He Started Investing in His 40s, Now He’s on Track to Retire with Rentals

0:00Ashley Kehr:What if the thing that finally pushed you off the sidelines and into your very first real estate deal was not a market shift or a perfect opportunity, but was actually gaining custody of your granddaughter and realizing the path you were on was not going to be good enough.

0:14Tony Robinson:And what if you did it while working a full-time job, serving in the military, and learning a very expensive lesson about property taxes that nobody warned you?

0:27Ashley Kehr:This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr.

0:31Tony Robinson:And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And our guest today, Brent Beard, is a real estate investor and an agent in the Kansas City area. Brent bought his first duplex in 2025 while still working in W-2, still serving in the military and raising his granddaughter with his wife. Now, he's not here with a polished success story. He's here with a real one. So Brent, welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

0:53Ashley Kehr:So Brent, let's start off with what changed. You mentioned gaining custody of your granddaughter really shifted everything for you, how you thought about income, time, and just the future in general. So take us back to that moment and tell us what exactly changed for you. Yeah, so my wife and I, we have always kind of skated by on our salaries. I work in the tech industry where I lead an engineering calibration lab for a leading tech company here locally she works in the banking industry as a customer service agent and we've we've always just kind of gotten by not rich but not poor enough to pay the bills and keep the fridge stocked and back in 2000 late 2023 we realized after a long drawn out court battle for custody of our granddaughter.

1:45We were awarded custody and it was kind of like, whoa, we can no longer coast on our salaries like we used to and I need to figure out what I need to do to provide more. So, you know, at that point was when I went and finished my bachelor's degree because I was looking for that corporate promotion and started dabbling around in entrepreneurship. entrepreneurship is when I came across real estate and bigger pockets and ultimately what led to that shift.

2:16Tony Robinson:Why real estate Brent like what was it about real estate that made it feel like that was the right thing to layer on to give you some of that additional I guess cushion in life that you were looking for? So just the early part of of this journey was spent in education right educating myself. And based on what I've found out on podcasts and books, reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that's kind of the starting journey for a lot of investors. I felt like real estate is more practical. It's something sure it could be more capital intensive, but it's more appreciating wealth over time. And I know that this is a bit of a journey that you were kind of going on on your own.

3:07Tony Robinson:It sounds like you're kind of consuming the podcast and reading the books. But how did you get your wife on board with this idea that real estate was also the right vehicle? Because I think there's a lot of folks who are listening right now a lot of Rickies in the audience who have listened to, you know, we're on episode 700. And I think you're like 36, right? Like, like, they've listened to all 700 episodes, they've drank the Kool-Aid, they're excited, but their spouse hasn't quite gone down that same path. What did that conversation look like between you and her to also get her on board? Yeah, there were definitely some reservations there in the beginning, especially when the numbers of investments started to become a little more clear and real.

3:49But my wife likes to, she likes to call me nerd. And she said, you're smart, you're business oriented. and she pretty much just had trust in me. And so that was kind of the way that she bought into it.

4:05Ashley Kehr:Now, Brent, you've already told us a bunch of stuff that you have going on. You have a full-time job, you're part of the National Guard, and you're raising your granddaughter. How have you actually made time for real estate investing without any of those core elements falling apart in your life? very carefully. It's very deliberate. You know, I get to see my family probably five to six hours per day, per work day, Monday through Friday. Weekends are open unless I have to go be all I can be. But it is with that understanding that, you know, none of this is going to be easy per se and it does require some level of involvement analysis you know so but it's there have been sacrifices and there's more sacrifices that's ongoing now because I'm also in school to be a dual licensed realtor in the states of Kansas and Missouri so tonight I have my qualifying final for Missouri then it'll be on to Kansas.

5:15Well good

5:15Ashley Kehr:luck. Thank you. So, um, but hopefully, hopefully things just kind of slow down. Um, but yeah, my wife is fortunately very understanding, uh, uh, kind of what I'm trying to build here. Now, along the lines of building, tell us about the first property that you ended up purchasing. Yeah. So the first property that I purchased was a duplex, um, in Leavenworth, Kansas. it was full disclosure it was kind of outside my buy box in terms of what I was looking for you know I was typically looking for you know side by side two-car garage you know plenty of parking things like that but I kind of stumbled across this it was on the MLS and I looked at the list price and ran some numbers and it cash flowed at list price.

6:11But, you know, did some, came in at about 10 % less on the offer. Might've been 15. I think we kind of landed on a 10 % discount and ultimately closed on it. So it was your typical boring MLS, nothing fancy, no creative financing. It's PennyMac, 30-year fixed, locked in at 6.99%. I did inherit a resident on one of the units, and then I leased up a one-year lease at the end of the year. And currently, I'm in the process of vetting local property management firms. because I've started, I've been self-managing and I've kind of learned the ropes. The longer I self-manage, the more that I realize I don't want to self-manage.

