Financial Freedom in 6 Years by Buying Rentals with Just $6,000 Down

This investor turned $6,000 intoThis investor bought his first property with only $6,000 in cash. Then he did that six more times and now he owns more than 50 rental units. And there’s no reason to think that you can’t take your first steps today and get on a similar journey to financial freedom. Hey everyone, Dave Meyer here. I’ve been buying rental properties myself for 15 years now. I’ve written two books about real estate investing and I’m the head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. And joining me today on the show is investor Jeremy Taggart. Jeremy lives and invests in Pittsburgh where he’s built a seriously impressive portfolio of rental properties and he has a thriving agent business. Jeremy is going to tell us how he has basically repeated the same low money down strategy for almost his entire twenties. How getting fired from his day job was actually a pivotal and beneficial moment in his life. And why Pittsburgh is a market. Anyone looking to invest long distance should consider exploring, especially in today’s market. Let’s bring on Jeremy. Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.Hey Dave. Thanks for having me.Absolutely. Let’s just start by hearing a little bit about your background. How did you come to be involved in real estate?Real estate kind of came into the picture for me a little over a decade now. I was sophomore in college like many others, red, rich, dad, poor dad. That kind of light bulb went off at that moment in time. So really the next two years was just self-education on real estate investing, which was good because the fact that I couldn’t jump in right away, it basically allowed me to know as much as I could possibly learn without actually doing it. So by the time I got to graduating, basically I felt very confident that I knew the general concepts of real estate investingAt that point. Did you have specific goals that you knew you were looking for? Were you just trying to get into the game or what were you thinking about back then because you were mostly just educating yourself and you weren’t actually doing the real estate just yet?Yeah, so the fire movement was pretty big back then as well. I kind of caught the tail end of it, so I loved that concept. I think that was probably my goal. I want to retire early, I want to live off my rentals, not have to work a W2 job, have my own schedule. So that I think was kind of what inspired it.And what year was this?I graduated college in May of 2016. So it was between 2014 and 2016, kind of the tail end of when the fire movement was real big.Sure, yeah. And if you are unfamiliar with the Fire Movement, fire is an acronym that stands for Financial Independence, retire Early. Basically just this concept of trying to generate passive income in some way where you don’t have to work that full-time W2 job. Now, Jeremy, the interesting thing about fire, I think, at least for me, is that there’s so many different versions of this. For some people, they want to spend very little money and then they’re okay just making a few grand a year. There’s something people call Fat Fire where you want to get to financial independence, but you still want to live high quality of life and be able to spend money pretty loosely. Did you have a goal within fire that you were shooting for?My goals kind of formed over time, and they’ve changed since then as well. So I think initially it was more leaning towards the traditional fire, maybe live a leaner lifestyle, but it was worth it for me for the flexibility and that’s changed since then. Now I’m definitely a hundred percent fat fire. It’s definitely changed fat fire to a degree. But yeah, that was kind of, I think the initial goal and how things have transpired since then has kind of made me shift my mindset a bit. As far as the actual long-term goal.You’re learning about this, you want to go into fire. What happened when you graduated college? What was your first move?It was kind of a mindset shift from middle class to entrepreneur, business ownership from that point. But the time I graduated I’m like, there’s no way I’m working at the W2 job. So that was kind of more viewed as a placeholder at that point. And first step was House Hack. I got my first house hack in July of that year, graduated in May, so jumped into that right away. Pittsburgh’s cheap. So I only needed I think six grand to close on the thing. Yeah, it was a triplex for 125,000, which,Oh my gosh. What kind of condition was it? ItWas a solid building. It just needed some cosmetic updates. Really? Yeah.Wow. I am sure people listening are salivating at that idea of 40 grand a unit right now. So it’s pretty good.And it was like a three bedroom unit and two bedroom unit. So this was a big building,I assume you financed it. How much did you put down and where’d you get that six grand from?Yep, FHA. That was the only option at the time for low down payment, two to four units knew about the seller’s assist. I got the 6% seller’s assist, so I only needed essentially