I Had ZERO Experience and Replaced My Income with Real Estate

Have zero experience in real estate investing (literally no idea where to begin)? This guest proves you could be financially free in ten years or less if you start today. Just a decade ago, Peter Fife was broke, working a dead-end job, and never thought about investment properties. He had such little money that when a book on investing piqued his interest, he would sit in a bookshop reading it, but never buying it. His brother, who had some money but bad credit, asked Peter to use his credit to fund a renovation on a triplex. Both had no idea what they were getting into—essentially a second job after their nine-to-fives, painting, replacing floors, scrubbing walls. The profit from the first deal? Close to a six-figure check, replacing Peter’s income. He then did his spin on the BRRRR method—buying, renovating, reinvesting, and repeating—quitting his job with just two properties. Now, less than a decade later, he’s financially free with enough passive income to support him and his wife. He took some huge risks, including selling everything he worked for to buy one really run-down property. The gamble worked out, and he’s still using the same formula today! You don’t need experience to start investing, just follow Peter’s framework! In This Episode We Cover How to invest in real estate when you have no money or experience to start The shadiest lender ever (please don’t do what Peter did) Why you must reinvest profits from your first real estate deals How to know it’s time to quit your job to go all-in on real estate investing Peter’s repeatable BRRRR formula (buy, rehab, REINVEST, repeat) Why Peter sold his best rentals to buy a beat-up multifamily property (and how much it makes now) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1180 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  This investor went from buying a single property to owning multiple apartment complexes and cash flowing $7,000 per month, all in less than 10 years. Peter was working a dead end job in 2018 when his brother suggested fixing up a house that was about to get foreclosed on. A year later, they each made nearly six figures. And then Peter was hooked on real estate investing and was willing to do whatever it took to build a profitable portfolio, including sleeping in his truck for several weeks while renovating a new property. That dedication has paid off with nearly a 3X return and a repeatable new investing formula. Let's hear exactly how Peter makes these deals work.

• 0:48Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer, Head of Real Estate Investing at BiggerPockets. And on this show, we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate. Our guest on the show today is Peter Fife from Provo, Utah. Peter started investing with just a single triplex and co-called more than 20 lenders to find funding for that first deal. Today, he's able to clear $1 million on some individual deals. He scaled up by getting creative and hustling to make deals work that other people overlooked, enduring a lot of short-term discomfort to achieve long-term success. Peter did all this by going all in. He burned the boats, and it's not for everyone, but this is a super inspirational real estate

• 1:33Dave Meyer?

  journey that's only getting better. Let's bring on Peter. Peter, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thanks for being here.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  No, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

• 1:42Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, this is gonna be a great show. Let's start by hearing your background. Who are you? Where do you live? And how'd you get into real estate?

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Lived in Manti, Utah, farm town. Not a lot of access to real estate, not a lot of stories there. But I started out in real estate because I was kind of at a job that I didn't want to be at for the rest of my life. And yeah, I had an opportunity to kind of fall on my lap with my brother and... Went from there.

• 2:05Dave Meyer?

  And where were you at that point, both financially and professionally? Were you working? What were you doing with your time?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I was an intern working for a company that I was staffing and recruiting for them. I was happy to have the job. They eventually moved me up to a salary of making like 40 or $45,000 a year. So not really a ton there either. But it was while I was at that job, my, my brothers actually worked there as well. That one of my brothers came to me and, and he had said, you know, hey, there's this opportunity of a triplex in the area. I have terrible credit. You have great credit. I have money. You don't. Let's kind of go in on this together. We'll use your credit, my money, and we'll see if we can flip this thing together. So that's kind of how it got started.

• 2:43Dave Meyer?

  Okay. So it was a triplex in your own area?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46Dave Meyer?

  And how did he come across this?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  He was living in the same city and I think as he was walking along, he just kept passing this triplex that was in terrible disrepair. And it turns out that the owners were kind of in the middle of a, of a nasty divorce. And so they just needed to liquidate the property and he happened to be there at the right time.

• 3:02Dave Meyer?

  What year was this?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  This was in 2017.

• 3:06Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  So we walked into this triplex and it was, the walls were brown. We thought that the owners had just painted it brown. We're kind of walking around knocking on some walls. It's like an old pioneer home. And after about three minutes of us faking, like we knew what we were doing, we both kind of turned to each other and we were like, dude, we're screwed.

