BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Scaling from 0 to 30 Deals (While Working 9-5) and Starting with $0

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

30 real estate deals in two years, starting with very little money, AND doing it all while working a nine-to-five? After listening to Tim Yu, you’ll have no excuse NOT to invest in real estate. He��s done it all: house hacking, creative financing, seller financing, lease-to-own, single-family, multifamily, house flipping, and everything in between to find the real estate investing tactic that worked best for his goals and his lifestyle. After trying (and failing) house flipping, Tim was ready to give up on real estate entirely. It wasn’t until a house hack (renting out other units/rooms in your home) gave Tim the cash flow he needed that he decided to give real estate another shot. From there, he spent hours calling owners after work, sweating bullets on cold calls, and refining his real estate skills. He’s been able to buy a house for truly ZERO dollars down, pick up profitable rental properties for as little as $3,000, and get seller financing terms that have made him six figures in just a year or so. Tim has tried every strategy, so you don’t have to, and if one of his tactics resonates with you, be like Tim and give it your all! In This Episode We Cover: The one loan that lets you buy your first property for ZERO dollars down How to get squatters out of your property (fast) with “cash for keys” Using seller financing to pick up real estate deals for just $3,000-$5,000 Tim’s personalized strategy for finding off-market deals and motivated sellers  The new type of rental property Tim is buying that makes $3,000+/month in cash flow  And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Apply to Be a BiggerPockets Podcast Guest! Get Fully Customizable Insurance Coverage for All Phases of Occupancy on One Monthly Schedule and Bill with NREIG Grab the Book on Creative Finance, “Wealth without Cash” Sign Up for the BiggerPocket Real Estate Newsletter Property Manager Finder 8 Rentals in UNDER 1 Year: A Rental Property Financing Masterclass Connect with Tim Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (01:43) BAD First Real Estate Deal (05:51) $0 Down Cash-Flowing Rental (09:24) Seller Financing with LITTLE Money (14:49) Finding Off-Market Deals (24:08) Moving Markets (31:38) New Type of Rentals? Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1090 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This investor has made more than 30 deals work in just his first two years in the real estate game, and he started with almost no money in his bank account. Today, we'll find out how he did it. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast where you'll learn how to achieve financial freedom through real estate. I'm Dave Meyer, the head of real estate investing here at Bigger Pockets. And today's guest on the show is Tim U, a U.S. Army officer living in Maryland. Tim was on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, episode 335 back in November of 2023, and at that time, he'd accumulated eight rental properties only one year after dipping into his 401K to make his first deal work. And Tim's story really stuck with me because he tried so many different business models.

He did long-term rentals, midterm rentals, he did flips, wholesaling, and more. He operated in several different markets, and he took on different partners. And this level of diversification can get out of control if you don't do it wisely. But Tim was an example of how you can do this well. He understood the risks he was taking and was still able to deploy his limited capital and time very effectively. Today, we're going to hear how Tim doubled his rental portfolio in his second year of investing, how he uses creative financing and basically just pure hustle to make up for

a lack of liquid cash and much more. Tim, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Man, thanks so much. I'm super excited. You know, I've been listening to The Bigger Pockets for, you know, quite a few years now. So it's pretty awesome to be on the show. So thank you so much. It's our pleasure, Tim. We're happy to have you here. You were recently on the Bigger Pockets Rookie show, but your story is super cool and inspiring. And so we wanted to dig a little bit more into your story. But maybe if people don't listen to the Rookie Podcast, you could just give us a brief background on how you got into investing in the first place. Yeah. Back in 2022, I actually bought my first investment property and it was a fix and flip. And that fix and flip was everything bad that you can imagine

happened to me. You know, bad contractors, a crazy drug deal across the street. Oh, no. The whole nine yards. And, you know, I thought that project was going to take 30 days and ended up being like six months. And I think, I think we made like $2,500 on it. So it wasn't even really worth the money. Well, then do it all and come out ahead. Even $2,500 on your first deal is pretty good. You're a braver man than I being able to go for a flicks and flip on your first deal. Yeah, it was like a cheap special, investor special. You know, it was all boarded up and everything.

And I was like, you know what, screw it. I've been listening to so many episodes. I'm just going to pull the trigger on it. Good for you, but hopefully you at least learn something. Oh, 100%. Right. I think that you don't learn as much until you actually take some action, you know, obviously with some controlled risk.

