Making $30,000/Month (Per Property) with Assisted Living Rentals

This investor generates $30,000 per month in rental income from a single property. It’s not a short-term rental, or a beachside Airbnb, or anything even close to that. Within a couple of years of starting to scale, James Davis has a rental portfolio on track to gross $1,000,000 per year in rents, from just six properties. The best part? He’s not even doing it for the money. His investments are making lives better while securing him financial freedom. You may have heard of assisted living before, but probably not like this. While many assisted living facilities focus on older adults, James owns small assisted living properties that cater to individuals with disabilities. After taking on two traditional real estate deals, James’s brother, who worked in disability services, thought they could be treating residents better. So, they converted one of James’s properties into a compliant assisted living facility. They got their first monthly tenant—the rent: $15,000 per month for one bedroom. Sounds steep, right? James walks through the entire expenses and profit margins to prove that the caregiving business may be worthwhile, even just for the emotional benefits. Now, he has six properties and has already pulled in $500,000 just halfway through the year. Follow the same steps James shares in this episode, and your portfolio could grow just as fast. In This Episode We Cover How James went from making $16/hour to bringing in $1,000,000/year in rents How much assisted living investment properties make (cash flow!) Locking down a 3.5% interest rate using the creative “subject to” strategy The process of becoming legally compliant for running an assisted living property Why James still buys long-term rentals instead of more assisted living properties And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1156 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?

  This investor makes $30,000 per property per month with assisted living rentals. Is there really no cash flow available for real estate investors these days? Or do you just need to get more creative? Instead of making excuses during a challenging market, today's guest found a formula that tripled his monthly revenue. And now he's repeating it over and over to grow his portfolio and advance towards financial freedom.

• 0:31Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone. It's Dave, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets, and I've been buying rental properties for more than 15 years. Today, I am joined on the show by an investor, James Davis, from Salt Lake City, Utah. And James started his investing career with just $15,000 in savings and was willing to do anything, including living without a toilet for three months just to make his first deal work. Now, just six years later, he owns six properties and is on pace to gross more than $1 million in revenue this year. James has done this by adopting the increasingly popular assisted living real estate strategy. Basically, what he does is provide a needed service to people in his community.

• 1:15Dave Meyer?

  And by doing that, he can generate up to $15,000 in revenue from just a single bedroom in a house that would normally rent for just $2,000. This approach is definitely an active strategy, and so it's not going to be for everyone. But if you're willing to hustle as much as James has, you can radically transform your financial situation in just a couple of years. Keep listening and hear how he's doing it. James, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thanks for being here.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:45Dave Meyer?

  So how long have you been investing or involved in real estate, James?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I got my first property, it was September of 2019. So it'd be almost six years ago.

• 1:56Dave Meyer?

  Nice, okay. And can I ask why? What brought you into the world of real estate?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  So I've always loved watching you guys. I've always, I really liked Graham Stephan and Meet Kevin online.

• 2:07Dave Meyer?

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Growing up in high school, I watched those channels. So I think I always wanted to be invested in real estate. It was just a question of when. And when I was 18, I actually moved out of my parents' place and I was a live-in aide at a nursing home. So what it looked like is I didn't have to pay any rent.

• 2:24Dave Meyer?

  Hmm.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I got to live there. I take care of this, this guy. He was in Vietnam War veteran and I took care of him. He paid for my food and housing and I didn't have to pay anything, which was really nice. Um, so it was a really good setup and my uncle reached out to me. He was a real estate agent. And he was like, hey, I have this property that I think you should invest in. And in my mind, I, I was like, oh, I, I don't pay any rent. I could live here for a while. Like I'll just save more money. I don't need to.

• 2:51Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Buy a property right now. And that was like July of 2019. So he was suggesting like, hey, you just use your savings. You'll have a down payment. It was like a house hack situation where I'd live in the basement and I had a separate entrance and then I'd rent out the upstairs. But it would be like $15,000, which was like everything I had. So I decided, okay, I want to take this on. That was July, August of 2019 and it was actually a seller finance.

• 3:17Dave Meyer?

  Oh, cool.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  And this is my uncle setting it all up. I had no idea any of real estate contracts or anything, how that worked. And I had just graduated high school.

• 3:25Dave Meyer?

