3 Paid-Off Rentals: The “Boring” (But Proven) Path to Financial Freedom

Financial freedom with three rental properties? It almost sounds too easy, but it’s reality for today’s guest, who went from making roughly $11 an hour to having more than enough cash flow to live on. With a little hard work and discipline, Lucas Teague saved $10,000 to buy his very first rental property. He made several offers and heard plenty of “nos.” But he only needed one “yes.” And that first yes changed everything. Lucas repeated the process: buy a “cheap” property, live in it, fix it up, and make tens of thousands of dollars. But instead of racing to build a massive real estate portfolio, Lucas settled on three rentals and started paying them off. Now he’s almost completely debt-free and earns enough rental income to cover his family’s expenses and then some. Lucas has all that he needs. Now, he’s focused on a new objective: giving back. In this episode, he’s sharing an unconventional but proven path to financial freedom so YOU can do the same. In This Episode We Cover How Lucas achieved financial freedom with just three rentals The advantages of holding onto your W-2 job while you invest Good reasons to sell an investment property (even if it cash flows!) Why you shouldn’t be afraid to make “lowball” offers The AI tool Lucas uses to identify up-and-coming neighborhoods And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1345. 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?

  Financial freedom with just three rental properties? It almost sounds too easy, but it's reality for today's guest, who went from making roughly $11 an hour to having more than enough cash flow to live on. With a little hard work and discipline, Lucas Teague saved $10,000 to buy his very first rental property. He made several offers and heard several no's, but he only needed that one yes. And that first yes changed everything. Lucas repeated this process, buy a cheap property, live in it, fix it up and make tens of thousands of dollars. But instead of racing to build some massive portfolio, Lucas settled on just three rentals and started paying them off.

• 0:43Henry Washington?

  Now he's almost completely debt free, living in his dream home, and he earns enough rental income to cover his family's expenses and then some. Lucas has all that he needs. Now he's focused on a new objective, giving back. In this episode, he's sharing his unconventional but proven path to financial freedom, so you can do the same.

• 1:09Henry Washington?

  What's going on everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today we have an investor story with Lucas Teague from Indiana. So let's bring him on. Lucas Teague, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast, my friend.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Henry. I've been watching the show for probably 10 years now and it's an honor to be here.

• 1:26Henry Washington?

  Why don't you give us a little bit of background? What got you into real estate in the first place? And when, when did you get started?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I'm in my early 30s now. I've been investing in real estate for about 14 years. And really, I think it boils down to financial freedom. As a kid, I had a, a parent who lost their job after working for a place for about 30 years. And just all of a sudden, you know, they came home one day and didn't have a job. And I was probably 15 or 16 and, and after that I, I made the decision, I've got to prevent that if at all possible. So.

• 1:56Henry Washington?

  How did that turn into like real estate being the source for that extra income?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've always had the, the mathematical lens. And so, you know, I looked at, hey, can I buy a business? And this is at 18 years old, I said zero capital at the time. Well, with no money, it's a little bit difficult to buy a business. So then I turned to, okay, what if I invest in some stocks? Well, once I get to like $2 million in stocks, you know, maybe I can make $60,000 to $80,000 a year, but it's going to take me about a hundred years to get to 2 million at the, the money I was making at 18. So I moved on to the next thing, which was real estate. And in my area at the time, there were houses selling for 20 or $30,000 and you could rent those out for $300 or $400 a month. And, and I'm crunching the numbers and like, man, this could, I could do something within a decade, probably, or five to 10 years and get the tax benefits and all of the other benefits that come with real estate investing.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And it seemed like a no-brainer.

• 2:47Henry Washington?

  So what year was this when you've had this epiphany?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was probably 2012. So I graduated high school in May of 2012 and I worked in the pharmaceutical industry at the time and I still do today. I work for Eli Lilly, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. So I do that and then I'm also a real estate agent. But at the time I made about 1195 an hour. And so my first year was essentially just saving up $10,000 for that either down payment or that first house that I, I purchased later in 2013.

• 3:15Henry Washington?

