$120,000/Year Cash Flow with 9 Rentals by Buying What TENANTS Want

Investor Greg Rotersheimer bought his first property in 2007. But wait, this isn't going to be the story that you think it is. In his early 20s, Greg was sitting on a property worth less than he paid for just a year ago. So when he tried to move out, his only option was to become an accidental landlord. But he didn't keep buying. Instead, Greg took a break from real estate for 14 years, only coming back when the midlife crisis of working corporate until 65 started to kick in. Greg saw how real estate worked with his first home, so why not repeat the system? But this time, he did something different. Greg targeted the exact home the optimal tenant would want. He partnered up when he didn't have the cash, and he bought more when his savings were replenished. Now, just five years later, Greg has nine paid-off properties, cash flowing over $100,000 a year. He didn't buy during the crash. He always put at least 20% down, and he even self-managed his portfolio. A small portfolio with six figures of income, Greg did it starting in 2021, and he's still buying deals today. What's going on, everybody? This is Henry Washington with The Bigger Pockets Podcast, and today we have an investor story from investor Greg Grotesheimer, who bought his first property right before the crash, and today has an amazing portfolio with a ton of cash flow. So let's jump in and learn how he did it. Greg, welcome to The Bigger Pockets Podcast. Henry, thanks for having me. Awesome, man. Well, let's just jump into this. Tell us about where you were and what you were doing before you got in real estate. So straight out of college, I started working for a health insurance company in operations. High level from there, I started to go into Medicare, Medicaid, which was, at the time, a lot of the Obamacare stuff was being rolled out and implemented. So that's where most of the opportunities were. Then I would bounce around from a lot of the different startups that were coming out, basically facilitating these types of programs. So a lot of technical requirements, a lot of compliance requirements, attention to detail, all of those kinds of things. Basically, I just kind of climbed the corporate ladder that way. That's cool that you have that background. What year was it when you made the pivot into real estate? I bought my first residential home in 2007. Oh, wow. So you know what I'm going to start to say there, right? Ouch. Yeah, exactly. So I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at the time and was there for three years. That's where I met my now wife. And so we moved to where we live now, which is Richmond, Virginia. And so my house was worth less than what I bought it for. So I became an accidental landlord right out of the gate. I was able to sell that property when we bought our current residence. Didn't really do anything with real estate up to that point. But leading me to my current real estate journey, I was a couple years from age 40 and a friend and work colleague of mine, we're about in the same boat. So call it a midlife crisis, whatever you want to call it. We were saying we really want to be in the office world from now until we're 65. And I've always been very interested in financial independence. And my dad, for example, retired when he was 52. So that was my model. And so we settled on real estate. So I bought my first condo with this partner in 2021. So about five years ago. You give us a little more background about that deal. What did you pay for it? Did it need work? Was it a flip or rental? Nick Neumann My partner and I figured we would just dip our toe in the water to start. So it was turnkey. In fact, it's only about 10 minutes from my residence. So even upkeep, anything that we're going to have to do with it is not far away. We bought it for $172,500. It also was already being used as a rental. So we had a tenant there. Preston Pysh paying market rents? Or did you have to raise rents? Nick Neumann No, we did raise the rent. She'd been there 10 years. So she was paying around $1,100. So we upped it to $1,500. And she was willing to stay. Since it was a partnership, we had to get a commercial loan rather than just if I was buying it individually. So our rate was still good, especially for 2021. And of course, we had to put a little bit more down. We had to put down about $50,000. So $25,000 a piece between the two of us to maintain the 50-50 partnership. So we didn't have to advertise or anything out of the gate since we did already have a tenant. So not much, I guess, in the way of lesson learned other than HOAs and that eating into your overall budget. But each month, we were to the good about $500. That's not including other expenses that might come up, but we were already on the right side of the ledger line with that purchase. Preston Pysh Do you feel like you got what you wanted out of that? You were learning how to be a landlord, or was it not quite the experience you were looking for? Nick Neumann It was the experience that I was looking for. And something that probably is worth mentioning up to that point, when I was, dare I say, finishing up my W-2 career, I started doing consulting. I was consulting for some former employers of mine, and that expanded a little bit in the years from 2021 to about 2023 in gaining