BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - I Bought My First Rental in 2021, Now I Have 19 and Replaced My Salary!

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

This high school football coach grew a real estate side hustle over the past four years that now replaces his W2 income. He did it making a median salary, all while working his full-time job and raising his family. He didn’t use flashy methods, risky strategies, or constant cold calling. Starting with around $30,000, Lamontis Gardner went from zero to 19 rental units in just four years and is STILL growing! After pandemic lockdowns left Lamontis with extra time and little work, he knew he needed to stop solely relying on his W2 income to fuel his life. Of course, Rich Dad Poor Dad found its way into his hands, and the real estate bug began. From there, Lamontis turned a lost deal into an opportunity to buy three duplexes from one owner. The problem? He only had a third of the money. It was time to partner up! After a home run first real estate deal that gave him a six-figure equity upside, Lamontis knew this was the path for him. Since then, he’s been buying rentals, flipping houses, and doing whatever he can to reinvest in real estate, all while working his W2 job. Now, he’s replaced his W2 income but is STILL growing his portfolio even in 2025’s high-rate, “tough” housing market. Want to do the same? Copy Lamontis’s strategy!  In This Episode We Cover How to invest in real estate when you don’t have enough money for a down payment  Why you DON’T need to cold call in order to find great off-market real estate deals  The easiest (and most profitable) homes to flip that ANYONE can find on-market Why section 8 rentals are not what you think (and might be as good or better than regular rentals) When to flip vs. renovate and rent a house (telltale signs of a great flip/bad rental)  How Lamontis scaled to 19 rentals and multiple flips per year WITHOUT a big team  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1108 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 bought his first property just a few years ago in 2021, working with two partners to find the cash he needed. But by the end of 2024, he'd accumulated a portfolio of cash flowing rental properties in Mobile, Alabama. And he had flipped five houses in a single year. On the show today, we'll hear just how he did it. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast, where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing. I am Henry Washington, filling in for Dave Meyer. Today's guest in the show is Lamontas Gardner. He's a formal. college football player who started his investing career by buying a single rental property in his first year.

Over the next two years, he bought four more rentals and flipped a house. By 2024, he was able to do 14 deals, including five flips. We're going to hear from the Montes on how he's been able to scale up his business sustainably and without taking on too much risk, how he found and financed deals in the Mobile Alabama market and what motivates him to continue growing his real estate business while working a full-time W-2 as a teacher and coach. It's a great story I'm sure you'll be able to learn from. So here's me speaking with Lamontas Gardner. Lamontas, welcome to the show, my man.

Thank you. I'm grateful to be here. Awesome, man. So give us a little bit of background. What were you doing before you got into real estate? I was coaching, actually, right after I finished playing ball in college. I went straight into coaching. I did that up until about 2020.

The COVID shutdown, season got canceled. and eventually the school shut down. So with a lack of income and a lot of time on my hands, I just decided to journey into a real estate. You know, I just dove into every podcast I could, every book I could get my hands on, and even the bigger pocket webinars that were weekly. Okay. So 2020 hit. Your income just stopped because the school shut down and that kind of made you realize like you needed something that you could depend on versus just depending on somebody else for your income? Yeah, I just realized I was under control of my job and I no longer wanted that. So just wanted a different lifestyle. I think a lot of people faced that challenge in 2020.

They realized that they really weren't in control. But not a lot of people just decided to jump into real estate. So why did real estate become the thing? I mean, a lot of people were like selling stuff online. They moved to investing in the stock market because it was all pretty easy to do from home. You know, why real estate? So prior to then, maybe about two years earlier, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. There it is. You know, that sparked that light in me to, you know, eventually want to get into it. And 2020 was just the perfect time.

Okay. So you kind of had the seed planted from when you read Rich Dad Poor Dad and you were like, all right, this is the time. So when did you buy your first deal? I bought my first deal in 2021. I decided I wanted to invest in my hometown. Which is where? Mobile, Alabama.

Okay. So we eventually moved from Atlanta and came back home where I took a local job here. here in a high school where I'm still currently working, which it provided me a more stable income to be able to invest. Okay. Well, let's talk about that. What was your first deal? How did you find it?