  Okay, well, that's some good bit of background. You bought that, that first property in 2013. What'd that deal look like?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this was a HUD foreclosure and it was listed on HUD.gov on an auction website for about $50,000. And my poor Realtor friend, we spent probably a month. We'd submit our offer on the auction website. We'd wait a week, it would get declined. And so it was listed at 50,000. We started at 6,000 and 7,000, then 8,000. And after about a month of doing that, the, the bank or whoever owned the house on the auction website, they finally accepted the offer of $8,000. So at the time I had, I had about $10,000 in cash and I went for it. So I figured, hey, for $8,000, what, what could go wrong? So.

• 3:58Henry Washington?

  That's an uncomfortable offer. They're asking 50, you're offering, you know, a couple of grand to start out. What helped you just start making uncomfortable offers? Cause that's a, that's a big hill to climb for a lot of investors.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I try to look at it with a non-emotional lens. You know, in this instance, it was a bank that owned the property. I'm probably not going to hurt anybody's feelings if I, you know, submit a low offer. Even if it's a person who owns the property, really you shouldn't hurt their feelings if you're offering something low. We deal with this, especially now being a real estate agent. An offer is better than no offer at all. All they, they can say no and then move along and you know, that's better than not hearing anything.

• 4:35Henry Washington?

  If you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know what to do to get my next deal. Go open the MLS and find a bunch of houses that are for sale that are in your buy box. Who cares what they're listed for? And make an offer that makes sense to you. Worst case scenario is they say no. Best case scenario is they say, I don't want that offer, but let's talk about it, right? Like, that's why an offer is better than no offer, no matter what it is. Cause you're basically saying, hey, I'm willing to have a conversation about this. So you did that first deal in 2013. You bought a house for $8,000. That sounds to me like you didn't buy much house. So tell, tell us about it, like what'd you, what'd you do with it? Do you still have it? How did it work out?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  No, so I, I sold that after about a year of owning it. Um, I put about $2,600 into that house, did all of the work myself, watching YouTube videos. And the bones of the house were good. It was really cosmetic. It needed paint, it needed some, uh, some flooring, some kitchen stuff. And so I worked on that for about a year and sold that in early 2014 for about 60,000. So I had about a $50,000 profit on that place.

• 5:41Henry Washington?

  What goes through your mind after that? Because I think a lot of investors get to this point where it's like, all right, I did a deal, but like, what do I do now?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think I said earlier, at the time I made 1195 an hour, which I thought was a ton of money and I was hourly. And within a year I had just made 50,000. And let, you know, if I worked on that full-time for a year, that's $25 an hour, which was double what I was making from my W2 job at the time. And my mind was completely blown that like you could, you could do this and make like as a, it was essentially part-time, a few hours a week, I worked on that property for a year and I could make double what I made at my, my W2 job. So thankfully I had a good experience on the first property. And yeah, I, I think that I got the bug after that and I had to, I kept looking and quickly transacted again shortly after that.

• 6:27Henry Washington?

  So what did the next one look like? How'd you find that one?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  The next one was probably 30 minutes northwest of where I live. And it was a triplex that was for sale for about $45,000. I had enough work experience at the time to actually apply for financing and get financing on this place. Unfortunately, this is where I learned a lot of lessons. The house was about 150 years old. It had two vacant units in it. It had one unit where somebody was living there, but they weren't paying any rent in there. So I had to go through, uh, an eviction and get those folks out of that apartment. And essentially I just moved into each one of the apartments. And you know, I'd lived there for three to four months. I would renovate everything. I'd move into the next unit that's available, get that previous unit rented out and did that for about a year as well. And, and sold that in 2015.

• 7:14Henry Washington?

  Okay, so you, you paid about $45,000. And how much money do you think you spent fixing up the, the entire property?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I would say between five and 6,000. You know, structurally the house was in good shape. It was more of a cosmetic rehab flooring, paint, you know, that kind of stuff. So probably 5,500, I would say.

• 7:33Henry Washington?

  Okay, and what were you renting the units out for?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Previously, and they were rented for probably 400 before I had to do the eviction. Once I remodeled everything, I moved those up to about 700. So once it was completely turned over, the property brought in about 2,100 a month.

• 7:49Henry Washington?

