BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - I Started Buying Rentals at 46. By 50, They’ll Replace My Salary.
Episode Date: September 14, 2026Kent Long wanted passive income. The problem? All those gurus and guides online were only selling a fantasy. The one thing that seemed to actually generate income: real estate. When a property that co...uld easily be split into two units came on the market, Kent jumped at the chance. Little did he know this $14,000 down payment would become an entire real estate portfolio that would help him retire early from his job. At 46, Kent bought his first rental property (just two years ago, in 2024). The purchase price? A mere $70,000. With a small renovation, this property began bringing in $3,000/month in rent and some serious cash flow. Now that there was home equity to pull from, it was time to repeat this system. Kent has now done this same type of deal four times, going from zero units to 10 units in just two years. He’s even gotten his young son involved, helping his 20-year-old profit nearly $50,000 from a similar deal! Kent’s close to replacing his income and fully stepping away from his 9-5, reaching early retirement, and dedicating all his time to real estate. He started in 2024 when most people thought real estate investing was past its prime—according to Kent, we’re still not even close! In This Episode We Cover The affordable real estate market where you can pick up rentals for just $70,000 How to turn a big single-family home into a cash-flowing duplex or triplex Using the BRRRR strategy to get paid to buy rental properties (seriously!) When it’s smart to use a HELOC (home equity line of credit) as a down payment How to pass down wealth and wisdom to your kids so they can reach financial freedom, too And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1330. 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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Kent Long bought his first rental property at 46 years old, just two years ago in 2024.
By the time he's 50, he'll have a real estate portfolio that will retire him early.
He did all this while working in 9 to 5, on the road 3 to 4 days per week, and without a ton of his own savings.
Kent began looking for passive income streams, but all the internet gurus and guides turned out to be selling a fantasy.
After hitting a breaking point, Kent saw a house on the market with enough square footage to convert it into two units.
This would turn into the beginning of an investing career Kent never imagined.
With just $14,000 down, Kent turned one down payment into four properties, making him $5,500 a month in cash flow.
And he did it all in just two years.
Now he's close to fully replacing his salary with rentals, allowing him to retire from his job at age 50, 15 years before traditional retirement age.
He did it all starting in 2024.
So if you think you're late to real estate, this is your sign to get in the game.
What's going on, everybody?
I am Henry Washington, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, and today we're bringing you an investor
story with Kent Long from Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Let's bring him on.
Kent Long, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Henry, I'm honored to be here, honestly.
Bigger Pockets has been a huge part of my real estate journey.
Well, why don't you kind of start there?
Tell us a little bit about your.
background and how you got into real estate in the first place.
Starting off, I, I, um, I was always looking for passive income. So unfortunately,
just life costs so much money. So to live normally, you have to have extra income coming
in. So my initial, like, thought process was I read Tim Ferriss, four hour work week.
And I started an Amazon business. So I, I made two products on Amazon and I had two different, like,
manufacturers in China that would send stuff directly to Amazon.
So ideally it makes sense.
Like,
then that's totally passive.
You know,
you watch all the YouTubers and they say how easy it is and you can make,
you know,
extra thousand bucks per unit that you're selling.
The kicker is it costs so much money to advertise on Amazon that you don't make any
money.
So then after that,
they stumbled on bigger pockets and started listening to just kind of real estate.
I've always been like Mr.
Fix It at home and can fix things.
And my dad's a union carpenter.
So I've always had like a background of building and fixing things.
And then about two years ago when I was going through kind of a bad divorce,
I had an option and I could either rent because my wife was steep in the house or I could
look at either flipping a house, kind of live in flip or buy a property that I could fix up
and then pull some equity out.
So that's kind of my initial dive into it.
But when did you start researching real estate?
And then about when was it when you bought your first real estate deal?
My job, my 9 to 5, I travel a lot.
So I'm in the car between two and four hours, three to four days a week.
So, you know, it would just be podcasts after podcast, you know, whether it was entrepreneurship.
