BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Paycheck to Paycheck in His 40s, Millionaire in His 50s with “Boring” Rentals

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

At age 47, Neil Whitney and his wife were living paycheck to paycheck—one bad day away from losing everything. Now, less than ten years later, he’s financially free with $8,000/month in passive income from rentals. Neil started with almost no money, promising his wife he would keep their life savings untouched while investing. He picked up side gigs, drove for Uber for a year and a half, and saved anything he could to buy a rental. And once he got his first rent check, everything changed for Neil and his family. Neil is now a millionaire in his 50s, thanks to “boring rentals,” all in affordable price ranges ($200K or under homes!). Once paid off, his rental portfolio will make him over $20,000 per month. In his own words, “If I can do this, anyone can do this.” Today, he shares the steps he took, how he finds the best tenants, and how to use rentals to fund the dream life you’ve always wanted (new cars, overseas trips, and more).  So if you’re in your 40s, 50s, or 60s and thinking it’s too late for you to turn your life around and get to financial freedom, Neil is ready to prove you wrong.  In This Episode We Cover How to buy your first rental property even if you’re living paycheck to paycheck  Are $200K houses really worth it? Neil says “yes!” and explains why lower-income tenants should not scare you  The one side hustle that helped Neil save over $15,000 for real estate investing  Using home equity to invest and build a real estate portfolio faster  Want a new car? A nice vacation? How to have rentals pay for all of it  The best piece of advice for new investors and those wanting to build financial freedom  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1231 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

At age 47, Neil Whitney and his wife were living paycheck to paycheck, and they were one bad day away from losing everything, which he found out after watching a lifetime movie. Now, less than a decade later, he's financially free with $8,000 a month of passive income from his rental properties. Neil started investing with no money. He drove Uber for a year and a half just to save up the down payment, and he promised his wife he'd never touched their bank account. Through acquiring boring rental properties, Neil is now a millionaire in his 50s, with generational wealth, children. Once his rentals are paid off, his rental portfolio will make him over $20,000 a month. In his own words, if I can do this, you can do this too. So if you're in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, and thinking it's too late for you to turn your life around and get financial freedom from real estate,

Neil is here to prove you all. What's up, everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Today, we've got an investor story with Neil Whitney from Picayune, Mississippi. In less than 10 years, Neil went from living paycheck to paycheck to sitting on the beach and watching passive income roll into his bank account. Literally, he did this. So let's hear about it. Neil, welcome to the show. Thank you. Appreciate it and super excited to be here. Yeah, man, we're glad you're here. And you've got a pretty interesting story. So I'm excited to dive into it a little bit here. So once you start at the beginning, tell us about your background and what got you interested in this real estate gig.

So real estate kind of came as an accident. Funny how it all started. I was at home on a crappy rainy weekend. My wife was bugging me to come watch a movie in the back. She's like, hey, will you come watch this movie with me? And I'm like, yeah, I guess so. You know, wasn't super excited about it. And so we went in the back and watched one of these lifetime movies that, you know, this guy, he's driving home from work and he gets creamed by a dunt truck. Oh, man. And got really, really messed up. And, you know, he ended up, he lost his job. They ended up losing their house. So him and his wife and the kids are all living in this minivan underneath the bridge and finally the church comes in and helps them out and you know

gets them kind of sort of back on their feet and she's like wouldn't that movie great and i'm like are you kidding me that movie just scared the crap out of me and she's like well what do you mean i'm like i'm one car accident away from being that guy right so i don't i didn't know what to do and i'm a big believer in law of attraction that monday i go into work and my boss walks in and he hands me rich dad poor dad and he says you should read this book swear to you right and so i read rich dad poor dad and the light bulb came on i was like okay so i need to figure out how to get into real estate but you know we were living paycheck to paycheck we didn't you know we had no money and so i told my wife i says hey we need to get into this whole real estate thing and uh she's like there's no

way i says i'm going to figure out of way she says okay i'm going to support you on one condition I says, all right, what is that? She says, you can't touch our bank account. All right. Fair enough. Okay. We'll figure it out, right? And so we went down to a Broadway show, and we were watching a Broadway show, and we ended up taking an Uber.

