I Started Investing with Just $7,500. Now I Own Millions in Rentals

0:00You know what it's like. You work all year long for your company. Then your boss sits you down, tells you you've done a great job. So you're expecting a promotion, a raise, maybe even a company car. But then they tell you, excellent work. We're happy to be increasing your pay by 2%. 2 %? That's it? There must be a better way to make money than this. And that's exactly what today's guest Remington Lyman thought. Just a few years into his working career, he realized his hard work wasn't paying off proportionally. What does reward hard work? Rental property investing. So he started buying properties with a partner using any money they could get together.

0:42Then a couple years later, when his job laid him off, he was already well on his way to financial freedom. Now he's got single family homes, multifamily properties, commercial deals, and more. that give him the income a job never could. He started with just$7 ,500, but now he's got millions in real estate, all because he placed a bet on himself.

1:10What's up, everyone? Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Today on the show, we have a super fun investor story with Remington Lyman. I really enjoyed this conversation because Remington's story is so familiar. He was not feeling like the reward he was getting from his full-time job was proportionate to the effort that he was putting in and the value that he was creating for his company. So he decided to place a bet on himself and find a way where he could be fully rewarded for the risks he was taking and for the effort he was putting in. And he picked rental property investing and has approached it in a way that I think all of you are going to learn a lot from.

1:55Let's bring on Remington. Remington, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. David, thank you for having me. Let's talk first a little bit about your background. Who are you and what was your history? What were you up to leading up to your investing career? Yeah, so I'm originally from Connecticut. I got recruited to The Ohio State University for the rifle team. Rifle team? Rifle shooting, yeah. I did not even know that was a D1 sport. That's very cool. Yep. Yep. Punching holes in papers. It was good. I trained really hard and got a scholarship to college and came to university, majored in finance, modern econ.

2:32When I graduated, I got your typical finance bro job at JP Morgan. I was an analyst and was always very entrepreneurial. And the W-2 just wasn't doing it for me and wasn't accomplishing my goals. So I quickly realized I needed to start my own business. and through that process, my roommate and my lease was ending and we're like, hey, instead of paying a landlord monthly payments and rent, why don't we go out and buy a property with the intention to later on turning it into a rental property? So that's what we did. We went out and we actually did a house hack. That was my first deal in real estate.

3:10It's a classic story. Love it. It's very similar, honestly, how I did it. I did my first deal with one of my partners, was my roommate at the time as well. we got tired of paying rent. We're like, we got to do something better here. Where were you living at the time when you did this? I was living in Columbus, Ohio. So my roommate and I, we found the dumpiest apartment you could find, had a bunch of roaches, and we were splitting$600. So each paying 300 to save up money. And that allowed us to put the down payment on our first duplex. And we did all the work ourselves. we did the renovation to the other side.

3:46We did the leasing. We mowed the grass, did the management. And that allowed us to save a bunch of money. And three months after our first deal, we went out and purchased a four unit and did the same thing. Wow. That's awesome. So what were you buying these things for? Our first duplex was actually pretty expensive for the time. It was about$330 ,000. And this was back in 2017. But after we leased up the other side, we found another roommate for our side on Craigslist and we moved in his girlfriend and we charged her like$300 a month. And so by the time all that was said and done, we were making about 50 bucks to the good every month.

4:22We'll live in pretty much rent free. Before we talk more about the deals that you've done and your real estate, what you're doing now, I'm just curious. You said you work in sort of finance bro job, working for JP Morgan. I assume it's probably pretty high paying, good job. What was it about the corporate life that wasn't resonating with you? Yeah. So growing up, I was always taught if I went out and trained harder, if I practiced harder, performed better than my competition, I would be rewarded. And when I got the W-2 job, I worked really hard, same thing, the first couple of years, and they gave me a 2 % raise at the end of the year.

5:00I'm like, hold up. I know basic finance, that's inflation. So I just got very discouraged and wanted something more from life. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. But you stuck with it for a while, right? Like while you were building your investing career, you stayed doing corporate or did you quit immediately? Yeah. So I worked for about four years at JP Morgan and I got up to 10 rental properties. And then in 2019, I actually got laid off from JP Morgan. And that was a real pivot in my real estate investing career. Were you able to cover your lifestyle at that point? Yeah, I was able to cover my lifestyle, but I was 22, 23 at the time, and I just wanted more.