And then eventually about three years ago to two and a half years ago, really just diving into bigger pockets and just constantly listening to it in the car.
So in July of 2024, I was looking at my first property. My real estate agent at the time had a property that used to be a duplex and it was converted to a single family. But all I literally had to do is put a door on it. So you walk in, it's, you know, the first floor would have been one apartment and then there was another door that went upstairs for the second apartment. So literally just putting a door on it would make it a duplex. What city was this? At Altoona, PA.
Al-Tuna, Pennsylvania. And how much did you pay for this large single-family home that was a duplex turned into a single that you wanted to turn back into a duplex?
But I actually turned into a trache. I'll get to that. So purchase price is $70,000.
$70 grand? Was it just sticks? Like, was it livable? All new LVP and the first and second floor and the third floor, all LVP already done. And everything was freshly painted.
Is this just prices in this market? How'd you find this deal? Was it on the market? Was it off market deal?
It was on the market for a while. So that house fell through a couple times. They sold it twice maybe and the loan didn't go through right or something happened. So then the seller just needed kind of off his plate. But it was only at most it was it was on the market for 80 or 90. So wow. That's just I just didn't realize the price points were or that low.
Well, the price points will get better.
and you're going to be, that's on the high end of what I pay.
Okay, okay, all right, all right.
So you paid 70.
It was a single that used to be a duplex.
You ended up converting it back to a multifamily.
How much did it cost you to renovate this property to get it turned into, I guess you said, a triplex now?
$10,000.
Okay.
Did it cost 10 grand because you have the skills to do all the work yourself?
Or did it cost 10 grand just because it was in pristine condition and you didn't have to do much?
So I didn't have to do a little.
lot, but I do all of the work. So, you know, the idea is, you know, I have a, you know, a
background of, you know, redoing kitchens and redoing bathrooms and I can do flooring and painting
and everything else. But that's all that I had to put into it to convert into a try. I had a little
bit of cabinets I had to add into the kitchen. And then there were some cabinets up on that
second floor that I used in the third unit, which was in the back. Can you estimate what
you think the renovation would have cost had you had to hire a contractor? I mean, I always double it. So it's
20 to 30, you know, 20 to 30 grand. That's fair. That's fair. Okay. Cool. That paints a good picture of
about the level of work that needed to be involved with this property. And so then you converted it to a
triplex. I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but I'm so curious because of that price point.
What are the rents for the individual units? So they basically added a, they added a business off the
backside of this house. That unit, I furnished it. And then there's like a makeshift kitchen back there
too. And I get 850 for that, that little unit. And it's, it's as big as it like a, whatever,
hotel room. Okay. So you're cash flowing off one unit. All right. What else you got? Right. So then on the first
floor, one bedroom, I get right around 900 a month for that. And the third unit.
$1.250? What? Because it's three bedroom.
And this is off of a $70,000.
Crap.
$70,000 single family, $10,000 renovation, which includes sweat equity, which is fine.
And you're able to bring in $850, $9,200, and $12.50 for a total of $3,000 a month in rent on an $80,000 all-in purchase.
Right.
That's a good stinking deal.
Wow.
Congratulations on that.
That's impressive.
Thank you.
Yeah, we always want to hit that home run in the first one.
All right.
So how did you structure the financing for this?
Was it a, did you pay out of your pocket?
Like, is it a conventional loan?
It was a 30-year conventional loan.
So you put down 20%, 25%.
Yeah, 14 to $20,000.
What's your debt service?
So what do you pay in the mortgage on that property?
Oh, I mean, I got so it's so low.
He doesn't even know, guys.
Look at, look.
He was like, I don't know, 50 bucks.
All of my loans are like,
like between four and $600. $600 a month mortgage, bringing in $3,000 a month. Even you put $14,000
down after a few months. You got your money back. That's, oh yeah. What a deal. What a deal.
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Bigger Pockets podcast. I am speaking with investor Kent Long, who has just shared his very first
real estate deal with us, and it was a banger. So Kent, tell me about this next one.
