BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - The “Repeatable” Strategy That Helped Him Buy 6 Rentals in 6 Months (Working 9-5)

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Worried you’ll come up short in retirement? When Brian Waters ran the numbers, he realized he was still decades away from being able to leave his nine-to-five. He needed a lifeline, and he found one in real estate investing. In just five years, he has scaled to 20 rental properties, and against all odds, he’s already on track to retire early! When we last checked in with Brian, he was buying simple, affordable, turnkey properties 2,000 miles away. But recently, he’s pivoted to a “hybrid” investing strategy you’ve probably never heard of, one that’s helping him scale his real estate portfolio even faster. In the past six months alone, he’s added six rentals—all while working full-time, coaching football on the weekends, and staying fully present with his family. Today, Brian shares the highly “repeatable” formula he’s using to tie everything together, makes a convincing case for keeping your W-2 job while you grow your real estate business, and shows you how to use other people’s money (and knowledge) to stack properties much faster than you ever could alone. In This Episode We Cover The “hybrid” investing strategy Brian used to buy six rentals in just six months The underrated benefits of keeping your W-2 job while investing in real estate Leveraging other people’s money (and knowledge) to buy rental properties faster How to find agents, contractors, and property managers for your out-of-state investing team The pros and cons of turnkey rental properties (and who should buy them) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1309. 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

Are you in danger of coming up short in retirement? When Brian ran the numbers, he realized he was nowhere near the amount he'd actually need to walk away from his nine to five. But what could he do? He was already putting in long hours at the fire station. He couldn't possibly take on a second job. Well, like many people searching for financial freedom, he turned to real estate. In just five years, he's scaled to 20 rentals, and against all odds, he's on track to retire early. last checked in with Brian, he was buying simple, affordable, turnkey rental properties

2,000 miles away from where he lives. But recently, he's pivoted to a hybrid strategy you've probably never heard of, but one that's helping him scale his portfolio rapidly. In the last six months alone, he's bought six more rental properties, all while working his full-time job, coaching football on the weekends, and staying fully present with his family. And Brian's about to give you the highly repeatable strategy he's using to tie it all together. What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer,

chief investment officer at Bigger Pockets. Today on the show, we have investor Brian Waters, a firefighter who is building a portfolio of affordable rental properties long distance

from his home in California. Brian, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. So good to see you again. I can't tell you how excited to get on here for the second time. I obviously had a great time the first time,

so it's a pleasure to be back, you guys. Thank you. There are people who didn't catch your episode. So maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit of background on your investing. Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Brian Waters. I live out in California. Mary you have two amazing twin boys that are 13. I was an airline pilot for a number of years,

got laid off, became a firefighter for Los Angeles. I'm a captain there now. And I realized at some point, like the pension just wasn't going to cut it. So I did all the other crazy stuff that males do in their younger age from just investing in this. And that came across BP, bigger pockets and it changed my life. Now I'm just scaling my portfolio while combining that with my W-2 job as a firefighter, a busy dad, a football coach, all those things. And yeah, I would love to get into how I'm doing that from 2,000 miles away. What was your approach when you realized you wanted to buy rentals, couldn't do it in California? How'd you go about figuring out the solution that you ultimately landed on? It was almost out of necessity, to be honest, because

once I bought that first property out in California, I didn't have a lot of capital. And I was like, well, I can save my way up, but I'll see you in 10 years when I have enough to do it. And so, you know, listening to a lot about what you and Henry talk about on the show, you got to come up with a strategy, a plan. Like, standing there at parade rest for me is not an option. So what I realized is I'm making a very good income and I'm blessed to have my job as a fireman in California. And I'm going to go take that money and that capital and go put it to work in markets where it makes sense. So for me, it just became out of necessity, truthfully.