And then after that first fix and flip, I actually started doing direct-to-seller investing where I would market and call sellers myself. You know, was doing a lot of lease options and creative finance deals. And the reason why I was on the rookie show is because I was known for purchasing eight properties in a year. Wow. And it was all, you know, financed differently. You know, either do seller finance or doing like a lease option. And then obviously I used my VA loan as well because I'm a veteran. And I did the old house hack trick in late 2023.

Okay. And then that's how I kind of ended up here. So I want to dig into the makeup and contents of your portfolio. But can you tell me just more about what motivated you to get into this? Because starting with a flip and doing a little bit more time intensive strategies, it sounds like. What inspired you to go that way, at least at first when you entered the industry? So I used to live in Louisville, Kentucky. and that's where I started my entire investing journey.

And for all you army folks out there, I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. And that's about an hour-long commute each way. So I was driving like two hours a day. So I would just, you know, destroy the podcast, right? Just listen to episodes every single day. And the idea of fixing and flipping a property and making $30,000, just sounded really cool to me. So that was ultimately like the path I chose.

But how I ended up on the property that I purchased, which is really crazy, which I used to look on Zillow every single day. And there was a property that went from like 100 grand listing, and it dropped down to like 50 grand overnight. So I immediately called my agent. I was like, hey, we should go see it. And we find out that there was some squatters that broke in. And the owners of the property lived in California.

So they wanted nothing to do with the property. And now looking back, I probably could have got it way cheaper. Cheaper than 50 grand? So I ended up getting under contract for 40 grand. Oh, my God. Yeah, but I probably could have got like 25, like 30 out of it. But I rushed. What kind of house is this?

Oh my gosh. It was like a, in Louisville, Kentucky, there's tons of shotgun houses. So single floor, just single layout. And looking at all the comps and stuff and even my hard money lender was like, oh, I think the ARV is about 120. The problem is nobody wanted to buy in that neighborhood because it was like a super high crime rate. But I didn't know anything. I just wanted to buy a property and see how it went. I mean, I imagine that, you know, you said you think.

thought it was getting out of 30 days. I'm sure getting the squatters out took longer than that. Yeah, we, that was that that that was a deal that I, you know, I did not learn about until we were kind of in the, in the brush of it. But yeah, you know, after like 30 days or so, I actually did the cash for keys method. Yeah. And they actually ended up taking it, which I was super surprised about. Yeah. Didn't have to go through an actual eviction or anything like that. All right. So you caught a little bit of a break there. That's nice. Yeah. All right. So you did this first deal. Sounds like a couple headaches, but you came out basically even for your time over six months. What about that experience? It encouraged you to keep going because I think given some of the challenges, a lot of people

might have walked away. So when the deal was over, actually during the deal, I was like, I don't want to do real estate ever again. I don't play me out. But luckily, you know, one of my friends I ran to at a local real estate meetup was like, listen, I'm not going to say it gets easier, but you have a lot more experience. And if you did do another fly, flip, now you know what you don't want to do, right? And he also said the same thing that you did. I didn't lose my butt off it. I still made a little bit of money.

So it wasn't like it was a catastrophic loss. But then the next property I did was actually a house hack because I bought a primary residence before I even started flipping. And I didn't even know what the VA loan was. So I put like 20% down, did the whole shebang. And, you know, after doing more real estate investing, I kind of realized it like, wow, I have a loan that allows me to buy a house with zero down. So I ended up buying a rental property technically, right? I lived in one side and then I renovated the other side and I made into a midterm rental. Oh, cool.

So that one was doing pretty well. So it made about $800 a month while I was living there. And that's when I was like, oh my gosh, like real estate's kind of cool. And I think I'm going to try to double down on it, right? I want to go back to something you said about it not getting easier because it's true. There's still going to be so many challenges. but I think your tolerance for it just goes up. Like you've seen and you've seen some of the bad stuff that can happen in the industry

and you still were okay, right? Like you learn that the worst case scenario, usually if you're smart about it, you can mitigate really bad losses and are able to at least learn a lot, at least come out close to even and live to see another day and go on to another deal. And it's great that you did that. How did you find that house hack? Yeah, so actually, you know, I love to stress the power of like what networking, right?