• 3:20Dave Meyer?

  But you had already bought it?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that we bought the house. We're like, we don't know. We've never even installed a toilet. We maybe painted a couple of walls. Like what the heck are we doing? Like it was, it was crazy.

• 3:30Dave Meyer?

  I think that, that moment of panic is, is ubiquitous across all real estate investors. I don't know people listening. I honestly still have that sometimes as you buy something, you're trying something a little bit new where you have that moment of panic. Uh, I want to hear how you got through that, but curious first, I'm just sort of the details of the deal. How much was it? And how, given that you were starting, one of you low credit, one of you not a lot of money. Like, how did you actually structure this deal and close on it?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we found a local credit union that was willing to do a 10% down payment investment for an investment property. Uh, so he was able to front that with, with my credit. So we bought that thing for $240,000. We did all of the work ourselves, like literally everything. We got it all checked by inspectors and whatnot. It was all done well. But after all was said and done, when we walked away, we sold it for $420,000.

• 4:19Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. We just made a good amount of money on that one.

• 4:21Dave Meyer?

  And the, the goal was always to flip it, not to hold on to it?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, always to flip it. And I had no idea about holding real estate properties. I was just kind of like, man, this is an opportunity to make more money than I'm making right now at my job. So.

• 4:34Dave Meyer?

  So you weren't like, oh, I'm on the financial freedom path, or at that point at least, you're just kind of like, yeah, you know, making a couple grand. It sounds pretty good.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I do remember after closing, signing the paperwork, and then I saw the money hit my bank account. And I was like, holy smokes. Like, I just made more money on that than I'd well, in like, almost two years of work.

• 4:56Dave Meyer?

  How painful was it, though? You had no idea what you're doing by your own admission. Was it, how steep was that learning process?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  It was brutal. So we would work our day job until 4:30. We'd come home, kind of, I'd give my wife a kiss, shove down some dinner, and then he and I would be working from probably 5:30 or 6:00 to midnight every night for that entire year. And like, his kids would come by and say hi to him, but we were working every night. So we maybe had like, a few days that accumulated maybe a couple of weeks throughout the year off. But like, yeah, we were working every night.

• 5:28Dave Meyer?

  How did you go about learning how to do this if you'd never done it?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, YouTube University.

• 5:33Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. That's what I figured you'd say. You just like, pick the project that night. You're like, how to drywall?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:39Dave Meyer?

  How to put in toilet?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Okay, there's a wax ring under this thing. Okay, cool.

• 5:44Dave Meyer?

  Okay, what was the hardest thing?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Uh, rats.

• 5:47Dave Meyer?

  Oh, no.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  That was the nastiest thing. So yeah, we had found buckets of like, these rat traps that the previous occupiers. Yeah. Yeah. So we had like, eradicate the place with rats. I think scrubbing down the walls. We thought they were brown. Turns out they're, they're white. They were brown because of the nicotine that had been smoked.

• 6:05Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God. Yeah. I've seen those kinds of houses for sure. But Matt, Peter, you are not doing a good job selling the idea of real estate. I mean, the check sounds good, but you're making this sound miserable. You're laughing, though. I know it's hard when you do it, but like, looking back on it, it sounds like it was worth it, right?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so worth it. I mean, To be honest with you, as of a couple of years ago, my wife and I could have retired.

• 6:28Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  We could have retired and maintained our standard of living. Our standard of living isn't phenomenal by any stretch of the imagination. But I mean, if I were to die, if I were to have died two years ago, my wife and kids would have been able to maintain their standard of living forever, which was really awesome.

• 6:41Dave Meyer?

  Well, that that seems super motivating. I mean, you just took a huge swing right out. It's right out the gate.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:46Dave Meyer?

  Probably one of the hardest possible approaches to your first deal. Buying it yourself, working with a partner, which is great, but neither of you really have experience in this and doing a full rehab, doing all of that DIY. But you did it and you made it work. So where'd you go from there? Were you in on rehabs or did you change your approach?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was definitely in on rehabs. I had, I kind of got that first shot of that high that I got when I walked out of that. And I was like, man, this is, this is what I'm going to do. My brother had kind of stepped away for a bit. And so I just kind of like, okay, I'll do this on my own. I found a property that was super cheap, selling for $212,000. I thought that it would need maybe $30,000 of money into it. And I could sell it for like 320.

