Turning Burnout Into (Real) Financial Freedom with 7 Rentals in Just 3 Years

20:35Ashley Kehr:So, okay. So like, let's just give the overall business picture of this. So the Rover website, like, do you need to, my mind always goes to insurance. Like Daryl will pitch me all these business ideas and I'll be like, well, there's a lot of liability. You'll need to get insurance. That's just going to be expensive because this could happen, that could happen. So like, is that like Airbnb where you get insurance through the app or is that something you had to get on your own? Do you need to like add coverage onto your homeowners policy? Are you providing the food, things like that, or people bring their own?

21:07Ashley Kehr:What are your actual business expenses that are coming out of your pocket each month for this?

21:17Let's say when you send your, it's very similar to with daycare. When you send your, you know, Ashley, I know you're, you have, uh, two sons. I have a goat.

21:30Ashley Kehr:Oh, my goat. I thought you were talking about getting to talk to daycare. I have a goat. My goat doesn't go to daycare. Grandma comes here to take care of the goat. Oh my God. When you send them to daycare, you pack their food, you pack their clothes and whatever. Same thing with the dogs. So, um, Rover actually cover all the insurance. So you don't have to get extra insurance. all you need to do is you know it's very easy actually and I am a little bit scared to bore my dog because I don't know if they screen everybody they said they do so you have to send in your ID and they do do a background check on you I never have any accident with any of my dog knock on wood the dog parents would bring all the supplies like you know beds food anything That's so interesting.

22:21Ashley Kehr:Like my son, he wants a puppy for Christmas. And I'm like thinking, this is like the perfect opportunity. Let's sign up for this. We're going to bring in the dogs. You take care of them. You show me responsibility and you can get a puppy.

22:35Tony J. Robinson:And then you can use that money to pay for the dog, Ash. It's like a - Yeah.

22:39Ashley Kehr:My God. I've been looking at prices of dogs. My God. The last time I bought a dog when I was like 18, I brought it home to my parents' house and my dad was ready to murder me, but it was like $200 maybe for my dog. And I was like, I need$2 ,000 at least to buy a dog now. Oh my God.

22:57Tony J. Robinson:Casey, what comes to mind for me, right? Because we invest a lot in the short-term mental space. And I think about dealing with the guests. And for you, I guess it would be like the pet owners. Or yeah, the dogs too, right? I guess both of those, right? You've got both sides. Have you found it difficult to manage the actual owners? Because like you said, this is almost more like a daycare where they're dropping on someone that they that they love. Have you found it difficult to interact and deal with the pet owners? For me, no. So with Rover, they have a process before you accept any dog, you can do a meet and greet.

23:34So the parents would bring the dog to my home to meet with me. And I would see if that dog is nice. Is it potty trained? You know, is it good with environment? And now I have a son, it has to be good with my babies too. And then it's also an opportunity for me to kind of, you know, interact with that owner. If they seem just difficult, I wouldn't accept the dog at all, just because I know down the road is going to be more problem. But most of 90 % of them, they're really easy going, they just want somebody love their dogs. And I'm genuinely love dog. My dream is to have a facility where I can help homeless dogs.

24:18But yeah.

24:19Tony J. Robinson:Do you get a lot of repeat guests or repeat customers in this space? Yeah. My rebooking rates, I would say very high. So when a dog parent stay, leave the dogs with me, they don't go anywhere else.

24:33Ashley Kehr:How did this pivot actually change your mindset moving almost all the way across the country? how did this change your mindset about what financial creativity looks like? So I think there's a lot of ways to make money. And if you just want to make money, I'm an immigrant. I came from Vietnam and I think this country is pretty amazing. If you want to make money, there's like 101 ways that you can do it. But if you want to make money, live a healthy lifestyle, be happy, and you can see your family every day, that's very difficult. So moving to Kentucky, I know for sure my goal is my number one priority is to take care of my son.

25:16And the real estate portfolio that we have is really help paying for our mortgage, a little bit of our living expenses. And now is and selling a home in California really help us with that money to look for opportunities to invest in either Airbnb, midterm rental or maybe of like multiple units like duplex, fullplex to get more income.

25:47Ashley Kehr:How much was the amount that you ended up profiting off of the sale of your house in California? Are you ready? hold it on so i see so we bought it in september 2022 and we sold it in september september 2024 and you have to stay in yet two years you have to stay in the home for two years for your primary resident so that you don't have to pay capital gain we net four hundred and sixty thousand dollars from the sale two years and tax free that is amazing yeah and you know so much on the podcast as we talk about not investing or moving. We just did a question on Rookie Reply about moving to a lower cost of living area and getting a house hack there or whatever.

26:33Ashley Kehr:But there's also opportunity in the more expensive markets too because you are oftentimes going to have a lot more equity buildup just because you're buying at a larger amount. 100%. That's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you.

26:50Tony J. Robinson:Casey, one follow-up question for me, because you mentioned this as you were answering the last question, but you said you immigrated here from Vietnam. How old were you when you immigrated? 17. 17. Wow. So most of your young life, you spent living in Vietnam and came here right before you were a legal adult. And you were able to build yourself up to making over a million dollars in annual income. Um, and I just think that there's, it's such an inspiring story. Like we interviewed, um, Sebastian Rodriguez on episode 626. And I can't remember what country he immigrated from, but like when he came here, he literally knew no one.

27:26Tony J. