Snowballing $20K into 10 Rentals by Doing What You (Probably) Won’t w/Gary Striewski

Would you sell your car, live without plumbing and electricity, and shower at the gym daily to build a rental portfolio? Now, would you do it while having one of the most prestigious jobs on the planet? If you said yes to both, you might as well be Gary Striewski, rental property investor, DIY home renovator, and, yes, host of SportsCenter. Wait… the host of SportsCenter used a bucket as a bathroom while renovating? Yep, but he’s got a good reason for going through the struggle. Working at SportsCenter has always been Gary’s dream job, but when 2020 hit, he knew he needed an alternative income stream. Real estate seemed like the obvious answer, but without much savings and only a car to his name he didn’t have many options to invest. So what did he do? Sold his car, downgraded significantly, and picked up a condo for $20,000 down. Fast forward a few years—Gary has turned that first condo into a full real estate portfolio, including a private ski house that’s soon to be a short-term rental. He’s had evictions, DIY renovations where he lived without plumbing for months, and closings that didn’t go as planned, but with persistence and grit, he’s become an expert investor. Follow Gary’s tenacity, and you can, too! In This Episode We Cover: How Gary turned a $20,000 down payment into ten rental units and a real estate portfolio Gary’s “value-add” renovation that 99% of people would never do themselves A huge tenant mistake Gary made that will cost you if you repeat it Why you should constantly evaluate selling your rentals, even if they’re performing well Whether or not condos are worth it as starter real estate investments Sports stars who (unsurprisingly) love real estate investing And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Apply to Be a Podcast Guest Try REsimpli, The Only All-In-One Real Estate Investor CRM Software That Helps You Manage Data, Marketing, Sales, and Operations Grab Dave’s Book, “Start with Strategy” Sign Up for the BiggerPocket Real Estate Newsletter Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area 10 Hidden Ways to Buy Properties with Huge “Upside” Connect with Gary Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (02:19) 1 Condo to 9 Rentals! (04:06) Base Hit First Deal (08:56) A Big Tenant Mistake (12:48) $60K Profit in 1 Year! (19:17) Living Without a Toilet for a Deal? (25:24) First Short-Term Rental (30:04) ANYONE Can Do This! (32:33) They Invest in Real Estate, Too!? Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1087 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?

  How much are you willing to sacrifice to build your real estate portfolio? You might have seen today's guest at his day job hosting SportsCenter on ESPN, but he still sold his car and lived for months without indoor plumbing just to make a deal work. Keep watching to find out how the man who calls himself the Kimchi Papi has built an incredible New England portfolio, including a four-season mountain vacation home that's about to be paying for itself.

• 0:32Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer and this is SportsCenter. Just kidding, I really always wanted to say that into a microphone. This is actually the BiggerPockets Podcast, where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing. But today's guest is Gary Striewski, who hosts SportsCenter on ESPN when he's not busy building a real estate portfolio in Connecticut and New Hampshire. Gary is here and gonna tell us how he went from owning just a single condo to 10 units in less than two years, while he's suddenly got the urge to start doing home renovation projects in his mid-30s, and which star athletes are also secret real estate investors. Let's bring on Gary. Gary, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thanks for being here.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Dave, I gotta tell you, man, I've done a lot of cool stuff in my career, and I'm not just saying this because we are in present company. This is like the most excited I've been to hop on a show or a podcast like in a very, very long time.

• 1:30Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. I'm excited to have you here. And I think a lot of our audience probably recognizes you. But for those who don't, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you've been up to in addition to being a real estate investor?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, obviously, you're referring to the people who recognize me as being the Polish sportscaster on...

• 1:52Speaker 01

  On any given network, depending on where regionally you're listening from, from Denver, I spent that good handful of years in Boston, embedded with the Boston Red Sox. And now I continue to live out my dream of hosting SportsCenter on ESPN. So I am joining you from West Hartford, Connecticut, which is about 20 minutes away from the worldwide leader here in Bristol, Connecticut.

• 2:19Dave Meyer?