• 7:28Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And it was a mess. I didn't have any money still.

• 7:32Dave Meyer?

  Can I ask what happened to the check?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that check went into us buying our home.

• 7:36Dave Meyer?

  Oh, no. Okay. So just quality of life, wanted to support your own living.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I ended up going on Google Maps and I typed in money and lender. And I called every lender and money result that came up. And on the 21st phone call, I got ahold of somebody, told them the deal, somehow convinced him that I could fix a house by myself in six months.

• 7:57Dave Meyer?

  And these were hard money lenders?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. I mean, this guy wasn't necessarily hard money lenders. This guy's just money.

• 8:02Dave Meyer?

  You don't even know. You still don't even know you borrowed this person's money. You're just like, did you just meet him behind a 7-Eleven and he'd give you a bag of money?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I never met him. He was like, yeah, here's my account number, here's my routing number. And for the expenses of the remodel, here's my debit card. Just make sure all expenses go to the debit card.

• 8:18Dave Meyer?

  What? I mean, I guess he's the one taking on risk, but wow.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, there's a lot of risk on my side too, because I said, look, if I can't flip this in six months, then you can, then you can have my house.

• 8:28Dave Meyer?

  Oh, your primary. You put up your primary as collateral to a stranger on the internet.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. If this dude is willing to give me his account and routing number and the deal is going to close, let's do it. And so he mailed me his debit card and yeah, I worked on that house all day, every day.

• 8:43Dave Meyer?

  I'm not gonna lie, this is some shady shit.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. Hopefully this isn't. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. I just, I just needed money. And so, um, yeah. And I, I call and that closed five, five months and 27 days later.

• 8:58Dave Meyer?

  Wow. Okay. Well, I, I wanna compliment your hustle because that is awesome. I do respect the hustle.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  I know.

• 9:06Dave Meyer?

  Honestly, it, it sounds like you, you, you really made it work. We'll just, I just a word of caution to our audience. Maybe don't just meet people on the internet who mail you your debit card. There are better forms of financing. Let's just say.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  And I had no idea there were.

• 9:22Dave Meyer?

  No, I, I totally get it. I, I, I think at the beginning of my career, did some stuff I would not recommend to our audience as well. Uh, I just, uh, you know, in the spirit of hustle, you, you sometimes do something, but luckily I think in today's day and age, we've evolved this industry. There are a lot of hard money lenders. There are private money lenders. There are people that you can meet through the BiggerPockets community who maybe at least have reputation that you can check out. Uh, make sure that they have all the right paperwork in a row of that kind of thing.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's what I did moving forward was someone was like, hey, you should go on BiggerPockets, check out their, their lenders. I was like, oh, okay. I didn't know BiggerPockets had lenders. And so I kinda went on there.

• 10:00Dave Meyer?

  What's a lender?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's kinda what it was like. And then I, and then from that point on, it was, it was much more streamlined. I started doing several more deals and yeah, scaled up from there.

• 10:10Dave Meyer?

  Okay. So how did that, that second one, you said six months and you finished in five months and 27 days? How did that work out financially for you?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Uh, that one I made, I think it was $42,000 on that one.

• 10:22Dave Meyer?

  Nice. Amazing.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Which again, I was happy with. And I think more, more importantly, it gave me a good, it started giving me a good track record. So that when I went to those hard money lenders, I could say, yeah, I've done a triplex. I've done, you know, this house now. And I've done it in the time that I've said I would do it at. And then they became much more willing to lend to me.

• 10:36Dave Meyer?

  Yep. That's, that's the perfect way to do it. And did you, you did all the work yourself again, but without your brother?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Without my brother. Yeah. So I did all of it myself. And I, I learned that the first go around for me, I'm guessing this is similar for everybody. But the first go around for me is arduous and slow. But then the second time around, I mean, it was, it was easily twice as fast.

• 10:54Dave Meyer?

