BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - I Started BRRRR-ing in My Mid-40s, Now I’ll Retire a Decade Earlier
Episode Date: November 10, 2025Brian Waters was destined to work until he was at least 63 years old. Now, just five years after starting to invest intentionally, he’s got 16 rental units that can retire him a decade earlier! How�...��d he do it? A combination of easy, done-for-you out-of-state investment properties and the ever-profitable BRRRR method. Brian’s work isn’t sitting at a desk or crunching numbers. He’s a firefighter and is routinely one serious injury away from his career being over. With a family to support, losing his work wasn’t an option. So, in his 40s, he decided to pivot and go all-in on building a real estate portfolio. He bought a couple of properties in his home state of California before Southern California prices began to eat into his limited savings. So, things had to change. By being extremely clear about his plan, Brian began investing out of state, buying over a dozen properties without ever laying eyes on them. He tried a very beginner-friendly strategy that helped him build his out-of-state portfolio before moving on to the BRRRR method, where he gets paid to buy cash-flowing rentals in areas 99% of investors overlook. In five years, he’s completely transformed his financial future, using a method you can, too! In This Episode We Cover The best out-of-state real estate investment for beginners (completely hands-off) How to use the BRRRR method even when you’re living thousands of miles away from your investing market Using your primary residence’s equity to fund your first (or next) real estate deal What to do once you’ve run out of cash to invest (should you raise private money?) Why you do NOT need to wait until you're 65 to finally retire And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1198 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This investor had no exit plan from a demanding and dangerous day job.
Working a full 30 years to vest his pension just didn't feel possible.
But then he discovered real estate.
And now, just five years later, he owns 16 investment properties
and is on track to retire 10 years ahead of schedule.
And he's doing this while investing thousands of miles away
from his expensive California hometown.
This is the path to financial freedom.
What's up, Bigger Pockets community?
I'm Dave Meyer, housing analyst, rental property investor, and head of real estate investing at
Bigger Pockets.
Welcome to the show.
Today, we're bringing to the story of investor Brian Waters from Huntington Beach, California.
Brian loves his job.
He's a firefighter, but he's seeing friends and colleagues struggle trying to reach retirement
in a very dangerous line of work.
So he started looking for a long-term backup plan, and he bought his first rental property
during the pandemic.
Now, he's amassed a very impressive out-of-state portfolio
that puts him on path to financial freedom well before his 60s.
On today's episode, Brian's going to share what he's been doing,
like why he started investing with a turnkey company instead of riskier value at
properties, how documenting his journey on social media paid off huge when he needed capital
to expand, and how he's proving every day that the burr is far from dead in Midwest
American cities. Let's bring on Brian. Brian, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thank you for being here.
Dave, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited. It's good to finally get to
meet you and I can't wait to talk about some real estate. Let's do it. Tell us a little bit about
yourself first. Where were you in life when you first got the bugger started thinking about
investing in real estate? I was in my early 20s. I became a Medevac pilot in Hawaii, a commercial
airline pilot. I was living at home and I wanted to buy a house. I live out in Southern California. It's
super expensive. So we talked to a real estate agent in the area and he kind of had the inside of this
place. And I knocked on the door. A lady answered and asked her if she would be willing to sell her
house to me. And she said, yeah, but I'm not ready to move. So we bought it. We've rented it back to
her for a year. And then for the next over 10 years, I had roommates. I was a pilot. I was gone,
flying all over the country. So who cares who's in my house, right? So my mortgage was pretty much free.
And that allowed me to build all that equity, which later became the golden goose to my investments.
So what did you do from there after a house hack? I think a lot of people either stick with just
house hacking over and over and over again. But what did you do after that first deal?
So it was years until I actually got back into the real estate game. So I let that property just
increase in value. I'm lucky Southern California and the home prices go up over time.
But that kind of fast forwards me to getting in the fire service and being a 33-year-old
with brand new twin boys and kind of almost in panic mode, like, hey, I don't want to work until
I'm 63.
And also, I'm one injury away from actually having to retire.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's scary.
That's hard.
Yeah.
I've been part of our peer support team for over 13 years.
And you see a lot of mental and physical stuff going on.
And I just had to come up with a plan.
So the very next property was it was right around when COVID was happening. I had enough equity in my house that I was able to refinance. I don't even want to say the rate because it's going to make people, it's going to trigger some people, but it was it was very low. Does it start with a three? It starts with a two. It starts with a two. Oh, man. Yeah.