And tell us a little bit about what the strategy is you chose. Yeah. So for me, the initial strategy, which we've talked about on the previous episode, was Turnkey. I think it's a very fantastic way for busy professionals. Like I said, I coach my kids football team. I'm a busy dad, all those things, just like, you know, I'd say most of the listeners are on bigger pockets. So what that is for the listener is you're buying a property that a company goes out and finds. They do all the remodeling. They put a tenant in place. They take care of all the CAPX, all that cool stuff. And they put it out there and you can buy it. It's off market. And then they go ahead and professionally manage it for you. The only problem with that, after you do

two, three, four, I ran to the same exact problem that I was having in California. Now I have to save my way to the next one. And so I decided to eventually take those skill sets that I was learning because you're going to learn a lot, even in turnkey. Yeah. And bridge that into doing the burr process, which you guys talk so much about. So I think it was a perfect segue into that. You know, I learned a lot during those things and I'm still learning, but I was able to put those things to work in doing the bird. And that's what I'm doing now. Great. And we're going to talk about the burr. a lot and how you're doing it long distance. But curious just to hear a little bit more about your experience with turnkey. People have very different opinions on the merit of buying a turnkey property.

And again, just for our audience, people use the word turnkey in two different ways in real estate. One is if you went out and bought an on market rental that was moving ready, you could just put a tenant in it right away. Some people call that a turnkey deal. But there's this other like business where you go to a turnkey provider and they actually, find the deal for you, they renovate it for you. That's what Brian was talking about. So what was your experience like with that, Brian? So these term key providers, they deal with a lot of out-of-state investors. And I think it's a good combination. So they've solved a lot of our problems. Number one, deal flow is a big deal, right? The interest rates, that's a big deal, being able to professionally

manage it and also on the back end, knowing what you're going to rent. So what I wanted to do initially was not have to do a lot of analyzing and stuff. So they'll bring you, they'll bring you these properties and they're great. No, they basically do all the work for you. All the CAP-X stuff's done. They know the markets. They've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these. But most importantly, the incentives that they give you. It's wild. So right now, they're buying the rates down to five and a half percent or lower for you at no cost, which is, I mean, that's not, that's amazing. That's great. Yeah, that's great. They're, they're giving us deals on the property management fees. They're also giving what's, they're giving us a rent guarantee for the year, which

another one is like, what? Like, I can't believe they're doing that. Oh, I didn't hear about that. Yeah. That's a new. That's a new thing that they're doing because because, you know, the truth is you're going to have evictions. You're going to have stuff that happens. But they want us to have the best experience possible. So for that year that the tenants are in there, I don't, if it's an eviction or whatever, they leave. They're going to guarantee that rent that you sign on the lease. So I'm like, you cannot lose, you guys. You can't live. That's pretty good. That's a risk mitigator, especially when you're coming from across the country. That makes a lot of sense. If you think about the way that a turnkey provider, one of these companies operates in their business model, they need to move deals. They rely on

velocity and volume of deals to make money. And so they're buying deals. They're renovating and they got to sell them quickly. So they will offer incentives in the same way, if you look at what's going on in new construction with builders right now, they're offering incentives too because their business model relies on velocity. They need to keep moving stuff. And so that presents a great opportunity. The tradeoff that you get with a turnkey provider is that a lot of the equity growth of doing a renovation yourself, that opportunity is gone because they've done that, right? And they're selling it to you, hopefully at a fair price. But you don't typically go out and buy from a turnkey provider and then say, oh, I'm going to renovate this property because it was just renovated. And so if you're a

kind of investor who just wants, you know, hands off. I don't want to do very much. I get some cash flow, but I don't need a big bump of equity. Great option. But Brian, it sounds like you, in your own life, reached a point where you said, I can't just keep sticking with this strategy because I got to come up with 20 or 25 percent down every time I'm doing this. And I'm not building more equity that quickly in these deals. So that's when you decided to do what? I started to do the burr stuff. And that's what I've transitioned it into. And that's how I've been able to scale my portfolio from the last time we talked at 14,

now up to 20, and I put four more under contract. Whoa. I mean, that was like less than a year ago, right? Yeah, it was six months ago. Well, we're going to talk about that. But why Burr? What stood out to you about this? This strategy is what's right for you.

