Regular Investor Makes $1.5M by Recognizing This Rare “Upside” on Her Rental

Imagine making $1,500,000 on one regular real estate deal. We’re not talking about a huge apartment complex or commercial real estate investment. $1,500,000 on a single-family home purchase. How is that even possible? Dina Onur is more than a million dollars richer after spotting one rare real estate investing “upside” at the closing table. And the best part? She’s just a regular, everyday investor. Dina runs her own home healthcare business and is a mom of three, but she decided, “I’m not busy enough; let’s start buying (and renovating) rentals!” So, that’s exactly what she did. Her clients routinely had houses to sell, so instead of passing them along to real estate agents she knew, Dina made the jump, buying a triplex to test her hand at rental property investing. She did a BIG renovation but created some serious sweat equity as a result. The next rental? Double the size—a six-unit investment property. But, none of these compare to the one deal that is making her over a million dollars. This was such a rare find that Dina was offered hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price to sell it to other investors. She refused, and if you can find a property like hers, you too could make a seven-figure profit on your next real estate deal. In This Episode We Cover: How Dina made $1,500,000 on a real estate deal everyone else overlooked Pulling yourself up from bankruptcy to rebuild your financial life The one reason you ALWAYS check the zoning of a property before you buy Why Dina refuses to invest in single-family homes and sees them as too risky Using a HELOC (home equity line of credit) to fund your home renovations Financing new construction and a sneaky way to get around the massive down payment 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 Invest in High-ROI Turnkey Rentals with Rent to Retirement or Txt REI to 33777 Save $100 on Real Estate’s Biggest Event of the Year, BPCon2025 Buy the BRRRR Book, “Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat” Find Investor-Friendly Lenders 10 Hidden Ways to Buy Properties with Huge “Upside” Connect with Dina Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (00:55) Young Business Owner to Bankruptcy (02:17) Accidentally Finding Real Estate (06:41) Finding Her First Deal (09:29) Huge Renovations, But BIG Rewards (17:12) Tearing Down Her House for This? (20:12) Making $1.5M on One DEAL!? (26:19) What's Next? Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1081 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.

• 0:05Dave Meyer?

  Imagine generating $1.5 million in a single deal in an expensive market in 2025. I know these numbers may sound impossible to believe, but today we are talking to a normal, everyday investor who took a regular deal and found upside in it to the tune of $1.5 million. Dina Onyewa, over the course of her career, started a few different businesses, some of which failed and left her in pretty bad financial situations. But eventually, she discovered real estate and gradually accumulated a handful of properties near Boston. And it was sort of a modest, sustainable portfolio until she accidentally stumbled onto a once in a lifetime deal. We're going to get into Dina's full story today

• 0:50Dave Meyer?

  and how you can look for the same types of upsides as you look for your next property. Let's bring on Dina. Dina Onyewa, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me, Dave. I'm so excited. Pinch me that I'm here.

• 1:04Dave Meyer?

  Well, we're excited to have you as well. From everything I've read about you and heard about you, you have a really cool story that I'm eager to dig into. So maybe you can just start by giving us a little bit of background on you and how you first started investing, or at least thinking about real estate investing.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, absolutely. So I'm an immigrant. I came to this country about 25 years ago with my family. My father's entrepreneur. He threw me into his business, sourcing different type of materials that we exported to different countries. So got married, moved to New York, had my two kids. Me and my husband started the business together. We made not such a good decisions. So within six months, we filed a bankruptcy, had to relocate from New York to Boston. And that was very difficult times. That's when my husband restarted his life. I started to going back to school, got my masters. I got myself into a corporate world, which I did not like a lot. I was working in the medical device industry.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And after that, I decided to research, what else can I do? And I loved home healthcare business. I quit my job and started my own company. So my home healthcare company has been open now for 10 years.

• 2:17Dave Meyer?

  Thank you for sharing your story, Deena. It sounds like you've had a lot of the ups and downs of an entrepreneur over the course of your career and have somehow, you know, figured it out. I'm curious sort of what gave you the drive to keep going and start another business after, unfortunately, I'm sorry to hear that you had a business that had failed in the past, but you know, what, what was it about either your background or your personality that gave you sort of that drive to keep going and keep trying new entrepreneurial things?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Sure. So I think that was from the early age, my father who threw me into the business at age 16 and 17, you know, trying to find products in US sourcing them, connecting with vendors. So he gave me a lot of push. My father really built my business skills and I didn't even know at that time what he was doing, but I became who I am today just because, you know, of him.