  All right, so you have a very cool job, full-time, working at SportsCenter. You do a lot of other stuff as well, but that's one of your main gigs. How are you a real estate investor? How are spheres crossing right now?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  You know, you mentioned having the dream job. I think everybody sort of came to a halt in COVID, you know, summer of 2020. I was fortunate enough to still be going into the studio hosting my programs, which was predominantly SportsCenter Snapchat at the time. But everything was parsed down. There was skeleton crews working on every show. So I found myself having a lot more extra time than I previously had, and I was looking at a small chunk of savings that I had built my way up to. And I just knew I had to do something with it because the 13 cents of monthly interest just wasn't going to cut it if ESPN unfortunately had to, you know, cut some of their on-air people. Fortunately, that didn't have to happen, yet still it definitely piqued my interest in

• 3:15Speaker 01

  finding something else to do. And real estate was an immediate option because about two years prior, I purchased my first house when I got the job at ESPN. One thing led to another, got my real estate license, found a condo, deployed the 20,000 bucks I had saved up to that point. And the rest is history. I scaled up to nine doors in about two years, and I have a pretty, pretty good, pretty healthy portfolio five years later.

• 3:41Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Good for you. Super cool story and super relatable. I think I imagine a lot of people look at working at ESPN, dream job, but at the end of the day, it's still, you know, a corporate job. I'm sure it's a good corporate job, but people, regardless of where you're working. Want that sense of security, that, you know, ownership and able to sort of control your own destiny. I think that that motivation seems to be true for almost everyone. So Gary, tell us a little bit about your, your first deal. Was it a rental property?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  It was. Yeah, it was a, um, just a small two bed, one bath condo in Hartford, about 15 minutes away from where I'm at. And it's, it's funny because I distinctly remember my real estate agent Cynthia at the time telling me when I closed, she said, hey, remember this process because this is the easiest it will ever be for you. This is going to be the easiest seller that you dealt with because he was selling it. It was in the family. They were getting rid of it. It was turnkey. It was beautiful. It was immaculate. They negotiated the price. They worked with me on it. They pushed back the closing. They reduced the price when something came up a little bit later. So for my first real estate transaction, I was like, oh, if they're all like

• 4:53Speaker 01

  this, why didn't I get into this sooner? And I'm so glad that Cynthia put that perspective on me because my second property was the complete opposite. As it relates to that first condo, you know, I bought it in Hartford, which by the way, is like a top five busy market as of like the last two years. I bought this in June of 2020. I think it was $73,000 and I immediately got it in circulation in a program here locally that helps families get back on their feet. Not quite section eight. Um, it's a little bit more hyper intensive, hyper focused program. And I had that tenant, um, and there I believe by the time I sold it in late 2022, she was still there. So that brought me a little bit of peace knowing, hey, we were able to stabilize this person's

• 5:37Speaker 01

  life and then go on to the next one, which was a second condo that I purchased in Bristol. About four months later, I bought my first deal in June of 2020 and I closed my second deal by October of the same year.

• 5:50Dave Meyer?

  That's great. Tell me a little bit about why you picked a condo.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  So I was looking at anything that was turnkey. Again, I only had $20,000 saved up, up to this point. So it wasn't anything, you know, that I was going to be able to bite off a big chunk. You know, I was single at the time, no kids. So I was able to sort of deploy all of the money that I had in a sense and, and sort of take this risk. But I didn't want to be taking too big of a risk, a single family or a multifamily. Again, this was my first sort of dive into the real estate investing world. So I kind of just wanted to take a couple nibbles at it, make sure I liked it. First of all, I could handle it and then sort of expand to more single family, more multifamily, which I now have a couple of each in my portfolio. It checked all the boxes too.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  You know, the, the 1%, it checked that. Um, you know, there was no cap X. I, I was doing all the, the condo riders and all of that stuff had been taken care of. So this was very, very much low risk, low maintenance, so to speak, and uh, just an easy first deal for me.

• 6:55Dave Meyer?

  I think that's such an important key for people to think about here because everyone wants to hit a homerun or grand slam on their first deal. And for me, as long as you learn something and you are not taking on excessive risk, that's the main goal. Because yeah, at, at a certain point in your career, you can take on more risk. And if you have a solid portfolio, like you have now nine deals and one of them isn't performing up to, up to par, that's okay. But you need to live to see that second deal, the third deal. And so having that first deal, even if it's condo, that's going to be a modest deal. Sounds like for Gary and for a lot of people, this just sort of is the first building block that you can use to get to your second deal, your third deal.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I think to your point, like buying that first condo, I think what was more value for me than anything I got monetarily, you know, obviously it was performing in the black. It checked all of the boxes. Um, was stuff that I learned, you know, that you don't learn until you're in it. My very first night, Dave, my very first night renting to this tenant, she called me and I was working nights at the time. I pulled into my driveway at midnight and she texted me, it was like 11:55. Hi Gary, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I was moving all my stuff in today. I lost my key. The very first.