  2,100 a month on a note of, well, you're only paying 45,000. That's a crap ton of cash flow. That's amazing. But then you said you sold it. So why sell instead of keep the cash flow?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  I was still 19 or 20 at the time and it was not in the best location. Um, so the area, you know, had some extracurricular activities kind of going on in, in the area and, um, not the type of tenants that I wanted to have long-term. And so it was, it was quite a bit of headache, um, and stuff. But I was doing the math and you know, I, so I listed the property for a hundred thousand. I got a full price offer on it. And so at the time, having the capital at 19 or 20 years old, that meant a lot more to me than making the $2,100 a month.

• 8:31Henry Washington?

  I know people are listening to this and going, this was so long ago. Like the numbers don't work like that anymore. Now you can't pay the same price points you were paying then, but there are deals that you can still get at a discount and you can still rent and get current cash flow. And what I want people to focus on is not necessarily what the dollars were for the purchase price, but look at the spreads and understand the concepts of what Lucas was doing. Like this stuff still works. You can absolutely still go buy a single family home, live in it while you renovate it, and then sell it for a profit when you're done and not have to pay capital gains taxes because you lived in the property, especially if you lived there for two years.

• 9:15Henry Washington?

  If you lived there less than two years, you're going to pay some capital gains, right? You can absolutely go and find yourself a triplex and live in a unit, renovate it while you're living in it, move to the next one, renovate it while you're living in it, rent it out and then sell it when you're done or keep it as a rental when you're done. Like those strategies worked then, they still work now. The dollar signs are bigger now, yes. But also the purchase prices are bigger, but so are the rents and so are the sale prices, right? So like these strategies still work and the, the, the way you use to find these deals still works. There are bank-owned properties again, guys, like that died off for a while, but a lot of them are back. People are getting foreclosed on and banks are sitting on some properties.

• 9:58Henry Washington?

  You can absolutely go bid on foreclosures. There are opportunities on the market if you're willing to make offers that make sense to you. You'll have to make a lot of them, but like conceptually, what Lucas did is very much still possible in today's environment. Is it going to be a little more challenging? Yes. Will it be more expensive? Yes, but it can also be more profitable if you do it properly. So thank you so much for sharing some of those lessons and, and, and being transparent with it. I want to learn more about what you continue to do after that second deal. Cause now you've done a live-in flip as a single, you've done a live-in flip technically as a triplex. You've gotten a taste of that.

• 10:40Henry Washington?

  I'm curious, did you continue down the same path or did you transition to something different? But we'll get into that right after the break.

• 10:47Dave Meyer?

  Before we go to break, if you're someone who's bought a couple of deals and you're looking to scale up your portfolio into something bigger, I have a really exciting announcement for you. BiggerPockets is hosting its first ever conference focused just on scaling up. It's this December, it's coming up soon, this December 5th through 7th in Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to have a full day of programming with speakers like myself, James Danard, Kathy Fecky, and Devon Kennard, talking about how to scale up and build a sustainable business. Tickets are on sale now, but there are only 100 tickets. So go to biggerpockets.com/conferencesnow and get your ticket today.

• 11:25Henry 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. And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly

• 12:10Henry Washington?

  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 incentives, 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.

• 12:49Dave Meyer?

  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.

• 13:21Henry Washington?

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• 14:04Henry Washington?

  spending $400 on your Aven card. Enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, NMLS #2042345. Cards issued per 2020 license from Visa USA, Inc. By Coastal Community Bank, NMLS #462289. Member FDIC. Equal housing lender. Subject to approval. Terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 14:26Speaker 03

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• 14:57Henry Washington?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am here with investor Lucas Teague, and he has been sharing his real estate investment journey. He started back in 2013, bought a single family, lived in it, renovated it, sold it, moved on to a triplex. And the concepts for the way he did this are absolutely still possible today. So I'm curious, Lucas, what did you transition to after that? Did you stay the course on what you were doing, living flips, or is there some other strategy you tried?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Now, to some extent, yes. I took a two-pronged approach at this point. So I needed a place to live, obviously. I had sold the place that I was living. So I bought a primary residence for myself, and, you know, same pattern as the first two. The house had good bones. It was a cosmetic flip where I didn't want my family to come over for Christmas, but you know, it was very, it was very livable. And so I did that on nights and weekends as I was working my W2 job. And at the same time, I started looking for, I wanted to be in the long-term rental business, which is what I'm in today. So in my area, I'm shooting for a 15% cash-on-cash return. So I'm starting to look for these properties, and maybe that's once a year, maybe that's one property every three years. And so probably around 2017,

• 16:09Speaker 01

  2018, I began to buy these, these 15% cash-on-cash return long-term rentals and simultaneously working on the house that I was living in, you know, shooting for that two-year turnaround time. That way I could avoid capital gains taxes and, you know, do both simultaneously.

