Change Your Financial Future with ONE Real Estate Deal

All it takes is one (yes, ONE!) real estate deal to change your life and jumpstart your path to financial freedom. You could stop after just one, but more often than not, that first deal opens the door to even bigger opportunities, allowing you to build wealth, create more passive income streams, and finally reach financial independence. Every successful real estate investor has had that one deal that set off a domino effect, enabling them to build wealth. We’re sharing ours today so you can repeat them! Joining Dave are Garrett Brown and Matt Faircloth, two investors from different backgrounds, strategies, and parts of the country. But both had real estate deals that propelled them forward toward financial freedom. Dave also had a killer real estate deal (only his second deal ever!) that significantly increased his standard of living. We’ll share how Garrett made $50,000 (tax-free!) on a repeatable first real estate deal anyone in any area can try. Matt shares how he was able to scale up his portfolio fast when he realized he didn’t need to provide the money for his down payments and renovations. Finally, Dave shares the second deal he ever did that upgraded his life permanently and why he does not “sacrifice” to achieve financial freedom faster. In This Episode We Cover The real estate deals that defined our investing careers (and how they propelled us to financial freedom) The easiest real estate investment for beginners (make $50K+ tax-free!) Using other people’s money to invest in real estate? Why you don’t need to have the down payment How to live for free and speed up your timeline to financial independence like Dave Why you should tell everyone you know that you invest in real estate And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1139 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  Any one investment has the power to change your financial future. That's why you need to be in the game, looking for singles that can turn into home runs and leveraging your creativity to maximize your returns. But don't just take it from me. Learn from these expert investors and the investments that define their whole careers.

• 0:22Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer, Head of Real Estate Investing at BiggerPockets. I've been buying rental properties for 15 years now, and it's had a huge effect on my life, both financial and otherwise. And today I'm bringing two other investors onto the show so we can talk about the deals that we feel defined our careers. These are the times we tried something new and found it worked or hit a home run that allowed us to scale. And I wanted to have this conversation today because you're going to hear that these deals, even the ones that had huge impacts on us, aren't out of reach for anyone out there, even if they're just starting their investing careers. You don't need decades of experience or fancy strategies to find a totally game-changing

• 1:06Dave Meyer?

  investment opportunity. You just need to be in the game in the first place and always on the lookout for creative opportunities. We're going to be welcoming back Matt Faircloth. I have known Matt for a long time, I think 10 years now. He's been investing for 20 years and wrote the BiggerPockets book on raising private capital. And we'll also have Garrett Brown, BiggerPockets's short-term rental expert and the host of the Bigger Stays YouTube channel, joining us here today. Matt, Garrett, welcome to the show.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Always happy to join you, Dave. Thanks for having me on.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me here.

• 1:40Dave Meyer?

