He Started with $5,000. Now He Owns 14 Rental Properties (And Quit His Job!)

When Niyi Adewole got his first “real” job out of college, he had one goal: financial freedom. But when he asked his coworkers about the company 401(k), he left more confused than convinced. In searching for answers, he discovered a much better path: real estate investing. Then, with just $5,000 in savings, he bought his first rental property—a triplex he house hacked to cover his mortgage. That first property snowballed into the next one, and in just six years, Niyi quit his W-2 job. Today, he owns 14 properties, including small multifamily rentals, Airbnbs, and even a self-storage facility. His portfolio generates more than enough cash flow to live on, but instead, he continues to funnel everything toward the next property. Niyi’s story is remarkable, but he didn’t go from earning a $55,000 salary to financial freedom overnight. In this episode, he shares how he sacrificed, hustled, and stacked promotions at his W-2 job to get to where he is today. The question isn’t if you can do the same. It’s will you? In This Episode We Cover How Niyi scaled from $5,000 in savings to 14 rental properties (and counting) The playbook that allowed Niyi to quit his job and go all-in on real estate The immeasurable value of working with an investor-friendly agent A profitable investing strategy that doesn’t involve tenants or toilets Buying a house with low money down and having tenants pay your mortgage And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1306⁠. 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.

• 0:00Henry Washington?

  This investor went from a $5,000 down payment to financial freedom in just six years. In 2015, Niyi Adewole asked the finance guys at his office to explain how a 401k works, and he left that conversation even more confused. But Niyi soon found an investment that made way more sense. It was a triplex that he could live in in Louisville, Kentucky. That property cost about $190,000, but Niyi only needed about five grand to buy it. And that was convenient because, well, it was almost every dollar he had. He moved into one unit, rented the other two units, and went from paying $12,000 a month in rent to living for free. From buying that first property, it only took Niyi six years to

• 0:45Henry Washington?

  replace his W2 paycheck and move into real estate full-time. He didn't start with any family money or any other advantages. In fact, Niyi watched his mom lose their family home in the 2008 crash. But that's why he was so determined to build wealth that he could control. Today, Niyi is sharing the entire journey, how he scaled from one house hack into a portfolio of small multifamily properties, how he kept investing through several cross-country moves, and how he built the multiple income streams in real estate that helped him buy back his time. By the end of this episode, you'll see, there's no magic to investing in real estate. It's just a formula that started with one $5,000 investment.

• 1:31Henry Washington?

  What's going on, everybody? I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today, I've got an investor story with Mr. Niyi Adewole out of Atlanta. So let's bring him in. Niyi Adewole, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast, my friend.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Come on now. Thank you for having me here. This has been integral in my investing career, and so it's an honor to be here.

• 1:51Henry Washington?

  Well, we are glad you're here. And let's start off by just having you give us a little bit of background about how you got into this whole real estate space.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  So we're going to take it back a little over a decade to 2015. I was just getting into my first career outside of college, which was medical to buy sale. And I wanted to be smart with the money I was starting to make. I wanted to know like, hey, where can I put this where it can grow and start to earn some income? And so I went to my finance guys that, you know, I sat next to and played fantasy football with and and asked them like, hey, how does this whole stock market thing work? Right? I've never had a 401k before. I've never done any of this before. Can you just coach me through it? And they tried to simplify it, but at the end of the day, I left slightly more confused than than I came in. I was like, okay, let me just put this into like a target fund or whatever.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Right? But when I started doing my own research, I came across certain books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and things of that nature. And it got me excited about real estate. And then I found the bigger pockets podcast. And in 2015, I listened to, I don't know how many episodes, but there was one in particular that caught my mind. And I remember this specifically, I remember the exact episode. It was episode 60 with Serge Shoe crap, where he was talking about buying small multifamily homes. I listened to that once and just could not get it out of my mind, listened to it two or three times over that weekend and set in my mind that I was going to get started in real estate investing.

• 3:17Henry Washington?