I'm kind of a type A personality. I'm a go-gater. I like, I love, I don't like. I love real estate. And so when I fell in love with doing this stuff and the connections and the relationships that I made. And so my initial goal was never to have a bunch of these. But once I realized that the process is just a repeatable system, it became really fun for me.

And so yeah. So I started to jump into the birth stuff. I had learned it. And I'm like, this is actually a pretty good method. And the benefit, as we all know, is you're getting a lot of equity right away. You could recycle your capital right away. And you can take this as far as you want. And that's, I think, the benefit of that system. And that gets you around the challenge you were having, right? Because if you only have X amount

of equity, let's call it 100 grand, you put it into just for ease of math, you put it into a deal on a turnkey provider, it will grow. But it's stuck in that deal until you refinance it or you build up enough equity to take out a HELOC or whatever. With the Burr strategy, you put that money in and you build more equity, you know, let's say you invest 50 grand and you raise the value of your property by 100 grand, you've built $50,000 in equity that you can take out of that deal and put into your next deal. So that's why it's just so popular for scaling is because it allows you to use your money extremely efficiently to build up your portfolio. But what most people do, Brian, as you know, is they do to burn their own backyard because you're managing your renovation

and that could be intimidating, even for people who are down the street. So you're doing this from thousands of miles away. How did you gain the confidence and build the right team to do the first one? Because then I want to understand how you're doing six of these in the last six months. Yeah, I think even with the turnkey stuff, I started to realize kind of what they're doing. I'm somewhat emulating what they're doing. So what I started do is getting deal flow coming from them and from real estate, other investors and stuff. I started doing is going on Redfin, I'd go on there and put a little tag or heart on these

properties. What I started to notice is that these turnkey providers were investing in the same areas. It became like a shotgun spread, right? So I'm thinking, these people are professionals. They do this all the time. I know what numbers they're selling them for. And I started to work my way backwards. So when I would go on to Redfin, I would pull up that area and I'd go, okay, I'd find a property on, you know, another property on Redfin. It was a total outlier. I'm like, I'm not getting there. I'm going to stay with the herd and do what they're doing. So that was how I started to understand where. That's part of it. If other people were there, it's probably a pretty good idea to be that in the same place, right? You don't need to be some like genius market picker.

There's a reason why people buy in certain areas. And it's kind of obvious if you start to just dig in for a little bit. Right. So you built a team. How do you do that? Because that, I think, is what most people get tripped up on when they're looking to invest out of state. Because if you live in an expensive market, want to buy rentals, you look at a property in the Midwest, you're like, damn, I want to do that. That seems way more accessible than everything else I could buy in my area. But then there's the practical realities of who's going to manage these things, who's going to look out for this thing that I'm investing so much money in. So how do you go about it? Yeah, so everyone talks about OPM, other people's money.

There's something called OPK. It's other people's knowledge, right? So I like to go out there and, you know, I think real estate is so unique in the fact that you have to get out there and network. And guess there's a really cool company out there. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. It's called Bigger Pockets. Anyone ever heard of that one?

Well, guess what? It's probably the best networking real estate company in the world, right? That's the whole point. Yeah, exactly. the forms. I've met contractors. I met so many good connections. I met my real estate agent at Bigger Pockets last year that's helping me. Oh, at BPCon? Yeah. I met, I went up and sat next to him, and that became my realtor that's giving me a deal flow in Detroit right now. So you've got to be willing to get on the phone and make connections. But I kind of wanted to talk about one little

secret, another little sniper thing that I do. That's pretty cool because besides funding, besides an agent, there's a million of those, probably the hardest one to find is. contractors. Yeah, I would say good ones, reliable ones. So one little thing that I've done is I call it the Facebook group method. So a lot of people go into these Facebook groups, investor communities, it could be even the bigger pockets form that you're going into. And they're going to post a question. And then the question is going to be, anyone know a contractor in X city? That is the wrong method because you're going to get blasted, absolutely blasted by people dropping their cards, this and that. So what I personally do is I find a question

that not every person would know. Like a kind of a more detailed contractor type question. Okay. And what I'll do is I'll send a picture in there. Hey, how would you handle this situation? And it could be like a front porch. And I want to see their response. The educated response means, guess what?