  It sounds like you walked into an interesting opportunity with your uncle. So he, he came up with this house hack. I'm curious, which a great way to get started, especially in 2019. I'm sure it worked out well, but did you look at other deals or were you kind of just trusting your uncle? Like this one that he's proposing to me, it's seller financing, you know, like this is a good deal.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I didn't look at anything else. I had, I had completely trusted him and I, looking back, I'm like, wow, I was lucky. And I'm, I'm fortunate that I had someone in my life that cared about me and didn't take advantage of me because he totally could have.

• 3:58Dave Meyer?

  Sure. Yeah. But so was it like in a neighborhood you liked? Did you know where it was? Or you're just kind of like moving into a house blindly based on your uncle's recommendation?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  When I went to the neighborhood, of course, it wasn't the most expensive side of town, but it wasn't terrible either. We call it West Valley over here.

• 4:17Dave Meyer?

  Okay, cool. And so you find this house hack, you got to put 15 grand in. That's all of your life savings at this point. But you're moving from what was your job, right? Cause living with this veteran you were living with. Is kind of how you're getting income. So did you have a new plan for how you were going to make your mortgage payments or were you living for free?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  At the time I was making 16 bucks an hour at a call center.

• 4:41Dave Meyer?

  Oh, wow. And then you were doing DIY renovations to it at the same time?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And this is at the time where I had no idea what I was doing either. And what I had done is I I lived in the basement and had that separate entrance. There was no kitchen, not even a bathroom down there. And then I just I rented the upstairs right away.

• 5:00Dave Meyer?

  Okay, but how did you go to the bathroom?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Uh, it was funny. I I had a gym membership and I had to strategically do that. And I worked downtown at the call center. So I would go to the gym, not to work out or anything. I would just go there to take a shower.

• 5:16Dave Meyer?

  Just use the shower?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And then do everything and then go to work that way.

• 5:20Dave Meyer?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I didn't have a toilet for three months.

• 5:23Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God. I was.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just I didn't have a toilet. I didn't have a shower and it was that was my first goal was to try to get that.

• 5:30Dave Meyer?

  I imagine that's pretty motivating for what you're doing, your DIY. It's like, I gotta build myself a toilet at least.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And then on top of that, so I had the down payment for 15 and I knew I needed about 15 or so in work. And I ended up spending about $12,000 on the renovations because I did all of it on my own.

• 5:51Dave Meyer?

  And how'd you pay for that? Was that just more savings or your income from your job?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  It was my income from my job. So every paycheck, I just threw it at Home Depot, basically, going and getting materials and doing everything. Of course, I I knew how to do something, but then I I had to wait until I could buy what I needed to buy, which was really tough. Especially with like the mental load of the balloon payment coming due.

• 6:16Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Because my uncle was like, hey, if you don't finish it in a year, it's due. And like, if it doesn't appraise, then you can't keep the house, basically. So.

• 6:26Dave Meyer?

  So just so everyone understands, sometimes when you do a seller finance deal, the seller will say, hey, yeah, I'll float you for a year. But I'm not going to amortize this loan over 30 years like a bank. They're basically like, I'll give you a year to figure this out. But in a year, you owe me all your. Money and that's sort of in the form of a balloon payment. And so what James was facing is that in a year, he had to figure out a way to refinance, or I guess the seller could technically foreclose on you, right? Or try to take the property back. But you're also dealing with this thing where you want to go quickly to renovate so you can refinance, but you're using money from your call center job to pay for that. So how long did it actually wound up taking you before you could complete the renovation and get that refi?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  It took me eight months and I think it probably would have gotten done or two in two, maybe if I had the money right away, but I had to do it just paycheck by paycheck. I added a kitchen down there. I added a bathroom. I did all the plumbing, the electrical, everything.

• 7:26Dave Meyer?

  And you taught yourself all that?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a really good book. I think it's called like Home Improvement 123. It's something from Home Depot, actually. My uncle recommended it and I read it and it does like, it shows like all the basic stuff. If you didn't want to go through YouTube, but I used YouTube a ton. And even though it was really hard, I remember being very happy at the time and just being like, I know that this will like help me in the future. I just got to get it done, put my head down and work on it. I didn't, I didn't even have a bed. I had a sleeping bag that I was sleeping on. There was no flooring. It was a concrete floor. And it was just, I was the definition of house poor at the time.

• 8:06Dave Meyer?