And I started talking to the Uber driver, and a label came on again. I said, oh, okay, so wait a minute, I can start Ubering, make a little side hustle money, and then use that to get my first property. And so I signed up for Uber, started driving Uber. I hustled every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, every day off that I could. Before you get too far in, there's so much good stuff here. Hey, it's very similar, very similar to like how I got started. I had an epiphany in the middle of the night and then woke up and was like, I got to figure

this out, went to meet somebody who I knew was a commercial broker. And she basically handed me a box of books and Rich Dad, Poor Dad was in the box. And that's the one I picked randomly. So very similar. Crazy. Change my life. Obviously. But I think there's some things I want to make sure.

that people understand. You had a full-time gig, saw a lifetime movie that scared the pants off of you, you're like, I need to be more financially secure, told your wife you're going to do real estate. She said, great, you can't touch our money. So you said, I need to make some money in order to help me be able to afford the down payment for the first property. So the first question I want to ask is, how old were you at this time? Oh, I was late 40. It's 47? You were 47 and decided, Let's do this real estate thing. Roger. Yeah.

And then decided, let me pick up a side hustle driving Uber. Yep. So how many hours did you drive a week and how much money were you trying to save up? I didn't know how much money I was going to need at the time, right? This was all new to me. I started listening to bigger pockets. I had found bigger pockets at the time. What year was this?

2017. Okay. I started listening to bigger pockets and hearing, you know, how everyone was getting involved with real estate and just picking up little tidbits. here and there on random podcasts. I would drive Friday night until I got tired. On Saturday, near my house where I lived in in Slaudea, Louisiana, there's a swamp tour that comes in every day at 11 o'clock. And I said, if I go meet that swamp tour as they come in, there's bound to be somebody that needs a ride back into the city. Yeah. Right? So that's about a 40-minute ride, and I figured I'd make a quick $50, $75 on a ride into the city. And like clockwork, at 11 o'clock,

that tour would come in, I'd get a ride and I'd go back into the city. And then I drive until I got tired again. And then Sundays I would get up at like three in the morning and I would go sit down in the French quarter at the hotels. And I would be picking up airport runs. Everyone's going to the airport to leave on Sunday mornings and running back and forth between the airport and the city, airport in the city, airport in the city. So that was my thing. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I did that pretty much every weekend, every free moment that I had. I, I devoted to Uber to get that first down payment. I think about 18 months in, right, I had saved enough for my first house. And I found a cheap little house in Pearl River, Louisiana for 70,000.

Okay. And I had 14,000 to put down plus a little closing money. So it was roughly about 16, 17,000, I think I had to come up with. Okay. And we bought our first property. So you bought a single family home, first property, $70,000. Yeah, a little 900 square foot. two bedroom house. Did it need work? It really didn't. It was super, super nice. The lady that I bought it from had really done everything already to it.

So she put in all new tile floors and crime molding, had it painted. And it was super cute. I mean, like I said, super small, but super cute. And it was an easy brand, right? So we rented it out. And I think we made, I don't know, maybe $100, 125 a month on it. You know, but we thought, this is great. Right? We got an extra $100 a month.

You paid $70. You didn't have to put any money into it and you rented it out for how much? I want to say at that time, it was probably about $750, $800 a month, right around the 1%. I assume you used a conventional loan? We use conventional. Everything I've ever bought has been conventional. Conventional loan, 20% down. Yeah. And how did it perform? Did it stay rented? It did. Yeah, it still won it to this day. Haven't sold anything.

I love it. I love it. Well, it sounds simple. you hear your story, but it really isn't that complicated. You needed to find a deal that worked. You did live in a market where you could find deals that work in your market. That's something that works in your favor. Not everybody's in that position. I understand that. But you put in the work. You put in extra hours to generate income to get yourself to a point where you were financially ready and able to purchase a property. Yeah, because bear in mind, we were paycheck to paycheck. Like, we did, didn't have extra money whatsoever. And so that's why she's like, you can't touch the bank account. And so by taking that Uber hustle money and putting that aside and any little side job or

whatever I would do, I'm in the HVAC business, right? So any little side thing I would find, I would take that money. I would buy the pigeonhole all that money away. And eventually we got to a point that we could buy one. Well, Neil, I am thoroughly impressed with the story this far. And I definitely want jump into what you did from here and how you bought that next property. But first, we got to take a quick break. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income. Legally, 100% IRS compliant. That's instant cash flow improvement. Cost segregation guys is the number one firm nationwide, specializing and identifying these

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One claim can, to raise years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com slash BPPod. That's NREIG.com slash BP pod. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Neil Whitney and we're diving into his second real estate deal. The second deal was kind of crazy. It was I found out about equity, right? And I had built a lot of equity and my home I was living in. And we took a heel lock out. on the house to purchase our next property, which I found a fourplex that was available. And, you know, I had the equity in the house.

