Real Estate Rookie

Do you need an LLC for rental property investing? Ask some investors, and they’ll hit back with a resounding “of course!” But ask another group of investors, and they’ll tell you “not at all!” This duality causes many rookie investors to become confused, not knowing when to protect their property with the limits that come with an LLC. So how are millionaire investors setting up their properties an...

Low mortgage rates, sneaky homebuying strategies, and getting into (and out of) debt, Lindsey Iskierka's story has it all. As the lead real estate agent on the SoCal David Greene team, Lindsey is in the thick of real estate day in and day out. But she’s not just helping others buy and sell homes, she also boasts a respectable rental property portfolio, with four units sprawled out across the state...

What makes a great real estate market? If you’re a new investor, you might think that high rents and cheap home prices are all that matter, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Experienced investors search for more than just surface-level pricing when looking into where is worth investing. This is doubly true when you’re investing in short-term rentals and medium-term rentals—both of which require a sp...

How far can you go? What are your “limits” in life? For most people, it’s easy to get discouraged by everyday barriers, but for today’s guest, not letting limits define him is what led to a brighter future. Tony Clark, today’s guest, identified and assessed his limits to determine his starting point. And now, he has three rental units, including a duplex in Nashville and a house in California. Ton...

Need to know how to estimate rehab costs, even if you’re investing out of state? For most investors, it seems almost impossible to do a full-scale renovation while living hundreds, or thousands, of miles away. But, many time-tested investors have done it (including Tony), and you can too, but you’ll need to know who to go to and what to ask before you start. Or, you could bite off way more than yo...

Building a short-term rental business is surprisingly simple. You buy a property, furnish it, then throw up some pictures of it onto booking sites like Airbnb and VRBO. After a few weeks, a booking comes in, and from there you’re in the game! This is all great until a poor review comes in, sending your listing to the bottom of the pile and your profit with it. Through no fault of your own, your in...

Foreclosures have slowly been creeping up as real estate values get hit hard. With home prices dropping and a tough economic forecast ahead, could a wave of foreclosures be on the horizon? If so, who will this affect the most—residential real estate investors like Ashley and Tony or commercial real estate investors with their million-dollar multifamilies? We’ll get into what exactly could happen i...

Hard work comes with everything, and real estate is no exception. To achieve success, you must be willing to work hard and continue to work hard even when things get rough. That means viewing mistakes as lessons and being resilient enough to power through whatever life throws at you. Today’s guest, Sahleem Lee, started his real estate journey and almost gave it up, but after a three-year hiatus, h...

Off-market real estate deals can give investors like you HUGE discounts on what would be expensive investment properties. Either due to the property condition or the state of the seller, these real estate deals sell for sometimes hundreds of thousands less than their on-market equivalents. But finding them can be a challenge. As a result, most new investors rely on real estate wholesalers to bring...

Before the most well-known real estate moguls were moguls, they were rookie investors with a dream. While it took vision to get them to where they are today, they wouldn’t be successful without goals and a plan to achieve their goals. Tony and Ashley, two investing tycoons in their rights, use today’s episode to reflect on their goals from 2022 and start thinking about goals for 2023. One of the m...

Section 8 investing isn’t as scary as it seems. Most landlords will opt to not rent to section 8 tenants, fearing non-payment or just getting stuck with a bad renter. But, this means that the tens of thousands of potential tenants, waiting with guaranteed rent, have nowhere to stay, while you struggle to fill an empty unit. Ashley Hamilton, Detroit-based investor, thinks that not renting to sectio...

The beautiful thing about building wealth is there’s not just one way to reach your financial goals. This is where your creativity and ambition come into play. Today’s guest, Daniel Schiermeyer, built his residential portfolio and then leveraged that to buy businesses, with more ways to cash flow than we can count! Daniel started getting into real estate after college when he read The Automatic Mi...

Pace Morby’s name is synonymous with creative financing. In fact, you could say that he’s brought back a revival of strategies like subject to and seller financing. He’s been so successful with these strategies that Pace has been able to buy over six hundred rental units this year without using a single bank loan! He believes that now, even with rising interest rates and high inflation, rookie inv...