  So you you listened to some podcasts, you got excited about real estate, but what actually turned it into action?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Man, so started to hear about that house hack strategy. And then I got promoted in my job. So when I first started working in 2015 as an intern, I was making like 55k annually and living in Chicago, which is semi expensive. And so that money was getting spent.

• 3:39Henry Washington?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And so what I did is I got promoted and actually moved to Louisville, Kentucky. And at the time, I could not pick Louisville out on a map. I actually thought it was where Louisiana is. I'm like, I'm looking around for it. Like, where the heck is Louisville? And when I saw Kentucky, I was a little bit disappointed, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because Louisville is a lot less expensive. There's a bit less to do or less distractions out there. And so I was able to actually go get my first house hack when I moved there in 2016, where I bought a triplex for 190k, live in one unit, rented the other two out, and essentially live for free.

• 4:14Henry Washington?

  So that was your very first real estate deal was a house hack Louisville, Kentucky triplex. Did you just find? It's sitting on the market?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was on the market. Um, I was looking to find a quote unquote, you know, investor friendly Realtor. I messed that up initially. Um, but I still was able to buy a deal and at that time I thought I was overpaying, but looking back, I mean, I, I wish I could buy 10 of those.

• 4:34Henry Washington?

  I assume since this was on the MLS, it was pretty much turnkey. You just had to, to move in.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Correct with some caveats. The thing about Louisville, Kentucky, anybody that's been there or seen the Derby. Most of these homes were built in the early 1900s. And so Henry, I don't know if you're still working with 1900 homes, but.

• 4:51Henry Washington?

  I try not to.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I try not to now, uh, from experience, from back then I didn't know. And I bought a bunch of these, but that one had so many weird quirks, right? There was like one of the units where they couldn't put HVAC into it. So I had to figure out like a mini duck system and, and every winter the pipes would freeze. So I had to get like a space heater for this one area. It was a lot going on. But I went from paying 1,200 a month, right? To now saving that 1,200 and living for free. And when I moved out, was able to actually make income on that and that opened my eyes to a new world that I didn't, I didn't know was possible.

• 5:23Henry Washington?

  This house hack, did you use an FHA or a conventional loan?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I went FHA with it.

• 5:28Henry Washington?

  So three and a half percent down. So what did you end up putting down? And then what were your rents in the units?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my total amount was about five grand, which was everything I had saved up. So it was a lot of money to me. I was like, dude, this is everything I got. Let's hope this works. Uh, and when I moved in, the mortgage was 1350 and that's including everything, right? The insurance, all that stuff. And the two rents of the other units was 1,400 total. And so I was in the positive, call it $50 if you had no expenses and that was a win.

• 5:59Henry Washington?

  So people talk about house hacking all the time because of the power of the strategy. But just the fact that you get your mortgage covered is only 50% of the benefit of house hacking. The true benefit of house hacking comes from you continuing to pay rent. You just pay it to yourself. That allows you to save up what you need in order to continue to invest. So was that what you were doing with that? With that now windfall of cash that you didn't have to pay rent with?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yes, and what you said is a hundred percent the key. It's are you willing to have delayed gratification and sacrifice now for the future? And I think that my background and what happened to me financially in the past is what allowed me to not even have a question on that. When I came up, right, I had a single mother that raised three boys by herself. I was the last one, right? And, you know, in the oh seven, oh eight timeframe, like right before that, my mom bought a family house. We're all going to live there. It was amazing. It's like, Mom, how'd you even afford this? And it was answered no wait, when we had to short sell that thing and declare bankruptcy. And so I've seen financial struggle and I've seen what it's done to our family. And so when I was getting into medical device and all this other stuff, I'm like, dude,

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I want to be financially free because it just means so much to me and to be able to help our family kind of see that there is another way. And so, yeah, I was saving that money and I was still doing a good job at work to where I got promoted in less than a year after I purchased that home. And I actually got moved up to Boston with the same company to move into a higher risk, but higher reward medical device opportunity. And started closing some deals up there and doing a similar thing with a house hack up there as well.