• 16:24Henry Washington?

  What I like about your strategy is, what makes it possible is, you said you had a goal of 15% cash-on-cash return. That was the goal. So that was the thing that was important. Not volume of deals, but deals that meet your very specific criteria. And whether that meant one deal a year or one deal every three years, that wasn't what was important. What was important was that the deal met your criteria. That discipline is exactly what makes investors successful in a down market like we're in now. And what makes that kind of strategy possible is because you had a day job, right? You had active income

• 17:07Henry Washington?

  from going to work every day. And so I know a lot of people listen to this podcast because they want to retire from their day job. There's absolutely a path to do that. It takes longer now than it used to, but yes, you can do that. But there's also still a path that builds wealth. If you have a job you like or a job that you enjoy, you don't have to focus on quitting your job. But the benefit of not having to quit your job allows you to have the discipline to have a strategy like this, to be able to say, hey, I want 15% cash-on-cash return. And maybe that sounds wild, but the deals are out there. And if I gotta buy one deal every three years to get it, then that's what I'll do because I have a job that's bringing in the income. So you were looking for this 15% cash-on-cash return type deals. How long did it take you to find one?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Really not long. So I, again, I'm a mathematical-focused person. And so I found ways to export the entire MLS into an Excel spreadsheet, use Excel to calculate cash-on-cash return for thousands of properties simultaneously. That's still something today that I do as a real estate agent, just make analyzing properties so much faster. And so it maybe took me a year. And, you know, it was, the first one was a house listed at 150. I offered 110, thinking we would negotiate, and hey, they accepted 110. And so we still have that property today, and it's, you know, it's way under rented. It's 1350 a month, but still off 110,000. It's, it's well above the 1% rule, so.

• 18:30Henry Washington?

  That's super cool, too. So you made, basically made a spreadsheet that told you what price to offer for all these properties and ordered it for it to hit your number? And did you just like go down the list, pick your favorites, and start making offers?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would just sort the column by, hey, what's the highest cash-on-cash return that's on the market currently? And, you know, of course, some are going to come up 20%, 25% cash-on-cash return. You look at the pictures and it needs a complete gut. And so, but it gives you a list to look at where you're not looking at thousands of properties, you're looking at five or 10, and, you know, spending your time focusing on the ones that are most likely to work for you.

• 19:01Henry Washington?

  You know, this strategy is so much easier now with AI. Like, literally, anyone can do this now. You can scrape the MLS or have your agent send you a bunch of listings, and then you can just have AI put it into a spreadsheet, use some basic rental knowledge on what you think the rents would be, and calculate cash-on-cash return for the, all the deals that are on the market, and have it literally tell you, this is the price you would need to pay for this to work. And you could just start submitting offers. Like, you can do this today.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So speaking of AI, I've built a tool as well that will analyze the micro environment of your specific town and neighborhood. And so, you know, I live in a city with 5,000 people, and you can even specifically target neighborhoods and everything like that now with AI.

• 19:42Henry Washington?

  Okay. Tell me what that means, though, for normal, normal people talk. What is, what does the tool do?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  That means now you can analyze news articles, anything that would affect the market value in your specific town. And then maybe there's specific news where something, a new business is going to go in close to a specific neighborhood. And so, you know, over the next five years, it's going to increase 15% or 20% in that neighborhood. Now you can find those 15% cash-on-cash returns in that neighborhood and get the appreciation simultaneously.

• 20:10Henry Washington?

  That's really cool. Let's put a pin in it, because I want to get back to the story, but that's super cool. And of course, you did something like that, because why wouldn't you? All right. So you did that first 15% cash-on-cash return deal. What year was that?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  It was 2019.

• 20:22Henry Washington?

  That wasn't that long ago. And so, did you just ramp up continuing to do that? Or how did you go from there to where you're at today?