So I pulled it out. I bought that fourplex. And so we did touch the money there. However, the fourplex was such a good deal for us that, you know, we were seeing significant cash flow like over a thousand a month on. And so we were able to pay back that heat lock really, really quickly. Let's talk about that for a second because I think a lot of people have thought about this as a plan or a strategy. But since you executed it, let's kind of dive into what that looked like.

So you took out a HELOC. And for those listening, that's a home equity line of credit. So you tapped into the equity in your personal home. And when you do that, the bank gives you access to your available equity, somewhere to the tune of between 75 and 80 percent of the equity they'll give you access to. And you said you found a fourplex. Is this another one that was listed on the market? Yeah, on the MOS. What was the purchase price?

312. So purchase price, 312,000. You purchased it on a convention alone, which means you had to put 25% down, as you said. So that's about $78,000. Is that the money that you pulled from the line of credit? Yes. I assume you had closing costs and some other things. And so the line of credit was used for the closing costs.

How did you, did the property need work? No. So these were turnkey. Yeah. So we did do eventually some work on them as people vacated. Right? we would remodel and then raise the rents. But as they sat, they were all fully granted.

What were the rents when you bought them? 650, I want to say. 650 a unit. So it was bringing in about $2,600 as it sat. And so you just kept it rented. Yeah. And then did renovations as tenants moved out. Yeah.

As the tenants moved out, we went ahead. And basically, you know, it just went from crappy countertops, pull those out. We did on two of them, we had to pull the entire cabinets out because they were just complete garbage. Yep. And we put new cabinet, cabinetry in, new toilets, new, new bathroom vanities, you know. But then we went from, you know, $600 a month rent to $1,000 a month rent. Awesome. So is that what everything's rented for now, $1,000 per unit? Yeah.

$4,000 a month on this quadplex that you bought on the market using a convention alone. I like to call this old boring real estate. I'm boring as it gets. It's just old boring, tried and true real estate. Find a deal that makes sense. Buy it on a conventional loan. If you don't have the money, save it up until you get it. Fix it up as you go.

Rent it out. This is old boring real estate works. It works awesome. I think everybody's kind of, you know, people are always looking for what's the next fad, next big thing, you know, creative finance. rent by the room, Airbnb, midterm rentals, but old boring real estate still works, guys. My wife and I started making a game, right? Again, let's go back to Rich Dad Ford Ad, right? An asset versus a liability.

And my wife, you know, we started making a little bit of money. And she's like, okay, so I want a Jeep. I said, okay, we're not going to just go out and buy a Jeep. We've got to go out and buy a duplex to pay for that Jeep. And so that's what we did. We went out and we bought a duplex. And that duplex pays for our Jeep. And that Jeep long been paid for, but the DuPlace doesn't stop paying us, right?

It just keeps coming. And God forbid she wants another Jeep or whatever. Well, you know how it works, right? And so we've played this little game. And, you know, we were in Mexico. I don't, Jesus, this must have been eight, nine years ago when she really, it really clicked for her. We're sitting on the beach. And her phone's going, bling, bling, bling, bling.

She's getting all these text messages. And I'm like, who the hell keeps stuff? texting you, all these texts. She's like, I don't know. She drives her phone and she looks at me. She says, I get the real estate thing now. We're getting deposits in the bank while we're laying on the beach in Mexico. And that was her aha moment, right? That's when she figured it out. Like, this works. You know, and at that point, we had accumulated a few properties. So, you know, currently we're, we're up to you. We have two fourplexes, six duplexes and three single family houses. Twenty-three doors in total. Cash flow is right about eight thousand.

