay for it? How'd you finance it? So prices in Denver had gone up a lot in just those couple of years, I guess four years between buying deals. So I financed it with another partner. I actually was a minority partner in this as well because I didn't have enough capital to put in. So I split it with a, partner and then paid, I think it was 720 for a three unit. This is again in a prime location in Denver though, like really good walking distance area. I assume you mean walking distance to like libraries and research facilities at all the things you were very interested in. Yeah. Museums and

cultural experiences. No, there was a sandwich place called snarfs down the road. I was very happy with it. There was a grocery store two blocks away, a dive bar with a couple of pool tables and darts. I was in heaven. Honestly, I look back on it. I think the two years, like, the most fun I've ever had was those two years house hacking in that house. I had a great time. And it was a great deal.

I still own that place today. It's one of the best deals I've ever done for sure. So your second deal was a house hack. You were having the time of your life. When did bigger pockets come into the picture? Yeah. So that was 2014 when I bought that deal. And then, like, towards the end of 2014, 2015, the tech company that I had

started. It was profitable. It was doing okay, but decided to wind it down. It was just not taking off in the way that I wanted to, like the whole other topic. But basically, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I decided two things were really interesting to me. I really like data analytics. shocking for everyone who listens to this podcast. I know. So I decided to go back to grad school. And I wanted to stay in Denver. So I got into grad school there for data analytics. But then I was realizing that I just loved real estate. I really enjoyed doing it.

I found that I was going to open houses, even when I had no money to buy anything. I would just go and look at them. I had a friend who was a real estate agent. I would just go look at deals. I was just having fun. I really enjoyed it. And so I decided to see if the next job I could get was like both tech and real estate.

That's what I was looking for. And I literally just Googled like tech. company's real estate and went through a bunch of them and found this company called Bigger Pockets. I had never heard of it before. And I was like, this is really interesting. This is kind of what I've been doing. What are these words like house hack? There are forums where all of these people who are doing what I'm trying to do are talking to each other. I was amazed. And so I looked at it and the office was one mile from where I was house hack. It was just like complete luck. and I looked and reached out.

There were no jobs for me. And so I waited. I think it was nine months from the first time I reached out. And they put up a job that I was qualified for. And I applied. And thankfully, I got interviewed first by Scott Trench, then by Josh Dorkin, then by Brandon Turner, then by all three of them together sitting on a couch, all three of them and then me sitting on the other.

But luckily, I got the job. And that is when I think I started seeing myself as a real estate investor. Like that, you know, joining Bigger Pockets sort of changed my whole trajectory from wanting to be in tech, which I still did. Like I still like working at tech companies. But that's when I was like, oh, man, I should like grow a portfolio. Like take this thing a little bit seriously. Start setting goals. Get a little bit more sophisticated about it.

And that really sort of like changed my trajectory as an investor forever. So can you give us maybe some specifics about how. bigger pockets helped you become maybe a more structured or a more intentional investor? I was still investing in Denver at that time. I started to see all the equity that I had saved up in these first two properties that I was really proud of. Like I was like, oh my God, I've got a couple hundred grand between these two deals, even being, you know, a partial owner of these. Like that's my nest egg. That's my life savings. And I think the big, you know, honestly, the big thing was like, oh my God, I should have reinvested that.

years ago into different deals. I sort of like realized that I had been going much slower than I needed to. And then, you know, sort of having that realization, learning about doing refis effectively, you know, using equity for one deal to build into others, like from 2016 to 2020, it allowed me to just do like way more deals in Denver over the course of those couple of years. Can you give us an example of how a deal you did now that you were a more experienced investor with a little more strategy was different than maybe one of those first two deals. So I'll just give you an example of the third deal I did, which is I realized that I could take money out of one of my first two deals. I think it was the second one I did a refi on

and wound up doing my one and only off market deal. I think I've told you this story. But I was just learning about off market deal finding. I was learning about buying in the path of progress. I was learning about how real estate investors research areas to buy. This is obviously like my thing. I, you know, I had just gotten a degree in data analytics. I'm good at this stuff. And I was like, I'm going to find the best block to buy in Denver and go out and find an off-market deal. And that's exactly what I did. And I had never, I would have never done that years ago. You know, like I was just buying on market retail prices. Things were easier to buy back then. And then I was like, no, I'm going to like really.

get good at this and figure out exactly what corner, what pockets to buy and where I'm finding the deepest value and just like really getting good at the analytical side of things. And so that one deal I probably bought for 70, 80 grand below comps because I bought it off market and I knew all these things were coming to the area and there's all this infrastructure spending. And so like I just started thinking about it in a really different way and was able to finance it without having to wait several more years to build up for my next deal. What were some of the characteristics or things that you were looking for in the neighborhood to let you know that this is where you needed to buy?