the down payment. I had saved up money from that internship. And then like I said, I was working full-time, 40 hours the last semester of college. So that’s how I was able to get the six grand to put into it. I scraped together six grand, but I didn’t have a ton of cash available after closing, so it was most of my money basically. So I moved into the thing after we actually had to get one of the tenants out of there. So that was my first experience with Landlording was she wouldn’t leave. So I had to hand deliver a letter to her saying the bank’s making me move into this. Basically try to make it sound like she was not doing something illegal, but per the terms of the loan she needed to move out kind of thing. Her lease was up. So actually the first time we got in there, we were waiting for her to get picked up. She got picked up by a taxi and left a bunch of junk in the unit. So that was my welcome to Landlording moment as far as the first House act.And so what were you getting? It cleaned out. You wanted to make improvements or what was the plan for the, I assume you’re living in one unit. What was the plan for the other two?It was nice because I was living for free right off the bat, even at Below market rents from the other two units, it covered my mortgage and I think it was above my mortgage, but 200 bucks. So good situation. That was the goal from the start. I didn’t do a lot of work to my unit just because I didn’t have a ton of cash. I wanted to focus on the other unit. So one of the tenants actually passed away a few months after that. So that was my next, you want to do this thing, here you go, type deal. So it was another kind of clean out the unit. The family helped with that. And then a lot of DIYing at the beginning, the first few properties, I didn’t have a ton of cash. I was working a job getting paid 40 grand a year. This was my first property, so we did, I’m not good at DIYing, but we did a lot of DIYing, so we just kind of made it happen. And I would do some stuff too, get creative. I would buy kitchens off of Craigslist from high end areas that they bought a 2-year-old home and they wanted a new kitchen, so people would list their kitchens on Craigslist with the granite and stuff. SoThe whole kitchen, just like all the cabinets,All the cabinets,Countertops, everything.So we would go to pick it up in a U-Haul to save money on the materials. Facebook marketplace, Craigslist was.That’s so funny. Do you have to find ones that are oriented the right wayKindOf in the right shape of the unit? Sure. Some of ’em are like have islands or L-shape or something like that.Yeah, we got creative with it for sure, but I actually use the same kitchen in multiple properties with apartments and stuff. These kitchens were almost million dollar houses.Oh, there was enough cabinets for two or three different units. Oh, that’s awesome.Yeah, so we did a lot of that at the beginning. It was just making do with what I had and saving money on the materials, and that was kind of the first few,Probably a nicer kitchen than you would buy if you went and bought rental grade cabinets at Home Depot or whatever. It’s probably nicer what you bought on Facebook marketplace.These were high end homes. So it was a way to kind of cheat the system, I guess.So once you got these places stabilized, how did that impact your lifestyle? Trying to get fire? You’re working full time, was this generating a lot of cashflow for you or what did it do for you on a day-to-day basis?Yeah, so obviously living for free and having that extra on top of my mortgage from the other rents to basically pay for my utilities. So that’s huge. Just having your housing covered at the beginning, it really allows you to start stacking some money just to live below your means in general. So that’s a huge expense. That’s the appeal of house hacking in the beginning. To even make it to the point where you can start saving money, you can give yourself some runway. So after a year, my plan was to house hack basically every year on the year, and I ended up doing seven of them total because of that. SoWait, what?Seven houseHacks? Seven.Yep. That’s kind of my thing is the house hacks. I’m known as the house hacker basically.Oh my God. Okay. So just I want to ask about that. So basically you took the money that you were generating and you just started socking it away with this idea that I’m going to go buy a house hack one year, and just for everyone to know when you buy with a lot of loans, you basically have to agree to live in the property for a year. So Jeremy’s basically saying, he’s like, all right, I bought one in one year. I can move into a new one. And so you just started taking your cashflow and saving it up, is that right?Yeah. So saving up for the next one, and you thought 1 25 was cheap. The next one was actually a single family because at the time it was just FHA for the two to four units. If I wanted another duplex, I needed at least 15% down. So this one was a single family that I did 5% down conventional. And then same thing there, I got the 3% seller’s