• 20:29Speaker 01

  So I attempted to. This was in rates where, you know, under 3%. So I found another one in 2020. I bought that property for 120,000. It rents out for 1525 per month, per day. And so I continued to look through 2021 until about 2026, earlier this year, and just honestly could not find anything that was worth my time to, to look at. So I asked myself, you know, what else can I do if I, if I'm building up this cash pile to buy these 15% cash-on-cash returns, but there's none out there? What can I do to hit financial freedom faster, right? So I can pay down debt and deleverage myself. And so for the past four years, you know, I would have a, a cash pile enough to purchase a house, but if that started to grow and grow, I would use the additional to pay down leverage.

• 21:14Henry Washington?

  I love this conversation. If you are a real estate investor, buying a new property isn't the only way to help yourself achieve financial freedom. You have a couple of options, and I love that you explored this option. You can look inwardly at your portfolio and say, yes, I have this property. It cash flows great leveraged if I pay it off. So if I take this $50,000 and I pay off my loan on this asset, what kind of cash-on-cash return do I get? Now, what kind of return do I get? And is it better than going and buying a new one, right? Because if you've got cash flow of, let's call it $300 a month, and you can

• 21:53Henry Washington?

  pay that asset off, and now you've got unleveraged cash flow of $1,200 a month, that's a substantial increase. And is that return higher than if you just go buy another leveraged house and add it to your portfolio? Like, that's the math you get to do. Another option is maybe you can pivot a strategy, take a long term and make it a short term if it makes sense, right? So I guess the point I'm trying to make is you don't have to go buy another property. Consider your current portfolio. Can you pay for something? Either paying down the asset, remodeling a kitchen, adding a bedroom, right? Can you add money to your current asset to increase the rents and will that produce a higher cash

• 22:35Henry Washington?

  on cash return than buying a new asset? Or just paying something down? Because paying something down not only gives you more cash flow, but it gives you less stress. So that's the thing. That's my favorite part about it. So then what do you do if they, are you just going to focus on paying off deals now? Or is there something else you're working on?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  No. So probably three years ago, um, my, my poor wife was so patient with me for the past like 10 years, you know, moving her into a different place, having half the house under construction. And so, you know, I told her, hey, like at some point, we're going to have to buy the house that we want to live in for, you know, a longer period of time. And this is, this is your seasoning as you go through your, your investor lifecycle, right? The, in the beginning, you're looking for anything that you can do. You're willing to, you know, live right next to tenants. And once you've done that five or six times, you've got to have, you'd be making some progress within yourself and within your family as well. So we found 66 acres out in the country where we live here. And we decided, hey, we were going to clear a small section and build our dream house on there. So it took me about a year to, to clear about four acres, get all my permits and stuff.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  And that's where I'm here now.

• 23:34Henry Washington?

  Oh, wow. So you found like wooded acreage?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:38Henry Washington?

  What did 66 acres cost?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  378.

• 23:41Henry Washington?

  378. How long ago did you start that purchase?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  So that was in 2022 is when I purchased that, that property. And throughout 2022, I, I cleared the, the, it was about four acres of smaller trees that I had to clear for the house. And yeah, and continue to save up to have enough for a down payment to actually build the house that we wanted to live in for the rest of our life.

• 24:02Henry Washington?

  I've got tons of questions because I'm doing something very similar. And I'm going to ask you some of those questions right after this break.

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• 29:00Henry Washington?

  All right, we're back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am with investor Lucas Teague, and he has been sharing his investor journey, starting at a young age back in 2013. And now he has told us he purchased 66 acres, cleared out about four to five acres, and has built a home on that land. I have lots of questions because this is kind of a popular concept right now. I just bought 20 acres. I'm going to build a house on it. I'm excited about it. So how did you purchase this land? Because there's several ways to do this. I know some people buy the land and get a loan for the land and building the house all as

• 29:41Henry Washington?

  one. But you had to buy land, clear land, there's site work, there's utility work. Like, what did you have to research? And then how long did the process take between like finding the property and then being able to start a build?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  So it probably took us two or three years to actually find the property. And the reason we signed up for this one was it was right next to where my parents lived at the time. And, you know, my, my father was sick at the time and didn't have much time left. And so I wanted to be close to family when, when that time were to come. And so my parents own 68 acres to the north, and this property came up just to the south of that at 66 acres. And yeah, so I mean, it came up for sale. I did a little bit of research. Thankfully, it's not overly difficult to get permits in our area. It's not easy, but it's, you know, probably, we're probably right there in the, in the middle. You know, so there's some utility work that you've got to do. There's some elevation profile. There's, you know, floodplains you've got to look at. Mistake that I made, there's

• 30:36Speaker 01

  no internet access out where I live. There's no fiber. So I'm, I'm calling in from Starlink here, which saved me. So there's a little bit of homework that you need to do before you purchase something like that.