Denver this time was just growing like crazy and the city was struggling to keep up with infrastructure, like cities, you know, roads, railroads. And so they announced this light rail. They were restoring the major train station in downtown and they would connect to the airport, which if you've ever been to Denver airport is in the middle of nowhere. And so, like, you needed a trade to get there. It's fair. And so I was like, I'm going to figure out where the stations are.

And I actually went to city planning meetings myself to try and figure out. They were coming up with different routes that they were thinking about doing. But there was, like, two neighborhoods that had common stations in them. Like, either way that they did it, there was going to be a station in this neighborhood. Then they announced that they were going to tear down this whole street and build a park alongside it. And I was like, okay, this is the place I got to be. They're putting a ton of money in here. Denver, people love to bike. They love to walk. So it was like a bike lane going in there. And I was like, I got to buy this. And literally, the friend you were joking about before,

well, my friend who is a great real estate agent. And I went and we literally like marked off on streets like where they were going to be doing eminent domain, which were the houses that were going to be closest to this park. And we figured it out. And I called. I'm, one for one on cold calling on off market deals. I called one guy. You batten a thousand on cold calling? And then I quit. I've never done it again.

I was like, I did this once, and I got this deal off market, and then never did it again. It was honestly one of my first days at Bigger Pockets. I was like, I got to do,

I was like so stoked about all this stuff I was reading. I remember like walking into the hallway and being scared like, Josh was going to be like, why are you not at your desk? And I went out and I just called this guy. He picked up and I was like, how about, I think I bought it for like 430.

I was like, how about 430? He was like, okay. I was like, really? And I bought it. It was great. House hack that too. So you paid 430, you moved into it. What did you rent the units for?

So that actually became my primary residence. I still own it as rental today. But that became a primary residence because I figured out that I could move out of the apartment I was living in, rent that out for about $1,500, which is great. That was like going to cover basically my mortgage on the, this new property. And also at that point, just life stuff, my wife and I, you know, now wife and I wanted to move in together. And I was like really stoked about this house. She was less stoked about this house. But I was proud to have a place that I owned for us to move into. And you still

own the property today. Were you correct in terms of the park and the infrastructure that was coming? Oh, crushed it. Yeah. You know, I bought it for 430. It's probably. probably worth 800 now. Nice. Nice. And I didn't even, I didn't even renovate it. That was not even a BIR deal. I just, I bought that straight up from a flipper. Before we move on to the rest of your journey, is there some sort of tips or strategy or resources you could give people who want to do similar market research to determine where the path of progress is or what may be coming? People always ask me this because you can get really analytical about it. But I honestly think the best thing to do, once you've picked a market, is go analog.

Go old school. I think the best things that I still look at is every market I invest in, I subscribe to the local like business journal or if there's like an economic development area, see where businesses are moving and also just understand where you would want to live. Like people pay for walkability, people pay for convenience, they pay for access to jobs. Like these are the kinds of things that you can learn by talking to your tenants, talking to your agent, talking to local people. I honestly still think that is better than.

any analytical thing that you can do. That's how I learned about is I was just like, hey, they announced they're building a train. I'm going to figure out where the train stops are going to be. Like, it wasn't online. I had to literally go and look at the renderings that they were building. And I like wrote down the addresses and the cross streets and then just figured it out from there.

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out of the blue is what it seemed like to me. And so when did that happen? Why did it happen? And how did it change or shape you as an investor? Yeah. So it happened in 2020. And I'll say that in 2016, when I started getting serious about investing and when my wife and I moved in together, we actually made a goal. You know, we had some financial goals. But one of our goals was to move abroad. It was always my dream. I love to travel. It's probably my greatest passion. Even more than sandwiches, it is my greatest passion. And so I really wanted to do that. And I had no idea how it was going to happen. And then in 2019, my wife's job, they were like, you're getting transferred to Amsterdam. And we were kind of like, cool, this is it.

We've been waiting for a chance to do this, and it fell into our lap. And I was pretty, nervous, but Scott Trench, who's the CEO at Bigger Pockets at that time, let me go. And it was cool, but, you know, I had to, you know, I was self-managing at least 10 units at that point. And so I really had to figure out how to become a more sophisticated investor. At first, I sort of did a hybrid strategy where I had a friend who was kind of a maintenance guy who would pick up the phone if there were emergencies, but I was still doing the leasing. And then over time, I just started to realize that I should just hire a full-time property manager. And then I sort of had this realization then I was like, now the whole country is open to me. All kinds of investing are open to me.

It was sort of forced into this way of thinking, you know, I can't be hands on no matter what. There's no way from Amsterdam. It was an 18 hours door-to-door flight back to Denver. You know, like, how was I going to do this? And I just started really learning about everything else. I was like learning about commercial real estate, syndications, passive investing opportunities like private money funds. And I also started thinking I'll start to invest in other markets. Now, because of COVID, I actually wound up not buying any active deals for like three years, I think until 2023. But I actually think the experience made me a much better investor. I just learned all of these different skills that I did not have when I left Denver.