• 8:14Dave Meyer?

  Reality check, immediate.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  She texted me at midnight and I was like, all right, I've come too far. I gotta go give her a key, dude. It was nuts.

• 8:22Dave Meyer?

  It just shows even your first, like even when the closing goes as well as possible, no plan stands up to operating a rental portfolio. You can't plan for it. You just have to be flexible.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I learned more in the life lessons of that first deal and continue to learn more than, than any monthly check, honestly.

• 8:40Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. All right. So glad to hear that that first property went well. I want to hear more about how the second one sort of reversed itself. Maybe it was a bit more of a challenge. But first we have to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Summer bookings sound great until someone slips by the pool, gets hurt on your dock, or damages your property during a long holiday weekend. A lot of short-term rental investors don't realize their standard policy may leave gaps when it comes to short-term rental activity. That's why investors use Steadily. They offer landlord insurance built for real estate investors, including short-term rentals. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, you'll also get 5% off your landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to learn more.

• 9:24Dave Meyer?

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• 12:13Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. We're here with Gary Streiski talking about his blooming rental property portfolio. We talked about first one went pretty well, but you hinted at this before, Gary, that the second one was sort of the opposite and more of a challenge. Tell us about it.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  And it's funny, Dave, because I still have this one in Bristol, but after I closed on my first in June, I was hooked. I had the bug. I was like, how do I get another one? So I sold my car because I got rid of my savings. So I sold the Jeep that I had, my 2012 Wrangler. I sold it outright. I sold it for $19,000 and I used that money to spend $1,500 on a 2007 Toyota Prius in the middle of summer that didn't have AC because I was like, I am all in, dude. I'm a grinder. So I bought a condo in Bristol. Legitimate stone's throw from the ESPN studios because I thought to myself, okay, cool, I'm going to like give back to this company that hired me. So I'm going to rent this out to somebody moving in and starting a job.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I'll keep the rents low. It's a lower priced zip code. So I listed this thing in October of 2020 and Dave, this is, you hear the horror stories about listening to and falling for, as I'm using my quotes, some of the sob stories that you get in the real estate field. So it was a, it was a, it was a young man who was relocating his family. He had a young son and his girlfriend was pregnant. He was like, hey, I'm just trying to give my family a better life. We're relocating from the Bronx to Bristol because we have family here. I don't have a job, but here we go, Dave. Here we go. First red flag. First red flag. I don't have a job. Okay, whatever. You're relocating. You'll get one. Second red flag. I'll give you 10 months

• 13:55Speaker 01

  prepaid rent in cash. And listen, man, I'm four months removed from my first deal. So I'm like, wait, you're going to give me $11,000? When can you move in? So

• 14:06Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  So thinking to myself, and you know, I'm a guy who's worked since I was 14. I'm like, certainly, especially with two kids, you'll find a job between now and the 10 months before your next rental payments due. So anyway, I, I did use that chunk of cash to buy my first multifamily. We'll get into in a second.

• 14:24Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  But certainly 10 months came and went. Hey, you got a job yet? Oh no, just this and that, this reason, that reason. So Dave, I think I gave him October. It was 10 months. So we got to October of the next year. I had to, I ended up evicting him of, in August of 2022. But it was just one of those, again, situations where I probably learned more in the experiences that I dealt with, with this particular renter than any money that he initially would have prepaid me, you know?

• 14:56Dave Meyer?

  Right. Yeah. I imagine it's disappointing because it sounds like your first deal, you were able to provide housing to someone who needed to get back on their feet. That's, to me, I think one of the more valuable, rewarding parts of being a real estate investor. And you want to continue that and offer that to people. But it's a fine line and it's hard to figure out how to be generous and

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 15:18Dave Meyer?

  give people a chance, but also to protect yourself.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:21Dave Meyer?