  Excited about this show because I think, I believe that there's sort of one deal, maybe two deals that sort of get you hooked as an investor or get you started feeling like you can do it, or perhaps even open up your eyes to an entire new strategy or tactic that you can use in your investing career. Today, I'd love to hear both of yours. I'll share some thoughts about mine, but Garrett, maybe you'd go first. Tell us a little about, like, is there a deal to you at least that stands out? Like, that was the one? And what did it do for you?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Every type of real estate investing, pretty much anything in the ecosphere of investing. But the most pivotal deal that I actually had happen was a live-in flip. That was one of my first purchases. I bought a townhouse in Houston, Texas. This is maybe a year or two after I got my real estate license. I just found out about BiggerPockets while I was in there. You know, they don't, they don't teach you any of this in your licensing classes and things like that. They teach you how to do some contracts. They'll tell you like different clauses that you probably never used during your career. But I started diving into BiggerPockets and it started to turn on light bulbs for me. And so I started looking at properties because I was looking to buy my first place. And I didn't want to buy anything that was already turnkey.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I knew where the value was going to be like taking a sacrifice to actually live in something that needed a little work. I looked for stuff that didn't have a ton of, you know, structural issues or big ticket things that I personally didn't know much about. I was looking for something that just needed like a facelift in a good area in a, in a place that I was going to be happy with living with for a year. So I had a lot of data out there. I was crunching numbers and kind of started realizing that I could get into a place for 5% down with an owner occupied loan. And also make 3% technically on my purchase of it as an agent. So I'm pretty much getting in for almost 2%. I found a property that just got in a new HVAC system, just got in a new roof, all the big things.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  But it was kind of ugly inside, like it had some very dated flooring. I think it had carpet in a couple of sections, like all the things that most retail buyers will look at and go, oh, I can't, I can't live in that. And that's not a function, like I could not come home to a, you know, yellow walls or something like that. So luckily I saw like, you know, kind of was like, well, I could probably, you know, withstand that, especially if it's something that I could, you know, get my hands dirty. Use a little YouTube university, figure out how to do a little backsplash. And we ended up selling that townhouse right before even COVID hit for more than any other townhouse had sold in that community ever.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  We sold it for 178, I think.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  You bought it for a buck 20, 178.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Bought it for a buck 20, made a 3% commission on the buck 22.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  So I sold it for 178, took that exact money and then rolled it into a brand new live and flip.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That had some land on it. And then we ended up even building cabins on that property, which is a whole nother deal that we'll talk about a whole nother time.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I gotta pause before we get into building cabins out there, Tom Sawyer, let me, I gotta ask you a question.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Those that don't own homes don't know about this rule, I don't think, that you can sell your home and keep up to 250K of the profit from that home tax free. And I got buddies that have done what you've done and they're courageous enough to move every year or two, and they're making up to 250 grand if they're single, half a million, put a pinky next to your mouth if they're married. What stinks about flipping houses, you gotta pay taxes. What's great about live and flip like you're talking about is you get to keep all of it, up to a half a million bucks if you're married. That's a, that's a reason to get married right there. There you go. So you were able to roll that 50K minus rehab expenses up into this new live and flip with the cabins, right?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yep. And I just rolled it right in and then planning to do the same thing. And then the point you made too, is I lived in it for those two years. And so I was able to avoid any of those capital gains taxes from that.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  It was a really easy way to turn my housing expense into pretty much an asset for me going forward that I was able to keep rolling into deals.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  It's huge, man. You gotta live somewhere, right? You gotta live somewhere. And it's either like a house hack or a live and flip. All to be anyone's first living arrangement.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  You know, to the bigger pockets listeners, man, I was, I was a house hacker.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Same.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  You were a live and flipper, man. And that, but just playing the real estate game early, just to, just to cover your living arrangements, man. I mean, it's brilliant.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And I still do it, even in the house that I'm living in currently.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Are you living and flipping now?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  A live and flip right now.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, bought about six months ago. I, I've learned so many things from that first one that, you know, somebody gave me an offer. It was about 240. We were like, ah, we'll pass for now. They ended up coming back to us a few months later and said, hey, do you still want to purchase this property? And we ended up getting it for 205. And it had a new HVAC, all the same things.

• 6:31Dave Meyer?

  Oh, nice.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  But just ugly cosmetics and one of the, I think it's the fourth fastest rising county in all of the U.S. It's Montgomery County in Texas. And so prices are rising, all the same principles I learned and I'm just going to keep rinse and repeat.

• 6:46Dave Meyer?

  You started this by mentioning that you have done a lot of deals. So like, what about this one sort of stands out to you that feels like sort of the one that made you feel like an investor or taught you something that you perhaps didn't learn on other deals?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  The first live and flip was just so monumental for me because I could see where I could do this for years to come, you know, and I don't always have to move instantly after a year.

• 7:08Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Like, we probably plan to live this one two or three years or whatever we want. But I'm going to keep increasing that value while I live in it and I don't have to take on like an equity partner and I don't have to do all these, you know, insane things to just make the deal work for me. Like it's working because I'm living in it and I'm naturally appreciating the property by just adding these things that I know. I'm turning into a rental in about a year or two. So I'm adding rental grade things to gradually updated, painting, painting terrible walls, upgrading the bathroom tub showers a little bit.

• 7:40Dave Meyer?