assist, so I didn’t need much. It was 48,000 was the purchase price, and this thing only needed cosmetics. All we did was paint refinish the hardwoods, it was generally livable outside of that. That was the second one. It was me and my now wife, then girlfriend. We just split the mortgage basically, which was like $420 total.So when you moved out of the first one, you rented your old place, the rent you basically generated from that, was that enough to cover your new mortgage essentially?Yeah, basically. And then some.So you’re still living for free in essence, even though you are paying a mortgage, the rent more than made up for it,And we were splitting it. So I think my portion was like 200 basically. And then this one was kind of the first burr you could say. So as I was learning more about real estate investing, the concept of Burr was starting to become more popular as well. So I’m like, okay, this one needs some work. I know it’s worth more fixed up. At the time, I think it was worth like 125,000 fixed up
Buying it for 48. I knew we could do a lot of the stuff ourselves. So I think I only ended up putting as far as cash out of my pocket, like 25,000 into it. So I had a pretty good chunk of equity after doing that rehab. So I knew that at some point soon I could refinance that, and that’s when I caught a big chunk of money to then continue to build the portfolio. I think I refinanced a couple years later after I had rented it out and I got my first big check, which was kind of cool feeling. It was like 50,000 tax free. So that was my like, okay, thisWhen you actually went to refinanceThe money. Yeah. So I’m like, all right, there’s something. This could work.All right. So it sounds like you did two successful house hack, but you’ve done seven. I want to hear about the other five, but we do have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with investor Jeremy Taggart talking about how he’s done, not one or two, but seven different house hacks. We’ve got through the first two. First was a triplex, second was a single family home with the Bur. You got a big check, Jeremy 50 grand. What did you decide to do with it from there?Third one was actually at this point in time, a local bank here in Pittsburgh, they started offering 5% down owner occupant, two to four unit loans. And this was before the Fannie Freddie even did it, which I think was last year. I think that was kind of a game changer. I’m like, alright, they’re going to give me as many of these as I want. If 5% down I’m doing this. There’s no end to this basically.And just for everyone who knows, lending rules change all the time, but for a lot of mortgages that investors use like a FHA loan, you didn’t use to be able to put 5% down on more than a single family. That has changed. But it sounds like Jeremy beat the lenders to the punch and used a local bank that would allow him to put just 5% down on a multifamily unit. Was it a similar profile of deal that you were looking for? What was the third one? Similar to the first one?The beginning I was focusing a lot more on cashflow. That was my main metric. I wanted to find basically something that would maximize the cashflow side of things. I wasn’t quite as concerned with long-term upside, so I was looking for up and coming areas, properties that needed some cosmetic work. Maybe they were under rented. So that third one, yeah, it was a duplex. And this was interesting too because during this time, I think right after I closed on my second one, I was having issues with agents, I think went through four or five of them to find one that even relatively was on the same page as me on the investing side of things. Really? Yeah, it was a struggle for sure. I definitely knew more than all of them, which I thought was an issue because I was a new investor.Totally. Yeah, that’s frustrating. You want someone on your team who can teach you something, especially when you’re two or three deals into your career.This was when I’m like, alright, I think there’s a need here for investor friendly agents. So I got my license, I think it was end of 2017 is when I got it, my real estate license. And I kind of frustrated at my job too, because most W2 jobs, you’re starting out at a base salary, was like 45,000. I wanted to make more money. And I remember asking my boss, how can I make more money? And they’re like, that’s not how it works. So I’m just like, all right, I need to figureSomething out. That’s a hard no, you’re not getting a raise.So they couldn’t give me an answer and I’m like, all right, this seems kind of like a dead end. So I got my license and I’m like, I’ll do this on the side. There’s a need for it. I think I could get clients relatively easily. Got that, did two of them at the same time. So it was kind of the same thing here. I was working a lot. I was doing the agent thing nights and weekends, even some at work, which they weren’t a huge fan of.Oh, I’d imagine. Yeah. That’s just moving you further away from your objective of getting a raise. I’m sure that’s not, they frowned upon that a little bit.It