• 7:38Henry Washington?

  So if I'm hearing you, you moved to a whole new market after you did your very first deal, which in a lot of people's perspective would probably be a little frustrating because now you've you've just you found this market where you could buy good deals. You got a great deal. And if you want to start growing and scaling, now you don't live there anymore. So how did you go from like one house hack in Louisville to a much more expensive market and being able to invest? Did you still invest in Louisville or did you pivot and invest in Boston?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  When I moved to Boston, you're spot on. That cost is way in above. I didn't even realize Boston was that expensive. It's like top five in the country.

• 8:17Henry Washington?

  It's crazy expensive, yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Because I'd never been there before. So when I'm like looking at it, I was getting a promotion to where, hey, you're getting, you know, a 20% raise in your income. But when I looked at the cost of living, it was actually a 40% decrease. I can't even afford to go get my own apartment. And so I delayed gratification, right? And I said, hey, I only want to have 25% of what I'm making. On base, not commission, go toward living expenses, right? And so I ended up doing a house hack, but not in the traditional sense. I didn't buy anything. I just had two roommates in an apartment and we all rented it together, right? And I was able to save significantly on that front.

• 8:54Henry Washington?

  You did a rental house hack. I did that too. I was coming.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 8:57Henry Washington?

  Yeah, not because I was into real estate. I was just broke.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Hey, both work. It works either way.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Up there, I was just like, hey, man, I gotta save somehow because it's expensive.

• 9:07Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  And then to your point, I had just bought down here and I knew that neighborhood. I used to run around the streets and, and, and kind of understood that block. And so I continued to invest down there. And the next deal that I bought, it took about eighteen months to, to close some deals and get enough money. But I ended up buying twelve units at one time, three quadplexes from one owner. That was literally three doors down on the, the side street adjoining. Cause I knew that neighborhood and that's what I did. And I did it through a partnership as well with family to get the rest of the funds.

• 9:38Henry Washington?

  Okay, so you moved out of your house hack. I assume you kept it and you rented the unit out that you were living in. So now that thing is cash flowing because you were already making money to live there. So now you've got one cash flowing asset. Then you rent hacked in Boston. So you decreased what it would cost you to live there. And your very next deal wasn't in Boston. It was actually a set of multifamilies from a Louisville, Kentucky owner. Now was this somebody you knew already, or was this a deal you went hunting for?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Uh, it was one where I connected with an investor friendly Realtor. And she has now been my partner for, for many, many years and we partner other stuff together. But it was through her network. Uh, it did hit the market, but it was five hundred K to buy twelve units. And I was like, hey, these numbers make a lot of sense. There was a lot of work that needed to happen on the house. Structurally, roof siding. There was a lot going on, but that was the next deal that kind of got us going.

• 10:37Henry Washington?

  Okay, that's a lot of units to buy when you're not there. So how did you get your eyeballs on all of these units to determine what you were buying and if it made sense?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Man, so it was leaning on her, right? Right to go in and do videos of every unit, which she did. And then, once we're able to get under contract during that due diligence period, I did fly down to go and see these units. I realized it was a lot of work, but looking at what I was pulling in on the house right, right next door. That was semi updated with our management. I'm like, man, we can do this. Um, now I quickly realized that when you're dealing with, because some of the tenants were section eight, some of the tenants were like a whole bunch of other different housing pieces. It was a different class than what I was used to, which was mostly students renting the other place out. And so that was a learning curve, but I just kept trying to automate as much as I can within my systems. And then I used and leaned on that realtor to help me lease up different units.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  But it still was a struggle. Looking back, if I did that again, I probably would not have bought that deal. It was a hell of a lot going on, right? That was, that was why they were selling it for so, so little. But, um, it taught me a lot and it helped me get to where I am today.

• 11:43Henry Washington?