They're probably know what they're doing. So or all what I'll do is I'll call it, I'll kind of call it lurking in a sense, but I'll sit back and I'll go through and search other questions that people have asked. And if someone's just firing off a business. card, they're desperate for work, right? They're probably not the best ones out there. So I'm waiting for really knowledgeable response, that OPK, that knowledge that they have. And once they give that, then I go, okay, I'm going to dig in more and find out who this person is. And that response, I'm going to give them a chance, at least have an interview. And so what I do is I put together

interview process checklist and I want to find out how they handle different stuff and how knowledgeable. If they know that one little thing, chances are they at least know what the heck they're talking about. So that's good. Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great, example of how to think creatively and to network really well. That's kind of the whole idea behind Bigger Pockets forums. It's like, I don't know if you've ever heard of this term. I think it was Gary Vee came up with it. Gary Vaynerchuk. He talks about the thank you economy where it's just like look for the people who are just going out and sharing their knowledge and not just trying to pitch you something. So like in your example, like if someone's

spending the time on a Facebook group giving you a thoughtful answer about how they would approach a problem instead of just trying to make money off you right away. That contractor winds up getting more work because they're just giving and trying to be productive and trying to help other people. And it just shows you who they are. And like that's the same thing you see in the bigger pockets forums. People are just on there. Experience investors answering questions for free. You know, it's the same idea. Like just try and help one another. And if we can do business together, great. It's a really good approach. I think a lot of people who get into this just think about networking as one-directional, right? Like you just like, hey, I need this one thing from you.

But networking in my experience, if you start doing it in this way where you're contributing and having conversation, instead of just getting to that point right away of like, can we transact together, you actually, again, it's counterintuitive, but you go faster and find better people quicker than if you just try and jump the gun. And if you want to do it, everyone, you can do this for free. I know there are people who listen to this podcast who don't know that you can just go on BiggerPockets website, BiggerPockets.com, it is free. You can go on and network with literally three and a half million investors who are out there and ask questions and talk to one another, do deals together. It's awesome. Go check that out. So you've also accomplished something very

impressive, Brian, which is the scale that you're doing at. I want to understand just how you're doing that, but we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Investing in real estate has always been smart, but it hasn't always been simple. Now, it's both thanks to the Fundrise Flagship Fund. The Fundrise Flagship Fund launched more than five years ago with a mission of delivering low-fee access to Blue Chip private market real estate. Today, the Fundrise flagship fund has grown to manage more than a billion dollars of real estate on behalf of hundreds of thousands of investors, making it one of the largest funds of its kind. For those who believe real estate has an important role to play in their portfolio strategy, the Fundrise flagship fund has

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They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score, and they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working. together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows

to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer here with investor Brian Waters talking about how he's built a system where he can invest long distance and not just buying turnkey properties, but doing the burr method. So Brian, tell me, once you had a team in place, how did you set it up so that you couldn't, you're not just doing one of these a year or one every couple months? You're done six in the last six months. How have you built that business? I think everyone talks about the buy box and that's,

it is really important. It's probably one of the most important things. I have not steered away from my buy box and that's the past six months. And that makes it so easy. Because if you're getting all these deals coming your way, you're like going to get pulled to the left and the right and you want to analyze this stuff. You're wasting your time. I know my numbers. I know the neighborhoods. I know the streets. I use the same product and everything. I'm literally like creating the exact same recipe every single time. It just makes it easier. And I treat my contractor really, really well and he gets, he gets it done for me. And just creating that system, that SOP and sticking to it until you get to where you want to go is the most important thing. Study that market. I could see a deal. I could see a