To have something you’ve never had, you have to be willing to do something you’ve never done before. Today’s guests, Amy Wright and Mitch Mathern are doing something most people haven’t seen before, a twist on the BRRRR method. They’ve closed on three properties in three years, and all their properties are over 100 years old! Amy and Mitch started their real estate journey right before COVID and w...

Before you invest in real estate, everything can seem new and confusing. Bidding on houses, renovation budgets, finding tenants—these are all skill sets you must acquire to become a financially independent real estate investor. But that doesn’t mean you need to be a pro before buying your first property. Just ask Brittany Arnason, AKA InvestorGirlBritt, the Canadian real estate superstar who start...

The path to financial freedom is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires patience, discipline, sacrifice, and a long-term mindset. Today’s guest, Logan Kohn, is on his way to financial freedom with over one million dollars of real estate with three properties at only twenty-one years old! Logan planned to invest in real estate later in life, but COVID forced him to rethink his timeline. Since intere...

Medium-term rentals are not new to real estate investing, but most investors have hardly heard of them. For years, corporate travelers would rent a room, apartment, or small property for a year or less. These travelers would pay a premium to avoid long-term leases and stay close to their work. But, with the rise of traveling nurses and digital nomads, the medium-term rental strategy is in a reviva...

If early retirement seems out of reach right now, try semi-retirement. Once you get there, you’ll only be halfway to early retirement, just like today’s guest, Jessie Dillion. At only thirty years old, she is semi-retired and has scaled her real estate portfolio to almost two million dollars in nine months, with five properties total! When people think about high returns, they often think about a...

Is the 1% rule in real estate still relevant? Who shouldn’t be buying turnkey rentals? And why is an escrow account favorable for scaling real estate investors? All these questions and more are coming up in this Rookie Reply. We’re back at BPCon 2022, and joining us is fellow investor and turnkey operator, Zach Lemaster. You may have heard Zach’s episode on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast or...

Your network can be your most powerful tool inside and outside of real estate. Today’s guest, Ryan John, started his real estate investing journey after seeing his friends succeed in the investing space—including his childhood friend, Ashley Kehr. Ryan has been in the real estate game for a year and a half and has closed on two off-market deals—a house hack and a duplex.  As all rookies know, tryi...

A cash offer almost always gets a seller's attention. Whether someone comes in low or high, the prospect of a smooth closing without any loan contingencies is often more than enough to get a deal done. But what if you don’t have stacks of cash lying around? Maybe you’re trying to get your first rental property or house hack with a conventional, FHA, or VA loan. How do you set yourself apart from t...

Who says you can’t have it all? The career, the love, the wealth—it can all be yours if you want it and work for it. Today’s guest, Mackenzie Grate, works hard so she can have it all. Working full-time as an assistant middle school principal, Mackenzie spends her nights and weekends as a real estate investor and agent. She owns two single-family homes, a fourplex, a duplex, a short-term rental, an...

As a new investor, financing can come with a lot of questions. Financing your first property itself seems like a steep learning curve, but once you find a method that works for you, it makes investing a lot easier. Welcome back to this week’s Rookie Reply. But, instead of just answering one question, we’ll be going over multiple to get you on the fastest path to investing in real estate. Today, we...

Life is unpredictable, and there's no way to get around that. Instead, you have to learn to pivot and accept where you are, so you can get to where you're going. Today’s guest, Josiah Hein, was hit with life’s unpredictability when he was in a car accident with a drunk driver, resulting in damage to his neck and back. Josiah could have easily used the accident as a reason to give up, but instead,...

Real estate investing is known for one thing: cash flow. No matter who you talk to, investors always seem to be hypnotized by this single metric. Rookie investors love to chase after cash flow and cash flow only—often completely disregarding the much more lucrative benefits of real estate investing for the shiny object of monthly profits getting deposited into your account. But, if you’re buying,...