  As a business, you know, you can't take on other people's financial problems as your own.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm, I'm one of those guys who My heart on my sleeve and I'll, I'll listen, you know, every, everybody is innocent until proven guilty. And I will trust anybody. I always give everybody the benefit of the doubt, whether it's in this field or my professional field or just personally. But I am, I definitely get it from my dad. As soon as the trust is betrayed, or you give me a reason, a solid reason to know that this is your character. Then it's like, okay, cool. I got my lawyer. I got the sheriffs. What else do we got? What, what else do we need to do? So I eventually got him out and I'm happy with my guest that I have in there. Now she's been with me for, uh, four years now because she started at that multifamily.

• 16:04Dave Meyer?

  That's great.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:05Dave Meyer?

  So I'm glad that you, you figured that out and were able to get, get a better situation for yourself and were able to find a new tenant there. You said that you bought a multifamily. Was that one also in Bristol?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It was. Yeah. It was, uh,

• 16:19Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  June of 2021 is when I purchased this traditional two family. And, uh, I, I legitimately used the funds that I got from that second condo, that chunk of cash. Could I have bought a car that had AC? Of course I could have done that, Dave, but that, but that would not have tested the true grit of somebody who wanted to make it in this real estate journey.

• 16:40Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. You need, you need some of these stories to like hang out with real estate investors. You need some like bravitas to explain like this, the, all the sacrifices that you went through, all the luxuries you gave up.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's the, yeah, that's the easy one. Wait till, wait till we get to the story about my second multifamily flip, a live-in renovation where I was using a five gallon Home Depot bucket to,

• 17:01Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  You can finish the rest. So I, I did.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  I'm built different, man. So I purchased this two family in Bristol. I got a great deal on it. And one of your most recent episodes, it, it was, it's really good. It's 10 ways to find hidden value in properties.

• 17:19Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  And this sort of checked all of the boxes. The, the owner was relocating states. They had the U-Haul packed up, ready to go during the showing, basically. And then the bottom unit had been there for a while in severely under market rent. So I saw a couple of different avenues to really bring this thing sort of up to market. Yeah. In in in my standards, um, I gave them the option when I eventually took the property over. Said, hey, you're, you know, fifty percent of market rent. And I took out the, um, fair market rent figures at the time. And I said, you sit on it for a week. I would love to have you guys stay. Let me know what you think is a fair increase. I love that. Yeah. So I sort of, I sort of took my hands out of the equation just to, you know, give them the decency.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  They've been there for three, four years. I didn't want to come over here and just start ruling with an iron fist. So I'm glad that they actually gave me a figure that was actually higher than the figure I was gonna propose. And then the, the day of closing on this particular unit, again, they were out of state. South Carolina, they had moved. And during my walkthrough inspection, we went to the basement, my real estate agent and I, and the basement was wall to wall junk. I mean, you name it. It was there. Pallets of dirty laundry and bags, paint, thinner, liquid, old bikes. I mean, you name it, Dave, and they left it in the basement. So I, a little bit more seasoned now. I'm like, okay, this is my fourth or fifth deal. I know how to handle these things at closing. I'm not gonna close. Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  They're out of state. They gotta do something about this. So we reached out to them, Dave Close, and said, hey, this is, this is unacceptable. You know, this, this is not an acceptable way to, uh, hand over the keys, essentially. And they're like, well, what do you want us to do? We're out of state. And I was like, I don't know, but you're gonna pay to get this. Sure. Get this, uh, cleaned up. So eventually I walked away with thirty five hundred dollars at closing. Oh, nice. To pay to have somebody come out there and clean it. With the extra money, I actually had enough to replace all of the appliances in both units. So a way to add value kind of off the bat. Total win. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And then, so I bought that in June of twenty twenty one, and I actually sold it a year later, because that's when, Dave, I started to see. The real market start to explode.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  God, I sold it for like 80,000 more than what I purchased it for.

• 19:33Dave Meyer?

  Wow, yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Net.

• 19:34Dave Meyer?

  After commissions, you're still walking with that or that was before commission?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I think I walk with mid 60s, but after a new roof, new appliances, I put a French drain in the entirety of the bottom. Cause this house was built in like the late 1800s.

• 19:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  As you know, everything in New England is like, if you found a house that was built in the 50s, you have a new build.