  So much easier. Yeah. There's just so many hurdles and research you have to do and mistakes and you have to drive. Back and forth to Home Depot nine times in one day, and that's just your life for a little while.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:08Dave Meyer?

  And you were working full time, right?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  At this point, I had left my job.

• 11:13Dave Meyer?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Expecting our first kid.

• 11:15Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Everyone thought, again, thought I was nuts for leaving my job, and I did. Yeah, I was about two months away from, from our first baby being born.

• 11:22Dave Meyer?

  And was that just because you were, at that point, bought in full send on real estate?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  For me, my decision came as I've always wanted to work for myself. I've seen people that are business owners, I've admired them.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  But I was terrified of, of starting a business, and I just thought, man, I've done this now a few times. This is now giving me a good financial cushion. I'll keep doing real estate while I try to start other businesses. And so that's what I did. I, I, every home that I flipped would translate into a business that I would try to start, which inevitably failed. And I flipped another home, and I would fail that company. I failed enough to where I, I do have, you know, a couple of companies that, that are now working really well outside of real estate. But there, there's, there's a graveyard of, of failed companies.

• 12:04Dave Meyer?

  I mean.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  In the past.

• 12:05Dave Meyer?

  There's no shame in that at all. I mean, starting businesses is really a brave thing to do. And personally, I think the best path to financial independence is owning your own businesses. And sometimes they don't work. That, you know, they are high risk, high reward propositions.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:21Dave Meyer?

  One of the reasons I love real estate is it offers a lot of the reward without a lot of the risk because it's sort of a proven business model. But I have also started businesses outside of real estate. Some of them have done okay, some of them have failed. That's just the game.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  And, and the beautiful thing about it is that with real estate, if your business does do well, well, that money's going right back into real estate. And so that's kind of what I've done. So it's been, it's been a bit of a journey. So I've started like in, yeah, a baby bottle company, uh, which has been interesting.

• 12:48Dave Meyer?

  Really?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've started like a AI property management company, which just started. And it's just, it goes all over the place.

• 12:53Dave Meyer?

  Cool.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  But all that's been funded by real estate.

• 12:56Dave Meyer?

  All right, well, I want to hear how your real estate career evolved after that second flip and after you quit your job. But we got to take a quick break, we'll be right back. They say real estate is passive income, but if you've spent a Sunday night buried in spreadsheets, you know better. We hear it from investors all the time, spending hours every month sorting through receipts and bank transactions, trying to guess if you're making any money. And when tax season hits, it's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. That's where Baseline comes in. BiggerPockets' official banking platform. It tags every rent payment at expense to the right property and schedule E category as you bank. So you get tax-ready financial reports in real time,

• 13:41Dave Meyer?

  not at the end of the year. You can instantly see how each unit is performing, where you're making money and losing money, and make changes while it still counts. Head over to baseline.com/biggerpockets to start protecting your profits and get a special $100 bonus when you sign up. Thanks again to our sponsor, Baseline.

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• 16:01Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with investor Peter Fife, talking about how he quit his job right before he was having his first kid, in the middle of doing a DIY flip on his second deal. Sounds like that deal worked out. But now you're, you know, you have your first baby. You now are full-time in real estate. Where do you go from here?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Around the second flip, I started realizing, man, I need to start creating passive income.

• 16:27Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  I'd listened to a lot of BiggerPockets. I'd heard about the BRRRR method. And so with every flip that I did, I tried to divide the money that I made from that into two different properties. One that I would hold on to, long-term, and then one that I would sell.

• 16:39Dave Meyer?

  I like that approach.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  And that's kind of, that's kind of how I did it. So I would make $40,000. I'd find someone that needed $20,000 to buy the property that I'd hang on to, and then $20,000 for a down payment for the, for the flip home.

• 16:49Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so you would rehab two properties, essentially?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:53Dave Meyer?

  You could be doing both yourself at that point, though, were you?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  No, I was doing, I was doing, yeah, I was doing both myself.

• 16:59Dave Meyer?

  How?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  So it was very much, it's like the ones that were like multifamily, like the duplexes, those would be the ones that I tried to buy and hang on to. They needed light remodel work, like new carpet paint, you know, very much cosmetic. The really heavy flippers, those needed some, some serious work. And so I devoted most of my time to those. But initially, I would, I would get this property turned around, or this duplex turned around as fast as I could, so I could get renters in there and start cash flowing.