And that's really opened me up to having a much more diversified and I think sophisticated portfolio now, even though I'm back in the United States. I think out-of-state investors have a strategic advantage over backyard investors. You know, and I'm a backyard investor. And what I mean by that is out-of-state investors are forced to build an automated business that operates without them. Like they don't have the luxury of being in the backyard. And so they have to build systems.

They have to have tools. They have to have people to do things for them in order for their business to function. And I think that gives them an advantage because at some point all of us decide, hey, maybe I don't want to be as hands on. And most of us, like myself who invest in our backyard, I now have to go build those things that somebody who invests out of state just inherently structured their business to be able to operate. And so I totally can see how that would just make you an all around better investor. There's trade-offs. There's like total pros and cons, but given where I am in my investing career, I've been doing this now 16 years. And I've fortunately, you know, built up a lot of equity. And I'm like transitioning from what like Chad Carson would call from the growth stage to the harvesting stage. And I am grateful for those skills now. Now that I'm in this sort of era where I don't need to buy a lot of deals, I can buy deals. But I'm more thinking about sort of an endgame and how to reduce risk and build just a rock solid portfolio that is highly automated. The skills I learned when I moved to Europe and was forced to offload a lot of this stuff are coming in handy right now. I'll say that. With that being said, what does investing now look like for you and what is the plan, the end game, as you say? So I basically, my overall portfolio, I think of it in three in thirds. So one third, yes, for people who are hearing this, I invest in the stock market. So I do actually diversify, unlike a lot of real estate creators.

I put about a third of my net worth into the stock market. I have about one third of my wealth into what I would call actively managed properties. I'm not self-managing, but there are things I own directly. They're not like funds or syndications. And then I have about a third in funds and syndications, which is split between multifamily syndications. And I actually have put quite a lot of my net worth into lending funds recently, private credit. It's a great way to make cash if anyone is interested. So that's what it looks like right now. And I've started, you know, buying actively again since I've been back in the United States in the Midwest. And I think I've told you this, but my goal in the short term is to keep buying those deals, but getting better at value at investing.

It's been a weakness of mine for 15 years. You know, I did do Burrs in Denver while. I was living there, but never structural. Like I was, I've added units. I've added some bedrooms. I've done some lockoffs, that kind of stuff. But never the kind of stuff you do or what James does. And I don't really want to get there, but I just want to get better at construction. I think that, you know, in 16 years, I think I've learned that that is the one way to make money in real estate that doesn't really change with market conditions.

You can always make money if you're a good value ad investor. That's very true. And I want to get good at that. And so that's why I've been a part of three flips. I've kind of done two in the last year. Not because I want to be a flipper that is not really my goal, but it has taught me so much about construction. And I want to do it to just be able to take on bigger burr projects

is kind of what I'm moving towards. But I'm still doing, I really like passive investing. So I'm going to keep doing that as well. All right, Dave. I was thinking about letting you off the hook, but I think I changed my mind. I got a couple of good ones for you. Okay.

I don't even know what you're talking about. Let's go. All right. First one, we'll start off easy. What's something that people may be surprised to learn about how you actually like to spend your free time? Okay. I guess, I don't know if this is surprising or not, but I am a exercise freak.

I'm like one of those people who has to go to the gym or do something active every day or I actually go crazy and lose my mind. So I definitely do that every single day. Okay. Makes sense because you said you needed to do it. to gym when you came to visit. I mean, I sit in front of a computer all day. So if I don't, you know, the rest of my day, usually either doing real estate stuff or working for bigger pocket. So if I'm, if I don't do something physically active, I become a psychopath. Next question. Are you one of those

morning routine guys? Like, do you have a morning routine every morning that you follow? No. You can't function. Absolutely not. I actually made a whole real making fun of this trend because I think it's so silly. People are like, oh, if you, if you don't get up at five in the morning, like, you can't be successful. Like, honestly, I do wake up early. I wake up at like 5.30. Not because I want to. If I could sleep till 9 a.m., I would. I just naturally wake up that early. No, I'm not one of those people who is like super regimented in like the time I do stuff. Like, I work a lot, but I'm pretty loosey-goosey on when I, when I do different things. Are you? Do you have a morning routine? No, no. I, my day is different every day. I don't, yeah. The only morning routine

thing I have is I take my daughter to school every morning. That's like a nice one. It's not, I wake up every morning and do an ice bath. Then I do 15 minutes of journaling about why I'm the best guy in the world. About why ice baths are awesome. Then I eat 150 grams of protein and nothing else, not a single carb since 2022. Then I intermittent and fast until 6 p.m. and eat two crackers. No, I actually like to enjoy my life. Like, that's part of why I invest in real estate is to not have to live some completely stelic lifestyle.