  But none of that's even that hard. Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  It's not. It's, it's like a thousand dollar renovation for a new fiberglass tub or whatever. Like all those things are not anything that are going to break my pockets now. And if I don't want to do it this month, I can wait till next month to do it or when I get a little free flowing money coming in or I get a bonus from my work or whatever like that. So it's not like the pressure isn't on me to get in the house, flip it, make my money and exit before, you know, like all the, the interest rates are weighing down on me. It's like, I'm going to live here and I'm going to be fine as long as it has AC, it has running water, has electric, it's, it's stable. You know, I can get insurance on it, like things like that. It's, it's kind of a no brainer to me.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  What my wife and I did, we bought a house from a bank, the bank foreclosure in a development we wanted to live in and we did the live in, but we didn't flip, right? So we lived in it, fixed it up. And then we didn't want to move because it's a place we wanted to raise our kids and all that jazz, right? So we then put a HELOC on the house because you create that value, right? You buy a house for at a discount, you bring it up to market that creates a delta hopefully and the money you spent to renovate it versus market rates. You've opened up that spread of value. You can either sell it and monetize that value and go roll that up and get a way better house in a bigger area, better neighborhood, all that as you've done, right? Or what my wife and I did was we opened up a HELOC and now we take that HELOC and we've

• 9:04Speaker 02

  lent it out to people with no one in the real estate community through hard money loans. We were currently have that invested in a fix and flip that we're doing right here in the town we live in. So to the bigger pockets listeners, right? Talking to them to the other, to the fourth person in the room here, so to speak, right? If you're telling yourself, well, that's all great, Garrett, but I don't want to move, right? You don't have to. You can go and do exactly what Garrett's talking about and then monetize that value you put in into other real estate transactions and keep living in this house. You've worked hard to create and make it your own, but then take that money and put it somewhere else.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 9:38Dave Meyer?

  Matt, you're not just talking to the fourth person in the room. You're talking directly to me because yesterday I closed on a house and I'm probably going to do just that. I've, we bought it as a potential live and flip, but my wife and I are moving in and we might just stay, you know, like we'll see how it goes, but we might just stay. And if we do, we're probably going to do something similar. Like we bought something under market value. There's good value add opportunity. We're going to fix it up so that we can live in it. If we want to flip it, we'll flip it. If we want to live in it, we'll do a HELOC and we'll, or we'll do a cash out refinance and we'll take some of the equity out and just reuse it. But, you know, I'm talking out of my butt right now because I haven't done it yet. But Garrett, like what you were saying really sort of resonated with me about taking

• 10:23Dave Meyer?

  the time pressure off of flipping because that's kind of one of the reasons I've never really wanted to be an active flipper is like I work full time. So I, you know, staying on top of things like you need to, to be a flipper, to really hit your timelines would be a challenge for me, or at least it would be stressful. I'm sure I could do it, but it'd be stressful. Whereas like you go into these deals, you're like, I'm not going to move for two years because that's when I get my best tax benefit. I'm pretty sure I could handle a renovation. Over the course of two years. So I just think that's a really cool, important part of this that really makes it forgiving. Like it's a really sort of, I think, low risk, high upside kind of investment. And to me, that's, that's what you want to be looking for.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yep. 100%.

• 11:07Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, great deal and story, Garrett. Thank you so much. Matt, we're gonna have to hear yours, but first we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  You might've just heard me talk about my first deal, but my most successful deals actually weren't houses at all the first time. They were tents, cabins, mirror houses in the woods. It's called glamping. It's one of the most underrated real estate strategies out right now. I've taken raw land and turned it into millions and now I can sell it as a business later on with a 3X multiple that you can't get with single family rentals. I break it all down in my new guide for BiggerPockets, The Glamping Investor, which is available for preorder now, coming out July 15. Check out biggerpockets.com backslash glamp guide and you'll be able to get your copy reserved. Happy glamping.

• 11:52Dave Meyer?

  I just booked a backpacking trip through Olympic National Park. Two nights out on the trail, no cell service, nothing to do but eat trail mix and stare at mountains I'll never get tired of. That's the whole appeal. But while I'm off grid, my place doesn't need to sit empty. I can list my space on Airbnb and make a little extra income while I'm away. And with Airbnb's co-host network, I could partner with a vetted local co-host to help take care of the details, from guest communications to onsite support, so I can fully unplug and enjoy my time out in the backcountry. If you've got upcoming travel plans, you can find a co-host at airbnb.com/host.

• 12:34Dave Meyer?