7:10And I want to find one property manager or one property management firm who can scale with me as I increase in my portfolio. So, and I just want one property manager, not one managing this property, one managing that property, so on and so forth.

7:28Tony Robinson:You said that the property didn't initially meet your buy box, but you decided to move forward because the numbers looked so strong. Just quickly walk us through what did your underwriting process look like? Like what data sources were you using? What tools were you using to actually run the analysis? And when you say the numbers look strong, was it maybe the appreciation play that you like the most? Was it just the pure cash flow? Like what was the actual data point that made you say this is a deal that's worth pursuing? Yeah, so what I did, I used kind of a culmination of tools. I built my own spreadsheet that had editable fields for assumptions and then formulated fields for the calculations.

8:07I utilized the BiggerPockets calculator. and a lot of my source of truth came from my agent you know when when I asked you know hey what is the market rent for you know I have a two bed and a three bed well the two bed is already rented at 850 he's a little bit on the lower end of the market rent the the range for the three bed one bath was about$1 ,200 to$1 ,350. What I did, I listed it at$1 ,100 because it still cash flowed and I wanted to get it rented. Appreciation, I think the last decade it experienced, I think, a 7 % overall appreciation. Of course, everything appreciated ridiculously in 2020 and 2021, but But just looking at the next 10 years, I predict about 3%, just being conservative, probably looking at about an 80 ,000 % increase in value just organically.

9:14But it was the cash flow that really struck my attention as pending that that second vacant unit did rent at$1 ,100, which it did. that was bringing with property management baked in at 10 % with 20 % going towards CapEx, vacancy and maintenance, plus all the expenses, it was a little bit over an 8 % cash on cash return.

9:41Tony Robinson:Pretty good for just like stable long term rental, not having to do a whole heck of a lot. Well, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, Brent is going to share the tax story. And this is when every rookie investor needs to hear before that goes in their first deal. We'll be right back after this. Vacation is expensive. Your empty place doesn't have to be. If you're heading out of town and your home is sitting empty, you could list your space on Airbnb while you're away and turn those unused nights into extra income. And with Airbnb's co-host network, getting started is more straightforward than most people think.

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11:17Ashley Kehr:When you buy your first rental property, there's usually a moment right before you pull the trigger where your brain starts spiraling a little. What if I'm making a mistake? What if I can't figure this out? What if this whole thing becomes way more complicated than I expected? Honestly, building any business feels like that at first. And for a lot of investors, that next step is creating a brand, a website, or even a business around what they're building. And I've learned this myself. Whether it's real estate, building a brand, launching a side business, or creating something online, the hardest part is usually just getting started before you feel fully ready.

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13:17Ashley Kehr:You underwrote for 8 % to 15 % increase on the property taxes, but you got hit with nearly 100 % increase. So what happened? What did it cost you and how did you recover from this? It was 100 % operator error and a complete oversight on my end. So when looking at the historic taxes, year over year, the taxes would increase your 5%, 10%, 15%, you know, whatever the case may be. So, so when I was underwriting my deal, I was expecting that 15 % increase in tax year over year. Um, but one thing that, that I failed to realize was the, uh, the amount that the property was being assessed at. And in the state of Kansas, I'm not sure if it's like this in every other state, but it's something I'll definitely keep in mind to look at.

14:13In the state of Kansas, whenever you buy a property, the purchase price at which you buy that property is now the new market value for that property. So what had happened was it was being taxed at this amount and was purchased up here. So now when I got the new tax bill, I'm now being taxed at this new amount. So it was about an 87 % increase in taxes. Fortunately, I underwrote the deal so conservatively that I'm just naturally able to absorb that impact and not really have to pivot and change my strategy or anything like that.

14:49Ashley Kehr:I think like one really big important lesson there is that how taxes are assessed changes from state to state, sometimes even county to county. So I think that's something to really understand like in New York, we have like a star savings and this is if it's your primary residence and like there's some other qualification criteria. But if you're just getting from your real estate agent what the property taxes are and you say, okay, yeah, maybe they'll increase a little bit when they do the next assessment, but you're not realizing that you're using this as an investment property. You're not going to qualify for the star savings.

15:27Ashley Kehr:Maybe they're also a veteran and they're getting that exemption on the taxes and like then you're gonna get once you become the owner of this property all of those exemptions and savings are taken off and now you understand what the real basis is so I think really looking at the property tax bills too and understanding what how it's actually calculated for the property that you're buying because it's so easy to just look what you know the agent is telling you that they are or to pull up the amount but not actually reading the bill of the property tax. And it's also important kind of in my situation where the Kansas City metropolitan area encompasses two states.