So just don't hate on me for that. But I'll be able to pull out some money. And I wanted to get in real estate because I love my children to death. And as a father, I didn't want to have to.
have them live in 10 buck two and not be around me.
So selfishly, I was looking for property where I could buy early and kind of make them have
to have to be around me forever.
So as I was looking around Southern California, I found a house that was for sale.
And I call it the firefighter special because the realtor was a fireman.
The seller was a fireman and I was a fireman.
And so the seller, he was three years from retirement and he wanted to sell his house,
but he wanted to live in it for three more years because his son was in high school
and finish off. And so I was like, perfect. That was my first rental. And that property is still
one of my better properties today. But what happened eventually is I looked at my bank account and I was
like, well, I can no longer afford houses in California. Yeah. I would imagine. So my next journey was
into the out of state stuff. Now, Brian, I want to hear how you scaled because I've sort of gone down
a similar path where I started in a more expensive market. At a certain point, it gets super hard. And so
you have to come up with a new strategy. You don't have to go out of state. But it sounds like you did.
We're going to hear about that, but we do have to take one quick break.
We'll be right back. Stick with us.
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Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with investor Brian Waters, who is just talking about how he
turned his primary residence into a small portfolio in Southern California. But Brian sounds like
he hit the point most people in California do where it's just not really logical to keep going.
least if you want to buy rental property. So what was your solution to that challenge?
What I decided to do, instead of going into the flips or the burs, which I later got into,
I decided to go the turnkey method. And for me, that has been an amazing transition to out-of-state
properties. People call turnkey different things. Some people say a property that you buy directly
that is just fixed up and nice is turnkey. But you're talking about buying from a turnkey operator?
Yes, absolutely. So maybe you could just tell our audience a little bit about what that entails and why you were attracted to it.
So number one, this is a great strategy for an active, hardworking W2 super busy person. I'm a firefighter. I'm a dad. I coach full-time football for my kids. I don't have a lot of time to go do this stuff. And those other strategies aren't wrong. But what these turnkey providers are, there's companies all over the country. And they internally do everything. They go out and door knock. They market.
they cold call, they find the houses. Once they do that, then they go out and have their own
construction teams that fix the properties. And they put in new flooring, new kitchens, new bathrooms,
new water heaters, new roofs, everything. And then what they do is they turn around and they have
a property management company that finds a tenant and signs a lease. Then they put it on their website.
It never goes to the market and investors can go buy it. So I love this strategy.
because literally, they give you the numbers.
You already know what it's rented for.
You already know that all the major CAPEX items like the roof and water heater is brand new.
Those are going to be deferred for later.
You have a good quality product and you could run the numbers because you know what the price is,
you know what the insurance is, you know what the rent is, and you just have to analyze it.
And that's what I did.
And I absolutely love that strategy for beginners.
Yeah, I think what you said is so important that where you are, the kind of investor you are,
will usually dictate if this is a good strategy for you. Like if you're busy and you're out of state,
this is a great idea. This just makes a ton of sense, right? Like being able to go out and buy something,
get the benefits of a value out opportunity, but not having to go out and source all of the
contractors or subs yourself, knowing that the repairs and CAPEX and maintenance and all this stuff
is going to be a little bit less is really appealing. But I have some questions because I think this is a really
interesting option for our audience. I'd love to dig in on. So,
Did you know the market you wanted to invest in? Did you go out and find the turnkey operator first?
Or how did you find a deal that you were comfortable with?
So what I did is I called multiple turnkey providers. And this is kind of a buyer beware for all the listeners.
There's some really, really good ones out there. And there's some really bad ones, right?
So I am a big believer of follow the herd mentality. So I was talking to other investors through forums, through Facebook groups.
The cool part about that is, is you're protected in a lot of senses here.
You know, you're protected by the inspection report.
You're protected by an appraisal.
You already have a lease signed.
And people will argue, well, you're not going to cash flow on these.
I want to tell you a little bit about some of the incentives these people are offering,
which is actually blowing my mind when I talk about it.
So a few of the ones out there that are really good, they will buy the rates down to 5.5%,
30-year conventional fixed, which is amazing.
That's awesome.
They have a one-year tenant guarantee where if the tenant moves out, they're going to pay you that rent that was talked about.
They often will have lower incentive property management fees of 5%.
We're investing in these states that have low property taxes.
And again, the CAPEX items are all taken care of.
So I'm very conservative when I underwrite stuff, but every single one of these cash flows.
Well, good on you for doing your due diligence, because I think that's the real thing that people get hung up on.
Because you're right.