that comes through from Redfin or wherever I'm getting it. And I could know within a minute whether or not I think it's a good deal or not. Obviously, there's more to that. I'm going to analyze it further. But I have to know if I even want to take a look at it. Will you tell us what your buybox is right now? Absolutely. So I'm in the Detroit market and the Memphis market. The deals that I'm looking for are between $70,000 and $80,000 for purchase price. And then the remodels, I don't do cheapy remodels. I'm not going to go crazy and put like a gold toilet or anything like that in there. But what I will do is I want to make sure, Brian's keeping this for the long term. So I want to know that it's going to last me a long time. So, you know, I'm putting new roofs,

new windows, new water heaters, new HVP flooring, kitchens, pretty much a full, full job. But the remodels that we're getting, which is mind blowing to me, because in California, you couldn't even get like an awning for this much, but it would be about 40 grand for that. So that's plus or minus what I'm getting. So we're all in for 130. And these properties are appraisal. I literally just had an appraisal come in yesterday for 170. So that's remarkable, right? And they're renting for around $1350, $1,400 a month. And yeah, I just, I'm sticking to that plan. I'm using the same materials. I have a spreadsheet of all that. It just makes it easy. Yeah. I have the same contractor so he knows the expectations. I barely even have to talk to him

anymore. And then you said something important. You got to analyze data. So, you know, when I get my appraisals back, I'm going to look at the appraisal. I'm going to study it. What caused stuff to go up? What caused stuff to go down? Is it a square footage issue? Is it a bathroom, extra bathroom? All that type of stuff. And so let me just recap those numbers forever in here. You're buying between 70 and 80K in Detroit and Memphis. You're putting about 40K in, which agree with you. I got a quote for a heat pump for my primary residence that costs that much. So that's pretty impressive. And then you're getting an appraisal at 170-ish. So with closing costs, you're making 40 to 60 grand in equity on each of these deals? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, that time 10 times 5, that's a couple hundred grand in equity. That's not

bad. That's awesome. Wow. Congratulations. So that's great. It seems to me like your your whole model is how repeatable you can make this. Is it anything that's 70K or do you have like a specific format you're looking for? No, it's very neighborhood specific because a lot of those markets all over the country, like you can go on one street and it's like a, it's not nice. But so I'm sticking to areas I've known. And because I've been analyzing and I've, and I love analyzing stuff, I could tell you like a million streets in Detroit because I know when it pops up, I'm like, yep, that's a

street I've bought on or looked at. So the reality of it is a lot of these neighborhoods that were were built back in the days, they had the same builders. And so the layouts are very similar. I mean, most of mine are three bed, one bass, three. bed two bass. They look the same. If I lined up all 20 of mine in a in a row, you'd be like, oh, you can tell them. Yeah, they're all brick. It's all, it's similar. And so it really makes it easy. And what do they rent for? They're renting between 13 to $1,400, depending on if it's a normal

renter versus a section eight renter. So you're getting pretty darn close to the 1% rule once you've put in the additional equity. Yeah, close enough. And then, you know, as we talked about, all the capix items are all done by me. And so those are coming. down the road maybe 15 years, but I don't, like, I still keep really good reserves and I run my numbers of conservatively, but those things are taken care of on the front end, which keeps the tenant happy, and it keeps me from having to deal with that stuff. So you said, you know, materials are the same. I've heard this from other people who are kind of doing this, but like, use the same LVP, use the same cabinets, you know, use the same paint color. So you're not

constantly making decisions. Is that why you're able to allow your contractor to kind of just do his own thing, like, because he basically knows the formula and he doesn't have to think that hard. Yeah. And the reality of it is, let's say you have a tenant turnover and there was some paint issues that need to be done. Well, guess what? We probably have extra paint from the last job. We're not going to do new stuff. If I'm using the same exact materials and the last one appraised for 170 and then three months later on the same block or two blocks over, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get close to that. Maybe not perfect. Right. Yeah. You know, it takes a lot of the risk out. What about across markets?