• 3:15Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I grew up in obviously not the exact same situation, but like my dad was always kind of like pushing me in these situations where I'd have to like figure things out for myself. And I find that people either go in one or two directions. They either take to it and really like it and then want to become entrepreneurs themselves, or people just go the complete opposite direction. They're like, I want to be an accountant and I want like the most stable, predictable possible job. But it sounds like you sort of caught the entrepreneurial bug, started this home healthcare business, which is awesome. And tell us how that led into real estate for you.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  People started to just ask questions. I would get like a phone call from reception. Well, this family is looking for real estate agents, you know, do you, do you know someone? And that's when I started to like think, why am I not buying those properties directly from my clients?

• 4:03Dave Meyer?

  Interesting.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  And majority of those clients actually had single family homes. They didn't have multi families. And at that time, when I started to read, I realized like, single family homes are not for me. I'm looking for multis. I want less risk because when you have a single family, you only have one payment coming. So I was minimizing the risks. I knew from the entrepreneurship, like working with my dad, that, you know, things can go up and down very fast. And I did not want that for sure. So home healthcare company made me like really open up my eyes into like a real estate world.

• 4:37Dave Meyer?

  So people were looking to sell their homes because unfortunately, someone in their family was either passed away or needed to move into some sort of assisted facility. So yeah, sort of by accident, you found yourself with a deal flow pipeline.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:52Dave Meyer?

  That was sort of unexpected to you. At that point, you know, you said you wanted multifamily, but like, had you even been thinking about becoming a rental property investor? Or was this kind of just a fortunate opportunity?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  No, it was just like one business was leading to another one. Like a couple of years later down the line, I was thinking about it. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is incredible how this has pushed me into something else. And I pivoted and I listened to a lot of like bigger pockets stuff, which I loved. I joined networking groups, masterminds and read a lot of books. And actually, I felt really lonely, to be honest with you, when I realized and found like real estate, like I needed to find my people. I needed to find who can I talk to, who can give me some guidance. And especially like a woman, it's more like male dominated industry.

• 5:39Dave Meyer?

  It's definitely a part of entrepreneurship. People don't talk about that. It is lonely, you know, when you're trying to figure everything out by yourself and you're not necessarily following the path that a lot of your friends or your family members are doing. And if you don't have a community or a support group, it can be really challenging. So how did you go about and finding a community that would help you? Was it was it just bigger pockets? Or were there other things you were doing as well?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  So bigger pockets was one of them. I religiously listened to the podcast. Brenda Turner was at that time the host of the show. He's amazing guy. I

• 6:15Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  One of my dreams is to meet him one day. And also masterminds, and I was able to network with people, learn a lot of stuff that people were doing, a lot of different things they were doing, not what I had in my mind. Set on. So some of those people grew into like a very close relationships that we can bounce off ideas, you know, like ask questions. It's just like community of people that have the same mindset, same goals.

• 6:41Dave Meyer?

  So you you found yourself with this deal flow, which is really interesting. How did you go from seeing an opportunity but not being an investor? So probably not knowing exactly how to make the most of that opportunity? And then go and develop a strategy and a plan to build a business that was in line with your personal goals.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  It was really hard to like, you know, pull the trigger. I really was like pushed into it. It wasn't the client from home healthcare company that I purchased my first deal from. It was actually the employee. Because you have so many employees, you have 15 employees, they come and you talk and you communicate. And she told me that her landlord was selling the property because he's moving to assisted living facility. And I offered her to introduce me to him in return for a commission.

• 7:30Dave Meyer?

  Oh, nice.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  And she could stay at the property. So that's how I ended up purchasing my first deal. And then I was all the way in into rehab. I was trying to figure it out. You know, things that I need to do, pull the permits, and I ended up skipping some of the steps.

• 7:50Dave Meyer?

  We all do. Not on purpose, it just happens.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was finding my deals through my employees and through my clients. But my clients were having single family homes, majority of them. So I passed on a lot of those deals to real estate agents.

• 8:06Dave Meyer?

  Got it.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Because my focus was on the multifamily homes primarily. That is what I wanted to do. I had very straight focus. Multifamilies, rehabbing them, following the birth strategy, just like it was written in the book. I I got the book and I got the recipe. So that was, um, that was pretty amazing.

• 8:24Dave Meyer?