They're especially like in 2021, 2021, 2022, everyone was calling themselves a turnkey rental
company, you know, and I would just encourage you all to look for people who have a track
record.
You know, there are great, reputable companies who do this.
I'm sure they are frustrated by some of the people in the industry that give them a bad name,
but there are very good, reliable companies that do this.
And I love that you called the investors too.
These businesses, they're different than traditional homes.
And I think it's similar to something we've talked about in the show recently, which is that new
construction is becoming more appealing because builders just have a different business model.
They need to move inventory.
And the same thing is true with turnkey operators, too.
They're doing volume and they're willing to buy down your rate to sell something a month
faster.
Whereas home sellers, Brian, give us two examples.
People are like, I'll just wait three years.
You know, it's just like a totally different mindset.
And so if you're the kind of investor, one, who can move quickly, two, might buy it volume,
might buy more than one.
people will potentially work with you and give you really great deals.
So, Brian, how did you actually ultimately pick a deal?
Did you settle on the operator first or the market first or what order did you go in?
I settled on the market first, which was Memphis.
And Memphis was a market that a lot of people were talking about.
Never been there.
Still have never been there.
But I asked around different people who had used them.
Some of these investors had multiple ones.
And when I interviewed them and talked to them, I mean,
these people sometimes are turning over hundreds of properties. And so I was using them as the
subject matter experts in that area. That's great. And have you scaled that up since then?
Yeah. So I currently have a total of 16 properties. 15 of those are out of state. And I've kind of
spread my wings a little bit to other markets as well. The first six properties minus the
California one were all turnkey. At that point, I kind of opened the wallet again and was like,
oh, where's all my money? And so I had to start getting creative. And that's, at that point,
I felt like I'd really learned a lot about the industry, even though they were easier to do.
I understood how to analyze stuff, how to find stuff. I started really digging into the
bigger pockets communities and understanding. And so then I transitioned into the burr stuff.
And so how many turnkey properties do you have total? Nine turnkey totals. And then the rest are all
burs. And you've never seen any of them. Never even been to the state that.
that's incredible. Yeah. I mean, you must have good reporting then, right? That to me would be the
thing that I would be nervous about. I invest out to say too, but I've just hand-selected the
property management, clearly you're happy with the property management. Oh, yeah, and they use all the
fancy online portals where they send you stuff. And truthfully, it becomes easier by the fact that
it's away from me, it have to have better systems and I have to have a better team to do it.
so I can go to the fire department and take care of the community or I can be on the football field
coaching my kid's stuff and not have to worry about, hey, the tenant call me.
And first off, I'm not even good at that stuff.
I'd go over there and probably break more than I would try to fix, right?
Oh, I know all about that.
Yeah.
Right.
So by the fact that it's far away, I'll wake up in the morning and like, hey, you had a little plumbing leak.
Don't worry.
It's fixed.
The tenant's happy.
We're good.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Moving on.
Well, good for you.
I know it is a big leap for anyone listening to this to invest out of state.
but I completely agree with you, Brian.
It forces you to just take a different position on the team.
When I lived and invested in Colorado,
I did so much myself just because I could.
I lived down the road,
and it just seems silly to go hire someone to do that.
And that worked well.
Like, I don't regret doing that.
But as soon as I started investing out of state,
I'm like, oh, I could concentrate on what I am good at,
which is like finding markets,
analyzing deals, doing asset management,
and find people who are way better at property management than I am.
I wasn't doing myself any favors, fix and stuff.
Absolutely not.
And so I think it's almost like this forcing function that allows you to just, like, mature as an investor if you do things out of state.
But, you know, it takes a certain personality.
And not everyone's going to be comfortable with that.
I do want to hear more about how you moved on to Burrs and what you've been up to recently.
But we've got to take one more quick break.
Stick with us.
For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios.
But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive.
But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real,
tangible assets without the complexity and expense.
That's the power of the Funrise flagship fund.
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 before investing.
This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com
slash flagship.
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Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
I'm here with investor Brian Waters talking about how he moved from investing in his own backyard in California
to doing out-of-state turnkey properties in Memphis.
Brian, what came next for you?
So as I did a few of the turnkey properties,
I kind of analyzed what these providers were doing
and I had really started to educate myself.
There was so much that I learned early on
and it was less risky.
Those turnkeys had a lot less risk,
but I knew that I couldn't just continue saving up for a property and buy,
saving up for a property and buy.
So I wanted to scale faster.