So first property, fix it up, basically added two units because it was a single family, turned it
into a try. Because I turned in and try, I got to be able to pull, I mean, it's 80% of the
appraise value. So then I was able to pull out a $78,000 helot. Well, I want to caveat one thing,
though, because I just want to make sure that we're clear on the terms. I love this strategy,
by the way. So you essentially did a burr, except you, I call it a modified bur. It's a, it's a
burr. It's instead of a refinance at the end, it's a helock at the end. And so you'd actually
didn't pull money out, you just got access to a line of credit. I like this strategy more than
the burr. And the reason I do is because when you refinance, you're getting a new loan at a higher
amount, which then lessens your cash flow. But because you just pulled a line of credit, you gave
yourself access to the equity, but you didn't get a new loan at a higher amount. Your loan stays the
same and you only pay more when you borrow the money against the HELAC. So he was saying he pulled
money out. He didn't necessarily pull it out. He got access to it.
I think it's a fantastic strategy.
I'm glad you went that route.
So you've now got access to this $70,000 line of credit.
And so that gives you buying power, right?
So what did you do with that?
I bought another single family right around $17.00 square feet.
And I was going to turn it into a duplex.
But I bought it for $30,000.
So you paid cash from your line of credit.
So you pulled out $35,000.
Again, why I like this strategy, because he didn't refinance, he didn't get a new loan.
He was able to use $35,000 of the $70,000 he had access to.
So you're actually only paying interest only payments on $35,000 versus having, if you did
in a refinance, you're essentially paying for all the money at once.
So you pull out $35,000.
You pay cash for a house that you want to convert from a single to a multi.
Now, were you specifically targeting single families that had the potential to be multis?
Or was it just coincidence?
Ideally, I want to duplexes or tries.
They're the easiest to renovate.
I mean, that's, you know, the whole BIRB process is, it's easier for D.
The whole idea of duplexes and tries is I like one renter to pay the mortgage and one renter to pay me.
So, you know, when you look at, when you look at multifamilies, it's just the cash flow.
And that's ideally was always, there's always been my goal.
So 35,000.
How much did it cost you to renovate this one?
20,000 all in.
What are you getting in rents on those units?
A thousand for the two bedroom on the upstate.
and then 900 for the one-bedroom.
So $30,000 purchase, $20,000 rehab, all in for 50, bringing in $1,900 a month.
Again, that is a fantastic cash-flowing deal.
Did you finance this one the same way, or did you do it a little different?
So when I went to get that refinance, that's when I went the commercial loan route,
which I really, I just like I love it.
It's just so much simpler, so much quicker.
So then it got reappraised at 110.
So I pulled like an $85,000 loan out on that and was able to pay off $20,000 of credit card debt and pay down that $30,000 that I initial investment.
Okay.
Because you paid cash, right?
And you probably funded the renovation out of your own pocket.
So you're all in 50, but it's 50 cash.
So then you went and you got a loan.
on the property itself for 80.
That gives you some cash in your pocket to pay off your debts.
And an $80,000 loan bringing in $1900 a month is still phenomenal cash flow.
Plus, you were able to pay off credit card debt, which essentially increases cash flow too, right?
Because now you're not paying those credit card bills.
That's awesome, man.
And I know a lot of people are listening and they're thinking, man, well, I can't buy, you know, $30,000 houses.
Well, A, you can because you can invest out of state if you,
want to. And B, there's markets like this all over the country. So don't just believe the lie of
if you're paying less than $100,000 that you're getting some piece of crap that it's going to,
you know, cost you more to fix it up than it is to sell it. There are plenty of markets where the
price points are lower. There's obviously risk to those things. Usually markets with lower
price points like this don't have a ton of appreciation. So I'm curious, is that what it's like in
your market? Do these properties appreciate with the national average or do they kind of just sit flat?