was kind of a slow death of me working at W2 job eventually to the point where they ended up firing me after I got the third house hack. So that was a big turning point in my career and I was fine with it because that first year I was making more, I actually made more as an agent than I did at my W2 job.Oh really?Yeah. So it was like, alright, I’ll just do this. I already kind of have a decent client base. I can jump into it and essentially there’s no ceiling on the income for the agent side of things. So that’s when things really kind started to skyrocket on the active income for me, from that point on, it was just my personality and just work ethic. It was a very good fit doing the agent side of things. So I’m still doing it now. I have a team at this point.Congratulations on going into being an agent. Sounds like you’re really successful. I want to ask you more about that, but I’m curious, as your income started to increase, you said you doubled your active income, which is incredible. Did that start shifting your strategy? We already know you did seven house hacks, but did you start wanting to buy or do anything outside of the house hack strategy as well?Yeah, so 2020 when I started to get a lot more active income coming in addition to obviously the first two properties, cash flowing at that point, I had that $50,000 check I got from the second one, which was kind of a burr and then making the extra money on the agent side of things. So it was at that point it was like, okay, I can start doing things in addition to the house hacks now and really start to scale this thing up. And I think at that point I had solidified my initial goals, which were 30 units by the time I turned 30 and I wanted to hit a million dollars net worth by the time I turned 30. So those were kind of my two goals that I set for myself in my twenties basically.Did you back into those goals for fire? Were you still thinking about that? Okay, if I had 30 units or a million net worth, I could retire by X date or is it just based on your momentum? It seemed like a good goal to shoot for at that point.Yeah, it was kind of calculated to the point where I’m like, okay, this would be initial financial independence, especially in a lower cost of living area. So I’m at this point, I can essentially live off of this portfolio if I wanted to. By the time I’m 30,By 30, I mean that’s a great goal.So that was kind of like I worked backwards from it and figured out basically what do I need to do to get to this point? And I was deadlocked on that essentially throughout my twenties. So it was like everything revolved around me hitting that and I’m very goal oriented, so I was making sure I was doing everything the right way to make sure I hit that. That’s when 2020 was a big year for me because like I said, I started doing some burrs and I did a house flip that year as well. In addition to the house hack 2020, I bought another house hack that was a duplex, kind of the same concept. All these house hacks were, make sure it covers the mortgage, buy a 5% down, look for some stuff that needs cosmetic work. And the fourth house hack was cool because I bought that one off of Craigslist also.ReallyCraigslist was my go-to forDifferent time. Was you still or no?Not as much now.Yeah, I sayIt kind of faded Facebook marketplace now, but I actually bought two properties off of Craigslist in 2020.Wow.So yeah, the big thing for me in March, I bought a single family house and this is when I started using other people’s money. This was the very first time basically. So I borrowed hard money actually from a client. So just building the relationship, he lent me 80% of the purchase price and the full cost of the rehab. And then I had the seller hold a second mortgage for the down payment to the hard money lender. So I was into this thing for five grand just for closing costs. Maybe it was like three grand and that was my first big big rehab. I think the rehab costs like 80 something thousand.Yeah, I mean compared to your purchase price, that’s serious.And the purchase price was I think 55,000 on that. And so almost doubled the purchase price. So that was scary too because I bought it right before Covid lockdown, so I was kind of freaking out a little bit when things were shutting down and I had this dilapidated house that needs 80 grand in work and the contractors have to stop working. So we made it through that as the real estate market exploded after that, got through the rehab and this one actually was net profit when I sold it in July when the market blew up net profit of 93,000 on that flip, my very first house flip. So having that cash as well, in addition to the agent side of things, it was almost like rocket fuel at that point. So then it just became like, I’m alright, this thing’s I can use other people’s money to make 93,000. This is pretty cool if you know what you’re doing and buy good deals that have good margins on ’em, I can just rinse and repeat, do this over and over. So at that point it was house hacks and burrs is how I’m going to get to my goals essentially.