dollars a month. That's amazing. And you found all of these on-market listed properties? Every single one. And when's the last time you bought a property? I bought four duplexes at once, October of 23. I think that's where a lot of people kind of get stuck is after that second or third deal, people try to figure out, all right, well, how do I scale this thing? One at a time. Absolutely. One at a time. Save up enough money. And what I like about the strategy that you said, that you've talked about, it seems like you've done the right thing by the income that you have coming in. Because I feel like people start, they buy rental property, it starts to cash flow. And then the cash flow just kind of disappears because it gets mixed in with all of the other

lifestyle creep expenses. It's just kind of it comes and it goes. And it sounds like you and your wife are very intentional about having the money go to a certain account and so that you could save up a certain amount in that account. And then you could go and do something with that cash flow. We do something very similar is we have an expense account. So I set up auto drafts for all the expenses in my account. All that goes into an expense account. That way, if and when a problem arises, the money comes from the expense account and it doesn't feel like such a burden financially. And it's just having those fundamentals when you're investing, tracking the money, making sure it goes into the appropriate accounts and then making sure you've got enough allocated, saving up to you get to $20,000

because we did something very similar. So for us, I wanted to save up a little over what it would cost to fix probably the most expensive thing that would happen on a house. That was my exact thinking. A roof. A roof. Absolutely. I need to save up at least 15 to 20 grand. That way, if I have to replace a roof, I can replace a roof.

And then anything above that, depending on how many properties we have, we would take out. And so that number goes up, the more properties we have. And all of these things that we're talking about in this episode, and I hope people are taking notes. These are just fundamentals of real estate. And it sounds simple when you hear us talking about it, but the fundamentals will keep you afloat. The fundamentals will build wealth for you over time. It doesn't sound sexy. It doesn't look sensy.

It's not overcomplicated. But the fundamentals will keep you wealthy, saving up enough until you can afford the down payment, buying the property, renovating it when the right time comes, making sure you keeping up with rent raises, making sure that you're out. allocating your funds appropriately, and then buying assets and using the cash flow to pay for the debt that you're bringing in because of the asset. Like this is really a lesson in real estate 101. And you did this starting at 47 years old. So I don't want to hear any excuses from anybody about you don't have time because you had a full-time gig and you were married, about that you don't have money because you hustled and drove

Uber to save up enough money, and that you can't do it at your age. You let none of that hold you back. I think that's really incredible. It's been a fun journey. And to be honest with you, anybody can do this. If I can do this, anybody can do this, right? I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. No one's going to out hustle me.

I'm going to go out. I'm going to do what I need to do to get it done. This is generational for me. I did this not just for my wife and I, but we got kids, right? And my kids, you know, my son's heavily involved. He's cutting all the grass and all the properties. He's getting ready now to either buy or build. a new new duplex for himself. He's going to live on one half. He's going to house hack and rent the other

half out. Oh, boy. He's on it. You know what I mean? He's 21 years old and he's, he's on a mission. And he wants to, so to speak, following our footsteps. All those properties are for them. You know, they're going to inherit these. This is going to be generation of wealth. I told him, we don't ever sell properties. How would you say you've managed risk as you've grown your portfolio? because a lot of people feel like if I'm doing this and I'm later in life, then I need to take on less risk. How have you managed risk? I'm looking at this as my retirement plan, right? I'm investing all of my dollars, if you will, instead of into a 401K, which I still do a little bit into a 401k.

But instead of into a 401k, I'm investing it into tangible assets. Here's the thing with real estate that a lot of people miss. If I had $100,000, right, and I wanted to buy gold, I'm going to get $100,000 worth of gold. If I wanted to buy silver, I'm going to get $100,000 worth of silver. Stocks, bonds, you name it, it's $100,000 to one. But if I have $100,000 in real estate, what can I do with that, Henry? You can buy a lot more than $100,000 of value. I can buy $500,000 with my eyes closed with $100,000 in cash.

I get a $500,000 piece of real estate. So you can leverage in a good way. This is good leverage, right? That you can take that and get much more than what your dollars are. Right. And so that's, to me, that's a no brainer for risk, right? It's good assets that you're purchasing and good debt. And we use that debt wisely, right?

Most of our properties, you know, we started, the first one was 20%, second one was 25. I think everything after that, it was like 30, right? The more that we buy, the more that they want down. Everything now at this point was at 30% down. And so, you know, and now we've got one of them paid off, a second one getting ready to get paid off. And this is our plane at this point. We're not really looking to acquire anymore.