The first realtor that I used when I bought my first primary residence was actually the realtor that I used for like my next three deals. So the house hack, she actually found this property because I actually texted her. I was like, hey, you know, I think I'm ready to move out of my house. And it's been about a year since I lived there. I think I want to do a house hack with my VA loan. And she actually found me a deal and we did a bunch of negotiations on it. Okay. And on the rookie podcast, I did talk about how I ended up getting paid like $200 to buy the house.

Because with the zero money down, we actually negotiated some sellers concessions. So when all the math broke out, the title company was like, hey, we're going to cut you like a $230 check, which was absolutely insane. So pretty hard to say no to that. You know, had never really known anyone who had done that. And I think I've heard two or three times the last couple weeks, people who have got cut checks. But that is incredible. I mean, at that point, I would never tell people not to underwrite a deal, but it's like, how could you possibly say no to a deal where someone is writing you a check to buy a house?

Yeah, it's actually kind of mind-blowing, right? You expect to wire out money to, like, close a deal and the escrow agent's like, here's a check for 200 bucks, you know? And you're like, oh, that's awesome, right? Yeah, it is awesome. But you've also earned it by being active due to military and serving your country. you've earned that right, which you deserve, absolutely. But it's cool that you were able to put those things together.

Absolutely. So you lived in that, and it sounds like you just went crazy from there. Like you did eight deals in one year. What happened after the house hack? Then I started to really take it more seriously. And, you know, I did like all the bootcams, all the mentorships to kind of like learn different skills and tool sets. And what really caught my eye was trying to negotiate with the seller directly to do

like something with terms, right? So a lot of the ways that I started buying properties in that first year was I would buy it on creative finance and then I would actually sell it on a lease option. So if I would negotiate a down payment with the seller, they'd say, hey, you know, I want a $10,000 down payment. I would then do a lease option where I would rent the property out, but also give an option deposit. So someone would have the option to buy it, you know, three to five years. And, you know, I wouldn't get the total entry fee all the time. but the math was, you know, three to five thousand out of my pocket to buy a rental property that cash for at about four or five hundred a month.

And doing that strategy kind of stacked up my portfolio for the single family side. And I just kept doing it like over and over again. And then eventually I was like, wow, I have like a decent size portfolio and I didn't really spend that much money out of my pocket. Yeah, that's super impressive. I'm curious if you have any advice for people because we always hear these ideas of direct to seller or, you know, doing postcards or mailers or whatever. I've only done it once and it seems very hard to me.

So how did you pull this off as a relative newbie to investing? Yeah. If you're first starting out, I don't recommend people doing the direct mail or paying for leads because it gets super expensive. Because you have to just do a ton of volume, right? So you're fronting all that money. Exactly. And then if you're not doing something active with it, like if you're not flipping the house,

you're not like selling it on a wholesale deal, you're just eating a lot of cost to try to buy a deal, right? Yeah, the time value of money on that is not a very good return, because you're going to wait a long time to recoup that cash, and then you're going to have to probably come out of pocket to buy the deal, too. So yeah, it can be tough. 100%. So what I was doing in the very beginning was I was actually creeping on like Facebook Marketplace, and I would work full time, and then I would get home around like 5, 6 p.m. and I would message like 30, 40 people on Facebook Marketplace who were selling their properties. And, I would work full time. And I would get home around like 5, And I would ask them like, hey, I'm an investor and I would love to like just hop on the phone with you.

And I got a ton of nose and a ton of screaming at my face. Oh, I bet. Eventually, you know, I had that one person that I was actually interested in selling their property to me on creative finance. And I remember the first time I booked a call with somebody that was interested. And he's like, I got an offer from somebody else and they kind of ghosted me. And it was another wholesaler that was dealing with that guy. And I said, ultimately, what's that price that's going to push you forward? And he said, $150,000.

Now, this house was a dump. Like, it needed some work in there. And I said, I can't give you $150 right now because it just doesn't make sense. But would you allow me to give you $150 over a course of a set amount of years if I paid you every single month? And he literally just said, if the contract's right. Huh. Amazing. And I just felt like my heart just, like, sinks.

And I'm like, I don't know what to do next. Yeah, I don't know what to do next. I'll make the contract right. If you're agreeing to let me do this, I will figure out the contract. Yes, it was crazy. So I called this title company in my city that is known to do seller finance deals. Okay. And the house was fully paid off.