Really from 2020 until now, it’s just been house hacks and burrs. I got very good at finding good deals. I worked as an agent, I knew the market the back of my hand.You just don’t need to do that much more. These are a proven business model that is clearly worked really well for you Jeremy. It’s worked well for so many investors that I know. So I know people out there. There are fun, exciting things to do. Short-term rentals or rent by the room, all those things are great, but you don’t have to do all of them. If you can just pick one or two of them like Jeremy did, you can clearly get a lot of momentum and success. I want to hear more about the deals you’re doing now, but we do need to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’re here with Jeremy Taggart talking about how he has used house hack and burrs to build a really great portfolio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jeremy, I’m sure you’ve seen that market change both as an agent and as a investor a lot over the last couple of years. So tell me a little bit more about what’s going on in your portfolio, how you’re finding deals and what the returns look like in today’s market.As the market changed, my personal investment goals kind changed as well. So it shifted what I invested in basically. So like I said at the beginning it was more cashflow focused, wanted to get that initial financial freedom chunk of cashflow coming in each month to reach that goal. And once I was there, then it became still the BGE concept. I’ll always do that, buy an under market value, rehab it, have it worth more after and utilize other people’s money to get to that point. But then it became kind higher end areas, higher price properties, higher quality properties. I’ve bought a lot more side-by-side town homes rather than up downs, stuff like that. And they’re expensive properties by Pittsburgh standards. So the house hacks then shifted to instead of maximizing cashflow, my house hack criteria turned into I want to buy the most expensive property I can purchase with this low down payment that at least breaks even.Tell us a little just about that thought process.It was the market shifting and just me becoming more knowledgeable as an investor, what builds more wealth over time I started to look more at appreciation, rent growth principle, pay down depreciation, which as an agent, I’m a real estate professional status so I can use losses.You get that real good tax benefit.Yeah, so I’m definitely taking advantage of that now. I just did my taxes this year. I had ridiculous loss on the tax return on paper that offset my agent income because of the depreciation. So then it became like I’m looking at the overall ROI on this money that I’m putting into the house hack and 5% of 200,000 versus 5% of 500,000 isn’t that much more out of pocket to acquire it,
But you’re getting way more principal pay down, you’re getting way more appreciation from a dollar amount standpoint and you’re getting way more depreciation for not much more money out of pocket. So in terms of overall ROI, using all the factors rather than just cashflow, that’s going to be your best bet on the house hacks at this point. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on as the market has shifted as my overall financial picture shifted to the point where I’m prioritizing year 15, year 20 from now to get to that point and I want to own nice properties when they’re paid off at that point, the rents are going to be way higher. So that’s kind of how it shifted for me personally and the market in general. I think,Yeah, I mean I’m doing the same thing I think now when I buy properties, I used to buy properties that were built in 1890, like 1910. It’s like when I’m retired at 50, I don’t want to be taking care of that property, I’m just going to buy something. Maybe the cash flow is not as good now, but I know it’s going to be in good shape. I’m not going to have to do these huge renovations on them. And I really just resonate with this idea of buying properties 15, 20 years from now. It’s so hard to guess what’s going to happen between now and then, but real estate over those long time periods always performs. And I find that in these times of uncertainty, like we’re in right now, no one knows what’s going to happen next year. No one’s going to know what’s going to happen six months from now, but 15, 20 years from now, I feel pretty good that real estate’s going to do pretty well and these properties are going to be cash flowing and they’re going to be doing better. So buying assets with that mindset to me just makes so much sense. I do want to ask you Jeremy, about Pittsburgh. I’ve always been curious, I do a lot of these analyses where I’m just pulling data on markets and there’s a lot on paper to about Pittsburgh. Obviously you’re an agent there and an investor there, you’re buying there. But tell us a little bit about Pittsburgh and why you think it makes a good investing market.Most areas are going to cashflow positive. We’re hitting the 1% rule on turnkey or close to it really. Yeah, multifamily specifically. We have a pretty good amount of them, but except really the only areas that won’t hit that are kind of a class areas, those are kind of more owner occupant areas at this point. But I like it because, and I have a unique perspective too. I grew up here so I kind of know the livability side of things. I think it’s a very good value for the amenities that we get are still the big city amenities, but it’s super cheap to live here. You can buy a mansion in a good school district for like 600 grand