How does that compare? Are you able to use similar layouts, paints and stuff? Or do you have to sort of cater the approach to the market you're investing in? This would be a great time to introduce my new strategy. It's not new, but it's pretty similar. And so I've partnered with a company out there after doing a bunch of projects to do what I call the Burr key, which is kind of exciting. So the Burr key is a kind of done with you, done for you, burr, which.

I think it's pretty cool. Okay. So how does the bur key to say right? How does the bur key work? Yeah. So what the bur key is, everyone knows what the bur is. And the key part is it's a done for you type of burr. And so what I've partnered with a team out there. They're not turnkey providers. They actually don't do turnkey at all. But what they do is they have a wholesale team. They'll go out and find the property. They have a construction team that does the remodel for you. And on the back end, they have a, property management team. So very, very similar. But where it makes sense for us is we come in now with private money or hard money and we can use that same birth strategy where we're building in the equity. And so the question probably that most people on the call are going to go, well,

how do they make money? Well, they actually, what they do is their main way they make money is through a wholesale fee, right? They're finding these properties for very cheap, which is fine. I don't care. I want them to make money. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. But they are also the project managers. And so it takes about two to three months for them to finish the product. They're using the same materials every time. And on the back end, they have a property management team, and they're going to manage it for you. So the difference is with a turnkey provider, they're buying the deal up front from the seller, from the original seller. They're doing the renovation and then they're selling it to you. With the burr key, you are buying the deal

from the seller through a wholesaler, so you're paying a fee. The team that you're working with never owns the property, right? Correct. So you're taking on the risk part in the renovation, but you're also getting the reward part of the burr. So it really is a little bit of both. Are these properties in rough shape? What do they look like when you get your hands on them?

Yeah, I don't recommend, but the one I bought was rough. Like, it, like, I mean, you might walk in and fall into the darn earth, you know. but so what they do is they're going to go out there and they're going to give you a scope of work. They, you know, probably one of the most important things when you're out of state is the communication. So this team, and this is why I'm continuing to do business with them, is that they will answer their phone all the time. They do a once a week property walkthrough where they're actually FaceTiming you and you're like getting a C thing. They have a Google Drive account where they're dropping photos in. You could manage your own burr, but this takes a little bit off your plate because they're turning utilities on for you.

they're dealing with permits from the city. If there's a change order, they're handling it all. Instead of me being on the phone all the time, it's a little bit easier to do out of state, in my opinion. This makes a lot of sense to me. But you said it was a home run. Tell us about the numbers. Yeah, I know.

I just got the appraisal back and I was like, oh, cool. I think I'm on to something here. So our all in was 135, so more than the ones in Detroit. The timeline, it took about six months. And it just appraised for ready for the drum roll. general 225. That's amazing. And you're going to rent this for what?

The rents in those areas go for, again, $1,400 up to like $16 for Section 8. So the only thing is like, I'm going to be barely breaking even. But guess what? I just got a lot of equities. So I almost don't. Yeah, huge equity. Yeah. One of those times where I'm like, if I have to come in with a hundred bucks, but I made a ton on the back in, oh, well, I can handle it.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah, exactly. Like, not every deal is going to get check every box. It's kind of like the big overall picture. If you're making enough money on your deal to compensate you for the risk and the capital that you're putting into it, personally, at this point in my investing career, I don't really care. Later in my investing career, I'll focus more on cash flow. But right now, it's like, hey, I can just make a chunk of equity.

Why not? Why wouldn't you just do that? Brian, it's super cool, man. And I love you're just inventing new strategies out here, just coming up with new business models, teaching us all. This is super cool. I want to talk a little bit more about the funding piece because that seems key piece to how you're, scaling and how people can replicate this model that you're creating. We've got to take one more quick break, though.