How did you end up financing it? Prior to my first deal, I made an offer on a duplex. I lost out on that duplex due to a cash buying investor. So at that point, it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to be able to compete. So what I did was this particular street is full of duplexes. So I pulled up a map and I wrote down every address on that, on the, on, you know, that street and I skipped traced every owner and called and I ran into a guy who actually had three. He had three duplexes on this street in particular and took that down. I couldn't do it by myself

so I had to bring in a partner but we used a local bank. Had to put 20% down and, you know, been going every since. Man, that's cool. That's just straight hustling, like a straight hustle lead. So you looked up every owner, skipped, traced them and then started making phone calls. How many phone calls did you make before you found this owner? Probably it would be about 25 to 30 calls. I mean, that's really not that many before you actually land a deal. That's pretty cool. But I like that, I like that style and that hustle because I think a lot of investors want to get into this business, but they don't really want to put in the work. They want to just find a deal online and you went and you just made the calls until you found one. Now I'm not saying everybody's going to make 30 calls and get a deal, but you don't know that

until you put in the work. So you got on the phone with the seller. he wanted to sell three duplexes and you realized you didn't have enough money. So the bank said you needed to put 20% down about how much money was that 20% that you had to put down? It was about 76,000. Okay, so the total purchase price was how much? It was 380,000 for three duplexes. How much of that 76,000 did you actually have? I had about like 28,000. Okay, so you had a little less than half, right? So you had to raise the rest and you decided to do that through a partnership. How did you find that partner? He was actually my college football coach. My position coach. So prior to bringing him on, I was trying to talk to the owners like,

hey, could you just allow me to buy one duplex, you know, or maybe two? And he was like, no, you got to take all three or, you know, I have to, you know, sell to someone else. So I was talking to my coach one day and I ran a deal by him. He was like, hey, does he still have it? I'm like, sure. And, you know, we worked out a deal from there. Okay. Did you guys 50-50 partners, since he was putting down more money or how did you structure that? Well, we actually split it three ways, with someone that he's close to, we all went in three ways and took that deal down. So essentially, you all kind of got a property out of it. Yeah, essentially.

And the good thing about that deal was, you know, we bought it for $3.80 and it appraised with $470. Oh, nice. And did you have to renovate these properties or were they all rent ready in good shape? No, they were all rent ready in good shape and cash flowing. Oh, man. That sounds like a great deal. So hustled and found your first deal. And what I like about this deal story is a lot of people,

would have stopped. They would have quit, right? They would have said, I can't afford three properties. I can only afford one, right? Or they would have said, you know, I can't afford to do this deal. But instead of you saying that, you said, how can I go get this deal done? And you were able to find a partner who then brought in another partner and you split the deal three ways. So I like that hustle because I think a lot of people talk themselves out of wealth. I think people oftentimes will just decide that they can't do something, given whatever circumstances are directly in front of them. But with real estate, what's so powerful is there's a whole lot of ways to get a deal done. And you have to remain open-minded. And you have to keep trying to structure something that makes sense. And I'm not saying everybody should just take on random partners. But I am saying that there are ways to take deals down. And you have to have a mindset of how can I get this done versus I can't get this done, which is one of the principles in Rich Dad Porte. Right. And that deal got even better. So that next year, we got them reappraised. And they appraised for. or 525. And at that time, I refied it and I was able to pull the down payment back out, which

set me up to continue to invest. Oh, so you did a whole burr on that property. Yep, it wasn't planned, but that's how it happened. And that's been a foundation to my investment journey, for sure. That's amazing, man. So now that you had that experience buying that long-term rental, what did you do next? How did that deal to help you transition into doing more deals? So that was in 2021. My next deal was in January of 22. So I guess I took the time off, but I did a flip in January of 22. I partnered on that as well with a local partner here. We bought a home for 138, and we put about 70-ish in there, and we sold that for 290. I think we netted about 70K, if I'm not mistaken. So we split it two ways by 35 a piece. I mean, that's a fantastic flip in terms of

numbers, how did you find that deal? Because you said you took some time off, so it's not like you had just deals cooking. Right. And at the time, I was still trying to search on the market, you know, for everything. I wasn't as experienced, but this house in particular was sitting on the market for months. Yeah. But the thing about it was it was listed as a two one, but it was 1,700 square feet. I love this. Yeah. Right. And so I kept hearing about, you know, these type of deals. And I'm like, hey, well, you know, let's go see it. went to see it and it was basically a three bedroom and all you had to do was add a closet to make it the third bedroom.