• 30:46Henry Washington?

  And did you use like one loan for all of it? Or did you have to do this all separately?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  No, so I'm, I stayed pretty conservative. I put probably 50% down payments on the land. You know, I did a specific land loan on a 15-year fixed at 3.7%. And that was back in 2022. And then I waited about another year. I got a construction loan to build the, the primary residence, which we finished construction of that in June of 2023. And since then, I've spent three years of just paying that, that property off. So now I'm essentially, we're, we're debt-free with our primary residence in our land. And so our, our monthly basis of what we need to, to make is, is fairly low.

• 31:24Henry Washington?

  That's really cool because there's a lot of different ways to A purchase land and to B build on that land. Not only are there combined loans like I talked about. So for those that are listening, you can get one loan that will allow you to purchase the land and build the house. Now, you have to have done a lot of research on the front side because you need to know who your builder are. You gotta have your plans, right? But a bank can loan you everything to do this, or you can go the route like I went and like Lucas went, which is to go buy the land first. And then a lot of banks will let you leverage the land once you own it as your down payment. So you don't have to put money down for the construction loan. So talk to the banks and find out what products to have that can help

• 32:04Henry Washington?

  you do something like this. I also hear that there's all kinds of grants and programs to help people take raw land and develop something on that land. It just depends on what it is that you want to develop on what programs that are available to you. Did you look into anything like that?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  I did. And that's something that I've hardly ever heard discussed anywhere on any real estate podcast. So if you own raw land in most of the United States, we have an issue where invasive species like bush honeysuckle, Lepidiza, autumn olive, those invasive species, seeds are coming in from, it could be China, or Russia, or Australia, things that are not native here to the United States. So our government has funding where they create a pool of funds to give to landowners to eradicate those invasive species on the property.

• 32:53Henry Washington?

  What?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Which was something I have never heard anywhere. And so, you know, I'm doing some research. Hey, I got these 66 acres, you know, do I want to timber this? No, not really. I don't want to them destroying the forest. Well, what else can I do? And so I stumbled across this. It's a United States Department of Agriculture, and then the subdivision Natural Resource Conservation Service. And they will essentially come out and look at your land, see the the level of invasive species that you have on the property, and then assign a budget for your property to get those invasive species removed. And that is, it's a one-time grant that you'll get usually over three to five years, depending on how invasive the species are at your property. And in my specific case, you know, they gave us about $1,000

• 33:37Speaker 01

  an acre over the course of three years. So about 66,000. And yeah, and we just finished that contract about three months ago or so. And yeah, super, super easy.

• 33:47Henry Washington?

  So they just gave you $1,000 an acre. Now, you had to go do the work to eradicate the invasive species of plant. What does it cost you to do that versus what they're giving you?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  In my specific situation, the levels were so high where I subcontracted it out to a group of folks. They would come out here, do the work for me. And so we basically split the money 50/50. I paid them and then I kept the rest as well.

• 34:10Henry Washington?

  That's so cool. I am absolutely researching this the second we got off this podcast. That's really cool. So how did you even stumble across that?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Just researching. I mean, I, you know, I have this 66 acres and I wanted it to produce some cash flow, just like a rental property would. And really, you know, am I going to raise farm animals? Probably not. You know, that's not my skill set. I could do a timber harvest, you know, can I let somebody else use the land maybe for hunting? And I wasn't really comfortable with any of those things. So I just kept researching. Hey, you can use AI now too. Hey, I've got 66 acres. What are, what kind of ideas do you have for me to make, make money from this? Where it's not too disruptive to my, my lifestyle? And there, I mean, sure enough, there it was. And honestly, it's a great program. Like, you know, three years later, our forest is so much healthier. We have 99% native species out here. The birds, the turkeys, all of the deer, the wildlife are happier because

• 35:03Speaker 01

  there's more calorically dense food out there. And so it's, it's really a good program.