And then what we did was we did a seller finance. We had a three-year note on it. And it was like $250 payments with 0% interest. And then there was a balloon at the end? Yep. There was a three-year balloon at the end, and it was in a really nice part of town in Louisville. So with the 150 purchase price with the amount of renovations, I think the ARV, when we got it like re-appraised to do a cash-out refinance, was it was like $255. Oh, wow.

Amazing. So we ended up pulling the cash out and paying them back. And, yeah, it was pretty crazy. It was, it's probably one of my best deals that I've ever got, actually. So that was your third deal, because you did the flip, you did the house hack, and then this was your first direct-to-seller purchase. and it sounds like it was a home run. I do want to say, like, I'm very lucky. Not every person gets a deal like that right off their first direct-to-seller.

Yeah. But also, it did take me about six months of calling sellers, like, every single day. Totally. So it's a big grind at first, but obviously, like, as you start accumulating, like, new skills to negotiate and have conversation with sellers, it does get easier. And then ultimately, you start getting money to pay for certain marketing to help you out. I mean, you're being humble saying that you're lucky. But I mean, there is always an element of luck in these types of things.

But you obviously put yourself in a really good position to get lucky by throwing yourself out there, getting yelled at, getting all those nose. It definitely takes a certain type of personality and a lot of perseverance and grit to work this type of strategy. So congratulations on finding such a good deal on your first one. Thank you. After your first deal, I was wondering, you know, what kept you going. But now after this deal, I can understand why you kept growing. so aggressively. I want to hear about how you kept building your portfolio, but first we've got to take a quick break. If the new year means getting rentals back in order, listings are a good place to

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That's hostfinancial.com. We're back with Tim U talking about how he went from a tough, first deal to a home run on this third deal. And it sounds like, Tim, you've been scaling a ton since then. So how did you move forward after that first direct to seller deal went so well for you? So I'm a pretty simple guy. I just kept doing a lot of the same thing. But eventually, the Facebook marketplace stuff obviously started to dry up. So we started doing county records. So I would go to my county website and see all the different foreclosure deals. And actually a bulk of my single family deals came from the foreclosure list and being able to reach the seller and end up negotiating

and try to figure out like a win-win situation. But I know a lot of investors do the same thing and they do a lot of cold calling. And from my experience of talking to sellers are trying to reach them, a lot of people going through a foreclosure don't really like to pick up their phone. And I didn't have time to do the door knocking thing. So what I started to do was I would just write handwritten letters and I would drive by the property and just leave it on their doorstep. And having that handwritten letter, I think, really helped because who doesn't want to open a letter that's handwritten that's written that's written to you? Oh, I love it. Yeah. They trick me every time, even those fake ones that has a machine write them. I still open them. Yeah, exactly. And the biggest thing is I never said that I

wanted to buy their house. Interesting. I always said, do you need any help with your situation? I would love to have a conversation with you if you want to keep the house or not. Huh. That's when I would get phone calls or text messages, whatever, and then I would have a conversation and see if me buying the house actually helped them or not. Yeah. And obviously, those are really great opportunities for owner financing or some sort of, you know, low cash offer. I'm just curious. What year was this when you were doing this? This was in the middle of 2023, going into 2024. So just out of curiosity, like if you were to just go look for on-market deals in 2023, rates were high in Louisville, were there deals that were attractive to you?

Was this kind of like the only way you could find things that made sense? I know there's some success in on-market stuff, but if I were to go like conventional financing, I don't remember what the rates were back then, but high. They were high, right? Like they were like getting up to like six, seven percent. Oh, at least. And no deals really worked with. conventional financing and every time we would try to reach out to an agent we get the typical like

owner financing seller finance the scam and i just didn't really want to deal with that anymore and so i just kind of pivoted to sellers and i think my personality type too is i enjoy talking to people on the phone this type of investment strategy probably wouldn't work for people that don't like to talk to people like this is a absolute grind speaking to different sellers and also just hearing a lot of pain too because the sellers that do kind of agree to this most of the time, they're not in the best situation. So you need to be a little empathetic, right, and try to understand where they're coming from. And I think ultimately that's what really helped me secure some deals, having that value-driven approach first. That's very cool. Yeah, I really respect that approach. I'm curious