  All right, we do have to take a quick break, but before we go, I wanted to announce to everyone, if you haven't heard yet, that the BiggerPockets Conference, BPCon, is back, and this year, we're heading to Las Vegas. Tickets are on sale now with early bird pricing, which means that you can save $100. And if you don't know why you should be attending BPCon, it's for a lot of reasons, but first and foremost, to build your network. You can join a community of like-minded investors ready to share insights, offer support, and grow together. Second, close more deals. Step into this purpose-built, approachable environment designed to accelerate your growth and expand your portfolio beyond expectations. And third, and there are more than this, but the third one I just want to mention,

• 9:07Dave Meyer?

  is just really unlocking your own personal potential. We have inspiring keynotes and expert teachers who will fill you with the momentum and confidence to begin or improve your financial freedom journey. All right, we'll be right back.

• 9:22Dave Meyer?

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• 10:05Dave Meyer?

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• 10:48Dave Meyer?

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• 11:33Dave Meyer?

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• 12:12Dave Meyer?

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• 12:48Dave Meyer?

  Thanks for sticking with us. Here's more of this week's investor story. You mentioned that your goal was small multifamily. You liked that it was relatively lower risk because, you know, if you have four units and someone unfortunately doesn't pay, you still have three other incomes. As just one example, tell us about your first couple of deals. It sounds like you were doing heavy rehabs right off the bat.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did that. So first property was a three family home, purchased it for $289,000, put in about $70,000 into the property. I like to go in and make it look nice. I like to update all electrical, plumbing, kitchen. I don't want to have a phone calls because I'm managing properties myself.

• 13:32Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So my goal is always to get this to the highest ARV I can so I can refinance out, pull my construction money out and move on to the next project. So when I purchase them, I purchase them as a portfolio loans.

• 13:46Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  At 25% down payment. I was very skeptical about people suing you and this and that. So I wanted all my properties to be under the LLC.

• 13:56Dave Meyer?

  And where was this? Just in what, what area of the country?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So this is in North Attleboro in Massachusetts, southern part

• 14:03Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  of Boston. So I rehabbed it, refinanced out. In a year, I was able to pull my money completely out.

• 14:12Dave Meyer?

  Oh, that's great.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And make about $15,000, which actually $15,000 I subtracted like from the down payment.

• 14:19Dave Meyer?

  And what year was this?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  I purchased 2018, 2019, I refinanced. Then I did another refi in 2023 and I was able to pull my down payment out and make $70,000. So the property value went from 289 to 650 in about five years.

• 14:41Dave Meyer?

  Okay, great. That's awesome. That's a huge jump. Some it sounds like due to your work and forced depreciation and value add, and then some due to sort of market conditions that helped everything go up.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:55Dave Meyer?

  That's great. Awesome. So what have you done since then? I mean, I can see why after a deal like that, very successful, you'd want to keep going. So what did you do after that?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  So I did another one, which was a six family home. It was next door and the lady who owned it, it was a six family house. It was just falling apart. I sent her a couple of letters, a handwritten, followed up with a couple of phone calls. Six months went by. She called me. She said she wasn't interested. Then a couple more months.

• 15:21Dave Meyer?

  Patience. Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And then I get a phone call and she told me she was ready to sell. So it was very interesting how this deal was working out. She was eighty years old. She was leaving. An hour and a half away, so I had to arrange for an attorney to go out to her house. At that time, it wasn't like really a thing, like attorneys were going places. Usually you come to their offices. So this was two thousand nineteen. So she sold it to me for four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, a six family home, which was a complete mess. We needed to take down the roof, take down the walls, put new windows, siding, like there was a major rehab.

• 16:00Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I think it was like hundred sixty five thousand dollars invested in that project. And the money like it was saving and the HELOC that I was able to pull on my house. So combination of both of those helped me go from project to project.

• 16:13Dave Meyer?

  And so you're saving money from your home healthcare business essentially, or was some of it also coming from the rental income from the first one?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Uh, it wasn't, it wasn't that much. You can't really, like you getting like three, three hundred, five hundred dollars per door and it's only three family homes. So it's, there is income, but.

• 16:31Dave Meyer?

  It's good income, but it takes a long time for a down payment and a renovation budget, you know, like that, that would take a long time.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So that took like a year itself.

• 16:39Dave Meyer?

  A year. Wow.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And because it's six family home, you can't really like move people out. You have to wait for them to leave and it's just like on its own, like very intense.