• 19:52Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, that's, that's basically new construction.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  For sure. So again, certainly some good learning situations in that two family. But again, I wanted to exit at the top of the market and I think we did a good job at doing that.

• 20:05Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I'm curious about that because a lot of the orthodoxy in real estate investing is just buy rentals, hold on to them forever, never sell them. So you mentioned selling your first condo. Now you sold only after a year, it's a pretty short hold period. Why? Was it just better opportunities elsewhere?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bought that for 160. I think I got two, high two 40s a year later.

• 20:27Dave Meyer?

  Pretty compelling.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was after I brought it to market rent and I modernized it in a way where the next buyer, whether it was going to be owner occupied or you know, a rental investor like myself, they weren't going to have to worry about the, the capex on it. With the major systems having been replaced and that's still my mindset as an investor right now is I, I'm definitely a buy and hold. I would not label myself as a flipper at all. I do look at myself as, as a long-term hold, long-term portfolio building investor. So those are the only two instances I actually sold properties because I got in so low and I saw the market doing what it was doing. In these particular markets, the Hartford condo and then the Bristol two family, that it would have been silly to kind of hold on to that.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  And take X amount of years to actually see those gains.

• 21:15Dave Meyer?

  Listen, I'm a buy and hold investor also, and I, I think it makes a lot of sense to hold on to these things. But especially early in your investing career, a good strategy is to try and just build up your equity as quickly as possible.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:28Dave Meyer?

  Cause then you just have more. Capital. Yeah. Where you can place bets because I made this mistake early in my investing career. I bought a four unit. It was my first deal. I held on to that for four years before doing anything and had built up a ton of equity that I was super proud of, but I could have been buying more deals. And if I had traded it out or refinanced it, probably could have scaled a lot quicker. And so I get the sentiment and I think people should think about holding on to properties when, especially if, you know, appreciation slows down, you're not building equity as quickly. But I appreciate Gary that you're sort of looking at each property that you buy individually and not sort of sticking to some dogma like, oh, I buy and I hold on to forever.

• 22:10Dave Meyer?

  But doing that work that every investor should be doing of continuously reevaluating, is this the best use of my money? Or is there somewhere that I could take my money and put it to a higher and better use? I want to hear what you did with that money, but first we got to take a quick break.

• 22:30Dave Meyer?

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• 23:15Dave Meyer?

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• 25:38Dave Meyer?

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• 26:20Dave Meyer?

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• 27:49Dave Meyer?

  All right, we're back talking about Gary's portfolio here. And Gary, I, I need to ask you, you got a property on House Hunters, right?

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have my, uh, gosh, my second multifamily, which ended up being a side by side duplex, which I still have in my portfolio. It's one of my better performing properties.

• 28:08Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  It's my baby. This is the one, Dave, where I felt like, okay, I've earned the badge of property investor, of real estate investor.

• 28:17Dave Meyer?

  Is this also in Bristol?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  This one's in West Hartford.

• 28:19Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  So this one is, was in West Hartford. It was a probate property. So unfortunately, the owner had passed away. He, he didn't live there. He was renting it out, out of state. One side was updated about a decade ago. The other side hadn't been touched. They were both rented out. One, obviously, a little bit higher than the other, given its condition. So when I took it over, one side stayed for a couple of months. Two brothers, cool dudes, follow each other on Instagram, talk about golf all the time. The other side was the side where I saw, again, to your, to your point, the added value proposition, which was, let me modernize this. It's in West Hartford. It is in one of the most desirable zip codes here in Connecticut. This is my first official house hack, too. So I completely demoed one side.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And because it was me, just by myself and my dog homie, who's my absolute road dog, she lived with me through all of this. Dave, I'm telling you, dude, I didn't have running water for two months. I didn't have electricity.

• 29:17Dave Meyer?

  You're on TV. What do you do? You just shower at work?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Dave, I gotta tell you, man, I, uh, not to get TMI or anything, but I had, I had everything down to a T. All right, I had my to-go bag, my gym bag with me at all times, and I would go to the gym at night.

• 29:31Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Okay, so do my thing, shower at the gym, go home. I did have my utility sink in the basement that was working.