Our plan at this point is let's get these things paid off. And when everything paid off, I'm looking somewhere between 20,000, $25,000 a month, right? I think I could retire pretty comfortably on that. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm in a very similar boat now. We're focused less on, on growth and more on paying down assets because you use the term generational wealth. And I feel like that gets thrown around often and people don't realize truly what it means. But in my eyes, you can't pass down generational wealth if you're passing down leveraged assets. So you've got to get those things paid off so that you can pass down something that truly produces income for somebody without them having to work. So we're focused on that as well. Well, I've got a few more questions for Neil, but we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. Here's the truth about passive investing.

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Start your free trial today and lock in 50% off your first month at re-simple.com slash bigger pockets. That's R-E-S-I-M-P-L-I dot com slash bigger pockets. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance, and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC-held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors,

understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. All right, rental property investors, listen up. Our friends at Dominion Financial already have some of the best DSIC. rates in the industry. Now, they're the fastest, too. They just launched 10-day DSCR closing. That's

right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with a DSCR price beat guarantee. That means faster closing. The best terms. Zero guesswork. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at BiggerPockets.com slash Dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. All right, we're back with Neil Whitney talking about how he grew his real estate portfolio, at the age of 47. Neal, one of the things I want to talk about is you're buying properties in that sub $200,000 price point typically for a single family. Some would call that lower income. Depends on the neighborhood. But I think there's a stigma a lot of the times with the tenants that can afford to rent these places. I want to hear from you on what's it been like to own assets

at this price point? Have you had issues with tenants? Is it, you know, how, and who's managing these? So my wife and I still manage them. And I think we've had two evictions over the course of, you know, I guess we're coming up on nine, ten years. You know, the biggest thing is you're screening, right? Make sure that you're screening your tenants and finding the right tenants. Income, we want to make sure they're earning three times the monthly rent. And, you know, we want to make sure that if they've got bad credit and it's because of medical bills, I'm not going to hold that against them. If they've got bad credit because they just don't pay their bills. That's another whole different animal. Yes. Right. And so we we take everything into consideration and we just, I don't know, maybe we're lucky or we're just really good at screening. You know, we've had really, really good tenant and most of my tenants are long term. I mean, in the, in the original fourplex that I bought, two out of the four are still the original ones that are in there. Yeah. Right. And, and the, the first property I bought, I've had, I think, two or three tenants.

over the whole time. And the most of these people that move out, it's because they buy a place, right? They bought their own place. Now, I want to make sure that people still understand this, because you're just blowing stereotypes out of the water right now. Do you still have a full-time job? Yes. Does your wife still have a full-time job? Absolutely. And you manage your portfolio of how many units? 23 doors. 23 doors, starting at 47. See, I'm reiterating these things for people, because I don't know how many times I hear I don't have time. I can't manage properties. I can't do this. figure it out. And you are literally still to this day managing a sizable portfolio at a price point where people think all the tenants are going to be problems. And you've done this,

like I said, starting at the age of 47. People can do this if you stop making excuses and just starting putting things into action. You can also hire property managers if you need to, but anyone can literally do these things. We're still cutting the grass. Oh, your son is. My son is. That's right. And one thing I want to make sure that I reiterate it for people is what you said that was very important when we started talking about tenants and if you're managing them is you said, you're really good or you take the time to be good at tenant screening. And that is what I find the problem is with most landlords who tend to claim that certain tenants in a certain class can be a problem.

Because what I found after managing rental properties at both high price points and lower price points, it's that it's not that one price point of tenant is worse than the other. I've had bad tenants at a low price point and I've had bad tenants at a high price point. Do you know what the common denominator was among those bad tenants at price points? Screening. Me. Me. We have to take responsibility for being good and doing the detailed work it takes.

it takes to screen tenants. I couldn't tell you how many times I hear landlords who don't call and talk to references, or I hear landlords who don't call the previous landlord and ask questions, or I hear landlords who don't call their employers and ask questions. Like, all of that stuff is tedious, but that's the stuff that's going to help you make sure you select good tenants. If you're good at tenant selection, it doesn't matter the tenant class that you're in. It's because you're picking the right, people for the property that you have to offer. And it sounds like you're just, I'm going to call you Tim Duncan, the Tim Duncan of real estate, man. It's big fundamentals over here. He's just fundamentally sound real estate investing. I love it. And so Henry, one other thing too is,

you know, we treat our tenants like the best customers on the planet. Oh, man. You're talking my language. So we love our tenants. Like we want them to be happy. We want them to stay forever. And I've, I've got, I'll give you one example. I've got one tenant that. She lived in this really, really nice house. And her husband passed. And she's like, look, I don't want to take care of anything anymore. So I just want to move into an apartment and have you take care of everything. We're like, okay, great, we're happy to do that.