16:08You know, so you have Kansas on one side, Missouri on the other, you have to understand the laws, regulations, taxes, and everything across both states. You know, because my next property might be in Grandview, Missouri, which is right across the state line.

16:23Tony Robinson:Well, on that note, Brennan, I mean, you're a licensed agent in Kansas the city, how has being on the agent side changed the way you think about investing? And how do you use that position to your advantage as a buyer? Well, I'm not, I'm not licensed yet. I'll be licensed pending passing the exams here in probably four weeks. So the strategy behind being an agent is, it's kind of an extension of the investor lane, right? One thing that I did kind of experience was agent speed, right? Sometimes I wanted to put an offer out and that offer didn't get put out for 24, 48 hours. And I probably missed out on five or six deals because of that.

17:11So that gives me some flexibility. Once I become licensed, when I want to make an offer, I can just make the offer right then whenever it's convenient. The second strategy is, you know, it's going to help alleviate some of the closing costs if I represent myself as the buyer's agent. But I think the biggest perk that I see is the networking side of it. Being able to get to know the people that I need to know, like your general contractors, your lenders, your property managers, and things like that. So I've, I've tried to kind of scale and build that team organically. But as you know, I have a lot going on.

17:54And it's just hard to make some of that stuff happen. So I think that's going to be a being an agent, and living in that, in that real estate agent space will help find those, get to know those networking people that I need to know.

18:09Tony Robinson:I've actually never heard anyone say that networking is like one of the bigger benefits of becoming an agent. But man, it's such a, such a true and valid point. Like I think about some of the most connected people that I know. And a lot of times it's the agents, right? Like they know the contractors, they know the title and escrow companies, they know the property inspectors, like they've got sometimes the biggest Rolodex of folks in a market. So you're absolutely right, man. Like sometimes just just the network of people that you meet, there's so much value in that. And for a rookie investor, what better resource than a larger network as you're looking to get started?

18:46Yeah, I mean, even if you don't want to be an agent, at least get to know a good agent and be close with him or her. Because yeah, my agent, I wanted my sewer line scope. Hey, I know a guy. Hey, I need some patching work done. I know that guy, you know, or I know that girl. Yeah, it's definitely a walk and roll of eggs.

19:09Ashley Kehr:Now, Brent, with building your portfolio, you have made it clear that you don't want to move fast just to scale fast and to scale big. You want to actually build something solid and something that's sustainable. So what do the next two to three years look like for building your portfolio? Yeah, so my long-term vision is kind of like the Chad Carson small and mighty investor model. Make as much money as you can with the least amount of properties as possible. Next two to three years, definitely plan on at least getting at least two. My short-term goal is one more property by October of this year, which would mark the one-year mark from my first property.

19:57I would like to stay on the pace of one property per year for the next several years. And then, you know, at some point in the next decade, hopefully I'll be at a position where I can analyze and see what properties I have. What are my high performers? What are my low performers? Why are they low performers? Make those modifications, prune where needed and keep it, keep it relatively small to mighty, just kind of like what coach Carson calls it. that's two to three years. I mean, I have, I have a long-term plan of 20 year plan. I'm 42 now planning on retiring, um, in, in the next 10 years, um, it's a 10 year plan.

20:44So, but until then I'll continue working at my W2 job, um, where as long as it's practical, uh, being a W2 employee makes me very bankable. You know, lenders love giving money to folks who have a consistent paycheck every week or two weeks. We use those agent commissions to fund more down payments on rental properties.

21:08Ashley Kehr:Well, Brunt, I just have to take this moment to fangirl over Chad Carson, because I'm also a huge fan of his strategy of keeping it small and simple. And I actually found something out this morning that relates to him is that he was actually announced as one of the keynote speakers for BPCon this year. That's going to be in Orlando in October. And Tony, you're going to be excited about this. I don't think you know this either, but one of the other keynotes that was announced was the author of The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel, I think, right? And you love that book.

21:44Tony Robinson:I do. That's a great book.

21:46Ashley Kehr:So if you guys want to come to BiggerPockets and fangirl with me and Tony over the keynote speakers, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash conference. Well, I have not had the opportunity to go to BP Con yet. It is definitely on my to-do list at some point in the future for sure. Yeah. Well, we'd love to have you there sometime. Yeah. I went to a workshop in Overland Park, Kansas a couple of months ago and it was hosted by a local real estate firm and it was a burr workshop and you know there were a couple investor agents that were leading this workshop and this was probably the this was the tipping moment that really was like yeah this is the space i need to start transitioning to for sure because i was in a room full of people who were smarter than me your contractors your agents and it's leadership 101 you you want to position yourself to be the dumbest person in the room, you know, and, and just being able to surround myself with, with people who are so much more knowledgeable than me.

22:53Uh, that was kind of an eye opener, eye opener. And, and that's kind of one, one of many elements of what, uh, BP com really is enticing to me.