other clients. And so the good thing there is that our household, we were able to basically function off of just my wife's income. So we were able to confirm that that was possible. And to some extent, as I was doing both consulting and in my W-2, viewed the consulting money as- Preston Pysh Play money. Yeah. Nick Neumann Exactly. So it took a little bit of the edge off from a risk standpoint, and it also helped my wife sort of stay out of the middle of it or feel like it was sort of part of our overall personal income. And so from those standpoints, it took the edge off a little bit for me to see if I liked it, and it kind of rolled into the consulting business that I was already doing. Preston Pysh So it sounds like you bought that first deal, and then was it shortly after that, that you started picking up some of the consulting, and you were doing the consulting and your day job for a while? Nick Neumann I was doing the consulting and day job actually about a year even before I picked up that property. So my portion of that 50,000, the 25,000, all had been made in consulting on the side. Preston Pysh So you really picked up a side hustle with the consulting. You used that to help fund your down payment. You bought that first one. That started producing some cash flow. And the side gig of the consulting plus the positive cash flow from the rental property gave your wife some confidence in like, hey, if I want to do more of this real estate thing, we can live off of your salary and we could potentially do this? Nick Neumann Exactly. Preston Pysh Okay. And did you make that shift prior to doing your next deal, or did you do another deal first? Nick Neumann I still had some money left over in the consulting side of things. So we ended up buying another condo in the exact same place, almost the exact same deal. It was a little bit smaller. They were both two-bedroom, two-bath, but it was for 173,000. But yeah, with those first couple, it was all the money that I had made up to that point from consulting. Preston Pysh Were these just listed on the MLS, or how are you finding out about these opportunities? Nick Neumann Just through the MLS. I had not really expanded into any off-market opportunities yet. I have since then. But at that point, it was just keeping it straight on the MLS. Preston Pysh When you decided to jump back in and buy that first one, did you have some goals in mind, or was it just like, hey, let's give this a shot and see how it works out? Nick Neumann Really just give it a shot and see what works out. And when my partner and I were deciding that real estate was where we were going to go, we were comparing that to buying a business or starting our own business. So we were saying to ourselves, we're going to have to scale up pretty quickly if we want this to be a business that would eventually replace what we're doing as our day job. Preston Pysh Takes a few doors at $100 a pop. Nick Neumann Exactly. So without doing a whole lot of math at that point, we were just saying, we know we have to scale up a lot. So let's keep looking for deals that make sense for us and keep on scaling. Preston Pysh That's cool. I like hearing you say that. That first deal, you kind of need to have some more realistic expectations. Your first deal is probably not going to be a home run. It's probably going to be a base hit. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to under budget your rehab, or you're going to under budget your timeline. You may not be able to get the rents you think you're going to get because you've never done it before. You never had to pick a tenant. There's just so many variables that may not work out exactly as perfect as you underwrite them to perform. But that first deal, the goal is to learn all of those things in a way that's going to protect you financially, especially in your situation. Worst case scenario, you buy this condo. You don't get the rent you want. It's in already decent shape. You don't have to rehab it. Your worst case scenario is you break even, or you have to pay into it a little bit of money every month. But you learn so much through that process that helps you be better for the next deal. It's okay to learn on your first deal so that you become a better investor. It sounds like you were able to get paid to learn on your first deal, and then you went back for more. You went back for seconds in the same complex, so it must have been all right. What shifted from buying condos in the same complex? You said you wanted to scale. Were you able to do that? What was the next step? The next step really was noticing that small starter homes that are on a decent size lot weren't being built, at least not here in Richmond. I gather that it's very similar nationally. So any new homes that are being built that could be considered starter homes are either right on top of each other, or they're costing a lot more than most people would be able to pay for it to be a starter home. Then also, just from the dollars and cents standpoint, I was at the point where I could go and purchase my next property. My partner was not quite in that same position. So just from that standpoint, I started to look to see what my next purchase could be whenever he was ready to partner on another deal. So it was really just those couple of basic things. Then frankly, the other