• 35:07Henry Washington?

  Well, Lucas, this has been really fun. What a cool story of how to use real estate to supplement your lifestyle, right? Like, not everybody needs to start investing and retire in a few years, but you can still build a pretty cool life and a pretty cool lifestyle using real estate and keeping your job. And I love that you've kind of talked us through how you did that. So before we get out of here, a couple of things. Can you tell us a little bit about like where you stand today as an investor? What's your portfolio look like?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  So today we have three rental properties and we've got our primary residence on the 66 acres, which is paid off. And so complexity started to enter my life at some point and I decided to simplify. And so we have a very simple portfolio that covers all of our family's basic needs. I still continue to work my W2 job, you know, for different reasons than what I did 12 years ago. But now I've shifted into a different phase of, it's not as much about me and my family. It's about what I can give back to my community, what I can give back to other families. You know, so I've been able to donate a very large sums of money to local, local charities and families and things like that. I'm, you know, giving a house away to a family member that that needs it as well. And so I'm moving into, you know, an all new chapter of, of life here.

• 36:22Henry Washington?

  I love that. I love that more than anything. I'm just truly a believer in that, like, we are, we are chosen to be stewards of wealth. And when I hear stories all the time of people who amassed wealth and lost it, I always see people who were selfish with it. But people who have philanthropic ambitions or who are using it in good ways always seem to continue to find more. And I don't think that that's a coincidence. So that's really cool that you're doing that. And it's really cool that you're able to do that all through buying a couple of properties back in 2013. That's really, really fun. All right. So earlier in the show, you were talking about this, this tool you built with AI to help you analyze neighborhoods. Can you give us a little more detail on that?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  So we're now in the generation of AI and it is such a powerful tool. Hey, 10 years ago, prices were significantly lower than what they are now, but there was not tools like this that existed and made it so easy for the average person. And you don't even have to be an expert. You can type into ChatGPT, or Claude, or, or Grok, or whichever app that you're using, and you can ask any series of questions and will make, make your life so much easier. But one specific thing that I do for my real estate clients and from an investing lens is, you know, in my specific market, there's maybe 100,000 people. And, you know, there's businesses going in, there's new neighborhoods going in, there's so much stuff that's going on just in my microeconomic circle. And something you can

• 37:47Speaker 01

  use AI for, you can have it analyze all of the local news that's going on in your specific area, have it overlay those news articles with a specific map of your area, and then chart out what, what's the next five years going to look like? What's the next 10 years going to look like? You know, if, if a new business goes in that hires 5,000 people, what that's going to do to the property values? There's some news that happens to neighborhoods where the prices are probably going to go down 10%. You know, maybe a new neighborhood's going in and prices are going to raise based off that new neighborhood or shrink. If a business is going in, there's going to be more jobs most likely. And so probably property values in that area are going to increase. And you can use AI to analyze that massive

• 38:29Speaker 01

  data set, overlay it with the map of your area. And now you can even target specific neighborhoods that have a higher probability of having more appreciation than what, what the normal house would in your town.

• 38:41Henry Washington?

  That's pretty, pretty cool. How long have you been using this tool?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Probably a year now. And, you know, I just purchased my first property almost using exclusively AI. You know, I trended the neighborhood. I found a specific area that's probably going to appreciate 20% in, in value over the next five years. Then I overlaid that with my 15% cash on cash return AI tool. And sure enough, hey, a property came up. I went and looked at it, pretty good shape. So yeah, we're already seeing results in roughly six months.

• 39:09Henry Washington?

  Have you seen results that match the research?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Probably not on the appreciation side yet. I would say on the cash on cash return side, yes, but I'd say too soon to tell on the appreciation aspect.

• 39:19Henry Washington?

  It is rare to find great cash flow and great appreciation. And you're using technology to help you be more strategic to where you have a higher probability of getting both, which is super smart. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Lucas, thank you so much for joining us on the BiggerPockets Podcast. Is there a place where people can find out more about you or find you?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find me on biggerpockets.com or you can find me on Facebook, Lucas T.

• 39:43Henry Washington?

  Awesome. And thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. This was super cool. I've got some homework I'm gonna go do based on what I learned from Lucas. Hopefully you do too. As always, we'll see everybody on the next episode.

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