  Good for you, man. I mean, that is an unbelievable amount of hustle to get it done. Like you just found an incredibly creative way to get into your first deal and worked your butt off and personal sacrifice for eight full months, basically to be able to do that. Not everyone's going to do it that way, but kudos to you, man. I mean, you took responsibility and you worked your butt off to be able to do that. And hopefully it worked out for you financially. When you were done with the renovation, like what did you have? Cause you had the unit upstairs now. So like, what did the final product look like when you went to apply for the refi?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I had an appraiser come in for the refinance and they appraised it at 285, which means the loan Was eighty percent, I think.

• 8:53Dave Meyer?

  Nice.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  So my mortgage was two twenty, which means I didn't have PMI and I got a three, seven, five interest rate.

• 9:00Dave Meyer?

  Wow, that must have felt good.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did. And it was June of twenty twenty when I closed on the refinance. So I was able to lock in that rate for thirty years on a conventional loan instead of an FHA. And my payment ended up being thirteen hundred with the PITI.

• 9:18Dave Meyer?

  And how much rent were you getting upstairs?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  So during the renovations, I charged eleven hundred, but afterwards I was able to do thirteen hundred.

• 9:26Dave Meyer?

  Oof, amazing.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  The rent covered my mortgage payment.

• 9:30Dave Meyer?

  So after, obviously, eight months of incredibly hard work and sacrifice, you were able to essentially live for free. Now, your upstairs tenant is paying your principal, your interest, your taxes and your insurance. So pretty much your biggest costs. I'm sure there were still repairs and other costs, but given that you just did a big renovation, like at least the basement unit was probably in pretty good shape. And so that's just a home run deal. It's incredible. I hope you still have that three point eight five percent interest rate on that deal.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. And it's still doing really well. And just recently appraised for four forty.

• 10:04Dave Meyer?

  Okay, congratulations. Just want to say like, this just seems like an absolute home run deal. Congratulations on putting in the effort, the time, getting creative and figuring this out. I want to hear where this first deal has taken you and how you went from living without a toilet for three months to now running a multimillion dollar real estate business in just the span of a couple of years. But first, we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Managing rentals shouldn't be stressful. That's why landlords love Rent Ready. You can get rent in your account in just two days, which means faster cash flow and less waiting. Do you need to message a tenant? You can chat instantly in app, so you have no more lost emails or texts.

• 10:47Dave Meyer?

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• 11:07Dave Meyer?

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• 11:49Dave Meyer?

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• 12:34Dave Meyer?

  That's rent, R-E-D-I, dot com slash biggerpockets. Most deals don't fall apart because of the numbers. They fall apart because of the financing. You find a property that cash flows, the deal makes sense. But then, the lender looks at your personal income, your tax returns, your debt-to-income ratio, and suddenly, the deal doesn't qualify. That's the disconnect. Because as investors, we're not buying based on our W2, we're buying based on the asset. That's why Host Financial offers DSCR loans designed for real estate investors, where qualification is based primarily on the property's income, not your personal finance.

• 13:16Dave Meyer?

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• 13:39Henry Washington?

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• 14:23Henry Washington?

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• 14:43Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with investor James Davis. We heard about this amazing house hack he did in Salt Lake City back in 2019. James, after you pulled off this incredible effort of hustle and creativity, what did you do from there?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so actually, January of 2021, I left and I served, it was a mission for my church. So I left and I was living in the Detroit area for two years.

• 15:11Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  So I had family that actually lived in the property and they took care of it while I was gone, while I was there in Detroit. And if anyone knows what a mission is like, you don't really have access to like technology or what's going on in the world. But when I came back two years later, I Saw that real estate values had doubled in my area. So my mortgage was around 220, but yeah, it was around the $400,000 range that it was worth. So I came back February of 2023 and taking the advice from what I've heard from bigger pockets and the other real estate investors,

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I went and I applied for a HELOC. So I got my HELOC approved for $100,000 June of 2023. And then this wholesaler sent me this deal September of 2023 for this single family property that was in, that needed a lot of work, but it was a sub two deal.

• 16:08Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  So the

• 16:09Dave Meyer?

  Interesting.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  The seller didn't have any equity. They bought it back in 2021, but they had two loans on it. So it was the original mortgage plus they got a loan on their down payment. It wasn't a pre foreclosure, but it was getting close to that.

• 16:21Dave Meyer?

  And how do you approach that? When you see a situation like this, like how do you structure a deal that makes sense for you and hopefully for the family that you're taking the mortgage over for as well?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  For this one, what we did, we backpaid all those mortgage payments. So I made sure everything was current and then they got $5,000 too on top of that.