• 29:38Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  So I would brush my teeth at home, but when I would wake up, you know, hey, make your calls, got a little bucket, fill it up, dump it in the utility sink in the basement. Um, and then I would get ready for my day at work. I would sometimes go to the gym at work and... You know, fortunately ESPN's campus is adorned with some, you know, some of the nice creature comforts.

• 29:58Dave Meyer?

  I would hope so.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Had a nice little private shower. But yeah, for about two months, I was living out of my gym bag.

• 30:04Dave Meyer?

  And what were you doing to the property?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Everything. And this was the property that was on House Hunters that I eventually settled on. So new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, demoed a wall. It was just short of, I guess, a complete, a complete teardown.

• 30:18Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Once I got that up and running, you know, I lived in that property until about June of 2023, when I bought this single family that I'm in right now. And I sort of did the same thing.

• 30:29Dave Meyer?

  Did you bring the same bucket to?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  The buck, the bucket.

• 30:33Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  The, but it's.

• 30:34Dave Meyer?

  The famous bucket.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Dave, it's very clearly marked as to not be confused with like my vacuum attachment bucket. Or, you know, any, any other kind of bucket.

• 30:45Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, like a biohazard sticker, like you see it.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  That was a funnel.

• 30:48Dave Meyer?

  All over it. Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a.

• 30:50Dave Meyer?

  Wow. So wait, I didn't, I didn't know about House Hunters. So you were a buyer? Like you, you got shown three properties on House Hunters and this is the one you picked?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what's funny? Every single person on the crew, including the director and the producer, were like, not a single person watching this episode is gonna think you're gonna pick this house. And I was like, it's not that bad of a house, dude. What do you mean?

• 31:15Dave Meyer?

  Makes good TV though.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 31:16Dave Meyer?

  I'm sure they love it.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  It gave me a complex. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Should I not be buying this? Is it that big of a dump? They're like, once they see the house you're coming from, which is my first house, my baby that I bought in 2018, and what I did to that property compared to this house and the disrepair it's in, there's no way anybody in their right mind is gonna think you're picking this house. So I was like, okay, well, it's gonna be one hell of a twist when I pick this house.

• 31:44Dave Meyer?

  Did they set it up though, that you were an investor? Or do they present it like you're just buying for your, for your primary residence? Cause it was your primary, but did you get the chance to explain that you're trying to?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:56Dave Meyer?

  Do something bigger here than just live in it?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  And they, and they did sort of set that up with the background, like Gary Striewski, he's young, he's ready to take the next step in his life. He wants to put himself in a position. So when his parents get older, and that really is a big reason why I, I do. Do this is, you know, my parents mean everything to me. Um, they gave me every opportunity that they never got, you know, growing up. My dad was in the army. He joined the army when he was seventeen and then became a Colorado State Trooper. And then my mom moved here from Korea after meeting my dad when he was in the army. So she gave up everything to come raise a family. So I guess you could say it's sort of pressure to like not mess it up. You know, I don't want to screw it up for all the sacrifices

• 32:41Speaker 01

  they made for me. So a big part of that story was, you know, hey, he's trying to put himself in a position financially where one day he'll be able to take care of his parents in the same way they took care of him. And all of that is a hundred percent true. So that's, that's pretty much the storyline that we, that we kind of presented on the program.

• 33:00Dave Meyer?

  That's awesome. I'm always curious what it's like. I, I am also a junkie of House Hunters.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:05Dave Meyer?

  I just love it. I love, you know, I don't know if you know, but I lived abroad for a while.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:10Dave Meyer?

  So I love House Hunters International. That one really gets me going. So it's, it's a lot of fun. It's awesome that you were able to be on it.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I remember you calling in on previous episodes, talking about living abroad and living in Europe. And I'm like, dude, when's this guy getting back to the States? How is he managing a portfolio from not just across an ocean, but like multiple different time zones?

• 33:31Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Dude, I just bought my first house in New Hampshire and I feel like it's in fricking Siberia.

• 33:36Dave Meyer?

  But honestly, once you're far enough away that you can't drive there, it kind of, it's all the same.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:42Dave Meyer?

  At least that's how I feel about it. You know, once I was moved abroad and I was like, okay, I'm nine time zones away, so I have to be completely reliant on other people. That's true if you're three hours away or nine hours away. Uh, at least that's how I see it. I actually wanted to ask you about that though, because I've seen on social media, you've been posting this place in New Hampshire. Is this a, it's like a short-term rental though, right?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is the Tipsy Moose and this is my.