thing that I was interested in was being able to get a 30-year mortgage that I couldn't necessarily get under a partnership. The numbers made a lot more sense and meant I could go after a property that was a little more expensive than what those condos were. It's an interesting story hearing your evolution as an investor. I absolutely have questions about this single-family deal, more so around what gave you the vision to know that your market needed this kind of an asset. I'll dive into those questions when we come back from our break. As a host, the last thing I want to do or have time for is to play accountant and banker. But that's what I was doing every weekend, flipping between a bunch of apps, bank statements, and receipts, trying to sort it all out by property and figure out if I was actually making any money. Then I found Baseline, and it takes all of that off my plate. It's BiggerPocket's official banking platform that automatically sorts my transactions, matches receipts, and shows me my actual cash flow for every property. My tax prep is done, my weekends are mine again, plus I'm saving a ton of money on banking fees and apps I don't need anymore. Get a $100 bonus when you sign up today at Baseline.com slash BP. BiggerPocket's pro members also get a free upgrade to Baseline Smart. That's packed with advanced automations and features to save you even more time. All right, everyone, we are back with investor Greg Rotesheimer, and we are talking about scaling his investment portfolio. Greg, so now you're focused on looking for, it sounds like, single-family home, and it really sounds like you're targeting that first-time home buyer or maybe the tenant that wants a single-family home. You said that you didn't see a lot of that product around. Were you purposefully looking at what your market was missing, or how did you come to the determination that this is an asset that is in demand? As simple as it sounds, even driving around town was part of it. There are a lot of apartment and condo complexes being built, but any single-family homes were either significantly more expensive or just didn't have the land. When I was comparing the numbers for those condos and what I could afford having to put down 25% to 30% as compared to the single-family homes, where I can do 20% or 25% depending on the numbers and the banks that I was dealing with, I was able to spend a little bit more money to get to those properties. And frankly, from my perspective, if I were at the age where I had kids, I know that I really wouldn't want to share walls if I could help it. And so that was my premise, admittedly, maybe a little bit not proved until I actually bought my first deal. But this is the essence of real estate investing. This is exactly what you should be doing as an investor. Leveraging the things you see, feel, taste, touch every single day. If you're a backyard investor and you drive through your neighborhoods, what are you seeing? What's being built? Who's living there? These are just some questions you can stop and ask yourself right now. You already have the data in your head. You see it every day. And so to be able to take that information and make some educated guesses. Now I'm not saying go out and buy an asset based on some unproven theory, but I am saying use the information that you have. That's your competitive advantage. And then go take your theory to a property manager or a real estate investor who has some actual data for you to compare it to. And then you can find yourself having some sort of competitive advantage by providing a product or a service that your community needs. Like real estate is a business. And as any good business, your job is to provide a product or a service that's in demand. I love that you took a look around to say, okay, what does my community need? And then how do I provide that? So I guess that's my next question for you, is how did you provide that? So the home that I settled on is a rancher. By rancher, you're saying all one level? All one level. I think a good thing to target are ranchers so that if you have older folks that have trouble with stairs, things like that, from a accessibility standpoint, you have that ready to go. And so the first one that I bought is for 245,000. So I had to put 50,000 down on that. I was able to rent it within two weeks of purchase. It was still relatively turnkey, not brand new anything, but everything was well-maintained enough. Most of the properties that I bought have been built in the either late 70s all the way up through the early 90s. Love it. The carrying costs are about $1,200 on that. And it rented for 1,600 out of the gate. In fact, this property, I just filled a vacancy and it's now renting for 2,200 in the span of four years. Gosh. So it's gone from 1,600 a month to 2,200 a month in rental demand there. Is it because they're still not building a ton of single family homes? Yes. The amount of inquiries that I've gotten on my vacancies, and I've only had three vacancies coming up on five years. So I have tenants that are staying for quite a long time. And even when there is a vacancy, they get filled very quickly. In fact, the next property that I bought was the exact same profile. I've probably spent an hour inside of it because it's rented so quickly and I've had the same tenants for that long of a period of