And we added a bathroom in one of the bedrooms. This was a cross space home. So it was pretty easy to do. And we basically, we had a three two. Which obviously increased the ARV of the property, which allows you to make more profit. Man, this is one of my favorite strategies for finding opportunities to make money. This is something like you guys can be doing. people can be doing this right now. You can look on the market, this exact strategy, look on the market for properties that have been sitting for longer than the average days on market in your market. So if the average days on market is 30 days, look for things that have been sitting longer than 30 days. But what you really want to look for is houses that the square footage number is bigger than what the bedroom and bathroom count would suggest. So if you have a 21, that's 1,500, 1,500, 1,000.

200,000 square feet, you know there's space in there where you can add a bedroom and a bathroom fairly inexpensively, especially just like you said if that house is on a crawl space. Because the cost to add a plumbing in a bathroom on a crawl space house is significantly less expensive than having to add plumbing to a house that's on a concrete foundation because now you don't have to tear up concrete and floors. Right. And so like you can literally put this criteria into the MLS or into Zillow or into Redfin and you could have a list of potential opportunities.

And why you want to do it for houses that are on the market longer than the average days on market is because those sellers might be motivated to take a lower offer. And so if you can find a property that's been sitting for 30, 60, 90 days, 120 days, that has, you look for a 3-2 with 2,000 plus square feet, a 2-1 with 1,500 plus square feet, that lets you know that there's potential value that you can add there and then go look at those properties and make offers.

you could potentially find yourself a deal where you know you can add value. I love that strategy now. Right, right. I still have that search criteria set into this day. I got it set at two bed rooms that are more than 1,200 square feet. So anytime I see a house that fits that criteria, you know, it's something that I definitely check out. All right. We have to take a quick break.

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flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. All right. We're back with the Montes. All right. So you did your first buying whole deal. You did your first flip. So how did you start to shape or accelerate your business from that point? During that 2023 year, I just started to study marketing and direct mail. And I started to incorporate that into my business. And that's when I kind of took off. You know, I was able to produce my own leads and my own deals versus waiting on something to hit the

MLS and competing with everyone, you know, on that. So it's kind of took off from there. Okay, cool. So I think a lot of people find themselves in this boat where you do a deal or two and then you realize you get the bug, right? You realize you want to increase that volume. And in order to do that, you need some sort of systems, processes, and procedures. And what you're saying is you chose the route of focusing on lead generation that you can control. And the more leads you can generate, the more deals you can do. But typically, do deals, you need leads and you need money. So how did you find the money to buy the deals that you were finding? Financially personally, I tried to set myself up because, you know, I was working my W-2 the whole time. So I was saving up money and I met a local hard money lender.

He would lend to me at 100% of the renovation and purchase price. So that significantly took my investing to another level just because I was able to take down deals without. putting any money down. Yeah, I mean, obviously, finding a lender that I'll lend to you at 100 percent is great. I assume it's like 100 percent as long as your LTV is at a certain point, right? For sure. Yeah. So I typically try to stay under 70 percent loans of value. Okay. Of that after repair value. In other words, what Lamontas is saying is that as long as he is all in at 70 percent of the after repair value, meaning if you're buying a property for ease of numbers sake, if you're buying a property in the ARV is $100,000. His lender was willing to loan him up to $70,000. So Lamontas would then know, as long as I'm buying that property and the money I need to renovate it falls at $70,000 or

less and he wouldn't have to bring any money. So if he was buying a property for $50 and he needed $20 to renovate it, he's all in at $70. Therefore, he can get 100% financing. If you were going to buy a property for $50 and you needed $30,000, you'd be all in at $80. That would probably mean you'd need to bring 10 grand to closing, correct? Correct. Awesome. So finding a lender like that is amazing. And a lot of people are going to say that's cool for you. But how did you, you know, how did you find that lender? Through a buddy that I have here that is a local investor as well. He introduced me to the guy and I would sit down with him. I took him a folder of deals that I've done, showed him

some before and after pictures, went over the numbers with him and just got to the point where, you know, he felt like he could trust me and felt like I was experienced. enough and, you know, he decided he wanted to lend to me. Man, this is like the playbook for real estate investing. What's cool about this is this is really something anybody can do, right? You hustled to find your first deal. So you didn't use money to find the lead. You just hustled, skip trace, called a bunch of people. You found your first deal. You then found your second deal on the MLS through the means that we talked about by looking for opportunity on the MLS. And you were able to be profitable there. And then you kind of documented each deal to show that you had