  Now, how did you finance this deal? Was it like a construction loan where you were given some of that renovation money? Or were you funding the renovation out of your pocket?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Henry, you're now getting into the mistakes and, and you have an eye for it. So keep in mind, the first deal I bought FHA, right? Thirty year financing. And I'm like, okay, this is smooth. When I was running these numbers up front, and this is really green of me, right? Having listened to all these podcasts, I was running it on a thirty year note. I'm like, these are three quadplexes. It's going to be thirty year. This is great. And then I get hit with the realization as we're getting past due diligence. This is a commercial loan. I've never done a commercial loan.

• 12:19Henry Washington?

  Twenty year AM.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  It's twenty year. That changes the numbers significantly. I'm like, hold up. This is completely different, right? And, uh, it's like a five year balloon to where, hey, you've got to either refinance or you got to sell this thing, you know, five years from now. So that completely changed up the numbers and I warned a lot of people of that now, like, hey, commercials different. That five unit you're looking at versus the fourplex are not the same thing. These are two different things, right? So we financed it with a commercial loan and then I just paid for the repairs out of pocket because I was starting to do well in the job. And this is what I'd say to anybody that's thinking about, hey, I want to move into full time real estate investing. You absolutely should use the job that you have as a business partner to help you ease. Into it. I would not just jump ship. You should use it to help you ease into it because it was only

• 13:04Speaker 01

  the grace of God and having that job that helped me be able to keep these properties long enough to where it actually made sense. And finish all these renovations.

• 13:11Henry Washington?

  What I just want to reiterate for people is knee used a commercial loan and typically commercial loans are amortized over a shorter period of time. So when you're underwriting deals, it helps to know what kind of financing you're going to get. I like to use a lot of local community banks and construction loans. And so I underwrite my deals with a 20 year AM. And also you're right, you have to understand what that balloon term is. So typically it's going to have what they call them adjustable rate mortgages. That means your rate will adjust after the adjustment period and you can negotiate that period. Sometimes they want to do it in three years. Sometimes they'll lock you into five years. It depends on the deal. It depends on your credit.

• 13:53Henry Washington?

  Depends on the institution. So when you're, when you're underwriting a deal with a commercial loan, you want to make sure that you at least are paying attention to what interest rates are doing because if rates go up and you get stuck in a place where you're now either have to refinance, you could be forced to sell because you can't refinance and the numbers make sense. Can you tell us a little bit about like what each of those units were renting for versus what you were servicing the debt for?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yes. So each of the units, when I first purchased it, were renting between uh 450 and 650. And it was under market rent at that time, right? I'd already boosted the rents for, for my units, which were the same size to, you know, 850 a unit, 900 a unit.

• 14:38Henry Washington?

  Wow.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  So that's where they were rented for. So I was like, hey, man, there's a lot of spread here. But there was a lot of work to get it there. And then the debt, it was around six grand a month.

• 14:46Henry Washington?

  That's pretty solid numbers. 850 times 12 units. That's about 10 grand a month. And if your debt service is six grand, that's a pretty solid cash flowing deal that you bought from somebody who was your boots on the ground. And uh, it's interesting that you, you, you've mentioned her a few times as a partner. So I'd love to dive into like what these next deals look like and like how you structured this relationship or partnership with your investor friendly agent, but I want to do that right after the break.

• 15:15Dave Meyer?

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• 15:47Henry Washington?

  Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of. Normally, if you want to write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year. No furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year.

• 16:29Henry Washington?

  And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly minimum to meet. That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentive, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777.

• 17:11Dave Meyer?

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

• 17:53Speaker 03

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• 18:22Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast with my man Niggy Iwale, who is telling us all about how he got started in real estate, started off with a house hack. I think that's a phenomenal way to get started, gave you the proof of concept, job threw you a curveball, good curveball, promoted you, moved you right out of the place where you bought your first duplex, but that didn't stop you from continuing to buy there, ended up buying 12 more units there, and then found yourself in a position to sell some of those properties to move into a, let's call it a larger opportunity. So why don't you tell us about this townhouse development deal and kind of how you structured that?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so you're spot on. We bought that 12 unit and then over the next couple of years, all the way up until, call it, beginning of 2021, about more triplexes, duplexes, and just got better at identifying deals. We got to like 30 units. I just kept, anytime I saw, and it was all within a mile of each other, most of them on the same street. So I kept seeing the opportunities and now- I know the numbers.