• 16:42Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  So instead of having to come out of pocket, they got $5,000 and I paid for all the closing costs too and the wholesale fee too. So, and it's good for them because they're in this situation. If they tried to sell with an agent, they would have to fix up the property. They'd have to deal with all that and it would be like a several month ordeal probably.

• 17:03Dave Meyer?

  And probably a 6% commission.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So with a sub two, they don't have to do that.

• 17:08Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And that's kind of the selling point because a lot of people don't know about it, especially the sellers. So when you're trying to talk to sellers about sub two, you have to say, hey, this, you get equity, like you get paid to get out of this and you don't have to deal with the payment anymore. And then if I don't make the payment, you can have the place back and all the payments I've made, you can have that too. So that's how I've structured it. And I think also key is having a really good title company that's dealt with it before. And you can reach out to title companies and say, hey, have you ever done sub two deals? Like, have you ever done seller financing? This is what I'm wanting to do. Have you guys had experience with that? And there's definitely escrow officers that have more experience than others. So having those people with experience

• 17:53Speaker 01

  is, I think, really key.

• 17:54Dave Meyer?

  For sure. Yeah, I mean, that's really good advice because with subject two, right? There are risks to both the seller and the buyer, right? Like, for a buyer, there is a risk that the bank could call the note due. What are the risks to the seller? I guess, maybe I should ask you.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the risk to the seller is it's still on their credit. So like, the loan is still there. So if I don't make the payment, it could affect them still. So if someone pulls their credit, they still have to explain, hey, this is a mortgage that, yes, is under my name, but it's a sub two. And they have to prove that if they were trying to get loans in the future. So there are downsides in that way. But I think the pros outweigh the cons where they can get out of a situation that they really don't want to be in anymore.

• 18:37Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And they can get paid to be able to get out of it, which is nice because sometimes with properties that need a lot of work, you almost feel like you're taking advantage of people when you buy them. And I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling like I'm taking advantage of someone's suffering. But with sub two, I feel like you're offering a solution for a really tough situation that they're in. And you're giving them a way out that's creative, that, yes, there are risks, but I got their interest rate, which was three and a half percent in 2023.

• 19:06Dave Meyer?

  I think subject two is sort of a controversial thing. I think as long as you understand the risks and sort of go into it with the mentality that James has, where you are trying to genuinely help someone and create mutual benefit, as long as you understand the risks, work with professionals, as James said, like, work with people who really understand this and go in it with an approach of trying to find a mutual benefit. It is a worthwhile strategy for a lot of people to consider. Make sure that you're not Breaking any laws, doing anything right, but you know, if assuming that you can do it right. Like you said, you can help someone out and you can get an interest rate that's a fraction of what you would get today. If you were just to go get a new mortgage.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And with this one specifically, we had reached out to the mortgage company and said, hey, this is what we want to do.

• 19:51Dave Meyer?

  Oh, that's great.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Hey, it's either you have a foreclosure or we make the payments. And they said, okay, yeah, we do need to call the loan due, but we'll, we'll delay it. So they agreed, hey, we're going to delay 18 months. If the payments are current after a year, you guys can assume the loan.

• 20:07Dave Meyer?

  Okay, that's a great way to do it.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but of course that was with the mortgage company agreeing to it and being kind enough to delay it. But it was in their best interest too.

• 20:17Dave Meyer?

  That's a great way to do it and definitely appreciate you, you know, really dotting all the i's, crossing all your t's and doing this the right way. When you were talking to some of these wholesalers, were you intentionally looking for sub two? Or did you just kind of like come into this deal and then figured out sub two after?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  I was looking for seller finances, but with the interest rates being higher, it was tough to find a deal that I could cash flow with the numbers. Cause I was wanting to buy and hold and doing the long term. And that was my idea back then was to buy the long-term rental real estate. But the numbers just couldn't make sense. So I came across sub two and it kind of came to me, I guess, with that first deal as an option.

• 20:59Dave Meyer?

  Well, you, you've proven yourself, James, to be a very creative and hardworking guy, just from the first two deals that you've told us about. I want to hear more about how you've scaled because I understand that you've really grown a massive real estate business in the last couple of years. But we do have to take one more break. We'll be right back.

• 21:19Dave Meyer?