some track record. And then when you were ready to start expanding your business, you were networking, looking for resources. And when you found a resource that might be interested in lending, you were able to basically show him, hey, this is the kinds of deals that I have done. These are the kinds of returns up and able to produce. So I have opportunities for you if you are looking to make a return on your investment. These are things that literally anyone can do. And I love how you have been able to kind of execute this. And I'm sure, I'm sure it was scary. Like the idea of talking to somebody and asking for money is probably scary. But how did you feel like that went for you? It went well. It was definitely, you know, scary. But it was something I knew I needed to do. I needed to find another

lender if I wanted to accelerate and move at a faster rate. Because before that, I was just using local banks, you know, which is okay. But you have to bring money and it's a slower process. You know, so once I met with him, you know, now I could take deals down cash. Man, that's super cool. So the marketing was generating the leads. You knew you had the money coming in. So it was really just a matter of how many leads could you generate. So kind of tell us about where you are now. Tell us about your last year with investing. What does your business look like? Because it sounds like you put the pieces in place to level up. So what did that turn into for you? So the last year, I think I did 12 deals. Just flips or rentals? Both. I kept more than I sold. I mainly tried to buy and hold, but I started realizing fast that, you know, I couldn't live off of that cash flow.

So as of late, you know, I got into more flipping. Yeah, man. A lot of the time, this business is portrayed in a way that lets people believe I'm going to buy a bunch of rental properties and then I'm going to live off the cash flow. and I'm going to quit my job. That can be done. It just takes a long time and a lot of properties. Because when you have debt on these properties, your net cash flow, you know, isn't always super great. And it depends on your market. There are some markets where you can get amazing net cash flow even now. But in most markets, you know, $100 to $200 net cash flow per property, it's going to take you a whole lot of properties before you can do that. And then we all realize that, you know, sometimes that gets blown out of the water when an HVAC goes

out for the year or something like that, right? And so if you've got a property producing five to seven thousand dollars a year net cash flow and then you have an unexpected expense that wasn't budgeted for, you know, your cash flow is gone. And so I think we all at some point realize, okay, the cash flow is great, but I don't want to depend on that to live off of. I would much rather depend on something like flipping houses. And I think that's why I mean, that's why I got into flipping houses. And so you started doing some flips. You did about, 12 deals last year. Give us a breakdown. What's your portfolio look like? Right now, I'm at, I want to say 19 total units. And then how many, about how many flips a year are you doing?

I think last year I did five flips. This year, I'm trying to up that to at least 10. Okay. So it sounds like you really did scale your business and start to level up from just doing onezy, Tuesday deals to where now you have a consistent lead flow. Is there a deal that stands out in the last year, that was kind of especially good for you? Definitely. So that was this deal that is actually in the neighborhood that I live in. And it's something I had my eye on for a while. And probably for about two years, man, I was communicating with the owner. He had a renter in there, but I would probably occasionally just pop up on his porch maybe once a month, you know, once a month. And he finally let me take that deal down. I purchased it at $55,000. Put about

$75,000 in there, and I sold that for $230,000. So you were all in for $125,000 and you sold it for $2.30. Yes. Man, so what's that about 50, 60 net profit? It was actually a little bit more because I didn't have to put out any closing costs to the seller. It was just pure deal. I just had to pay the agent. So I actually came out around like $80,000. Man, that's, I mean, that's a solid flip, folks. I mean, I'm averaging on my flips. I average about $40,000 to $50,000 net profit, which is a pretty good. Most people are averaging around $30,000 net profit on a flip. So to make 80 plus, man, let me borrow $20, man.

Yeah, man. That was my best deal. I haven't ran into one like it since, but that was my best deal last year. And I have one more that was very similar. I purchased it for 53. And I put about 47 in there and I sold that one for $190,000. Okay. So the one you made 80 on, that one you found just because you had been in this neighborhood,

seen this guy and been working on him for a while. The second deal you talked about, was that a mail deal or was that another hustle league? It was a me a little bit longer to take that deal down because there was some like probate issues. So we had to go through court to get the deal of approval. Ruth. So it took us about like two to three months to get it. But it was at the end of the day, it was worth it. It was worth the time. And I was able to help her out a lot. She just wanted to be able to get off of it. So I was able to help her out a lot. And, you know, it worked out for us, both. All right. We have to take another quick break. But when we come back, I've got some questions

for Lamontas about other marketing strategies he's using to find deals and how he decides if he's going to flip a property or keep it as a rental. We'll be right back. If you own a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income,

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Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could. be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip

and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications. It can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host, but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have.