• 19:21Henry Washington?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Um, I was like, hey, I'm buying that, buying that, buying that. And, and more came. And so this opportunity, my realtor, who I've been working with this whole time, my investor friendly realtor, she's owns more real estate than I do, right? And so she's been living in this town and this neighborhood for over a decade. And she kept driving by this land that this owner is trying to sell themselves. It was 11 acres of land in Taylorsville, Kentucky, which for anybody that's listening is about 30 minutes south of Louisville, Kentucky. And it's one of the best school districts in the metro. So her kids go to school there. She's very familiar with the area. And so that was kind of our, our end with the knowledge. And the cool thing about this land is most land is zoned agricultural out there. But this one, the owner went through the two year process of getting it switched to B two commercial, meaning you could build literally just about anything over there.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  And so we had a game plan to build townhomes as well as storage with storage being the first piece. And she brought me in to have the conversations with the owner, which took about six months to negotiate actually buying that land. But once we bought it, we kicked off ground quickly on the storage, which cost about 2.2 million to build. And, and we just are 50 50 partners is, is how we split that piece up. I made her the managing member because she lives there, has all the contacts and things of that nature. And then we just, we work from there.

• 20:36Henry Washington?

  Wow. So that's a, that's a heck of a leap. I understand you, you, you, you got up to 30 units in, in Louisville, but 30 units of kind of, uh, you know, buying, existing and renovating is a whole different ballgame than, than ground up development. So you mentioned townhomes and storage. So did this property, did you build both? Or did you buy it with the intention of doing one and then another?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  One than the other, we haven't done the townhomes yet because that's not something we can do out of pocket. Right? This is more of a syndication that we got to work on.

• 21:08Henry Washington?

  Okay.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  So we bought the land officially in like middle of 2022. And we broke ground for the storage in 2023, finished it in 2024. We're now at like 75% occupied. I love storage now. It's amazing. We literally, we're running it with one VA and one handyman in like a text group chat, which is awesome.

• 21:27Henry Washington?

  Okay. So you, you, you build for 2.2.

• 21:31Henry Washington?

  So what's that put you in terms of like, what's your debt service on that versus what are you bringing in from a money perspective? Cause you said you're what 75, 85% occupied?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  So we're 75% occupied. Last month we brought in a little bit over 15K.

• 21:44Henry Washington?

  All right.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And the note on this is around 12K.

• 21:47Henry Washington?

  Okay. Yeah. You're doing all right. Yeah. You're doing all right. Cause people don't realize the maintenance is not the same as like a single family. There's not as many things to break. There's expenses and maintenance, but not like, there's no toilets, right? It's, it's a different, it's a different ballgame. So that's, that's pretty solid.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the key to storage, and this is what we learned early on, cause the first couple of months of leasing up were rough. Cause we were at market value, but the key to storage is just look at the big guys. You gotta really slash early. So there's a lot of discounts that you give early and you make the price a lot less than all the others. But the cool thing about it is we built into our system that every six months that somebody's with us, it's a 5% increase. So you go from 100 to 105, six months later, 105 to whatever six, 5% of that is. And long story short, like it, it ramps up quickly and we have most of our people that have been with us for over two years. Cause once you get a storage unit, you tend not to leave.

• 22:38Henry Washington?