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• 25:02Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with investor James Davis. James, it sounds like you did your first house hack, you did the Sub2 deal, but since then, in the last two years or so, you've really scaled your business. What have you been up to more recently?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  So my brother reached out to me. He was working for a company that did residential and disability services. There's assisted living for older people, but then there's assisted living for different categories of people too. We went into the realm of assisted living for people with disabilities that are any age. So my brother reached out saying, hey, I work for this company. And one, he didn't really like how it was being run. He was really passionate about the mission where it's like, hey, there's, we need housing for people with disabilities. Of course, there's a business side of it.

• 25:49Dave Meyer?

  Sure.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  But you should look at this. So he sent me what it could look like and the whole licensing process. And I reviewed it with him and it would be really expensive because one, you have to have a long period of time without a tenant at all, where they do tons of inspections and Licensing process and then we have to do so much paperwork.

• 26:11Dave Meyer?

  And you already have to own the property at that point, right?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:14Dave Meyer?

  So you're just sitting on a mortgage and insurance and taxes while you're working with, I assume, the government, state, local government to figure this out?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So we're sitting on it and it's more like I'm sitting on it. And we're doing the licensing process and we started that around like July, August of 2023. So it was actually before I bought the second property when we started. And it took eight months for the whole licensing process where we had to do all the paperwork. And then we finally got approved. Okay, you're allowed to provide services for these types of people.

• 26:49Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  But in this industry, at least in the state of Utah, the way it's set up, it's it's it's similar to like being a real estate agent where you have to fight for clients and like really show that you can take care of them. Me and my brother, actually, after we got the license and we were finally legal to have clients, we got the list of all the caseworkers in the state of Utah and called every single one of them. And it was like 400 called everyone. We're like, hey, we're the a newly licensed provider. If you have a resident, we're ready to take them right away. And of that entire list, we got one person.

• 27:23Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  So we found a client that toured the place and was like, okay, yeah, I want to live here. And that was our very first one. And at that point, my HELOC was at like $50,000. And me, my wife and my brother, we were all working full time and we all took shifts. I'm taking care of this person.

• 27:44Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my gosh. So it's really like one to one care?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So it was 24/7. Someone had to be there 24/7. So we just took care of them. It's similar to having kind of like an infant where they just need that level of supervision. The good thing is the revenue was closer to like $15,000 a month, just from this one person.

• 28:05Dave Meyer?

  $15,000 a month and they're living in one bedroom in your facility?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yep, just one bedroom and we were approved for up to three.

• 28:12Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  So that was the first one and we took shifts and we didn't hire anyone because we really wanted to pay down our debt that we had accrued.

• 28:21Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Just from the vacancy and then from the renovations too. So we did that for about five or six months, just literally taking 10, 12 hour shifts back and forth while we were all working and we just had to work it around our schedules. But after that, we started hiring people and it made it a little bit easier.

• 28:44Dave Meyer?

  I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this thinking 15 grand a month, maybe you can get three tenants at once. It's 45 grand a month. That's an incredible amount of money. Tell us just a little bit about the economics about this because first, are there other expenses like, you know, I assume there's a lot of insurance and stuff that on top of just labor costs, that's a lot more expensive as well?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. You have to have the highest level of insurance for this industry. Like you're taking care of people. So if something goes wrong, the state requires us to be covered. So the insurance requirements are really high. So we pay, it's about a thousand dollars a month just in insurance. The good thing is, is that as you get more clients, that number kind of stays the same.

• 29:22Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  For insurance cost, but when you only have one, it does feel like it's a lot too. For a $15,000 client, you are looking after all of the expenses, probably like 10 or $11,000 a month in expenses. So, but you're probably cash flowing three or $4,000 per person that's living there.

• 29:43Dave Meyer?

  Wow. And just as you scale up, I assume you got more residents over time?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Yeah, we have a lot more now. So we only had that one for like five months, but then as we were doing well, the caseworkers, I guess, noticed and they sent us a little bit more. So right now we're, we're at 13.

• 29:59Dave Meyer?

  13 residents across how many properties?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  So we have four properties right now that are active where we have residents there.

• 30:06Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  So there's residential care, which is that type of assisted living, but then there's something called supported living where they live in a home and then there's a staff that comes and takes care of them. So we have six clients that are residential. Then we have the rest that are supported living. So they're not involved in our real estate portfolio. They're, they're like, they're business.

• 30:30Dave Meyer?