that, Tim, did you have experience with cold calling or any sort of like customer service focused business before? No, you should have heard my first 60 calls. Oh man, I wish we could play it. You know, stuttering Tim and I remember when people would pick up the phone, my heart would be racing out of my chest. Oh. I'd be like, hey, Mr. Seller, do you want to sell your house? And they'd be like, no, right? And I'm not going to say any bad words, but it was just a lot of profanity. Oh, I bet. Never call me again type thing. I've done a little bit of cold calling. And I know that feel like we're like desperate for anyone to pick up but then the second they pick up you're like oh no what do i do now it's kind of like you're almost like i wish they did pick up because then i don't

face the rejection yeah you just got to keep going but but i think that's the big thing with how i first started was you know reaching out to for sale by owners on zillow and also facebook because they were already trying to sell versus you pulling a list off a data software and just blindly calling somebody for hours on end, at least they were expecting people to call them. So even though I got destroyed on the phone, it was more of like, hey, I saw that you're trying to sell it. And are you still taking offers? And then the conversation goes from there. Oh, that's a good point. That's like a good entry level way to get into these conversations. Yep. And you know, you have your scripts that you start creating. And I always made up like a little white lie and said, hey, you know, me and my wife are investors.

We have a house around the corner. And we're looking for our next one. Are you still taking offers. And then the answer is usually yes. And then now you can kind of proceed with the process with them. Are you married? I am. Okay. Okay. I was didn't know if that was the white lie. Yeah, no, no, no. The white lie was like, hey, I have a house around the corner. Yeah, around the corner. Yeah. This was still in Louisville, right? Though you're still in your market, your local market. Yep. I did not leave the market until July, 24. And then I ended up buying some houses in Iowa City out in Iowa. So that was the first time I really left the state of Kentucky.

Interesting. Okay, I want to hear about that. But before we do, I just want to ask, when you're making these phone calls and reaching out to people, did you have a buy box that you were looking for? Or were you just looking for any deal? And then you kind of figure out what to do with it if you were able to peak someone's interest. Yeah, for me, it was just single family properties, 60 days on market.

And no house was older than 1950s. And the reason why I had the 1950s thing was my first flip. The house was like 100 years old. So I had a lot of nightmares with everything regarding the plumbing, the foundation, all that stuff, even electrical. Oh, yeah. And then as I got more advanced, I started looking for two-bedroom one baths with enough square footage. Because I did flip a few houses in between. And I always looked at opportunity.

So really focusing on if I can turn a house into a three-bedroom or just adding another bathroom. And that was my big criteria. And were you mostly looking to buy and hold or did you flip or wholesale any of these? It was primarily a buy and hold portfolio strategy. And then the secondary would be a fix and flip if I got a cash deal. So if creative finance couldn't work, I would pivot into a cash offer and then I would end up trying to flip it myself. Okay. I didn't really start wholesaling until the end of 2024 and this year.

So most of my stuff was just trying to buy it my money. That's awesome. And so how many did you wind up doing in Kentucky before you moved to Iowa City? Yeah. So in Kentucky, I had nine properties and I think it was like 12 doors or something like that because some were duplexes. Awesome. And then in Iowa, we ended up buying a six property portfolio from a seller. So that really up the numbers. And then we had some fix and flips in Kentucky that we actually just sold a couple months ago. So amazing. Yeah. So it's been a crazy ride in the last couple years and just a few grays that got added to the top of my head, but we're still here. So, nice. Well, that's great. So tell me about the decision to change markets. First, when you

started in Louisville, did you know that it was a good market or was it just sort of like you wanted to be in real estate and that's where you were. So you were going to make it work some way locally. You know, obviously, you know, New York is very expensive. And when I moved to Kentucky and I saw houses were like a hundred grand or 120 grand i was like whoa this is crazy like the same house that i'm looking at would be like half a million at home yeah and then with that in the combination of really wanted to get into real estate because i think after like 2020 there were so much content about real estate and everybody was starting to talk about it and i kind of started to get fomo so i was like you know what i i got to do something now or else i feel like i'm never

going to do it and i don't know if a lot of guests that you've had had the same experiences I've had, but when I first started looking at buying my first property, I had a ton of people telling me not to do it. It was in the beginning of 2022 when interest rates were still in the three, four percent range, but prices were going up. And everyone told me the market's going to crash any day now. And I'm glad I did not listen to, you know, my parents. I'm glad I didn't listen to a lot of people and just ultimately tried it. So yeah, it's hard when people are telling you not to do it. I started in 2010. People were always like, oh, it was amazing.