One thing that was super, super, super,
important and I had this discussion with this awesome couple at the Bigger Pockets Convention we just had.
Yeah.
Is one of my friends early on told me is you have to to start using social media when you first start.
And I still to this day cringe when I watch my own videos.
It's just uncomfortable.
Oh, it sucks at the beginning.
It's so hard.
The reason I'm talking about this is because this allowed me at a certain point to raise over a million dollars in private money, which is I'm
I'm super, super happy about that.
I have some amazing partners.
But it creates that gap between that awkward conversation of me asking them and them coming
to me.
When they come to me, I can just have a conversation.
I won't even talk about private lending until they, you know, say, hey, I want to do this
too, but I don't want to put in all the work.
And then it's easier.
It's more of an organic conversation.
So all my lenders have come from pretty much my warm circle, friends, family, aunts, uncles,
people that came to me and I was able to take that money.
And now I'm like, well, now I got to start burning, right?
Because I have a little.
Better do something.
People need of return.
I learned about the private money process.
And I found a gem of a contractor in the city of Detroit.
And I've been hammering Detroit.
And I know you talked a lot about this on a few podcasts recently.
And I love that market.
And I've in the past two years of bird, we're on our seventh property there right now.
For those who say the Burr is dead, I disagree.
Yes, I love it.
Brian, we're just breaking down this.
Burr is not dead.
Your primary residence is not a bad investment.
I love it.
Well, I just want to commend you for the social media thing.
I know from personal experience, it's very awkward to get started, but it is a really
powerful tool.
It takes a lot of guts, man.
So good for you.
And I know not everyone's going to do that, but it's a really repeatable strategy that
almost anyone can do if you are willing to laugh at yourself the first couple of times.
you make it real, because they're not going to come out well.
They're going to be very cringy, and then you'll get better over time.
Well, in the spirit of getting uncomfortable, tell me about doing the burr long distance.
I'm sure that was a little bit uncomfortable too.
Oh, it was completely uncomfortable.
And, you know, not all of them went perfect.
I will say that my last two were actually home runs.
Like in the last couple years?
In the last couple days, like the week.
Amazing.
So I had heard about the.
Detroit Market, I actually listened to episode 1325 on the Bigger Pockets Daily where they read
the articles out.
Yeah, yeah.
And I highly encourage all the listeners to go and listen to that one.
It's an article that someone wrote about the Detroit market.
And it blew my mind.
I was like, oh, here's an opportunity.
I'd never been there.
So this was one of the one markets that I actually went to.
Everyone told me like, this city is super dangerous.
Don't go there.
But you know what?
I've learned not to listen to people that have not done what.
you want to do. The downtown area had people driving around on those beer cars with
kegs on them. There's rooftop bars, super clean. Companies like Rocket Mortgage have their
headquarters there. They just bought Redfin by the way. All those factories have been coming back up.
The Detroit Lions are doing good. Go Lions if you're a fan. It's one of the only cities in,
or one of 10 cities in the country that have all five major sports. They're building a Detroit
FC soccer stadium there. Oh, cool. And so they're just,
putting, it was so bad for so long, so there's only one way that it can go and it can go.
So as I, what I did is I contacted a realtor before I went, again, interviewed a few,
made sure they're investor friendly, asked them to give me some neighborhoods.
I already knew a bunch of houses that were for sale and that had sold.
And so I was kind of doing a little bit of detective work in that area.
And it just blew me away.
You know, people always generalize things about cities, whether it's Detroit or Chicago or
Indianapolis or whatever it is, go there and decide for yourself.
Like I really, I have learned a lot.
I've gone to a lot of markets.
I love doing what you're doing, by the way.
I do the same exact thing.
I have a map.
I drive around.
I just walk into random stores.
I just try and get the vibe.
It's a vibe check.
I don't know how else to describe it, but you do that.
I have gone to markets that people love and I hated them.
I've gone to markets that people hate and I've loved them.
It's just depends on who you are, what you're comfortable with, what you're
trying to accomplish, but think for yourself.
Like, I think that's really the thing.
And honestly, it's one of the reasons why on this podcast, people always message me and
they're like, what markets do you invest in the Midwest?
And I don't tell them because I don't want you to do what I do because what I do is for
me and my strategy.
And you shouldn't just blindly listen to me or to Brian or to anyone else.
You should come up with your own strategy and find the markets if you want to do out
of state that work for you.
So maybe walk us through one of your recent deals.
Like, what are the numbers on these look like?
What I do is I go on to Redfin and I put little areas and that sends me a message right away when something pops up.