It would sit flat. I mean, when it comes to risk, like, you know, I like to think of it as lower risk than anything else because it is the money that I'm putting into it. The amount of money that I would invest into a $30,000 house compared to a $300,000 house. I'm just mitigating risk just in the initial price point. It's a sliding scale, right? It's a seesaw. Typically, if you're in a market where you're getting tons of appreciation, cash flow is none, negative, hard to find.
inversely, when you're in a market where you can get phenomenal cash flow. I mean, we're talking
a debt service of 600 bucks bringing in $3,000. That is phenomenal cash flow. But you're not going to
get a ton of appreciation, right? That's just how real estate tends to work. So you need to figure out,
if you're listening to the show, to figure out what your strategy is, you have to set your own
goals and then buy properties in a market that allow you to meet those goals, right? There's going to be
ups and there's going to be downs, there's going to be risks, and you want to be rewarded for the
risk, I think that this is a decent strategy if you're trying to build up cash flow, heavy cash flow
market. Before we move on to this next deal, Kent mentioned that he used a HELOC on his first house
to fund his second property. And if you're a Bigger Pock Pro member, we have a new perk with our
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Bigger Pockets pro member. All right, Kent. I love these deals.
I think this is a good strategy in what seems to be a very highly cash flow heavy market.
You're from the market.
You live in the market.
So you understand that market.
I think that that's a smart investment plan.
Paint us a picture here in terms of time.
The first deal was 2024 in July.
How long was it between that one and this deal?
I got this deal done in February of 2025.
So about seven months later, you did this next deal.
Okay.
That's a reasonable time frame.
one deal, learn some lessons, you go and do another deal? That's great. Okay. And how long did it
take you from deal two to deal three? It took a little bit longer because that's when I got my
son involved into this real estate journey. First one was a home run. The second one was going
really well and it was going to like I knew that it was going to work out because I already had
kind of the cash. And another duplex while I was working on my second property, another duplex came
up for $44,000.
Okay.
This was on the market listed.
This is on the market listed for 44,000.
All right.
I had to get there immediately because I knew when duplexes come up in El Tuna, they go quickly.
How old was your son at the time?
19.
Okay.
Okay.
Awesome.
So he's a 19 year old.
He was in college, but like over the summer, he was going to fix a duplex up, basically
do the same thing, pull equity out of it.
And then, you know, do one property a year.
for the next four years while I was in college. So I got the house for $44,000. So, you know,
I put $15,000 down on it. Okay. Did you use the HELOC to put the money down? Or did you? Yeah.
Yeah. I had a boy. I did a commercial loan on this as well because I'm working with a local bank.
So again, I think it's benefits like to be working with like your local banks because they'll,
they know the area. They know how to make things work. So typical structure of a loan for a local
community bank if you're doing a fix and flip or some sort of construction loan. It's 85% of purchase,
100% of rehab. So you got to put 15% down. So that was your 15% down payment you were talking about.
You borrowed that from your line of credit on deal one. How much did the renovation of this duplex cost you?
I think we took a $15,000 renovation loan with this commercial loan. So as you're doing the work,
they'll pay you back. But we really needed about $25,000. So it was, again,
a big property and the flooring is what we didn't figure it out right.
Okay.
And then the caveat to all this, we're lucky as in my dad as a union carpenter and would come down
two to three days a week and help him fix this property up.
So you got the whole family involved.
Grandpa, dad, and son all working on this property.
That's super cool.
So total budget was about $25,000 that sounds like on the renovation of this duplex.
You paid 44.
You've got 25 in it.
So you're all in for just under $70,000.
And what are you renting those units for?
1,200 and 1,200.
That is awesome.
Yeah, it was fantastic.
And then we refinanced this.
And he was able to pull out $72,000 out of his first property.
As a 19-year-old.
Yeah.
Wow.
He turned 20 until he refinanced it.
But at 20 years old, we went to a lawyer and they wrote him a chair.
for $70,000.
How scared did that make you?
No, he's the most frugal kid you'll ever meet.
Oh, boy.
He won't spend a dime of it.
Oh, I can't imagine getting a $70,000 check at 19.
I was not that responsible.