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Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value, in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent-to-retirement does. They're a full-service, turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of our down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with bigger pockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit biggerpockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with investor Brian Waters talking about how he's

inventing strategies, scaling long distance, doing all the things people say you can't do. So, Brian, I absolutely love the story that you're telling us here and what you've been accomplishing for yourself. Tell me a little bit more about financing because I imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, you're working to you're working. a W-2 job. You're making good cash flow, but did six burs in six months. You got to, you're pulling in private money. You're using other people's money. Tell us a little bit about how you got started with that and what your system for using outside capital looks like. Absolutely. First and foremost, listeners, please keep your job. It's, it's the goat and goose. It's going to help you.

So now that that's off my plate, early on in my investing career, I just started document, documenting this stuff. And that's honestly what led me to this conversation with Dave today is I started telling my story on social media. We talked about how cringe worthy it is and who cares you guys. But what happened is I started doing all these projects. I got to like around number eight, number 10, and people coming out of the woodworks. I'll just call like Uncle Rich Rico or whoever. If you pull out your phone and just scroll through, there's a lot of money sitting there and they want to put it to work. People are scared of other things right now. They're scared of crypto, all that stuff. And we're not going to get into that. But they want,

everyone wants to get in a real estate, but not everyone wants to do what we're doing. So one way to do that is they want to partner with you. So I'm paying my lenders very, very well. But the reality of it is you don't need to go and do that either because there is something called the hard money out there. Hard money is a fancy term of saying an institutional lender who's going to lend you the money to buy a property for the rehab. Yes, you're going to have to pay for it. Again, why it's important to have a job. And that they want to open a up that book because that's how they make money. And the better you get at it, the more you do, the better the rates get. When you hear people say, I scaled a 100 rentals, it's because of that.

It's not because they had a lemonade stand or whatever. They have investors, right? How do you recommend people start doing this if they want to scale and want to get access to this capital? Do you have to use social media? Are there other ways to do it? No, I think social media is your new business card. It's funny because now that I'm going around and speaking at different places and kind of getting in that world. I don't think I've ever been asked for my phone number anymore. It's like, hey, what's your social media handle? And so they want to go back in time. They want to see what you've accomplished. We're in a weird part of society right now where trust is super important. And you can tell people that you do real estate, but if they want to see it,

they want to watch your journey. And a perfect example is I had someone reach out to me that said, Brian, I've been watching your social media for three years. And I finally am in a position where I want to partner with you. And I was like, whoa. So if I was not consistent in doing what I'm doing, that opportunity would not have been there. And I think it's important. We all do it. And I think another important factor is, including myself, we're nosy. We want to know what people are doing. You just, and when come on you doing the thing, they want to go, I want to do the thing with you. And that's, and they're organically going to reach out to you. So are there other ways? Yes. I think this is just an, it's, it's overlooked by a lot of people. And trust me,

when you guys go on my social media, please feel free to make fun of me in the comments. It is, it's, we're having fun. Real estate is fun and I think, I don't take it too serious. I know. Sometimes you see these comments, people are like, why do you say that? I'm like, I'm just a dude. Like, you know, like this isn't scripted. There's no, like, I don't have a team behind me coming up with this stuff.

I'm just saying what I feel and it's fun. And that's authentic. Like, that's what actually works. Like, is just showing people the reality of the situation. You don't have to paint some perfect picture of every deal or every part of your life. Like people, like you said, Building trust comes from authenticity. That's whether you do it in social media or you come to BPCon and you go, you're talking to someone, you got to be authentic.

Be who you are. And like, that's how you find the good contractors, the good lenders, the people who are willing to lend you money. But I will say, though, I want to call out something you mentioned before Brian that it was after you did a bunch of deals that people started reaching out to you. And that's not to say that you can't do it right away. But man, it gets so much easier once you've proven the model. Yeah. And I think truthfully, it's irresponsible for people that are brand new to go out and ask for it. Because the most important thing is, you guys, we have to take care of each other.