• 34:07Dave Meyer?

  Is that the name of the property?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  That's the name of the property. It's my new endeavor. Um, I fell in love with this particular area, which is about three hours north of me. So I it is actually my my second home.

• 34:17Dave Meyer?

  Oh, nice.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Up there more than I am here in Connecticut. But because I do split my time, I'm gonna make this um my first foray into short term rentals and I'm actually super excited about it. You know, it was it was strategic in not opening this thing up to outside rentals immediately because I do, Dave, like, want to familiarize myself with the area.

• 34:39Dave Meyer?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  I don't want to be the guy who buys a house and then the next week pisses off all the neighbors because they're seeing all of these out of state license plates. So I do kind of operate, I think, with a little bit of hopefully empathy and some decorum for my neighbors. And I've ran the figures. I've met with the property management companies. I I actually just agreed to team up with one um last week. So

• 35:01Dave Meyer?

  Nice.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're looking at second quarter of twenty five, having this thing up and ripping.

• 35:06Dave Meyer?

  Oh, nice. What's the draw? Is it White Mountain skiing? Why do people go up there?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of it. If you're familiar with the Lakes region, this is actually on Gunstock Mountain. So I'm about sixty seconds from the entrance of the ski mountain.

• 35:19Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  So wintertime, you have the skiing, which is great. And then summertime, you're five minutes from actual beachfront. So it it it quite literally is a four seasons rental. But for me, being from Colorado, growing up skiing, I wanted to get back to having the ability to ski.

• 35:35Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  So uh, actually going up there after the pod today and uh, hanging out with the girlfriend for a couple of days. We're supposed to get like seven inches of snow here.

• 35:43Dave Meyer?

  That's super fun. I mean, honestly, one of the reasons uh, I picked to move to Washington from Amsterdam is to be able to ski.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:50Dave Meyer?

  I miss it. Once you live in Denver, Colorado, it's pretty hard to give it up.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 35:54Dave Meyer?

  Such a nice part of life. And at least for me, like, I love being outside and having something to do outside in the winter is just such a big draw. So totally understand that. I'll tell you, though, man, I I bought a ski house uh, in Colorado that I use part time, but it's mostly a short term rental. It definitely changes it a little bit when you're renting it out to people.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Dave Meyer?

  I'm just, yeah, do you? How do you feel about it? You know, because you buy it as a second home, you want it to feel like your own home, but then people are also in it. It it. Are you worried about that at all?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  You know, if this thing is rented out a third of the month. Just to help offset or offset completely the mortgage. That's a win for me because as you mentioned, it was one of my favorite episodes. That's why I keep referring to it. I mean, it's just a forced savings account for me.

• 36:38Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  At this point, and that's probably a top three viewpoint. I see my entire portfolio, which each one of these properties is just forced savings.

• 36:46Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  So I don't have to be, you know, net positive, anything. As long as I'm chipping away at the principal, I'm okay with it.

• 36:52Dave Meyer?

  Totally, man, especially that that personal use, not every deal needs to be a home run. It's the same idea.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 36:58Dave Meyer?

  The whole point of real estate investing is to better your quality of life, right? So if your quality of life for you is being able to enjoy this property, that's what you should be doing.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  And I will say this, it is cool because I kind of have become three things at ESPN. I think outside of me just checking a SportsCenter host box. I'm definitely the real estate guy at ESPN.

• 37:20Dave Meyer?

  That's fun.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I'm kind of the watch guy at ESPN as well, as well as like the motorsport car enthusiast at ESPN. You're like, okay, typical dude, like, okay, oh, wow. You like sports cars and watches and real estate. But it does serve a professional purpose. And when people want to have a conversation with me outside of sports and I've, I've found myself connecting with, you know, athletes or coaches or people in our industry more and on a more fair playing field, talking about other stuff, i.e. real estate, you know, than sometimes sports. And it's, it's like the ultimate flex when they're like, oh, you have a, you have a ski house? And I'm like, yeah, anytime you want to use it, just let me know.

• 37:58Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Just pay the cleaning fee and it's, I don't know, it's like so cool. I guess middle school Gary would have never thought that I have like a, a ski and lake house to be able to offer that to my friends and families and coworkers. But, you know, here we are.