5:42I knew I wanted a big family. I liked to travel, so I just kept buying. When I got laid off, I got my real estate sales license, commission-based job, worked really hard at that, closed a bunch of deals, working a lot with investors, which allowed me to make a bunch of money and just continue to invest over the years. It's a hard change, I would imagine, going from that steady paycheck to being entrepreneurial. It's exciting. It's great. And it usually works out in the long run. But I'm sure that was an adjustment for you just mentally going from having real estate be sort of like a side hustle to it becoming your main gig.

6:19What was that transition like? Yeah, it was really scary. And to be perfectly honest, I don't think if I got laid off, if I ever would have taken the jump. But now looking back, I mean, I was making$60 ,000 a year at JPMorgan, and now I make way more money than that. Sometimes I make that in a single commission check. Right. So I'm very fortunate. I'm up to 100 units now, residential, and I've got four commercial deals, working on purchasing more. I own my real estate brokerage, which has over 45 licensed real estate agents that I own 50 % of. and in the managing broker. And I just enjoy going to work every day, which JP Morgan, I did.

7:01It's a great company. I still bank there, but I just didn't have the oomph to go into work every day like I do now. Good for you, man. It's oftentimes those unfortunate circumstances that kind of light a fire, just, you know, necessity. You have to figure something out and entrepreneurship is scary. And so sometimes it takes a little kick to do it. But fortunately you sort of had like built up some of your business. You weren't just jumping into something brand new, which is why I think for a lot of investors, people listening to this, starting real estate as a side hustle is such a beneficial thing because it is manageable while you're working a full-time job.

7:39And then whether it's through necessity or someone else sort of deciding for you like it was with Remington or your own choice, you've sort of built some of the muscles at least, whereas you can sort of scale up at your own time. If it's okay with you, can we just talk about how you went from that first house hack to this really impressive portfolio in just 10 years? And maybe we can unlock some tips and tricks for the audience here. So you did your first house hack with a roommate, you renovated yourself. So how'd you go out and find that deal? And did you have experience with renovations at that point?

8:16Or how did you know how much you could take on? No, I really had no clue what I was doing. I started listening to BiggerPockets after I got my first deal on my way to work. And that really helped a lot. It helped me make less mistakes, helped me realize how, why I was making the mistakes I was making. But I learned everything with the renovation, with electrical, plumbing, flooring, painting, drywall, just from YouTube Academy. And whenever I had a question, I would have mentors that I would reach out to and they would guide me. But if you really accept that you're going to make mistakes in the beginning and you're willing to put sweat equity in and you stick with it over the long run, and I think that's where a lot of investors lose their way, is the first couple of deals don't always work out the way that you think they are.

9:04And those are going to be the toughest ones, but you're going to learn a lot. And then now I make less mistakes. I'm able to do more deals, bigger deals, have access to different types of capital. And you just got to really get started. So you did that first deal. How long after you bought that first deal is the second fourplex? Well, strategy we would do is I had a business partner at the time, which I eventually bought out, but I would do a house hack and then he would do a house hack. So we wouldn't have to wait six months to a year before doing our next one.

9:32Remington Lyman:Oh, that's smart. And we would just take turns getting the loan. So we got three properties, a total of 10 units in probably a year and a half, which is pretty quick. That's a super good idea. So rather than remaining as roommates, you're just like, we're each going to go acquire our own unit and we'll be business partners on all of them for some period of time. I like that idea. That's a pretty good approach. So it sounds like you got off to a really good start here, mostly focusing on house hacking, but I want to hear how you really started to scale because your portfolio sounds really impressive, but got to take a quick break.

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13:28Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm here with investor Remington Lyman, and we're talking about how he started his investing career in Columbus, Ohio, first by house hacking, working with a partner. After those first couple of small multifamily, I think you're up to 10, right? You had a duplex, two fourplexes. Where'd you go from there? Yeah. So, and this is where my portfolio really started to scale and it was using the BRRRR method. So I went out and I identified, I had been cold calling a lot, property owners, distress assets. And I found this four unit in this area that was really up and coming called Franklinton.