time. Were these both MLS deals as well? Yes. That's cool. You're finding ways to make deals on the market work. You're not doing heavy renovations. It's what Dave and I call good old fashioned boring real estate. Find a property, get a loan, put your 20 to 25% down, rent it out, maintain the property, buy the best asset you can given your financial situation. You're not buying anything super old. This is just tried and true old boring real estate. But old boring real estate has been making people wealthy for generations. And one of the things you mentioned was that you are managing these. So you are finding the tenants and it sounds like it's not been a ton of work because you're buying such great assets. Talk to us a little bit about being your own property manager and how that's either helped or hindered your business. I've heard this advice and would definitely second based on my experience that self-managing, at least for some period of time, whether it's a financial consideration or not, is really going to help you understand your workflow and how to make a deal work for you. Even if you want to use a property manager at some point, I think it's certainly worth having some background in self-management so you know how to manage the property manager. But from my standpoint, I'm handy enough that I can take care of most issues that come up and all of my properties are within a 20 to 25 minute drive to me. So it's really not a huge deal to get to those properties. And actually, I've been able to lean on contractor partners of mine as well as even just other colleagues of mine when I go on vacation, that they're willing to at least field a phone call for me. I feel like the nightmare scenario that something goes really wrong if you're out of the country or anything like that. But I've had really good colleagues and friends that have helped. So that's all been really good for me. And if I admit, I'm a little bit of a control freak. So if I would hand off too much of the control and the power from day to day, I think that would drive me just about as nuts as anything else. Getting the experience of doing it yourself will help you be a better manager of property managers when you go to hand it off. Because you don't just give up managing your assets when you hire a property manager, you just pick up a new job of managing your manager. One thing I would add that from my perspective is unique. Why I had 10 properties as my goal, and also from the timing standpoint, is my kids are getting just about to the age where I can start to employ them. And so that... There's tax benefits there. And specifically, it makes sense for me to manage from that perspective. Do you pay them $12,500 a year? That's a real good guess. But that's something I couldn't necessarily do, right? If I didn't have this type of business, I can't do that through my stock portfolio, for example. So at that number, the financial numbers make sense that I can start to bring them into the fold. Well, Greg, you hinted a little bit earlier that you've employed some different deal finding methods later in your investing career. So that leads me to believe that A, you continue to scale, but also B, you weren't just buying on the MLS anymore. So what did the next phase of investing look like for you? What were you focused on? And how are you finding those deals? Tell us maybe about one of them and what they look like. And as far as from the time standpoint, this was getting into about 2023, so gone were those 3.5% rates that I was in with those first deals. We're all sad about that still, but you know. So I really started to look to see how I could pay cash. And so when I started to be in a position to pay cash, that meant that I could start to engage wholesalers and then also even look on the MLS for as-is properties that needed some work. I was really trying to stay within that $250,000 purchase price. And at that timeframe, at that purchase price, it was going to be a house that needed some work. It usually is, buddy. When you start looking off market, now you're turning into a value-add investor. This is the stuff I like. Let's go. Let's go. Tell me about it. So I bought one wholesale property that really didn't need a lot of work. I just needed to rip the deck off and replace that, really paint, patching, and just a little bit of update to the bathroom. So it was not that bad. About how much worth of work there? Well, it was about 40,000. So not too, too bad. And frankly, I could have done more of that work myself if I wanted, but I did find a contractor through a friend of a friend. He did a fine job and it worked out okay. Give us the quick rundown. What was that? What'd you pay for that one? You put 40 in it and then tell us what either rent or sold for. Yep. So I paid 240 for it. And then with the 40 in, it was 280 all in. It rents for 1,900. Okay. And the current value is about 320. Okay. So what was the next one like? So the next one was MLS, but it was as is. I paid 255 and it had significant floor issues that I could see. Turns out that there had been some joists that were cut. There was definitely sub flooring that had significant issues. I did the bad thing, went on nextdoor.com, tried to find a handyman that could do the basic part of the work. And then I thought I would do the rest. He was awful. It cost me about 6,000 