How lucky is like, everyone thought that real estate was over forever at that point. And regardless of what market you invest into, there's going to be a challenge, whether it's getting credit or expensive homes or lower cash flow. There's just always things that you're going to have to navigate. And like you said, once you get into it, you learn how to make money off of the deals in the current market. Clearly, there are ways to make it work in pretty much any market conditions. Tim, I want to get into what changed and why you started investing in Iowa, but first, we have to take a quick break.

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Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Back with investor Tim U on the Bigger Pockets podcast. Why'd you move to Iowa City? What changed? So Iowa was really interesting for us because one of my cousins, he lives out in Iowa and he bought a house out there and he kind of saw me on Instagram. I was like, oh, I didn't know you did real estate. I think you should look into my backyard. So at this time, I have a partner now.

So it's been, you know, a couple of years. And my partner is more of like the underwriter. So he's a stronger with the numbers and stuff. And after looking into Iowa, like we love the Midwest. A lot of people will say Louisville, Kentucky does not count as the Midwest, but I do personally. And Iowa is like truly Midwest. And we picked Iowa City specifically because it's got a lot of life there. It's got tons of travel nurses there.

And it's got the big university. And actually the six properties we bought is like a five minute drive from the campus. So it's in a really nice neighborhood. The seller was dissolving his portfolio. And we ended up getting that deal from a broker connection. So we negotiated with the seller directly and paid the broker a fee. That deal was really complicated. It took us like three months to close, but we ended up closing it in July of 2024. Nice. Okay. And so is your cousin helping you out or do you hire property managers? No, we hired a property manager out there. And we actually, had a bad experience with our first one. So we ended up having to pivot to another one,

which is really tough because we never really experienced that before. And we had to eat a couple months of loss as we were trying to turn units over. But we finally got the assets stabilized. So we kind of feel good about it now. So I mean, that is one of the challenges of going to a new market, right? One of the biggest challenges is building out that team. So can you share with us, maybe something you learned or anything that you think might help our audience avoid some of the challenges you faced in finding a property manager in a new market? Yeah, I think you guys really have to interview quite a few, right? And for us, there were a lot of property management companies that manage thousands of doors. And the first one we used was a very big one, like very, very big. It's got

tons of units. And what we've learned was they may be reputable, but you're not their number one customer. A hundred percent. Like especially if you only have six doors in their portfolio, they don't care about you. It takes them a week to like respond to our emails and it was just a mess. So we ended up taking a chance with a smaller property management company that only managed a hundred properties at the time. Yeah. And the level of care and motivation to take care of us was really huge for us. And that property management company that's working with us, if we grow our portfolio, you know that property management company will get our business forever. That's right. But yes, have a really good screening process for your property management company and and kind of see if their visions

aligned with what you're trying to do for us was just to be honest with us like we know you guys got to make money as well just be transparent with what your fees are how long it's going to take to get back to us like sometimes we were just waiting for a week and a half to see if a unit got rented out you know it's crazy yeah i've had this almost the same exact experience and i don't even blame the bigger property manager that's just what anyone would do if you had a business and you managed a thousand units and one of your clients had 500 of those units, you would pick up their phone call first. Everyone would do that.

And it's just so much of this business. We talk about it a lot on this show is about incentive alignment and finding, whether it's a partner or a tenant or a property manager, finding someone to work with to put on your team who is in the same sort of spot as you and wants the same thing as you. It can work in other situations, but everything goes. go so much smoother if you're trying to grow together. Like Tim said, place with 100 units, they're going to be stoked every time you had a duplex. That's going to be a big boost to their business. And they're going to want to show you that they can scale with you so that you, when you

buy that third or your fourth or your fifth property, that you could grow together. And I've unfortunately had to fire some property managers too. And again, most of them are good people. It's just like they're just not the right person for my portfolio at that time. And so I think Tim is absolutely right. You need to not just find someone who's reputable, but find someone who really is going to provide the level of service that you're looking for at your stage of your portfolio. So now, Tim, what are you doing? Are you looking for deals in both places in Louisville and Iowa City? Yeah. So I actually, I'm not buying any more properties in Kentucky. Okay. And we've kind of slowed down single family as a whole. We kind of feel like the market is still pretty tight in terms of