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• 13:19Dave Meyer?

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• 14:02Dave Meyer?

  PropStream gives you access to over 160 million properties nationwide, plus simple AI tools that help you find better deals faster. Use pre-built lead lists like pre-foreclosures, vacant homes, and cash buyers, then let the PropStream Intelligence Assistant help you analyze properties and estimate opportunities in seconds. And now with PropStream Connect, you can do more than just find leads. You can actually contact them. You get free skip tracing, including LLC and corporate contacts. You can launch dialer campaigns, use click to dial with AI prompts, automate follow-up marketing, and send postcards, all from one platform. No experience needed. You'll also get accurate comps, built-in calculators, and step-by-step training through PropStream Academy

• 14:47Dave Meyer?

  so you know exactly what to do next. Start your free seven-day trial and get 50 free leads at www.propstream.com/bp. That's www.propstream.com/bp.

• 15:08Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Garrett Brown and Matt Faircloth talking about deals that defined our investing careers. We heard Garrett's awesome living flip story. Matt, you've been doing this a long time. I can't wait to hear what you've picked. It's the defining deal of your career.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the story I wanted to tell today was a little different, and this happened a few years after Liz and I were involved in the real estate investing space. We'd already gotten married. I had quit my day job to invest full time. We were living off of Liz's income. So, fast forward to 2011. The crash of 2008 was still there. There was still like a lot of great deals that were being done, but how do you finance them? Because the banks were still really skittish, needed to get really creative financing, still people doing short sales left and right and stuff like that. Very different time, and plenty of deals, just no money. Banks were sitting on their hands, and so creative financing was the way to get it done in the early part of 2011, 12, somewhere in there. So, I married up. Liz went to University

• 16:10Speaker 02

  of Pennsylvania, Ivy League school, and she was hanging out with one of her friends from Wharton, yes, I name dropped, from Wharton School of Business, because she graduated in social work, but she took some classes in Wharton, smart enough to go and rub elbows there. So, she's having coffee with one of her Wharton colleagues in that, talking about, you know, what they're up to, and he's now a financial planner. She's working in corporate, but also was just discussing what they're up to in all the different facets of life. And so, my husband's running a real estate investing company, and he says, when I talk about in Raising Private Capital, Dave, he says the magic words, which are, "Real estate investing, that is so interesting. I'd love to do that, too, but I just don't have the time," right?

• 16:52Dave Meyer?

  Well, do you have a checkbook?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. You name having, you don't need time. I got time. Yeah, you got money. It's good. So, she was like, "You should talk to my husband." And so, you know, Matt Faircloth jumps on a train up to Manhattan to go meet this guy, because he's a financial planner up in the big city, right? So, we sit down, and I tell him what we're up to, and by then Liz and I had a reasonable rental Portfolio, couple of single family homes, couple of four unit apartment buildings that we had bought with our money and with our immediate family. Like my parents and her parents were our seed investors on a few deals. And we had also rolled some of our capital, you know, done a deal, rolled it up as Garrett had done, you know, like do a flip, roll it into a rental, that kind of thing.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  So small portfolio and I laid it out what we had done and what we were up to and what our goals were. And he just goes, what if I gave you 50K for your next deal? And I was like, you're, that's a great question. What if you gave me 50 grand?

• 17:50Dave Meyer?

  I'd love to find out.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  How about you just give me 50 grand? Did you bring in cash? No, he was like, what if I invested 50K with you? What if you found a deal and we went half and half and you do, you do all the work and, and I put up the 50 grand to find a deal? And I said, you know what? Let's, let's try that. And so I talked to a lawyer friend of mine. Yeah, sure. They say you do it. You know, you're both active partners. It's not a security because you're both going to be, you know, active to a degree into the project and all that, yada, yada, yada. So I went and found these two little beater townhomes where my, my investing market, my playground at the time was Trenton, New Jersey. And I found these two little townhomes that guys, they were bought, they had, they had a lien on them from Deutsche Bank on both of them for a hundred and $75,000.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  The bank had taken a haircut down to where the wholesaler that I was buying them from was buying it from Deutsche Bank for a lower number. I still don't know what that number was, but I paid the wholesaler 25 grand per house.