• 17:20Dave Meyer?

  I mean, you must be good at this, because I bought my first deal, had that same moment where I walked in and I was like, what am I doing? I do not know how to do this. And then my experiences after that only confirmed, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to renovations. Like, I'm not good at it. I am... Modestly handy. I could do a couple of things, but I am not renovating or flipping a house by myself. So you must have either a natural ability for this, or I would imagine you've come to like it. Or like, how did you, how did you go from nothing to being so good at this?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  It was just the pressure of putting food on the table. I mean, I mean, kind of, kind of like what I was saying. I was, I was taking part of that money to try to start a company that would fail. That money's down the drain. And it's like, shoot, I've got enough money to feed my family probably for the next six months. This flip has to work and it's only going to work the way that I want it to if I'm doing it myself, which I grew out of. I started doing bigger deals and I hired, I now have a team that does all, all of, all of my work for me.

• 18:18Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you went with, I don't know if you've heard of this book. There's this book called Burn the Boats. It's kind of like this idea that you sort of like give up your plan B because then you're all in on plan A. And you put the pressure on yourself to perform. It sounds like you subscribe to that philosophy.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I, I procrastinate until the last minute, unless I can't procrastinate. And so for me, it's like, well, the boat is burned. There's no choice to procrastinate. I just have to perform.

• 18:46Dave Meyer?

  So you mentioned that you now have a team. At what point and like, at what scale did you go from doing it yourself to hiring out some of the work?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  So I started realizing these flips are great, but they're not giving me enough passive income that I want. And so at this point, it was very much passive income heavy of what I wanted. And I couldn't afford properties and Utah prices just spiked in the early 2020s. And so I started looking, I created a spreadsheet of like 80 of the fastest growing cities in the, in the country. And I did all this research on what the best investments would be.

• 19:18Dave Meyer?

  I love it. That's my favorite pastime. That's what I do for fun.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  It was brutal.

• 19:24Dave Meyer?

  This is my hobby.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  I hated it. I ended up hiring a VA from the Philippines and I was like, I can't do this.

• 19:30Dave Meyer?

  Dude, I would have done it for you.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Oh man. What ended up happening is I found a deal of a dilapidated apartment complex in West Texas that nobody in the country wanted, selling for $315,000. It was a 16 unit complex.

• 19:45Dave Meyer?

  You found this in West Texas. Were you just looking for deals or did you identify West Texas and then start looking for deals?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  So I had seen that Odessa and Midland, they were having some good indications that they were growing. They're very oil dependent.

• 19:57Dave Meyer?

  Yes.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And so I knew that was risky, but I had to pair that with the amount of accessible cash that I had at the time that I had. And in my experience with these lenders, it was very easy for me to get loans for deals that were one to four units. It was almost impossible for me to get deals that were five and up.

• 20:10Dave Meyer?

  Yep, that's common.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what I learned was that, man, if I want to break into this realm, the only way to do this is if I buy this property cash. And so I sold all, burning the boats, I sold all of my properties in Utah.

• 20:23Dave Meyer?

  Whoa.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Bought this thing cash and then flew down there, bought a truck for like a thousand bucks, slept in the truck for a couple of weeks, fixed up some units, got some tenants in there. And then at that point, I was like, this is ridiculous. I gotta, I gotta hire somebody. So then I found some contractors and they, and they took over.

• 20:42Dave Meyer?

  Okay. Well, I really want to hear the details of this deal because it sounds like, again, you're just going all in, hustling as hard as you can to make these deals happen. I want to hear more about it, but we got to take one more quick break. We'll be right back.

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• 23:55Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast here with Peter Fife. We just heard how he sold all of his properties in Utah, bought a multifamily in Texas, was living out of a truck fixing it up. We got to break this thing down, man. So how much was the property in, it was in Odessa, Texas?

• 24:12Speaker 01

  In a suburb outside of it, yeah.

• 24:14Dave Meyer?

  Okay. And how many units? How much did it cost?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was a 16-unit complex and it cost $315,000.

• 24:22Dave Meyer?