14:03It was in a really bad shape. The owner wanted$80 ,000. I was going to have to evict everyone, do a complete renovation, probably$150 ,000 of work. And so what I did was I had about $75 ,000 to my name at the time because I had just gotten laid off, but I had saved a bunch of money. I went to my mom and I borrowed about$10 ,000 and I purchased the four unit. And then I went with a partner who is a mentor. I said, hey, I got this great four unit that I own cash. I bought it for$80 ,000, but I got to put about$150 ,000 into it. And I think it's going to be worth about$450 ,000 when I'm done with it.

14:40So a home run deal. Like those numbers. And he's like, hey, I'll do that. 50 % partner. I'll give you all the cash to renovate. We'll quickly renovate it and we'll refinance it. And that's exactly what we did. So we put about$230 ,000 into it. We appraised it at about$400 ,000,$450 ,000. And we pulled all of our money out and then some. And that was a good example of delayed financing because we purchased it with cash, did the renovation, did the burn method and refinanced it. And I went on through my middle career doing that to a bunch of small multifamily properties. And within six months, because you have about a six-month seasoning period where a bank will refinance it for more than the purchase price and renovation, I just did that with cash, waited six months, pulled all my money out, and then some.

15:26And then I had extra money to do future deals. Dude, wow. That's an unbelievable deal. Let's dig into this one a little bit. There's a couple things I think our audience should hear about. So first and foremost, tell us about this mentor. Yeah. So I actually met my mentor while I was working at JPMorgan. I would go into work early so I could leave a little bit early, beat the rush hour traffic, come back home, and I would pull a list off the county auditor site of all the property owners, all the two to four unit owners in my zip code that I wanted to target. And our county typically had a number associated with the rental contact registry.

16:04And so I would call them up and I would be like, hey, I see that you've owned this home for 20 years. Are you interested in selling? And most would say no, but some would have a good conversation. And one person that I met was like, hey, I'm really old. I don't want to sell anything, but I've got a really good agent that found me a bunch of deals. You should meet with him. So he gave me his phone number. I called him up and I would have a beer with him after work once a month. And that's how I met my first mentor. Awesome. That's so cool. I mean, it's just hustle, right? Like you just built personal relationships based on, you know, your own hustle and effort because a lot of people want to find these mentors.

16:42There's no prescribed way to do it, right? Like you kind of just have to put yourself out there and something will usually work. Like the mentors I've had in my career, not even in real estate necessarily, I can't tell you how I found them. It's just like, you know, going out and doing your work every single day. And you can find these people who, you know, if you build authentic, genuine relationships with, can help you with your investing career. So tell me, Remington, how do you structure this deal? Because I think this is a common thing that people face. You got a deal on the line. Good for you.

17:18You don't have enough capital to take it down. So, like, how did you have the conversation with your mentor and how did you legally structure it? So you both had upside, risks were limited and so on. Yeah. So we drafted up an operating agreement. He put the money in for the renovation. I had the basis of the property that I had purchased cash. I had a little bit of extra that I needed to put into the partnership to cover, to match his money that he was bringing. And once we finished the renovation and refinanced it, we just split the proceeds 50-50.

17:51Remington Lyman:Okay. And then later on, we actually ended up selling that property. we 1031'd it from a four unit into a 24 unit apartment building that we still own today. Oh, that's... So not only were you able to pull cash out on top of your investment, but you had so much equity built in that deal, you could roll it into a building six times larger. That's incredible. Nice. And you found that deal, just cold calling? Yeah, I found both deals actually cold calling, the four unit and then the 24 unit that I 1031'd to. Damn, that's awesome. Good for you. And were you still doing your own renovations at this time when you were doing these BRRRRs?