  I know. I, I tend to get more. I start my, it's funny cause you can't see my office, but there's a wall right here. On the other side of this wall is a fence and on the other side of that fence is my storage unit. That I have at the storage facility and I said my storage unit, it's now units. I've got three of them now. Cause it just, it just keep, yeah, they got me. They got me. They got me. Well, that's really cool, man. Thanks for taking that tangent with me and telling me all about this storage deal. Because you know, I'd like to live vicariously through other people and their deals. But you know, storage is a commercial deal and you started off in residential. Did you completely stop doing residential while you focused on this storage? Or were you still trying to grow like a single family residential business at the same time?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Residential is my bread and butter. That's where my full comfort level is. And so I continued investing there and a lot of the selling that I did in Louisville was to continue investing. Where I moved to with the next promotion, which is Atlanta.

• 23:38Henry Washington?

  So at this point, you've pretty much sold. Pulled off your Kentucky portfolio, except for now you've got the storage facility. And you now wanted to start doing deals in Atlanta because that's where you've got some roots. So what kind of deals were you looking to do in Atlanta?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  So I ended up getting the most expensive house I got into living. It was a $670,000 single family with an in-law suite in East Atlanta Village. Which if anybody knows is an awesome part of Atlanta. A decade ago, this is where Gucci, Future and all these guys used to grow up, right? But it's been completely changed over. And so I bought there. And with that house hack, I wanted to try something different, right? I had a one-bed, one-bath in-law suite. And I knew that it could rent for about 1,500, 1,600. And I felt comfortable with that. But all my friends who I've been talking to and other investors I've met, were talking about this thing called Airbnb, like, hey, man, try out the short-term rentals. It actually works. And so I said, you know what? I'll try it here. It's one-bed, one-bath. If it doesn't work, I'll go to a long-term rental. And so I did it.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And instead of 1,500 a month, I was pulling in 2,500 a month on average. And some months I was doing three grand. It was covering most of the mortgage because you know, you got a 3% interest. I was like, this is amazing.

• 24:50Henry Washington?

  Man, that's super cool because that was like Airbnb golden era back then. It was still new. There wasn't a lot of regulation. People were all over Airbnb. So that's, that's great. But what I like about this, this strategy, and this is what I think people should try now, is it was a pretty low-risk strategy for you to try Airbnb because it's already your mother-in-law suite and you can already long-term rent it, right? I think where people get into trouble with short-term rentals is they buy something where it's short-term rental or bust, right? It just, you can't sustain it unless you rent it on short-term rental. So you were increasing your cash flow. You lived in the big house because you said, I'm done.

• 25:33Henry Washington?

  I've, I've, I've delayed my gratification as long as I would like to delay it. Yeah, I would like to be gratified now. And so you got your house and you did the short-term rental in that space. I assume that gave you proof of concept. So did you do more short-term rentals in Atlanta?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Right. From that one, when I started seeing the numbers coming in, just the first three months, I immediately went out and bought a full on house.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Bought a full on house that was, you know, maybe two blocks away.

• 26:03Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And, and made that a full on short term rental.

• 26:05Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  And then I started talking to others that were doing it. I got into managing a few investors that I was partnering with. As far as helping them with their flips, like lending money for some of their flips. I started managing some of the ones that they kept for short term rentals. And I was able to grow it from the first one being purchased in 2021. To now, today I have eight short term rentals. And I have a management company that manages about 25 all around the city. And that's, you know, from a one bedroom all the way up to a 10,000 square foot mansion. And so it's been incredible, but to your point, you cannot do basic short term rentals. This is, you know, initially it was basic because I didn't know any better. But over time, having talked to the right people, gone through the right courses.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Now we're doing luxury short term rentals where it's fully differentiated and full of amenities.

• 26:52Henry Washington?

  So you've now built an income stream outside of the properties that you own. Plus you were building your own short term rental business. And it sounds like there wasn't too much of a lift to bring in that income stream. Cause it's work you're already doing.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Hundred percent and, and, and you get paid for managing short term rentals. Way more than you can long term rentals. Long term rental management is between six and eight percent. You know, maybe 10% if you're, you know, a higher end one. For short term rentals, it's between 18 and 35%, right? And we charge 20%. And so it made a lot of sense for me like, okay. If I'm going to put in the time and effort to build out kind of an organization to manage all these, which we have now. I want to make sure that we can get paid money that makes sense. And that actually is what accelerated my timeline. Of being able to leave the W two a lot sooner than I thought I would. It was having this management that I never thought was going to come into play. I thought it was just going to be my real estate and maybe the realtor thing.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  But that, that allowed me to leave a lot sooner.