• 38:10Dave Meyer?

  It's super rewarding. I, I love it. Yeah. I just was able to do like one of my oldest friends have a family reunion at one of my properties.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 38:18Dave Meyer?

  Just pay the rental place. Yeah, it's like.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  You can't put a price tag on that.

• 38:21Dave Meyer?

  I was like really proud of it. I lost money on it and I was like, this is awesome. I get to help out my friend, you know, like, and, but that's super cool. I, I think that's a. One of the, uh, one of the really nice parts of like the second home, short-term rental part of the industry for sure.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:36Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, I'm actually, I was curious about that. You mentioned this, just like you do a lot of stuff. You, you're interested in watches and motorsports and sports and stuff. Like when you, you know, you have a big social media personality. Do you, do you feel like people resonate with real estate? Cause for me, it's just, it seems like people just get it intuitively, that it's like something people want to talk about, they're interested in. Um, so I'm just curious like how that's sort of developed your professional life. You, you mentioned a little bit, but I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit more.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  All the time. Um, again, I mentioned, I, I turned 38 in January and it's weird. I don't know if it was like this for you, Dave, but when I turned 30, something like a switch just flipped and I was like, I want to build a fire pit. I want to put up a fence. I want to learn how to wire up, you know, small, low voltage electrical. And I, and I did, you know, my first home was like my first project and I have this before and after of my backyard being in complete, it was a jungle. And I think posting pictures and videos of that, to your point, really does resonate with just

• 39:42Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  the average person. Like you and I, everybody listening, we're never going to know what it's like to be Jalen Hurts and win Super Bowl MVP or be LeBron James and dunk a basketball. But we all know who operate in this space, that first feeling of a closed deal or that first time, you know, an investment really paid off or a risk you were willing to take in any sort of facet, you know, ended up paying dividends if it's literal or figurative. And I think that's just sort of, you know, the, the common ground. I, I, I see myself as a bridge in my professional job of what happens in sports. And describing that and telling that and connecting that to the people who enjoy the sports and I'm just sort of the human bridge to make that connection.

• 40:28Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And I sort of see myself as the same in those other facets that interest me, i.e. real estate.

• 40:34Dave Meyer?

  That's super cool.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Just the friendships and relationships that I've started and had all through real estate has been awesome.

• 40:40Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it really is nice. It's I never expected that when I got into real estate, that it would be like a source of social connection and personal fulfillment beyond just making money, but it really is. And I mean, that's what BiggerPockets has always really been about. But you see it all over the place, just in in local connections, local meetup groups. It's it's really, I think, one of the most underrated parts of this business is that it can actually just be fun.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 41:05Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, on this topic of personal connections, are there any interesting sports personalities or other anchors or people at ESPN you've met who are like low key into real estate?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 41:16Dave Meyer?

  You know?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Really? I mean, when Alex Rodriguez was at ESPN and he was buying, you know, these massive syndications and funding all of these massive apartment and condo developments, I just wanted to get, you know, his ear for five seconds to be like, hey, hey, A-Rod, hey, dude, A-Rod, if you if you need like, if you need some capital, like, I got, I got some money. But it is cool, because I've actually connected with a lot of athletes that I grew up watching, quite frankly.

• 41:45Dave Meyer?

  That's so cool.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Who found their way into real estate and we just sort of have like a friendly relationship. I have one funny story. Former outfielder Gary Matthews, Jr.

• 41:54Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Uh, he played out West, played for the Angels. We have the same name. And I believe he saw me on House Hunters and we connected via Instagram. And it's just one of those like goofy connections that this guy's a former professional athlete. I cover sports, but our connection was my real estate investment.

• 42:14Dave Meyer?

  That's awesome. Yeah, it's very cool. It really is amazing how many people are interested in it.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:19Dave Meyer?

  Well, Gary, thank you so much for joining us today. This was a lot of fun. Enjoyed chatting with you about real estate. Hopefully we'll have you back sometime to hear more about how the portfolio is developing over time.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Dave, much appreciated. This was bucket list stuff for me. I had a really good time, man. Thank you so much for allowing me to come on to your show and chop it up a little bit.

• 42:39Dave Meyer?

  Absolutely. And thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. We'll see you again in a few days.

• 42:47Speaker 03

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