No, he does great with his money.
So he did pay me back.
So, you know, I put the initial investment in.
So, and it had to fund some of the flooring and some of the kitchen renovation.
So he was able to pay me back $18,000.
But then he's still sitting in the bank with over $50,000.
So what made you, you know, want to pull your son into this deal?
What brought that about?
Just financial security.
You know, it's financial future.
Like, it's making one, you know, giving him the opportunity to be successful later in life.
I mean, you know, he's going to have this property for the next 30 years, just cash flow and, you know, $1,500 to $2,000.
He can pay it down.
He can sell it.
You know, like you've always talked about having multiple exit strategies.
So you, and that's what you have whenever you, you know, when you buy these properties,
as long as you think about different ways of you want the cash flow, do you want, you know,
you want the HELOC, you need more cash, you're going to do another deal.
So we kind of talk through all that.
But because I was so fortunate on my first two deals and because the price points are so low,
it's just, it's, you know, we're kind of mitigating that, that risk, which is great.
What was it like working on this property with your dad and your son?
Seeing something go from what it was when you purchased it to this, this investment property
that's producing income.
It's fantastic.
I mean, it's nice, you know, working my son and then my dad comes down and helps out.
I mean, we just have a good time.
My nephews would come down and do some painting.
So, you know, like almost have like a party and just hang out.
And then, you know, we just feed.
everybody and get free labor. It's fantastic.
All right, Kent, thanks for sharing that story. That's super cool, getting your family involved
and still pulling off another amazingly well cash flowing deal. I'm assuming there's some more
and we'll dive into those deals right after the break.
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podcast. All right, we are back on the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm speaking with investor Kent Long,
who has pulled off some pretty amazing cash flowing deals. Now we're on to what looks like
deal four-ish, if you want to count deal three. Your son's deal technically, but you helped him
with that. So deal three and a half. So what did you do with deal three and a half? Found a duplex.
I believe it was on the market for 65 and I got it for 55. In pretty good shape, the kicker.
was there was tenants on the first floor already. So ideally I'm going to keep them. And then I actually,
you're not going to love this. I paid a contractor to do the work. No, I love that. I think you should
absolutely do that. So I got a $25,000 renovation loan with my commercial loan. The $25,000 is paid for
the second floor renovation. So painting, putting in a kitchen, and flooring. Did you leave the tenants on the
first floor at market rents or did you have to raise rents? So their rent was $450 a month.
Okay. So I came in and was like, you know, again, I took this from one of your previous podcasts
is not just jump them up to market rate. So, you know, like I just slow rolled them. I'll, you know,
increase you a hundred bucks a month for multiple months and I need you to eventually get the
$750.750 is still a little below market. But, you know, I'm a little bit below market. But, you know, I'm
They're paying all utilities.
And while that renovation was going on, they were covered in the mortgage.
Yeah.
Because it's a $55 dollar loan.
Tenants aren't stupid.
They understand that you have a mortgage and taxes and insurance.
Now, they may not want to pay more rent, but they understand.
And I have always found that if I just sit down and am honest with people, share the plan
and give them a say in how we get there, they're so much happier.
Market rents are X.
That's the first thing, right?
It's to show them.
If you move, you're going to be paying $8.50 a month for the same property.
Or I can let you stay here for $750.
That's where I got to get you to.
Can you help me come up with a plan to get you there?
If I've got to tweak your rent every month, how much can we afford to go up every month?
And when I give them a say in it, they don't feel like I just did something to them.
They feel like they got to work with me to keep that.
them in their home, which is always a better strategy. So purchase price, 55, renovation, 25.
So you're all in for $80,000. And you got the one tenant on the first floor up to $750 a month
in rent. And what were you able to get in the second floor? A thousand dollars for the second
floor, two bedroom. All right. So $1750 gross rents on $80,000 of debt. This is a recent deal that you found
in an affordable market that produces a ton of cash flow. There are markets like this all over the
country. I love that you're using strategies like lines of credit and community banks to grow your
business. That is exactly how I grew my business. And I like the pace at what you're doing
these deals because it seems like you're doing about a deal every six months or so. Is this your
only job? Or are you working some other job at the same time? So my nine to five is a regional manager,
as an occupational therapist, I oversee 18 skilled nursing facility therapy departments.