• 18:50Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Right? That's, that was the world that it was in 2011, 2012. The Deutsche Bank was willing to take a haircut for off of their $175,000 lien down to where we could buy these two houses for 25 grand apiece.

• 19:03Dave Meyer?

  Okay. I can see how this is a defining, a career defining.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right. So now I got 50 grand from a Wall Street financial planner looking for a home. I got these two little beater townhomes that needed a lot of work, right? The problem is just like, you know, Garrett's fixer upper, I needed some money to fix them up. And so I also had another friend and he came to me around. A month earlier and he goes, you know, I've been doing some rental deals and I've been funding them with a guy I work with who has an IRA. And he's been lending his IRA to me and I've been using this IRA custodian and whatnot. And it's been really good and I've done a few deals. The problem is I also have an IRA, this guy that I'm talking to.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  He says, I have an IRA and the rules don't let me put my IRA into my deals because you're called a restricted party. So you can't do that.

• 19:53Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  He was like, I want to grow my retirement account. I want to put it somewhere else besides Wall Street, but I can't put it into my deals. You know, if you come up with a project, can I lend my IRA to you? And I said, yeah, of course, you know, show me how to do it. And so he showed me how to do it because he'd already done it. So he showed me that how IRA lending works and whatnot. So now I walk in and I've got 50 grand from my buddy's IRA. And a collateralized loan that it is on title with a lien on the property with a monthly payment that he got. Then I've got an equity investor from my, my wife's Wall Street friend, right? Uh, and now I've got a hundred grand. So I can buy these two properties for 50K, which is what we did. I renovated both of them. So all in cost at a hundred thousand dollars, right? 50 grand per door is what my all in cost was.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  I leased them both out for again, another time, 950 bucks for a two bedroom apartment in Trenton, New Jersey. Which was a good, that was good rent for a fully renovated little town home, little, little house, right? But it was also, as we talk about in BiggerPockets, the 2% rule.

• 20:54Dave Meyer?

  I mean, we don't talk about that anymore.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I got the half a percent rule, right?

• 21:00Dave Meyer?

  Right, yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  But it was the 2% rule back then. So I was able to then approach a credit union who they were the ones that were starting to dip their toe in the water. Back then, after everybody got burned, this credit union, which typically does individual loans, like they'll lend to you when you want to buy a car. They'll lend you when you want a HELOC on your house. They'll lend you, you know, for personal stuff, but they were starting to get into business loans as well. And so they were willing to take a stretch on me and obviously they wrapped me and my wife and this, um, Wall Street guy up with a personal guarantee and everything. But they lent us on a valuation of $75,000. So that means I was able Pull out that full 50K, pay off my private lender, get my equity guys money back to him.

• 21:41Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Right? So I then started doing the Burr strategy, which we've heard about on BiggerPockets quite a bit, with other people's money. Wasn't my money. I took the Burr thing with this private investor's money. And then, before you know it, Dave, he's up in Manhattan. I know you used to live in the area, so that's an hour away from Trenton, New Jersey on the train. Right?

• 22:00Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And so, all of a sudden, on the weekends, this Manhattan stock guy is getting his buddies to take the train to Trenton to meet his buddy Matt, who has done this deal with his 50 grand.

• 22:13Dave Meyer?

  Really? He's showing you off?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we're doing windshield tours, man. I'm like, well, we could buy this, we could buy that.

• 22:19Dave Meyer?

  Oh, wow.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Before you know it, me and this guy start doing more, his 50 grand gets rolled up into other, uh, other projects with other friends that he brings down. So before you know it, we're buying duplexes. We buy another four family on the block that Liz and I own, two four families. We buy a third four family with these investors. We eventually roll it up and, uh, and, and, you know, I started doing YouTube videos back in 2013, 14, somewhere in there. I still have a YouTube channel that talks about real estate investing and all that jazz. And me and my new YouTube friends and this group of investors from Manhattan buy a 10 unit apartment building. And then we were off to the races from there, Dave, because I had gotten my head into, this is what it is, putting other people's money to work.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  With it when I'm willing to be the legs and they're willing to provide the money and, and get an equity split for doing the work that we do.