• 27:50Henry Washington?

  I chuckled because you, you're saying the thing. That all real estate investors realize at some point. It's interesting because we all get into this business because we're like. Cash flow, if I get enough cash flow from my portfolio. Then I don't have to work because my cash flow replaces my income. Right? Like that's the dream when we all get started. But then you start owning properties and you realize. I don't want to do that because if I live off my, A, cash flow is hard to live off of. But then we also realize if I pull my cash flow out, I can't, I can't do more deals as fast. And I like doing deals, right? And so what a lot of investors do and they realize is like, yeah, I still want to leave my day job, but I don't want to touch my cash flow.

• 28:34Henry Washington?

  So now I gotta go find another income stream that I can leverage these real estate skills with, that bring in the money and then I can quit. So for me, that was flipping. That's what I, that's my flipping is what caused me to be able to leave my W2, not my rentals, because I didn't want to touch my cash flow. For you, it sounds like Airbnb management, right? So now you're managing short-term rentals. That brings in an additional income stream. You keep all your cash flow from your rentals in your business. So are you comfortable sharing like, how much money are you typically bringing in a month in the short-term rental management business?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  From the management side, on the low months, somewhere around 10, 11 K. On the higher months, like summer months, where you start to get, you know, like the World Cup and these type of bookings, we've crossed the 20 K threshold.

• 29:17Henry Washington?

  Yeah, man, hey, that'll, that'll replace a day job pretty, pretty smooth. I like that. I like that. All right, we've got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back learning more about investor Nigeti Adewale, right after the break.

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• 34:07Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. Let's jump back in. That's awesome, man. And I like that you found a niche within real estate to start bringing in additional income. A lot of people either do what I do or flip houses, or they become an agent and start helping people from that perspective. Have you, did you, did you take a foray into being a licensed agent and making money that way as well?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's, that's my full-time thing now, right? Is agent plus manager of these short-term rentals. And it was a couple of things that came together that made that happen. So I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent, right?

• 34:43Henry Washington?

  Let's hear it.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  So I moved into full-time real estate as a real estate investor, agent, and property manager in August of 2022. I left my W two and made the full time jump. And it was a couple of things. One, the short term rental management income was coming in and that was something I didn't, you know, count on. Two, my agent business, because I had a niche that I focused on, which was being investor friendly. I had been an investor for seven years, right? That's all I knew. So I knew how to run numbers. I've made my mistakes, took my lumps. And so I helped other people get started or other investors keep buying. So that was starting to take off. And then we were kicking off, right? The build for the storage as well as we still believe we could build a hundred and five town homes.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  So we're starting to talk to other investors and I didn't want them to question my ability to be focused on this. If I'm also working a full time director role in a W two, not to mention.

• 35:33Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I didn't actually like that last role. So all these promotions were amazing. The last one I had in Boston was awesome. You mentioned that you got into flipping because it fit more of your personality, right?

• 35:43Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And it got to the point where I was so busy working around the clock, both as an agent, as a manager and as a full on, you know, director at this company, that I felt like I was going to drop the ball one way or the other. Like I'm going to miss a meeting some way, somehow, either for a real estate client or my director role. And before that happened, I sat down with the numbers, talked to my, my soon to be wife, and made the decision to move into full time real estate.

• 36:07Henry Washington?

  Yeah, man. And I want to say something here, like as many investors that come on this show and say they have a real estate license and they help other investors. I still think there is such a huge opportunity for more of that. There are not enough investor friendly agents, especially if you can have like an entire brokerage under you, like that's what you do. You serve investor friendly agents. Like it's hard enough to generate leads out there as a real estate agent for people who just want to buy and sell a regular home. Like that's what 80% of all the other agents are doing. So like, I feel like if you can find a way.