So I knew where I wanted to go first.
I already had a private lender ready to go.
And when this property came up, we just struck on it right away.
And it was $70,000.
And the scope of work on it was $40,000.
And so when you say you're doing the private lender, are you just straight up buying 100% of the acquisition price and the renovation with one private lender?
Is that kind of the goal?
Correct.
I've mixed before, but I think it's easier for me and for that lender just to do one
off together.
Okay.
So you just did.
You basically borrowed 110 grand.
Do you mind telling us, is that like hard money kind of terms, 10, 12% interest?
No points.
And I pay that lender 10%.
Wow.
That's awesome.
It's a great deal.
And again, getting back to solving people's problems, my lender was on a fixed income.
she's an older lady that has she had to have roommates and she's in her 70s and so I came to her
and I said you deserve to live alone and make some money how do we solve that problem for you
and I was willing to pay whatever and we came to terms on that and the next month she moved her
roommate out she has her own space and she is she's loving our relationship and you know I take
a really good care of her because she deserved that that's fantastic yeah that's amazing I love
that. Again, always talking about this, mutual benefit, real estate, it's not a zero-sum game.
Your contractor can win. Your realtor can win. Your tenants could win. Your lender can win,
and you can win all at the same time. That's when you're doing it right. Not only can
they win, I want them to win because I want to be their favorite customer when they're coming
back and they're going to do better work for you if they're winning with you. A hundred percent.
I love that approach. So tell us, finish the deal. So get a 110. Is this one of the home runs that
you're talking about? This is one of the home runs. So,
they cranked it out. We ended up putting a section 8 tenant in there. The process was pretty simple. Because
we put in new everything and I'd plan to keep it for a while, please don't lipstick on a pig stuff.
You guys, like it's important. If you're going to keep this for a long time, the tenant deserves a nice place to live.
And if you're going to keep it, it's going to have less headaches for you later. So we're all in for 110.
And when we got the section 8 tenant in there, it was 1350 for the rent. And it just appraise for 180.
and I was able to pull out, you know, 75% of that.
I paid back the lender all their money.
I still have a ton of equity in the property.
And I was able to actually put money in my own pocket.
I know this is rare, but they're out there still.
Wow, that's unbelievable.
And I'm curious, like, what is your deal flow like?
Can you, are you having trouble finding these?
Or can you kind of do as many of these as you want?
Yeah, I could do as many as I want.
I mean, there's, in that market, there's so many.
Just because a burr is not perfect and you're not getting all your money out,
I would argue that if you can get half of your money out, that's still better than a normal deal.
100%. If you can get $100 back, that is a win.
You have to change your expectations of what is perfect.
But to answer your question, I look for on market stuff.
I also have now have a contact with a really good wholesaler out there.
And third, my GC is always on the move looking for, because he's a realtor, he's always sending me deals.
So I have more deals than I could fund, but I also am a busy working professional.
So I'm trying to start with my strategy.
I don't want to do a thousand.
I'm a busy person.
So I'm doing five a year right now and that's plenty for me.
That's plenty.
And how much time does that take you like on an average week or month?
I think the hardest part is probably the underwriting, getting the property going.
But once we do that, I'm using the same flooring, the same color paint, the same windows.
everything. I literally have a spreadsheet. And I do this in case I have to change contractors,
but all the way down to the item number at Home Depot or Lowe's where it becomes super simple
for them to do. It also, I could predict my costs better, right? Yeah. So once I get that,
I'm spending a couple hours here and there. If problems come up, then obviously it takes me more.
But it's part of that who not how. Find that team member that's going to be really good at their job
and it's going to be less work for you. It's not passive, but it's less work that, that I
I have to do. Awesome. Well, I love it, Brian. Well, congratulations on your success. I really
admire the way you've sort of adapted over the course of your career. I think a lot of people
come into say, I'm going to be this kind of investor. I'm not going to be this kind of investor.
But you got to learn. You know, I wrote the book, Star Strategy. You have to have a goal,
but the path towards that goal is going to shift and switch. And if you just educate yourself,
work hard, you can absolutely do it. So congratulations on all your success. Thank you.
And thank you for being here. I loved hearing your story.
We'll have to hear how you're doing in a year or two.
You have to come back and join us again.
Thank you, guys, for the opportunity.
This has been an amazing opportunity for me.
And, yeah, keep growing, keep learning.
And I would love to come back at some point if you have me.
And thank you all so much for being a part of this community and for listening to this podcast.
We'll see you in a few days for another episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.
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