  So how big is this business grow? Like, what is your revenue now?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this year, we're set to do $1 million in revenue, maybe even 1.1 million, depending on how things go.

• 30:41Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And then net out of that, we should be getting at least $200,000 this year. So right about a 20% margin.

• 30:50Dave Meyer?

  That's amazing. Obviously, you know, created a business that you can, I would assume, comfortably live on. I don't know your, your living expenses, but based on the stories you've told me, I assume that you can comfortably live off of that. Can you break that down? Just like, how many units is that? Like, how many properties across?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  I guess it comes out, it's about $83,000 a month that we're getting a total. For the real estate side of things, it's about $70,000 of our revenue is coming just from the properties that we have. So we have four functioning properties. Two of them, it's about like $25,000 to $30,000 a month, because there's about two residents in each one. And their funding is a little bit different. Like, it's not always 15. 15 is kind of on the higher end, if they need a lot of staffing.

• 31:36Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  So for the first two properties, there's $25,000 to $30,000 a month. And then on the other two, they're like just one or two bedroom condos, and those pull in.

• 31:48Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  $6,000 a month each.

• 31:51Dave Meyer?

  And then the, the remaining revenue is from sort of the staffing that you do in other people's properties?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that would be non-real estate related revenue.

• 31:59Dave Meyer?

  Very cool.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:00Dave Meyer?

  I'm curious if you have any advice for our audience here, because I assume a lot of people are hearing your growth trajectory, your revenue, your profit margin, all super impressive. But you're also running a more sophisticated business that's more complicated than buying just a regular rental property. And you're taking care of people. Like, this is a super important role that you are playing. So what kind of investor, what kind of person do you think could succeed with a strategy like yours?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  I think if someone wants to have a choice of how they make their money and they still care about people. Cause it is caregiving in a way where you still have to care about the people. It's not all about the money, even though we wouldn't be able to do it if there wasn't any money. But you do need to care about the people. And if you do care about people, you have a way to take care of people and meet your needs and it's incredibly satisfying. Like I remember working at my job and I hated getting up in the morning. I hated like going to work. I hated like having a boss telling me what to do. I hated having to beg someone for time off.

• 33:05Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And saying like, hey, I want to go do this or like feeling sick and still feeling the need to go to work. Cause you have to suck up to somebody. So like someone that doesn't like being an employee. And I, and I hate being an employee. Like I hate, uh, and I think I'm a bad employee because of that. Like I just, I don't think I'm good at listening to other people.

• 33:25Dave Meyer?

  Well, that's the kind of what I was saying at the beginning. Like you clearly have this entrepreneurial spirit, even in high school, if you're selling stuff on eBay, like there's something about you that wants to take your financial future into your own hands.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. And I feel like a lot of people feel that way. It's just they don't have a vehicle to realize that dream. And this is a way to, to do that where you can use real estate and I love real estate. Um, and a way to fund my lifestyle too, and be able to meet my needs and my family's needs while meeting other people's needs too.

• 33:59Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. I love that mutually beneficial approach, thinking about, you know, creating a business that obviously works for you and your family, but provides value to the people that you are serving at the same time. You've obviously James accomplished a lot in just a couple of years. It's amazing. What are your goals from here?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think we're kind of on the upper end of where we want to be, at least on, on the business side. We might get another property or two, cause we're now we have six. And it was really easy to scale and buy more properties when you, when you just have a lot of money coming in. And we didn't get paid for a really long time because we would just put that money towards down payments and doing more subject twos and doing that. Um, but I think what we would want to do is buy a couple more properties, but we'd still love to have the long-term rental real estate too. Cause I do like the idea of having a tenant that only bothers you every once in a while, instead of every day. And you have someone that is really high maintenance.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Like even though there's more revenue on this side of things, it is nice to have some things really stable.

• 35:03Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Which is what long-term rentals are. So we want to use the revenue that we're getting and the profit to have higher down payments and just buy really good cash flowing real estate.

• 35:14Dave Meyer?

  Makes sense. Yeah, just balance out the portfolio, a little bit higher revenue, higher work. Some is a little bit lower revenue, but lower work. Building like a sort of a portfolio of different properties that have different values, different purposes in your portfolio is I think where most real estate investors want to get. So, thank you, James, for sharing that with us and thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story with us. It was really interesting to hear and I'm sure our audience got a lot out of it.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

• 35:44Dave Meyer?

  And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We appreciate you being here and we'll see you for another episode in just another couple of days. We'll see you then.