• 16:49Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. And so I just want to make a point to people that that's one of the things when you take on a rehab with these multifamily homes, if they're not vacant, when you get them, it can be really slow and you should really plan for that and a lot of vacancy in the first year. And it's totally fine if you underwrite your deal. And forecast at least one or two of your units being vacant at all times for the next year. It hurts, but if it still makes sense, you know, when you're running your numbers, that's fine, but pay close attention to that when the leases are coming up, how long that construction is going to be dragged out too. Cause at least in my experience, Dina, correct me if I'm wrong, like it's also hard to keep your contractors on a good schedule. When you have these sort of like rotating things, a lot of times you wanna maximize the work that you can do.

• 17:34Dave Meyer?

  When you have the person there every single day and you don't want them coming and going. So did you learn how to sort of manage your subs and your, your construction during the course of this project?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  I was trying different subs. That's when it was like, kind of like my learning curve. Who, who is my team of people, you know, who do I wanna continue working with? It is hard because they go from project to project, you know, sometimes they don't show up. Sometimes people take your material, you know, like it, it, it happens. So this is just like trial and error, you learn, I mean, you get referrals and stuff, but you never know who's gonna be, you know, working with you by your side. So you have to supervise it. And I was the one actually onsite with my husband, checking out like what's happening, you know, like, do we need to order materials? Do we need another person in here? Do we need to fire someone?

• 18:22Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  So it's just like, it gets real, you know, when you're talking about like big projects like this.

• 18:28Dave Meyer?

  How did you manage all this? You were doing, you had three kids, you're running a home healthcare business. You have one property that you're self-managing and then you're doing this big rehab, like, were you just busy all the time? Like, how did you manage that?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  So my home healthcare business, I was only already at that time, it was, I think it was like established five years ago. I was only doing just the finance, just the billing part of it. The first two years when I started my home healthcare company, I was grinding. I was, my husband was saying to me, you're married to your business, not to me. So it was a lot of time spent for the first two years establishing the business. And then I had the freedom to actually learn what the real estate is all about, managing kids. That's also like my part-time work that I do.

• 19:14Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yes, it's, it is a lot. But you, you know, you juggle where you're going to be, you know, needing more or less. So it's just like planning out and running with it. If you want to reach your goals, you, you just have to work hard.

• 19:29Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, of course. I want to get into your, your most recent deal because I think it's going to be fun to talk about with everyone. But just question, you've done so many things and it seems like been honing more and more in on real estate. Is it just because it's the most profitable? Do you like it? Or like, why have all these different things that you could be doing with your time? Are you doing real estate?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I love it. I'm very passionate about it. Whenever we do a rehab, actually I do some work myself there as well. I love to tile. I think that what gives me like peace and quiet, maybe it's like a therapeutic.

• 20:00Dave Meyer?

  Your meditation.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  So every single unit, every single house that we bought, um, I would put my stamp on it. I would tile, do the backsplash in the kitchen. That's just like my thing.

• 20:12Dave Meyer?

  That's nice. Yeah. And then when you go visit, you're like, I did that. That's a good feeling. Nice.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:19Dave Meyer?

  All right. We have to pause for one final ad, but on the other side, Deena is going to tell us about one of the most incredible real estate deals I've ever heard of. We'll be right back.

• 20:29Dave Meyer?

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• 21:14Dave Meyer?

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• 22:29Dave Meyer?

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• 23:13Dave Meyer?

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• 25:48Dave Meyer?

  We're back with the BiggerPockets Podcast. Tell me a little bit about your most recent deal because obviously market conditions have changed a lot, but you're still active. What are you doing right now?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  So in 2023, me and my husband, we were talking about moving closer to where his business is and it's in suburbs of Boston.

• 26:09Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  About like 15 minutes away. We found a house that we wanted to buy and we thought we are going to expand it because two kids were going off to college and we have this, the little child with us. So we purchased it and when we were closing, I realized we purchased not only a single family home, we purchased a house in a multifamily zoning.

• 26:28Dave Meyer?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  That changed the whole strategy.

• 26:33Dave Meyer?

  You're like, oh, I'm gonna live here and now I'm gonna build an apartment building.

• 26:37Dave Meyer?

  Which is great. I mean, but like, did you, so you didn't know that because you were shopping for a primary residence, right?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yes, we purchased it like a primary residence too. So that's why me and my husband were like, well, what do we do? And I was like, this is an opportunity to build in this very expensive market. We took like six months to really like sit and think, are we going to do it? Let's, let's put strategy together. Are we gonna like, and he's like, okay, let's not move. Let's just rented it out, develop the project, knock it down and build two beautiful townhomes.