As far as long-term forever home type deal. But we have all the major sports teams, we have all the amenities, so it’s, it’s a good place to live and the average home price is like 220,000. So I just, that’s wild. I’ve been to a lot of other cities too recently, traveling more. I think that it’s a good value. I think that is what appeals to me long-term that if I know it’s a good value now and anytime anybody comes visits here, they’re like, oh, this is actually kind of a cool city. I thought Pittsburgh was a rundown old steel mill, rust belt city that nobody even liked to come to and they kind of like it when they visit here. So seeing that perspective as well. So I kind of like to look at the livability side of things, which plays a big role in the investment side of things as well, I think because it’s just spotting things that are undervalued basically. The nice thing here is it’s still cash flows, but we have a lot of upside for that reason. And we have a diverse economy with employers. Like healthcare is real big. We have universities, a lot of hospitals, but the tech scene’s kind of starting to pick up as well. And the fact that it’s so cheap here, they don’t have to pay their employees as much, everything’s cheaper. So it’s liking what I’m seeing in terms of that sector.So this is a fun trivia question I often ask people, but we’re talking about Pittsburgh, so you already know the answer to that. Actually, the most affordable housing market in any OECD country, which is just sort of the most, I think 38 most advanced economies in the country, in the world, Pittsburgh’s the most affordable. And that’s not saying it has the cheapest housing, but the ratio of incomes to housing and other costs is the best in Pittsburgh. So I’ve always just found that fascinating and as everything in housing’s getting more expensive, everything’s getting more expensive. I always think that cities that have that level of affordability, that’s a good marker for potential growth in the future. But I guess we’ll have to see. But I think that there’s a lot to like about it.Yeah, I think just all the Rust Belt cities, I think they’re going to be become cool here within the next five to 10 years. Affordable, my opinion, at least.I agree. I think there’s a lot. I actually was looking at some population data this morning and for years during the pandemic, people are leaving the Midwest and the Northeast and the west and moving to the southeast and southeast still growing the fastest per capita, but a lot of the Midwest is starting to grow again population wise. And net migration is going up in a lot of these areas. And I don’t know if that’s return to work or some just inevitable return to normal from the covid years, but I think it’s really interesting and will have an impact on the housing market that we’re going to have to watch. So Jeremy, before we get out of here, I got to ask you your goal, 30 units by 30, did you get there?It was crazy too because I hit both of them at 28.Oh, nice. Good forYou. The net worth goal and the 30 units goal. Yeah,That’s awesome.It’s just funny how you set your mind on something and then it just so happens to happen like that on the same property. But yeah, so we hit that a little early and then I was planning on kind of stopping at 30 units at that point, but now we’re almost at 50, so I’m addicted to buying deals. So we’ll see how it goes here in the future.Well it sounds like you’re good at it and it’s probably fun. Do you have a new goal in mind or are you just kind of seeing where it takesYou? I don’t know. Yeah, we’re, I’m still buying deals now, even though don’t necessarily need them, but at this point it’s just kind of compounding has taken effect as far as cashflow and net worth and all that. So we’re kind of just playing it by ear, continuing to do what I enjoy doing with the agent side of things. And I do kind of keeping it a small portfolio though, kind like the Chad Carlson’s, small and mighty. I don’tEver oh for sureForesee myself having hundreds of units just because I am good with where I’m at now, 50 units. If I have 50 units paid off, I don’t really need much more money than that, soThat’s amazing.I’m leaning more towards that, but it’s still TBD, I guess, where we’ll end up on that side of things.Well, congratulations on all your success Jeremy, and thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us. We appreciate it.Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me.And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. We’ll see you next time.