18:27So I wasn't actually swinging the hammer at that point. I was just writing checks. I was managing pretty cheap contractors. Cheap contractors are good because you save a lot of money, but there's a lot of project management that you need to do. You need to make sure that they're showing up to work. You need to go to Lowe's and buy the materials because these guys don't have money to buy it themselves. And you make sure that they're doing the work correctly. And I wouldn't suggest that for a beginner, but I had enough experience to know what was supposed to be done correctly and how much it should cost.

19:00How do you like managing renovations? It's probably one of my least favorite things. I try to partner with people that are really good at it. And I will bring the experience with getting the loan. I will bring the experience of finding the deal and how to structure it, but I really don't like managing the contractor. So I try to find people that will do that part of the job. So that's awesome. It sounds like an incredible home run deal. I imagine after that, you kind of just bird for a while because if you could do that kind of deal, why wouldn't you do that all day? Yeah, bird for a while. At the time, interest rates were like 3%, 4%.

19:39So I would do the BRR and then refinance into permanent 30-year fixed rate debt that was super cheap. So a lot of times I would be cash flowing. And it was a really good strategy to use. And it still is today. Yeah. And at the same time, right, Columbus kind of exploded. Yep. There's a lot of out-of-state investors. There's also a lot of local investors as well. And what you tend to see is the local investors will tend to buy A, B class neighborhood properties. And then the out-of-state investors will tend to buy the C class properties because they want

20:09Remington Lyman:cash flow more. It's cheaper properties. But yeah, a lot of growth has happened in Central Ohio with Intel making the chips, Andurl making the drones. You got Honda building the electric battery for the cars. There's just a lot of growth in Central Ohio because it's been so cheap for these manufacturers to build out their headquarters. And then also there's a lot of higher education colleges to then recruit the talent to manage that. So tell us a little bit just about these deals. You were doing these BRRRRs. Were you cold calling for all of them or what was your deal flow like? No. So when I first started, and I still do today, I work with realtors.

20:49So they would find a property, whether it was on market or maybe a pocket listing that they thought would be a good deal for me. And I'll always pay a good realtor, even though I'm a realtor myself. I would say about half the deals that I've purchased were through realtors. The other half have been off market opportunities, whether it's working with wholesalers that are cold calling, whether it's myself that's cold calling. I also employ virtual assistants in the Philippines that will cold call for me as well. So you got to take every potential lead flow you can and analyze as many deals as possible.

21:22Yeah, it's hard right now to find good deals. I mean, they're definitely out there, but it takes a little bit of legwork. Remington, if you had to give some advice to our audience about, if they could just focus on one area, like if there's one thing they could do to improve their deal flow, sounds like you're getting amazing deals. Like where would you spend your time just starting out? Yeah, I would talk to as many people as possible, get out there and network. Some of the best deals that I've found were just from talking to property owners, to other realtors, being like, hey, I've got this need for this asset.

21:57Do you have anything possible? I own a small business, and we wanted to really buy an office space that could support a bunch of agents. And I was networking with this commercial broker, and I'm like, hey, we need a place that's downtown, that has good parking, and that's cheap. And I want to do the renovations. So if something that needs a lot of work, do you have anything? And sure enough, the next day he called me, And boom, we found our office building that I renovated. So get out there to your local meetups. BiggerPockets has a lot of really good meetups and events that you can leverage to build out your network.

22:35Totally agree. I think the best deals I've ever gotten, the people I call when I have a problem or an opportunity are people I've just gotten to know over doing this for 16 years. And it takes time. But there are ways you can accelerate your network, like going to local meetups, like Remington has said. You can and should come to BPCon. That's an incredible place to meet really high intent people who want to be doing deals together. Tickets are still on sale. You can go to biggerpockets.com and check those out. But whatever way you do it, figure out a way to build your network. You don't have to be the most outgoing person in the world.

23:12You just have to find ways to build a couple meaningful relationships. And it really can be the difference between sitting on the sidelines, scrolling Zillow, and just saying like, oh, this all sucks, or finding and seeing good quality deal flow over the course of your investing career really makes a huge difference. So it sounds like things went great through the pandemic, doing a lot of burrs, but I assume you've had to shift your strategy like a lot of us since rates went up. Let's talk about that when we get back from this quick break. Stick with us. Investing in real estate has always been smart, but it hasn't always been simple.

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