• 23:08Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Well, that obviously sounds like a defining deal. I can see why. Is it, I mean, obviously the returns are great, but I imagine this sort of just opened up a whole new world to you, like of how to be an investor.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:22Dave Meyer?

  I mean, now you've written books on this topic, but it seems kind of like changed your trajectory as an investor and a business person.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I want to speak to the, the, the BiggerPockets listener that's over here saying like, yeah, that's all well and good, Matt, but you can't buy a townhome for 25 grand anymore. You're right.

• 23:38Dave Meyer?

  It's true.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  But it's not about the deal, right? Because people are throwing rocks at it and saying like, well, you can't do that deal anymore. The deal is not. Why I had the pivotal moment and the deal is not why those investors joined me. There's always good deals out there. If you're willing to look and really drill into markets and find deals. I mean, Garrett, you're a realtor, right? There's good deals out today, you know? It's really just about the concept of introducing real estate investing to people that actually did not read Rich Dad Poor Dad and actually do not listen. Their fault. Don't listen to this podcast. There's people out there in our networks as real estate investors that don't understand what we do. And exposing real estate investing to those people, that was my pivotal moment to go to people that don't know what we know.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  That will ask you more questions when you're at the dinner party about like, yeah, I'm a full-time real estate investor or I invest in real estate on the side. The people that started asking questions, they're curious about what we do because they don't know what we know about the space. And they think that Wall Street is the only place that they can build their wealth. They don't know that there's other places they can do it. And that's what my pivotal moment was, is that I know a lot of people that are looking for another way. And if I go out and find deals and I put what I know in front of them and those opportunities, I can do as many deals as I want.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Do you think there was anything in particular that you did that made these investors like excited to work with you or put their money into you? I think that's something even like in my, you know, years of trying to get investors along with some of my ideas. It's usually like some get interested, but I'm like, what's, is there like a magic sauce to get them like besides just the, just, just the screaming deal? You know, the best, you know, the better the deal, the easier it is. But you seem like you were able to kind of get some, you know, investors on board pretty quickly.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Well, it helped that their friend was vouching for me, right? And so I talk about this in raising private capital, that, that getting referrals is huge because you've already broken through a lot of objections and a lot of, you know, when people have objections to investing in something, it's likely because they're not sure, you know, what, what it's going to look like, right? And if one of their friends has already done it, then that dissolves a lot of those things. That's number one. Number two, I made sure that they knew this is my full-time gig, man. This is what I do, you know? I'm a full-time real estate investor. I've already burned the ships. So this is, this is my, this is. My jam. And so I'm going to be, you know, supervising contractors at that time, doing the leasing myself, you know, meeting with the bank, co-signing with them on the loan. So I think

• 26:07Speaker 02

  that them seeing that I was going to be their legs and also that I had a track record and everything like that. That's what I recall. That's what dissolved a lot of any objections that they had. And I mean, you know what, Garrett? People took the train to Trenton with my Manhattan friend, toured around Trenton all day long and said, nah, it's not for me. Yeah. So yet he also be willing to take a no. Not everybody's gonna say yes. A lot of people did that.

• 26:27Dave Meyer?

  Of course.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. He brought dozens of people down. He brought dozens of people down and we produced maybe five, six investors out of all those tours.

• 26:34Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. And that was enough.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's all I need. I'll take all the no's I can, I can get because I know there's a yes in that pool somewhere.

• 26:41Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I think, again, like these numbers might not apply to today's day and age, but the things that Matt did are really applicable to today's day and age. And I think I haven't really done that, but I would imagine that would be a really big difference is going out and starting to work for other people in a way, both in opportunity, but forces you to be a more sophisticated investor too. Cause now you have investor relations. There's like a whole other skillset that you're forced to learn. Yeah. Then I'm sure helps, you know, makes you a better investor.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  That deal wasn't a life-changing deal. The concept was right. Like the deal produced like, you know, 300 bucks in cash flow for each one of us, you know? And that's awesome. Cause that's, you know, mailbox money for him. Yeah. And all that. But it is the concept that he was able to get his money back and reinvest it in other deals and then make 300 bucks and saw the potential here and all the, and all the things. And I was like, you know, hey, the world's my oyster. I can do as many deals as I want with other people's money if I know how to, how to structure things.