• 36:48Henry Washington?

  To have this like concierge service for investors, like there's so much money to be made. My agent, that's who he mainly serves is investors and a lot of the agents who work under his brokerage do the same thing and they do great, man. I think that's such a great niche. I think more people need to see this as a profitable niche. So are all of the agents under your brokerage servicing investor friendly agents? Or is that like the majority of your business?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And Henry, I think you're spot on. It's literally one of those where if you've lived it and you have a passion for this, which I do, I think you should get into it. So I was in sales, right? This whole time, so sales is one passion and I loved real estate. I was investing this whole time. So now it's marrying the two to where on Sundays, I'm no longer looking at my calendar like, oh man, you know, Monday's coming around. I got this call. I'm excited about it. Like I'm genuinely pumped about it. And so I have 10 agents on my team, right? We started in Georgia and then one of the agents moved to Florida. And then now we have a person in Texas. So we cover Georgia, Florida and Texas. 95% of the people we work with are investors and five of the agents that are on my team were first clients that I personally work with to buy, one of them buy one, another one buy

• 37:59Speaker 01

  three deals, another one buy two deals before they moved into getting their license and joining the team. So that's, that's kind of what we do.

• 38:06Henry Washington?

  Man, I love that. I hope other people listen to this and they get motivated and inspired to go out there and start an investor friendly agent brokerage because yeah, it's hard for an agent right now. The market's a little slower, but investors are still investing. So you've got yourself a subset of people who are actually out there trying to do deals, even when the market is slower for the typical home buyer. And for those of you who are interested in being able to find investor friendly agents, BiggerPockets has a tool that can help you do that. You can go to biggerpockets.com/agent and submit your information and investor friendly agents will literally call you, text you, email you. How do I know this?

• 38:49Henry Washington?

  Because I did it when Dave and I were going to go on the Cash Flow Roadshow. We needed some investor friendly agents to show us around. So I went on the tool and used it just like. Anybody else and got emails, phone calls and texts from multiple investor friendly agents, literally within minutes. So it is a very challenging part of this business to find investor friendly agents. And BiggerPockets doing a lot to help you close that gap. All right, man, this has been incredible. You've done so many things. It sounds like you've done them well. Congratulations on all your success. Can you give us just a little bit of an overview of where your portfolio currently stands today? And then tell us a little bit about like what the future may look like for you.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  So today we have the self-storage, which is 225 units. Thankfully, we've completed that at 75%. I can see that's amazing. We still have the town home project ongoing. Figure out what happens with that. I have the eight short-term rentals that I personally own. We have five long-term rentals in the metro of Atlanta as well. And I'm actively looking to buy some more long-term rentals. I think some deals are are coming on board that I've seen that I like.

• 39:55Henry Washington?

  Yeah, they are, buddy.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  And I want to get into more bird deals. I've done a few of those, right? Like one or two, but now I want to do it on on small multifamilies to where I'm going to keep it and hang on for a long time. And then when you talk about the future, I'm just looking to continue growing kind of what we're doing from an investor friendly standpoint. Because to your point, like, a lot of agents are having issues right now. But investors are still out there buying. I'm still out there buying. Our clients are still out there buying. And this is some of the best buying opportunities that we've seen in years. And so we just recently expanded to Texas and we're working with a client down there to buy their short-term rental. And I'm continuing to expand the team around, but that's that's what we're working on.

• 40:32Henry Washington?

  Thank you so much for serving the community of investors out there. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story. Thank you for being vulnerable with us and telling us about what went well, what hasn't gone well. And congratulations on all the success you've had, man. It's been a pleasure and I commend you for all your success.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Come on now, Henry. I appreciate you and the whole BiggerPockets sphere for getting me into this. And I appreciate you specifically for the motivation.

• 40:56Henry Washington?

  All right, guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Hopefully it was helpful to you and we'll see you on the next episode.

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