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Now, you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought-after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical

returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund for investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at Fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsor job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.

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always interested in knowing when you get a lead, how do you determine if you're going to keep that lead as a rental property or if you're going to flip that property because the internal debate can sometimes be challenging. Sometimes that can be one of the hardest decisions that, you know, to make. But ultimately, it just came down to the spread that I would make if I was to flip it, plus things like the layout of the house and the neighborhood that is in. So if it has like an iffy layout or the neighborhood is iffy, I would just keep that. You know, I would keep it and I would just refile out of it and just put that on the rental market. it, but if it's a, say, you know, just a slam dunk and the layout is good or I could knock out a wall

or, you know, just add a bedroom or bathroom or something like that, you know, I probably would flip it. So essentially what you're saying is properties that have unusual layouts, they're harder to sell. And when they do sell, sometimes you don't sell it for as much money. But they're not necessarily harder to rent. So sometimes it makes more sense for you to keep them when they have an unusual layout. And then the properties where you feel like you can create big value, you can. maximize your profits, then you flip those because that'll give you more cash to buy more rentals down the road? For sure, for sure. And, you know, I love the rentals because I look at those as wealth builders down the road. And I'm still working. So in the beginning, I wasn't as

focused on flipping. And I do a lot of Section 8 rentals. And I wanted to do something that fulfilled me and gave me purpose in this investing journey. So, you know, I focused on like single parents. You know, my mom was a single mother. So these rentals, man, they just a step down from the flips that I'm doing. You know, it's not the same finishes and everything, but I'm going in and I'm putting new roofs, gutting the bathrooms and renovating those new flooring and everything. So just providing a quality place to stay for those, for those moms. Man, I love that, man. I'm passionate about the same thing. I love, I call it, you know, revitalization instead of gentrification, right? So being able to fix something up nice.

and provide a place with maybe nicer finishes than they would expect to have from another landlord because it gives them pride, right, a sense of pride living there, pride of ownership. People deserve nice finishes. Just because you're unsectionated doesn't mean you don't deserve to have a, you know, beautiful place to live. Man, I love that. Yeah. And I think it works.

You know, it's a win-win for, you know, for me and the tennis, you know, just providing them a quality place to live, someone that they're proud of. I think it minimizes my turnover. The renovation on the front end also minimizes my repair. So I don't have a lot of late nights maintenance costs, you know, just due to the time I took to renovate it on the front end. And also, my tenants take pride in the units that they're renting. So, you know, it's a win-win for us both. Man, that's super cool.

Man, that's super cool. I'm super proud of you for doing that. And, you know, a lot of people have a bad impression of Section 8. And a lot of the times it's just unjust. They've never really done it themselves. It's just what they hear. So I love to hear when somebody is doing it and is taking care of the tenants because I don't care who you are, man.

There are bad tenants at every price point. It's not just that there's bad tenants. I've had terrible tenants that were paying me $2,000 a month, right? It's, you know, there's this stigma that Section 8 has bad tenants. It's not that Section 8 has bad tenants. It's that landlords are bad at tenant selection. Yes. And if you can get good at tenant selection, no matter what.

price point your rental is at, then you can have quality tenants who take care of your properties and you can provide great housing to great people. Right, right, yes. And that's one thing that I studied before getting into the rental world. I wanted to know how to screen to find the best tenants possible. So, you know, I have a detailed screening process from, you know, background to credit check, income verification, even driving by and talking to old landlord. So I'm just making sure that I put the right person in there. But, you know, once they're in there, I make sure I take care of them and the unit. Awesome, man. It sounds like you do a lot of direct mail. Are there any other marketing sources you're using that seem to be working that people could take a look at? Not right now. I mainly do