rentals. And for me personally, you know, I started buying rental properties on the pursuit of financial freedom, right? Sure. And, you know, what I started to realize was having a property that cash flow is 400 a month really wasn't changing my life. And, you know, it's really nice and it's really good to build wealth. But my strategy was like, hey, let's focus on properties that generate more cash flow per month and also provide a service. Because having single families and having people rented is great, but it really wasn't fulfilling for me. So what we're looking for to do now is we're actually trying to do with the co-living model with assisted livings. So, you know, people that are older. So we're actually looking for our first one right now in Tampa. And, you know, there's some

intricacies to that dealing with the fire marshals and the licensing and all that stuff. But we're kind of shifting towards a co-living model because we can find these properties on the market that's been sitting there for a while. And we can even purchase them conventionally with today's rates, today's financing and still be able to cash flow $3,000 a month, right? And that's being kind of conservative too. You know, Tim, I'm curious because you've only been doing this for what, three years-ish now, which is good. I mean, you've done a lot in three years. Don't get me wrong. But you've done a lot of different stuff. You've flipped. You've done, you know, a lot of creative finance. You've done direct to seller. You've done buy and hold. Now you're moving to assisted living.

Is this just kind of your personality that you like to try different things? Or is it kind of market driven where you're just like weren't seeing the returns that you wanted? Why take on so many different things, I guess? I think it is kind of like part personality that, you know, I'm going to try it at least one time of guy. Yeah. I don't like flipping. So I don't flip anymore. You learn that.

Yeah, I learned that, right? And, you know, you try it a couple times. The first one didn't go well. Second one didn't really go well. So I think flipping is really stressful for me. And some people love it. Right. Some people are super good at flipping. But for me, the second part is market driven. I think that how the markets that I look at now, it's super hard to find a deal that just makes sense. And as you grow as a business or grow as an investor, you know, I don't have time to call sellers 24-7 anymore like I used to. So my marketing has changed drastically. So I have to target certain lists, certain people and try to maximize my time because I still do work nine to five every day. So it's been really hard to do the same lead generation that I was when I first started. But yeah, I think it is a fusion

between the two. I do like to try everything at least once. And if it doesn't work, then, hey, we can mark it off the bingo card and kind of move on. Yeah, well, that makes sense earlier in your career, I think. I mean, it can make sense at any time. But I do think that that's a very good explanation. There's so many different things that you can do in real estate. You kind of have to try at least value add, try different marketing strategies, see what works for you, what fits and what's going to be sustainable. On that line of thinking, Tim, my last question for you here is, you know, what's next? Like you've said that you got into it for financial freedom, but, you know, you're not super excited by rental properties. So like when you look five or 10 years down the road, what do you

envision and what do you want your portfolio to look like? Yeah. It, you know, it's funny that question because when I was asked this a year ago on the rookie show, it's changed drastically. Right. I think when I was first talking about, I was like, well, I want to get into multifamily. And, you know, after, you know, dealing with so much real estate and talking to different investors, having a hundred door unit like thing didn't really excite me. Raising tons of capital or doing syndications didn't really excite me. So what I really want to focus on is trying to find an asset that provides housing to a certain population or demographic. I think, you know, in the next five years, definitely want to do assist the livings. But, you know, since I'm a veteran, I I do want to move towards more co-living properties that actually end up supporting veterans because there's a ton of displaced veterans out there that need housing and need a sort of community. So I think that's like what I want to envision in the next five years is focus on that. Good for you, Tim. I really think that, of course, most people get into real estate investing to improve their own financial position.

But this service that you're able to provide to your community and being a good provider of housing and residences, is, I think, extremely fulfilling. And I love hearing you say that and that you have your own personal mission, whether it's elderly folks or serving the veteran community. It's such a big benefit to real estate investing. And at least for me, and I'm sure for you, like it provides motivation when things do get tough. And you're remembering.

Yeah. Like, you know, yeah, you're in it to grow a successful business. But there are other people who are benefiting from your work as well. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today. super cool story, really inspiring to hear everything that you've been up to. Hopefully we'll have you back on the show again in a year or two to hear what you're up to. Yeah, I'd love that. I appreciate the time and thanks for bringing me back on the show.

And thank you all so much for listening to this episode. As a reminder, if you want a chance to be on this show, just like Tim as one of our guests, you can apply at biggerpockets.com slash guests. There's a form that you fill out there. Tell us a little bit about your story. and we'll consider you for a spot on the podcast. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media.

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