and he didn't really finish anything. I got really lucky that a neighbor of mine referred me to a contractor he had used. He came in and fixed everything for a really reasonable price. And so I was at 255 purchase price. It was at 290 once it was completed and it rented for a similar 1975 once it was ready to go. And in fact, I actually just refied that property to have money for this most recent purchase. So that's my first, I guess we would call that the slow burr. The first slow burr. Awesome. So you bought a wholesale deal and an MLS deal. You paid cash, so it's obviously producing cashflow. You had to pay the cash to get there, but it's a great place to put your money. Have you ended up doing any real value add, real off market? While we were finishing up that MLS deal, there was another wholesale deal that was 180,000 and- Yeah. Now we're cooking with gas. All right. 180K. That sounds more like what I would get. All right. 180K. So this contractor, while I was working on the house and he was working on the house, it turns out he wanted to get into the world of real estate investing and flipping. So he said, what do you think? Do you want to go ahead and purchase this? And so we did. It was a very small house, three, one, not even a thousand square feet. So we purchased it assuming we would flip it and have a split it at the end. It took more like nine months, what we thought was going to be six months to get it completed. All in, it ended up costing about 100,000 to get everything done. And I agreed to flip because I just didn't think I'd have enough cash to have multiple properties going at a time, especially if we flipped it in six months. But since it started to take more like nine months and it was in my buy box for every other metric, I ended up keeping it. So once we settled on a purchase price, I bought him out. How did you structure it? It sounds like you paid for the deal and he did the renovation. So you didn't have to pay for the renovation at all. That was his contribution? Correct. So you were 50-50 partners? Correct. Yes. Did you guys do any other deals together or was this a one and done kind of a thing? We are still partners. And so we have bought the last two, both have been through the same wholesaler as a matter of fact. They didn't need the same amount of work. We were able to get those completed in a three to four month timeframe, again, in the same area of Richmond. Well, this is cool, Greg. I really like the concept of partnering with a contractor. I just believe that if you're going to partner, then you both need to bring something to the table that the other doesn't bring, especially if you're going to be splitting it 50-50. And so I'd love for you to kind of share with the audience, Greg, maybe some lessons you've learned or best practices you have for working with a partner. First off, I would compare that initial partnership that I was mentioning for my first couple of deals to the now partnership with a I would certainly encourage people to partner with somebody that you don't have overlapping skill sets. For that first partnership, we basically were bringing the exact same skills to the table. So we weren't really able to work off of each other and let each person deal with their area of expertise. And so with the contractor that I now partner with, obviously he does all of the heavy lifting for the renovations, the estimates, anything like that related to what needs to be done to get the house to where it needs to go. The other thing that we say out loud, I think, to each other is we are the key, so to speak, for each of us being able to get into these off-market wholesale deals, i.e. I don't have skillset to buy one of these and then do those renovations on my own. And he doesn't necessarily have the capital to go ahead and make sure that we can get these cash so that he can get in and do these types of renovations. So I think from an appreciation standpoint, we both recognize what we're bringing to the table so that we can get into these kinds of deals. There is definitely a healthy tension as far as how often we're purchasing a property, what might need to be done with it. And flipping has been one of the constant negotiations, i.e. I am definitely more on the buy and hold side, and I think he's looking more into the flipping side. And that just has to do, I think, with what our financial goals are. For me, buy and hold means that I can hold off on paying capital gains in the short-term versus long-term, which is something that I definitely am looking to do. However, now that I'm right at the edge of getting this 10th property completed, I do appreciate what he's brought to the table. So we are going to start looking at flipping a little more aggressively so that he can start to build his portfolio a little bit more on his side. So it's been real positive from that aspect. In a situation like yours where the financial goals may be a little different, one thing that I did with an early business partner of mine was we just had a decision matrix document where we predetermined how we were going to make some of the decisions about whether we flip a house or whether we keep a house. And that was based on the buy box, like where that property is, cash we had in the business at the time, like in the LLC. And then we essentially put it into a document, we