• 27:41Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, thanks, Matt. And I will share my career defining deal when we get back from this quick break.

• 27:49Dave Meyer?

  For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple, but honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still, the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI agent helps with SEO, website copy, and email marketing after launch. You get domain, website, email, all in one account. And right now, you can get Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing through

• 28:32Dave Meyer?

  December 14th. So snag Hostinger's services at their lowest prices before the sale ends. Create your website today for just $1.99. Go to hostinger.com/realestate and use code REALESTATE for an additional 10% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing. I just booked a ski trip to Park City and I've already got the whole thing planned out. Five days, first tracks every morning before the crowds show up, my knees reminding me I'm not 25 anymore by the second run, and an embarrassing number of overpriced burritos at the lodge. I don't even care. This is the trip I look forward to all year. But here's the part I actually appreciate. The practical side of my brain kicking in is that my place

• 29:16Dave Meyer?

  doesn't have to just sit there empty the whole time I'm away. I can list my space on Airbnb and bring in a little extra income while I'm out getting humbled on a mountain. And with the co-host network, I'm not the one handling all of it. You can partner with a vetted local co-host who can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even handle the styling. So I get to fully focus on my trip and my place is still working for me the whole time. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host. 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

• 29:58Dave Meyer?

  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 positioned itself as both a simple and a smart option. Whether you're starting with $10 or $10,000, the Fundrise flagship fund makes adding real estate's unique potential for both passive income and consistent growth. Just visit fundrise.com/pockets

• 30:39Dave Meyer?

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• 30:56Henry Washington?

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• 32:04Speaker 04

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 32:38Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Matt Faircloth and Garrett Brown, talking about deals that have defined our careers. And I was kind of on the fence when we were planning this show, which one I would talk about, but I'm going to go with my second deal because my first one was great. But the second one, I actually started house hacking. And I know that's not how most people do it. I actually intended to house hack my first deal. Then I got an opportunity to live in the basement of my friend's grandma's house. And I did that for three years to save money on rent. And I was actually talking to my wife about that. We met while that was still going on. And she was like, you know, I was really a visionary.

• 33:20Dave Meyer?

  I really saw your potential, even though you were living in your friend's grandma's basement at that point. But then I actually moved out of Denver for work and I came back and I was like, okay, now I need a real apartment if I want my then girlfriend to stay with me. So I bought a three unit, actually only one block away from my original building that I had had. So that was awesome because I was able to maintain both properties really closely. But this was the first time I like noticed a really big lifestyle improvement for myself for real estate investing. And I think a lot of times we talk on the show about sacrificing and all the things

• 34:00Dave Meyer?

  that you have to do, which are true to have financial freedom sometime in the future. But I actually think, and for me at least, each deal that I've done has sort of incrementally improved my life. Like that first House. Yeah, I was living in my friend's grandma's basement, but I was making two, 300 bucks more per month. And for me, a year out of college, that was meaningful in my life, that I could actually save money for once. This time, I actually was able to live completely for free. I actually made a little bit of money most months, but I was able to live for free in a neighborhood I really wanted to live in. I was able to, you know, be closer to my friends and I had a really good lifestyle

• 34:42Dave Meyer?

  and was making this incredible financial benefit to myself. Still own this property. It's at least doubled in terms of equity. It's probably the best cash flowing property I still own. And I did all of that through a relatively simple strategy, which is house hacking. And I, the reason it just stands out to me is like, I think when I was first starting, I thought it was like all sacrifice. And to me, this one just was like, actually, you could do this and incorporate it and live a good life at the same time. And that was sort of eye opening to me and has honestly changed my strategy about real estate investing ever since. Like I don't do a lot of deals that are inconvenient to me. I am lazy about it.

• 35:26Dave Meyer?

  I pick deals that are, are support my lifestyle. And I'm lucky to have been doing this for 15 years now, so I don't need to like do the ultimate hustle kind of deals. Still doing live-in flips and that kind of stuff, but I only do deals that, that support the lifestyle I want. I don't want to like push off this like, oh, I'm going to really enjoy myself 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now. Kind of feel like that's the opposite of why you get into real estate investing. And so this deal kind of showed me that that was possible.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  What were you able to get into the deal for? Like, how much down was it and things like that?