Well, she came in. She put gutters on our property. She put in porches, did all kinds of landscape and all in her dime, not on my dime. Yeah. But because we come out there and we cut the grass and all that, she's perfectly fine. She, like, she, she invested probably five, $10,000 into my property. That's going to stay there when she leaves at some point. But, you know, she did all that on our own because she wanted something that would come out

and take care of the problems when she had them. And we do, right? If someone calls us and says, hey, you know, I've got this and this going on, we're prompt. We're out there. We're getting it taken care of as quickly as possible and making sure that, you know, our tenants are taken care of and that they know that when they call us, we're going to respond. This is something I'm passionate about because I feel like there is still a pretty big divide between landlords and tenants.

Tenets typically come into a rental relationship with a stigma towards a landlord, no matter who it is or where it is. And a lot of landlords, unfortunately, look down on tenants. Live up to that reputation. It's such a weird dynamic for me because in any, other business industry, we would not accept that because we are in the customer service business, right? And so if you're, as customers of other businesses, we do not allow people to treat us a certain way because we are the customer. But when it comes to real estate, landlords don't see

tenants as their customer and they don't treat them as such. But what I found is when you treat your tenants like customers and you provide them good, customer service and you give them that respect, they respect you and they respect your property in return. And a lot of people want great tenants, but they're not willing to treat tenants great to get that same result. And so I just want a lot of landlords to hear what you're saying and to hear what I'm saying and realize that without tenants, we don't have wealth. We don't have a business. We provide the service. They are the customer. If you, treat your customers with quality customer service, treat them like human beings, treat them like

you would want to be treated in a service-based business. You'll be surprised at how much better your life becomes as a landlord. One thousand percent. And I couldn't have said it any better, Henry, what we're talking about here is taking care of your people. And whether it's my employees at my day job or it's my tenants that live in my properties, 1,000 percent, you got to take care of them. What I want to do as we shift toward the end here is you've done something. great, right? You decided you were going to do something. You didn't let any of the negative self-talk stop you. You didn't let any of the... Oh, you mean my family members? She said, what are you doing? You're out of your mind? Absolutely. Absolutely. You figured out a way to be successful. What? And now you've built a portfolio up to the

point to where you're starting to figure out how to protect that portfolio by paying off the assets. So you have truly done the thing that a lot of our listeners want to do. And so what advice do you have for the person that's listening who's maybe in the same boat as you, who has the full-time job, doesn't have any money saved up, but really wants to get to that financial freedom point. And yes, you still have a job. I get that. And it's great to have.

I don't think people should quit their job unless they absolutely have to. But what advice do you have for that person who's hearing all this negative self-talk, who's hearing all the negative talk from the people around them who thinks it might be too late or they don't have enough money or they don't have enough time. I think it all starts with you, right? You have to make a decision as to who you're going to be, right, and how it is that you're going to live your life. And what type of future are you going to set up for yourself? Because if you don't like where you are today, go look in the mirror. You're there because of the choices that you make. Yeah. Right? And so make a decision, where do you want to go? I didn't like where I was at at 47 years old. Like I said,

we watched that silly lifetime movie that changed my life, right? And I decided then and there that I wasn't ever going to be that guy. There's no way I was going to let that happen to my family. And I made the decision and I just, you know, dove in and the hell with all the naysayers, all the negative people out there, you know, I focus on what's good for me and my family. and what's good for my business. I love that. I've given many a talk about this, is the power of deciding. There's a difference between what you're saying and what a lot of investors say,

because what a lot of investors who are getting started say is they're going to try. They're going to give investing a try. Try in my vocabulary makes me want to throw up. And so I run an HVAC company as well. And if anyone in here says try, they immediately go, Because that's a no-no word in my business. Try means plan to fail. Plan to fail.