  So 315 and 16 units, that's a little bit under $20,000 a unit. That, that's pretty darned good. Okay. I can see the appeal there. But what was it like selling these properties in Utah? Was that scary?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  It was so scary because things were going well. We kind of had a system going. I was familiar with it. I kind of, I thought I could repeat the process a lot of times. But at that point, my wife and I just kind of committed to the idea of passive income.

• 24:49Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  And, and so it was just kind of like, well, if we're committing, then we're burning the boats.

• 24:54Dave Meyer?

  That's just your thing, man. So, so what was the upside here? Like, you're buying it for 315. And so when you analyze the deal, what was the ARV? Like, how much money, you know, how much you're going to drive up the equity value? And then, since your goal has shifted to passive income, how much cash flow did you project it would give you?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I ran the numbers. The units were renting out for anywhere from 850 to 1,050 per unit, per door, if they were renovated correctly.

• 25:23Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, the cap rates aren't, aren't great out there, but even with those cap rates, it would sell for around 1.1 to 1.2.

• 25:30Dave Meyer?

  Oh my God. Unbelievable. That's a huge opportunity. So triple, maybe quadruple the value.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in my numbers, I kind of figured, you know, that the plumbing wasn't bad. The electrical was all up to date. It was just a lot of cosmetics. It was just a really ugly property. And so, yeah, so I fixed up a couple of units myself to show everyone that was going to hire, how it needed to be done. And then all in, we were in at about $300,000 after. So 315 for the purchase price, 300 for the. For the renovation.

• 25:56Dave Meyer?

  Wow. Okay. And just to reiterate what you said before, you literally moved to Texas, bought a truck, lived out of it and renovated some of those units?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, my, my family didn't. I have a very patient wife.

• 26:07Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. I wasn't, yeah. I wasn't expecting that.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  No, I flew down to Dallas, got an Uber to some guy's house that was selling a truck that promised me it worked well.

• 26:18Dave Meyer?

  Wow.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  He dropped me off. I gave him some money. He gave me the truck and off I went.

• 26:22Dave Meyer?

  Man, you are more comfortable with internet strangers than I am.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, forget it for bad, maybe. I don't know. But thankfully that truck worked out great.

• 26:32Dave Meyer?

  How did the deal go? How long did it take to renovate? Did you hit the rent numbers you were expecting in the ARV you were expecting?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything turned out the way that I'd, I'd hoped. Um, we ended up refinancing for $800,000. I was able to pull out $200,000 in equity and then we were cash flowing around for four to, four to $5,000 a month.

• 26:51Dave Meyer?

  Oh, my God. Okay. So four to $5,000 a month in tax advantage money. I mean, this was years later, but you were said, when you first started, you were making 45 grandish a year. So 4,000 pre-tax. And so this deal alone basically made you more income. One deal.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Dave Meyer?

  Got you more income than your job had been previously.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then that's not counting the $200,000 that I was able to.

• 27:18Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah. To, to do. Yeah, that's unbelievable. Could you compare to, for us, like, how much cash flow were you making in Utah with the properties that you had to sell?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the cash flow with those, I was making around maybe $2,000 a month.

• 27:32Dave Meyer?

  Okay. So you doubled your cash flow, added $200,000 and now you have a new truck.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. That, that truck is no longer, it's gone the way of the earth. It was not a great truck.

• 27:42Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  But, uh, it was an old beater, but it was cheap and it worked.

• 27:45Dave Meyer?

  I would imagine for a thousand bucks, you get what you pay for.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:48Dave Meyer?

  Unbelievable. Well, I, I think this is a really cool story. I mean, I'll just be honest. I think a lot of people out there, Peter, are probably listening to your story and they're like, there's no way on earth I would do something like that. I totally respect your hustle. It's great. Uh, it's unbelievable. And I think for certain people. Out there. This is an incredible model that you can follow of just hustling and learning and betting on yourself. I think that's what's so cool about what you've done here, Peter, is just bet on yourself. But even if you're not willing to live in a truck or do these things, I think what Peter has done here showed a model that can really work for a lot of people. He figured out a way to make active income through flipping, you know, get large sums of money that you can use to invest because it is hard

• 28:34Dave Meyer?

  to go after passive income if you don't have capital. I assume you reached that understanding at a certain point, Peter, that like, if you want to just buy something and hold on to it, you can't do that for nothing. And so you need to figure out how to get enough capital upfront to make that work. Some people like me choose to do that by continuing to work full time. Other people like Peter find ways to do that in real estate. Personally, I honestly don't care. I think whatever is easier for you to figure out a way to make that money upfront.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Oh, totally.