• 27:08Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  And they, both townhomes, about 7,000 square feet altogether, not each.

• 27:14Dave Meyer?

  Whoa, so big houses, 3,500 a pop.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:18Dave Meyer?

  Serious townhouse, yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Huge townhouses and I thought that I can pull it off and I did, I think.

• 27:27Dave Meyer?

  I love how modest you are. I just, oh, just pull it off. I did.

• 27:32Dave Meyer?

  That's great. So I, I, let's dig into this because one of the things, if you've been listening to the show recently, I've been talking about a lot is like looking for deals that work today, but have upside. And this zoning upside is like one of the sneaky things that can really go buying a good deal, even if you're buying it as a rental property to, from a good deal to an amazing deal. And it sounds like, Dina, you found this on Your primary too. So you were gonna move in, you decided not to, right?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Not to, yeah.

• 28:01Dave Meyer?

  But did you say you rented it out then?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  So yes, we decided to not move in, stay where we were and rented it out to college kids and they paid thirty seven hundred dollar mortgage.

• 28:12Dave Meyer?

  Wow. I mean, that's still pretty good for college kids. Cause I guess, was it a big house?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  No, this is nine hundred square foot home.

• 28:18Dave Meyer?

  Wait, what?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:19Dave Meyer?

  Where'd college kids get that money?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Babson College Kids.

• 28:22Dave Meyer?

  Wow. I mean, I'm gonna date myself, but my rent my last year of college was like two hundred and ten dollars.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

• 28:30Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so I guess the other nice thing about that is I would always worry about renting to college kids, but you're gonna tear down the house anyway, right? So it doesn't even matter.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  I didn't care. I didn't care. The only thing I cared about is, you know, they're gonna disturb the neighbors. We had a couple of phone calls, you know, the cops came by, they said turn down the music, but that was, that was fine, you know?

• 28:50Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so you had, you've done rehab at this point, but this is development.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  New development, yeah, ground up construction, knocking down, you know, putting the footings. It's a big project that took a whole year and we're doing the finishes right now.

• 29:03Dave Meyer?

  How did you go about learning that? Cause it's something frankly, I've thought about and always been a little bit wary of. Because it just seems like a lot of bureaucracy, especially this is in Massachusetts, right? I would imagine there's a lot of red tape. Uh, there's red tape everywhere, to be honest, when you, when you go through development. But certain areas, certain states are definitely more infamous for bureaucracy.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it took a year and a half to go through all the paperwork.

• 29:27Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so good thing you rented out. So you rented it out that whole time, hopefully you basically broke even.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  No, I decided to rent only for one year and one year, the forty four thousand dollars came out of my pocket. Because I had all those permits with a special due dates and timelines and I could not afford to have a tenant in there that needs more time to move or this or that. So I didn't wanna play around because I was investing a hundred K into architect, wetland specialist, arboristas, you know, like you name it, like I had to assemble like a team of people, prepare all these documents to submit to the town and have all those permits with special due dates. So I had to like really. Put the schedule together, how this is all gonna work out. I've never done it before. I just like, listened to a lot of stuff, read stuff, ask questions.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  The biggest challenge for me was like finances.

• 30:17Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  My project, if we're talking about converting the mortgage, which is the primary resident mortgage that we had with five percent down, into construction loan. So that whole amount came into two million dollars.

• 30:30Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I was thinking in my head, you know, it's like, what, three hundred bucks a square foot roughly? You know, it sounds like a little cheaper, but two million to build?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  No, well, to get the land, so you have to convert the primary resident loan into a construction loan. So seven hundred forty thousand plus one point three million is the construction budget to build two townhouses.

• 30:49Dave Meyer?

  That's a ton of money. Yeah. So how do you do that?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Like, for me, it took a lot of time. I went to a lot of banks. I went to actually private lenders that offered to buy my project. They offered to give me two hundred K on top of what I paid. I refused.

• 31:01Dave Meyer?

  Well, that's annoying, but that's a vote of confidence, right? You're like, I'm on to something. If they want to buy it from me, then I'm probably doing something right.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  So I had to figure out, two years from now, how am I gonna qualify for two million dollar loan? I had to go pick everyone's brain, talk to people, increase my income, start the property management for family and friends.

• 31:21Dave Meyer?

  Wow. So you have like eight jobs at this point?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  But they're like, small jobs that require very little time, you know, like you have to press this button, that button.