had it notarized, we signed it, and we amended it to our LLC documentation. And the amount of times that that saved us from having a knockdown drag out fight about, should we keep this one or should we sell this one? We would just say, all right, well, let's go look at the document. And then we'd look at the document and it saved so much trouble. So my advice to anybody who's considering a partnership of any kind, not just with a contractor, is to think about it with the end in mind. Every partnership will end at some point. It may be in a year, it may be in 25 years, but at some point it ends. So what's the end look like and how do you get out amicably? And to just document everything you can upfront so that there's less argument during the process, because you will butt heads, you absolutely will. It's like a marriage, guys. And anybody that's been married for any substantial period of time knows you and your spouse are going to butt heads. And trust me, partnership woes weigh on you, man. It's heavy sometimes. So just write it down, get it on paper, and it will save you a ton of headache. So where's your portfolio at today? About how many properties do you have and do you have goals of expanding it? I have nine properties today, the two condos and seven single family homes. Oh, you ain't sold nothing. I'm not. No, I've kept them all and knock on wood, Richmond has been good to me as far as continued rent growth and not a whole lot of issues with the properties that have caused enough of a headache for me to sell anything just yet. And Greg, if you don't mind, could you share with us an overall cashflow number? I know you've paid cash for a lot of your property, so I'm guessing it's a pretty healthy number. Yeah, overall cashflow, it's right around 120,000 because we've been paying cash for all of these properties. And the next question I have for you is, has real estate been able to help you accomplish the things that you set out to accomplish? Just give us a sense of what life's been like for you because of real estate. It definitely has. I know I haven't mentioned this earlier, but flexibility is a really big thing for me, especially for the age of my kids who are 11 and so I'm able to help with the little league team. I started to teach guitar lessons, which I haven't done since I first got out of college. We travel a lot, so it's definitely given me the flexibility and the amount of time that I've really been looking for, as well as that financial independence, which was sort of generically the first goal that I was setting out for. Guitar lessons, man, that's cool. Do you have a list of illegal riffs you don't allow your students to play? Well, of course, Stairway to Heaven is the big one. However, I started out by saying that midlife crisis, it's really depressing how many of my middle school and high school students don't even know who Led Zeppelin is. Oh, bummer. But for all of my female students out there, I have learned more Taylor Swift songs than I would like to admit. There's probably some young listeners you have no idea what we're talking about. And finally, before we get out of here, there's probably a lot of investors who are listening to your story and are wanting to do something similar. Maybe they've got cash put away and they're trying to decide, is it better for me to buy something turnkey and pay cash, or should I put my money in the stock market? There's a lot of options for people. Do you have any advice for those who are maybe just a little intimidated by real estate right now, but want to follow a similar path to you? I am not very risk tolerant. And so for people that aren't, you can still actually get into real estate and it's really just trying to find a deal that you're not trying to hit a home run, just make sure it's at least cashflow neutral, if at all possible, and trust your gut as far as what you're seeing in your particular area and what you think the need of the community is and the type of property that you see that there's more of a need for and go for it from there. I like that. I think there's two really important keys to your story that I think other investors should pay attention to. One is that you really took the time to try to figure out what your buy box should be based on what your market needs. The second thing is you bought the best assets you could given that buy box, right? I think a lot of investors get in trouble when they go and they try to buy the cheapest asset they can buy, because it sounds nice to be able to get a house for under a hundred grand, but under a hundred grand houses got under a hundred grand problems sometimes, and you can really lose some money by getting yourself in over your head. So Greg, thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story. It's really inspiring. And I'm sure that there are lots of people listening who are glad that they tuned in today. And thank you everyone else for tuning in and listening to the Bigger Pockets Podcast. If you enjoyed Greg's story, then I recommend you check out Bigger Pockets Podcast episode 1231. That's from January 26th with investor Neal Whitney. Neal's another inspiring example of how basic affordable real estate investing can change your entire financial future in just a few years. Thank you everybody for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.