Money is the root of all things good, but it could lead to bad situations. I will never risk someone's money. I'd rather sell my house, my car. I'll get a 20th job if I had to. But if you're brand new, you probably shouldn't be using private money. Maybe, you know, like unless you have someone, a mentor, you know, you've had a long conversation with Dave and you understand the process, please get good at it first because it's very risky. Before I worked at Bigger Pockets, I worked in tech and there was a saying about raising money, the first round. Like if you're trying to make a startup, they would say the first round of money you get is the three Fs.

It's the friends, families, and fools because those are the people, those are the only people who are going to give you money for your dream startup. up. And that's kind of true in real estate. Like if you're going to partner, maybe you have a friend or family who you want to, you know, be a sweat equity partner to, whatever it is. But like most lenders are going to be sophisticated and they have other options. And so like that stinks, but it's just part of the reality. You got to prove that you can do it. And I like what Brian said. If you go out and show that you can hustle for your first one, that buys so much confidence in the lender that they will be good stewards of your capital. and you have to put yourself in their shoes and how they're making decisions if you're going to go and try and raise that money.

So, Brian, awesome. Congratulations on all your success, fast progress. What are your plans and goals now at this point? Yeah, I mean, we didn't touch on this, but the very, and what I don't have to get into, I just want to share it because it's the power of real estate. The very first property ever bought in California, I just refinanced that, pulled out a 150 grand to buy an Airbnb in Utah. And it's a, we're going there in three days. It's going to be amazing. That's something that I would never been able to do if I hadn't bought my first one. So it's just parlaying that money down the road. And, you know, I'm super excited. But I got this email from this legendary guy by the name of Dave.

And I'm holding it right here. And when I opened it up, it just blew my mind. And so that email, I don't have to read the whole thing, but Dave invited me as an opportunity to speak at Bigger Pockets Orlando. And I am so thrilled to be there, you guys. It's going to be so fun. Oh, dude, it's going to be so fun. Yeah. You deserve it. By the way, this is going on my page. Oh, I love that you printed it out. That's awesome. Well, you absolutely deserve it. I was sitting around with my colleague Alex, who does the incredible job

of planning BPCon. We were talking about speakers and topics, as we always do. We're talking about out-of-state investing. It's a super popular topic. People always want to do it. And I thought, you know, Brian's doing something super cool. He's figured out a way to make this work. He's doing things I wish I was doing. And so I think everyone at BPCon is going to learn a lot. And so if you're the kind of investor who wants to invest out of state, I know tons of people reach out to me about this every day. Like, this is the kind of stuff. Come learn for Brian. Or if you're someone who just wants to learn how to do the burr, how to scale property, these are the kinds of events. They're the kinds of speakers that will be at BPCon. Brian already talked about how he found his agent at BPCon.

Amazing stuff here. So if you want to grab your tickets, go to Bigger Pocket. dot com slash conference. There's so much to learn, so much to enjoy at BPCon. And stoked, you're going to be there speaking this here, Brian. Yeah, thank you. I would like to say one thing. I am super approachable, you guys. I love real estate.

So after you listen to this, please reach out to me on social media. I will call you. Yeah, what's your handle? It's at Mr. at Mr. dot Brian dot waters, and that's on everything. And trust me when I say, I'm going to be the one answer in the phone. You will be talking to me personally. but at BP con come listen to what I got to say approach me talk to me I will go to lunch with

you I will give you all the tips and tricks I will introduce you to my real estate agents my contractors I love bigger pockets obviously so you know it's it's very humbling for me to say that I was sitting in the front row last year at the event and now I'm here talking to Dave and speaking and that's the power of bigger pockets I was the avatar you guys were shooting for and now I get to share what I'm doing So keep at it, everyone. Big virtual hug. Big virtual hug.

My BP family. I love you guys. I love it. Great way to end the episode. I should say one more thing, though. Brian was on the show in the first time because he went to biggerpockets.com slash guests and applied to be on the show. We really look through all the application. So if you want to share your story on Bigger Pockets, go to BiggerPockets.com slash guest.

And if you do, you might be sitting here telling your story to many other investors sometime in the future. Thank you all so much for watching this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you next time.