Plan to fail. 100%. There's power and decision because decision says, no matter how many times I fail, I'm going to keep going until I get it right. And your brain understands that and starts to figure out ways to help you. If you tell your brain you're going to try something, the second you try and fail, your brain goes, we accomplished our goal. We did it.

We tried. And so when you and the beautiful part about what you did is. you decided before you knew how. And I think that there's a lot of power in that because most of us want to know how first before we decide if we want to do it. And that's not that's not how life works. That's not how life works. This is not rocket science, y'all. This is this is like you said, basics. And I'm a simple, boring investor. I'm doing basic 101 investing. Nothing crazy. No, Airbnbs or anything. I'm just buying properties and getting them to cash flow and watching properties that I bought for 70,000 now worth 140,000. Right? Property that I bought for 300 is now

worth almost 500, right? So these properties are just continually growing when my wife and I, you know, we sit down and we go through our books and look at things. And when we saw that our net worth finally had that million dollar net worth. It was like, hey, holy smokes, we're worth, we're millionaires. Are you kidding me? I mean, we still have a million dollars on the bank, but technically, you know, we're there with it. Forbes says you're a millionaire. But you know, so keep it simple, right? Don't complicate things. Basic real estate has made millions and millions of people wealthy. That's right. The riches are in the niches, so to speak. But, you know, if you're going to be that niche guy, you better be really good at whatever it is you doing.

I'm not really good at anything. So I just focus on the basics. And I guess I'm good at the basics. I'm with you. I'm good at keeping things simple. And this is a great simple framework for people to follow. I know you mentioned that your goals were to start paying off some of these assets. And you've already done that.

You've paid off one or two and you're working on some more. Is there anything else you're working on in the future for your portfolio? Are you planning to grow anymore? Or is it trickly just pay him off? Are you going to pivot to anything? Or is it just stay the course. The goal right now is to help my son get into his first property. And I told him, hey, look, whatever it is, you decide, if you, if you have 20,000 to put down, I'm going to match you 20,000.

So whatever you put down, I'm matching you 100%. Are you adopting any more sons? Because, I mean, I could use a, I could use a match program. It's a one-time deal for him, right? You're not going to use it over and over again. But first, first place. And I told my daughter the same thing. I got a daughter who's given, you know, she's pregnant and she's going to be having a baby shortly.

And so first grandkid? First grandkid. Congrats. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. And so, yeah, now I've really got something to start building this whole thing off. Something tells me you're going to be a sucker of a granddad.

Yeah. I think so too. But yeah. So here's the other thing, right? My wife and I when we first met, she, she's from New Orleans and she hadn't really traveled past the Gulf Coast. I think the further she had ever been in her life was to Florida. And since we've met, we've gone, you know, Caribbean and Canada and all. But I want to fill her passport book.

That's my end game, right? I want to take $20,000 a month and blow it because I can, you know, and travel the world with her and fill her passport book and show her what an amazing world that we live in, right? The United States is great, but there's so much more. And, you know, just the places in the U.S. that she hadn't seen. I've taken her to New York. I've taken her to Niagara Falls and Tennessee and just, you know, a bunch of places that she'd never been before, Georgia and North Carolina and just, you know, all over. And she's like blown away. So every time I take her somewhere and she sees something that she hadn't seen before, that, that for me is the it moment, right?

When you get your wife out there and she's just like in awe and, you know, just so a preaching. of things that we never thought in our wildest dreams. We'd be able to do that. Now we can do it. We just bought our dream home. Didn't ever think we'd ever have a house that like we have now. You know, we've got a great house that we bought in South Mississippi. And, you know, it's, you know, it's been a life-changing event getting involved with real estate.

And it started with a lifetime movie and, you know, rich dad, poor dad, you know. I've heard a lot of real estate stories about how people got. started. This is the first one I've heard that started with a lifetime movie. Well, someone's got to fill a niche. Oh, man. Well, Neil, thank you so much for coming on the Bigger Pockets podcast and sharing your journey with us. It is a truly inspirational story. You have done the things that a lot of people think either you shouldn't do or you can't do. And you did them well and you did them fundamentally sound. And it sounds like now you and your family are reaping the benefits of those great decisions.

So thank you for coming on sharing with us. Henry, thank you for having me. This is real pleasure meeting you. All right. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you on the next episode. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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