• 31:29Dave Meyer?

  Well, that's good. I mean, you've clearly made it sustainable for yourself, even though you have a lot of things going on.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So figuring out the finances was the fun part.

• 31:39Dave Meyer?

  Glad you call that fun.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  So I wanted to build for myself. So I call this primary residence house hack, like a development house hack that I created on my own. I found the bank that would lend me as a construction primary residence for two family or less, with very special terms, amazing terms that I've never heard of. When we went to the closing, bank paid me.

• 32:01Dave Meyer?

  Wait, what? Tell me more about that. How does that work?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Cash to close to borrow a hundred thirteen thousand dollars. Because they do two appraisals when you come to the closing. They do as-is appraisal and they do future appraisal. So I bought it for seven forty. In two years, it appreciated to one point two million. After that, after the construction, when the building is ready, they do future appraisal, future value, and that came in at three point seven two five.

• 32:29Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  So the equity that I was generating in that project was one point five million dollars.

• 32:36Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God. That's insane. Oh, my God. Wow. Congratulations. That's so cool.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 32:44Dave Meyer?

  Wow. So it's like one point five million dollars on one deal?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:49Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God. That's so cool. And you didn't even like you bought this as a primary residence. So cool. What a great story.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my plan is to move in and rent the other apartment and I'm gonna house hack. I'm gonna probably only pay ten to twenty percent of the mortgage.

• 33:06Dave Meyer?

  Perfect. Amazing. Congratulations. Super cool. So that's probably one of the bigger equity pops I've ever heard of on this show, which is insane a lot because we hear some pretty cool stories. That's one of the coolest ones I've heard. So amazing. Are you now, are you addicted to development now? Are you looking to do it again?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It's very risky too. So like when we were excavating, we found the ledge underground and that costed me an additional seventy thousand dollars, which is a change order that we didn't account for. So could be a lot of stuff. Then when you're doing a construction, you know, you can bump into that, you know, you didn't account for and bank is not going to give you the money. You have to have your own savings and you will be able to pull it off. And the market changes a lot.

• 33:49Dave Meyer?

  There's just timing risk with it too, because it took you, how long? Three years, basically? Two and a half years?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we are almost done. And yeah, from the time when we bought it, development, like all those, you know, regulations, permits, until we broke the ground, it took three years with one point five. Yeah.

• 34:07Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. So obviously, everyone, you know, you could see the upside of development. But in my mind, there's sort of this spectrum of real estate investing strategies like rental property investing, single family homes and small multifamilies, like low risk, but solid return. So that's like one side of the risk spectrum. And then Developments on the other side, there's a lot of upside, there's amazing opportunities, but there's also a lot of risk.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 34:31Dave Meyer?

  And so it's great to hear this 1.5 million dollar pop, but I'm glad that you called out the risk to it as well because it's not just like something easy. And you have to find great deals and there are risks in timeline and market conditions changing from the time you start a project to the time you end the project. You gotta think about all of that, but obviously by Dina's story, we know that there that it can be very, very worth it.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 34:58Dave Meyer?

  So Dina, what's next for you? What's your plan for and your goals for your portfolio over the next few years?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, well, right now it's very hard. The prices are very high, interest rates as well. So I'm continuously looking, just you have to like, I, I listened to your podcast. It's like you have to find opportunities, you know, you have to create them yourself. And that's what I'm looking at right now in Massachusetts. We have this new law that's been passed recently, ADU. And accessory dwelling units, which you can add to the single family homes, but you have to be like a primary, I believe you have to be like a primary residence for you. But I'm looking to continue looking for different opportunities where you can create square footage or where you can, you know, maybe partner up with someone and do ADU. So I love the game. I know how to play it, I think.

• 35:48Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  You have to be comfortable to win and lose. So.

• 35:51Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  And that's what I'm, that's what I'm comfortable with.

• 35:56Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Well, good luck to you. If your track record is any indication, I'm sure you're going to find more ways to find upside in this new, uh, changing era of real estate investing that we're in. But Dina, thank you so much for joining us today and telling us your story. This was a lot of fun.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you for having me.

• 36:12Dave Meyer?

  Of course. And thank you all so much for listening. We appreciate it. Make sure to share the story if you know someone who might want to get into real estate investing, but doesn't know how to do it or thinks that they can't. Dina's story is such a great example of how you can figure it out, hustle your way, work hard to build a great portfolio, find financial freedom through real estate. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you again soon for another episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.

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