• 29:05Dave Meyer?

  To invest in the long-term assets, like you should go do that if your goal is long-term passive income. So I think that's an awesome template that people can follow here. The other thing I think that is so admirable and cool about this is a lot of people buy assets and then just hold on to them forever, regardless of how they're performing. And I think it's really cool that you sort of did the math and figured it out. And even though it might sound crazy to people to sell everything in your backyard and go move to another town, clearly you're good at analyzing deals because you found a really good one. And the way you analyzed it turned out to be true. I mean, I assume this was sort of like a transformative, life-changing deal for you that you were able to do

• 29:47Dave Meyer?

  because you were willing to think creatively and think a little bit outside the box and not just hold on to the properties that you've owned for years and years.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. And so I've now done that three more times. I've not sold any more properties. So I've hung on to all of the,

• 30:00Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  So I did a 17 unit close by and then I'm doing a 38 unit right now.

• 30:04Dave Meyer?

  Wow. In Odessa?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  No, 38 unit is in Houston. The 17 unit is in the same area of Odessa Midland.

• 30:11Dave Meyer?

  Why go outside of Odessa if that was working and get into another market in Houston?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Odessa is a good place. It is dependent on oil. And so I'd noticed that even with my rental trends, there were, there were some months where I had more vacancy than I'd wanted.

• 30:24Dave Meyer?

  I see.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  And, and that wasn't comfortable for me. And I know Houston is, There's just so many people there. If you build the right product, you're going to find a decent amount of renters.

• 30:32Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  It was safer for me.

• 30:34Dave Meyer?

  I just need to ask, how do you find these deals? They sound incredible.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  LoopNet, which I know.

• 30:38Dave Meyer?

  Really?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's just the properties that nobody wants.

• 30:42Dave Meyer?

  Why?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Really, I mean, I've come across, so these properties are properties that have had like voodoo worship in them. They've got tar written all over the wall, like tar splashed on the wall. You've got dead animals. People walk them and it just scares them away. For me, I just see money signs.

• 30:56Dave Meyer?

  Interesting. Yeah. Cause like at this point in your career, it doesn't sound like there's much you haven't seen.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  No. And I mean, when you're, when you're demoing a property, it doesn't matter if there's tar on the walls or not. You just, you're ripping off the drywall anyway.

• 31:10Dave Meyer?

  It's just slightly more stuff to throw out.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's not that big of a deal. Demo takes a few days. So it's like a couple of days of a hiccup. And it's like, that's not that big of a deal. But for a lot of people, it's scary.

• 31:20Dave Meyer?

  All right. So as we sit here today, Peter, what does your portfolio look like in terms of door count, cash flow, equity, anything you're willing to share?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would say door count, we're, I think it's at 78 right now. Cash flow, we're roughly making around $7,000 or $8,000 a month.

• 31:39Dave Meyer?

  Congratulations. An unbelievable success that you've achieved, really largely on just your own grit and hustle.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 31:46Dave Meyer?

  So now, Peter, that you have this passive income, what are your goals going forward?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  When I first started, I really was trying to scratch that entrepreneurial bug, but I got burned a few times with some businesses that didn't work. And now it's, it's like, okay, maybe I can, you know, keep taking these gains from real estate, continue investing in real estate, but maybe I can take some time now to try to start these other businesses that I feel have a really, really promising future. But all of that's funded by, by real estate.

• 32:10Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Well, congratulations, Peter. It sounds like you've had a really interesting career and totally respect the hustle. It's incredible, like what you've done and really taken on yourself to improve the financial lives of you and your family. Congratulations.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. Appreciate you. And this has been an awesome opportunity.

• 32:29Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. Thank you for being here. And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We really appreciate it. If you Have a story that you want to share on the podcast? We are always looking for guests. Have all experience levels. You don't need to be super experienced or have hundreds or dozens of units. We want to hear your real estate story. If you want to share yours, go to biggerpockets.com/guest and apply. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states.

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