• 35:57Dave Meyer?

  So I think it was 620 when I first bought it and I put 20% down. Cause I had gone in between those two deals, gone back to school, gotten a good job, was able to save up some money. And it was listed as a two unit. And I went in there and you know, you're like back the envelope, like, oh, this is pretty good. It's pretty good. It might work. And then I opened this door and they didn't even say, there was just a whole other unit. Wasn't even an opportunity for a unit. They were just. Was a unit that was not listed.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Like opening in Narnia.

• 36:27Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it was. And it's like, well, you know how you go to all these properties and they're always oversold? And then like every once in a while, you're like, wow, you really undersold this one. Those are the deals you want to buy, I guess, because no one else is looking at them. But I honestly, it's been 11 years. I forget what the rents were, but it basically allowed me to live for free. More than covered my mortgage payment and you know, with costs and expenses on any given month, I was coming out probably about even. I think that's the other thing, maybe a good lesson here is like, I wasn't like cash flowing a ton, but that's, that was fine. To rent an equivalent apartment would probably be in Denver at that time, 1,200, 1,500 bucks a month, you know? So that's 15 grand a year, basically that you're saving.

• 37:13Dave Meyer?

  So to me, that was a fantastic choice. I wasted it all at the bar across the street, but it was a good time. I enjoyed it.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Sounds like you picked a good place to live that you actually liked.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Lifestyle, lifestyle benefits.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Hey, pre-marriage, you know, and everyone should live in an environment like that at some point in their life and you did it pre-marriage. So that's good, right?

• 37:33Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Going back to underscore one thing for the listeners to relate to, right? Like anybody, answer this question. What would happen if your housing expenses went to zero, right? You know, if you would, if you have a day job and your housing expenses go to zero, what would you be able to do? What I did was paid off all my student loans and all my credit card debt in two years. Got myself completely bad debt free in two years because of having a good job working for Angus Allran at the time. And no living expenses, right? Like that, that'll do it.

• 38:05Dave Meyer?

  Totally.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  I mean, Dave, you're probably able to squirrel money and do the things and then roll up and spend some money at the bar. I get it, but also.

• 38:13Dave Meyer?

  That was mostly a joke, but.

• 38:16Dave Meyer?

  They had good two for one deals, so I took

• 38:19Speaker 01

  It's networking. You were networking. You were networking.

• 38:22Dave Meyer?

  Exactly, yeah. But no, actually, you raised a good point, Matt, because I paid for my grad school. I was going to grad school also during this time.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 38:31Dave Meyer?

  I did wind up taking out loans for grad school, but I went in-state, so it wasn't crazy expensive. I didn't want to go to a private school or anything like that because you don't have to pay while you're in grad school. But during the two years I was in grad school, I saved up all the money that I needed so that when I was done with school, I just paid off the loan and never paid interest on it, which was awesome. And then the other sort of secondary benefit was it took me about four years between my first and second purchase. I cut it down to two years into for my third purchase, you know, so I was able to just save up money at a faster rate, even with paying to go to grad school, which increased my salary, which allowed me to invest faster and, you know, sort of like started this

• 39:13Dave Meyer?

  whole cycle that I've been on, I guess, since whatever that was, 2014.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  That's brilliant.

• 39:18Dave Meyer?

  Well, this has been a lot of fun, guys. Thank you guys so much. I had a feeling, for everyone knowing, Garrett and Matt did not know each other before this show. We met right five minutes before we started recording, but I had a feeling we'd have fun, and I think that we were right. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Hope you all learned something. These are kind of different experiences, which is really cool, you know, a live-in flip renovation. I guess both Garrett's and mine were owner-occupied strategies, but both things that really sort of set you off, turn the light bulb on for the possibilities. Same with Matt's, right? Turning that light bulb on and seeing different things that you can do with real estate. That's the beauty of this business. It's so incredibly flexible and customizable to whatever you want to

• 40:01Dave Meyer?

  do. And that's the key. Get in, start doing things, learning, not just tactics and skills, but learning what you like, learning what you're good at. And that's how you really start to take off. So Matt, Garrett, thanks again, and we'll see you all next time for another episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 40:49Speaker 05

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