direct mail. In the beginning, I did some cold calling just due to the lack of funds, but I figured out really quick that I don't like cold calling. The cold calling, it increases the chances of me getting, you know, pursed out, you know, of what happened. Yeah, yeah, that's weird. I like the direct mail because it doesn't take a lot of time and I just bring the leads to me and majority of the people that call me actually want to sell their home. So that's my favorite form of marketing. So it looks like you've been able to build a really impressive business over the last few years and that's inspiring for many people. So what's driving you now? What are you moving your business towards in the next year? Are you keeping things kind of the way they're going? What's the future

look like for you? I'm just trying to keep it around like 20 deals a year. So like I said, last year I did 12, but I want to up that into 20. And that's something that I want to do from year to year moving forward. That's like you're kind of around, hover around that 20 point. And man, right now, what keeps me going, like I said, is, you know, providing quality place to live for the tenants and also, you know, my family. You know, I want to just be able to provide a quality lifestyle for for my wife and my kids. So those two things right now drive. But I'll also say as far as the business goes, I think, you know, right now just kind of focus on like the stabilization of it and just becoming more organized and developing more systems. I hired a VA. So that's been

helpful for me tremendously. So that's kind of where I'm at, just stabilizing it, you know, getting the grip on everything and just maintaining the amount of deals that I'm doing you to you. That's cool, man. One thing I learned this past year in 2024 was that I didn't want to have some massive flipping business doing 50 to 100 flips a year. I kind of realized I like the spot of about 20 flips a year plus acquiring enough rentals to help me offset my capital gains. And that's like what I need and want just for me and my family. And I think it's good because scaling is great. But you got to figure out how far you want to scale because big portfolios have big portfolio problems. And if you're not prepared to handle this big portfolio problems, then this business goes from being fun to being terrifying real fast. For sure. Man, I'm big on being purposeful with what I do. You know, I like to have a purpose and I like to be fulfilled.

So I knew a while ago that I didn't just want to have this 100 flips a year business because I didn't want to create another job for myself. You know, I wanted something that was manageable and that was, you know, that I enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis. And speaking of jobs, I heard you say that you still work your W-2. Is that something you plan to continue to do? Are you looking to get out of it? Yeah, I'm looking to get out of it. I think this probably would be my last year there. I think I've gotten to the point where my cash flow for my rentals has exceeded my W-2 month-to-month income. So along with that and the flipping, I think I'm able to pull away after this school year. Okay, that's awesome. Well, I hope they don't listen to Bigger Pockets before you get to tell. But, no, I mean, it's super cool that you kind of took the time to build your business the right way. And it gives you the opportunity, the freedom to be able to choose to leave at the right time. Because I'm sure having the job helps you stay bankable, which helps you be able to continue to grow your business.

One last question. I heard you say you have a VA. What does your team look like? If you're doing, you know, 10 flips, you want to scale the 20. Do you have a big team around you? It's mainly just me. I made that one hire in the VA, but I have, you know, a pretty decent construction crew that does most of my houses. So, you know, just having those and not having to search for contractors from deal to deal, man, they've been really, really good.

Like, you know, if I had to give the MVP to anybody within my business, it would be those guys. So you tell it. Like a good contracting crew is literally like the missing link in this. If you have that, you can go pretty far. Yeah. So I assume that these contractors are third party. So they're on a contract basis. They're not hired in-house.

No, no, no. They're 1099. And so that's another thing that motivates you as well because, you know, when you have these contractors, you have to keep them busy. So I'm having to make sure I'm keeping deals constantly coming because if not, you know, they're going to go find work elsewhere. So that's another thing that that just, you know, motivates me to keep buying. Man, that's amazing. Well, Lamontas, I think your story is truly inspiring. I love what you're doing for your family. I love that you've created a business that fits your lifestyle. I think that's important for people to see because I think sometimes people feel like they need to build this business and just scale it to the moon. And that's not necessary. You can build a business that fits and provides the lifestyle that you want. And you can just try to maintain that going forward. So I love how you've done that. I love how you've done it, you know, fairly quickly. And thank you so much for sharing this inspiring journey with people. No, I appreciate you for having me, man.

I'm just grateful again to be here. Thank you, Lamontes, for joining the show today. If you think the BiggerPockets audience could learn from your own investing journey, you can apply to share your story just like Lamontas did at biggerpockets.com slash guest. I am Henry Washington, and we'll be back with another episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast in just a few days. Thanks for listening. 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.

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