So, no, not me. All right. Now we're going to get a little spicy. Tell us your wildest tenant story as a landlord. Oh. Oh, I actually have a fun one. So I was house hacking. I told you guys in this three.

unit. Had a really good relationship with these people living downstairs who lived there for four or five years in the main unit. We got along really well. And then when they moved out, they just straight up, like, didn't clean the apartment. And so I paid a professional cleaner to go in and clean it out. And they got like really mad about it that I deducted it from their deposit. And it's truly one of the two or three times I've like ever gotten a disagreement with a tenant. I was like personally upset with this. Like we hung out. We were like friendly with each other. And we had this, like, blow-up fight. And I was, like, really upset about it for, like, a while.

And I sort of, like, forgot about it. And then I was living in Amsterdam. And Jane and I had a party. We invited over a bunch of our friends. Some of them were American. And my buddy, Joe, was like, I'm going to bring some friends of mine. Like, can they come? And I was like, yeah, of course.

And in walks, my tenant, in Amsterdam, across the world. This was eight years later, across. the world walks in and she was like, hey, Joe told me you were going to be here. And I just wanted to apologize. I was really immature about that. Can we be friends? I was like, yeah, we could be friends. And we hung out. We had this like cocktail party. We stayed up and drank and reminisced. And we're now friendly again. So it came full circle. Your life seems to be just a smattering of randomly unusual circumstances. That's hilarious. I have plenty of awful situations. But I'm going to now answer that with a positive story because that was a good one.

All right. Have you ever been recognized for being on the show in some sort of weird or unusual place or doing something you wish somebody hadn't recognized you? Yes, a lot. More and more recently. I think I got to tell them what you were there for, which was so funny. So before BP cod, Henry, myself, Henry's wife, Jessica, and a friend of mine, Andrew, were going out.

Henry suggested the steakhouse. We booked it on open table, right? Like no special connections, just like went out on open table. We get there and they seen us at a table for four and it's this beautiful table looking out over the strip. It was a nice place. It was a nice restaurant. It was a really great view. It was great view. And so we're sitting down and the host or server says to us, you know, you guys must be pretty important to be able to get this table. And completely jokingly, like, no, I was just joking around. I was like, what? You don't know who I am? And he goes, actually, I do know who you are. You're the host of the pockets. And I was like, well, now I look like such an asshole. Like, I was, I did look like a huge asshole. I just am not used to actually getting recognized. But it was so funny in the moment. It was hilarious. It caught us all off guard. Because it was, it was clearly the best table in the house. And he brought it up on his own. He was like, oh, you guys. must be special and it was like, don't you know who I am? Yeah, yeah, bro, I do. You're not that cool.

You're a giant jerk. Yeah. Oh, classic. Classic. I'm still embarrassed. Still embarrassed thinking about that. But yes, that happened. All right. Have you ever been around or seeing somebody that you were starstruck by? Oh, oh my God. Yes. Okay. I grew up in the, in the suburbs of New York and had an internship when I was in high school. I was like, you know, filing cabinets. And I'd go to New York City for it. And I got in the elevator one time by myself and in walks, live Tyler. And I'm like, you know, this is, this is probably 2001 or two.

You know, this is, she was just in Lord of the Rings, Armageddon stage, you know. Can I tell you Armagedon secretly one of my favorite movies? It's everyone's favorite movie. I love it. It's the best movie. I've seen it at least 25 times. It's so good. So I'm like, I guess I was probably like 15 or 16 years old.

And she walks in. She's very tall. She's taller than I am. And she just like comes in and is like super nice to me. She's like, hey, how's it going? And I did not say a single word the entire time. We went for like the 40th floor to the first floor, probably a full minute. I just stared at her probably drooling out of my mouth.

And then she was just like, okay. Bye. This is like, walk. I haven't thought about that in so long, but yes. First of all, you nailed it. Congratulations. Yeah. I really nailed my chance with Liv Tyler too, because I'm sure in 16 I had a chance,

or now ever had a chance with Liv Tyler. But, yeah. That's hilarious. That was pretty cool. All right. Well, that's hilarious. and a great way to end the show. Thank you for sharing your story with us, your investor's story, but also thank you for getting a little vulnerable with us, both in the story, and then answering

these random questions at the end. It's been a good time. And I think the audience enjoys learning about our journeys, but also you've got a lot of lessons in your journey. And I appreciate working beside you, and I love how you treat investing. And I hope other people learn from this and can treat investing very similarly. Well, thank you. I hope what people have learned is, although I talk a lot about math and people think I'm smart, I'm just a normal idiot. And if I can do this, any of you can do it as well. That should be the takeaway. If Dave can do this, anyone else could do this too.

All right, folks, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets Podcast. We look forward to seeing you on the next 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 Calico 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. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.