So you're doing this part-time with a full-time gig where you're traveling a ton.
How much time you're putting in on a, you know, weekly or monthly basis into your real estate
business.
I wouldn't even say it an hour or two a week.
Yeah.
I mean, if I do three or four a month, maybe.
Yeah.
I like this.
I like the story because most real estate investors are mom and pop folks.
just like you and just like me to some level where you do a few deals here and there,
you get them stabilized, and then you move on to the next one. You do it in your spare time.
It's not something that's you're taking all of your focus and you're able to still produce
good income and cash flow when things are done the right way. I love that you're leveraging the
community banks. I love that you're leveraging helix and lines of credit. But this is just
basic real estate investment strategy. Like this isn't new. Like this is literally things that have been
around for decades. Anyone can do this kind of strategy. So your goal getting into this was to buy
assets, produce passive income. Where do you feel like you are on that roadmap? Because you're still
self-managing, right? So there's some work involved there. You're doing some of the renovations here and
there. So there's some work involved there, but you're also producing a good amount of income. So
how many more deals do you think you need to do before you can really start to remove yourself from
some of those things? My initial goal was to do 10 in five years. And I think I'm going to get
eight done in probably maybe three and a half years. Before we get out of here, let's kind of give
everybody a recap of your portfolio. So how many deals have you done? How many doors do you have? How much
cash flow is it producing? I have four properties, two duplexes, two triplexes, and then their cash flow
and $5,500 a month currently right now. And that's in a two-year time frame. That's pretty cool.
And that includes your fourth deal, which looks like you bought a duplex for around 90 grand,
and you turned that one into a triplex? Correct. That one was the biggest renovation and then the biggest
workload for me for sure. The duplex was already done. There was new floors, some carpeting, both
of those rentals were ready to go when I bought the property. I'd put two renters in there immediately.
And then I'm getting $9.50 each for both of those. And then the first floor was an old corner store.
And it was a disaster. Like it was, it was dirty. There was an old deli fridge still sitting in there that I had to
like use a sledgehammer to get out of there because it was so big. And then I took about two dumpsterfuls of
of garbage to even get that first floor cleaned up and I converted into a three bedroom one bath
on that downstairs unit. And what was the budget for that renovation? About $30,000 I put into this.
So you're all in for 120 and you rented that back unit for how much?
1,200. So that puts you a total rents, gross rents of about $3,100. $3,100 on $120,000 a debt is phenomenal cash flow.
And so this one was an on the market duplex again as well.
Correct.
Yeah.
I just got it refinanced and I'm able to pull 83,000 out of it.
And then I'm paying my HELOC down to zero with that.
And you start all over again.
So after all of these deals, what's the goal going forward?
Are you going to try to get to 10 in your time frame?
Or are you going to evaluate yourself after this eight?
Ideally, I would love to get four more in the next year.
and a half. And when I turn 50, you know, a year and a half from now, just kind of be done
and then retire my nine to five job. All right, Kent, thank you so much for sharing this
story. This is such a cool story. What amazing deals. Like, I love that you've done this in a recent
time frame. I love that you're buying the properties on the market. And I love that they're producing
cash flow that is getting you to your goals seems like ahead of time to where you can actually
leave your 9 to 5. I love that you were able to bring in your son and your dad and have everybody
work together to build wealth because that's truly the dream. Those bonds and those memories
last forever and it's pretty cool to be able to share that with your family. So thank you for
sharing that story. Yeah, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Henry. Thank you very much.
And thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Again, if you have a story
you would like to share on the podcast, then you can go to biggerpockets.com.
com slash guest and you can apply to share your story with us right here on the bigger pockets
podcast as always thank you for listening and we'll see you on the next episode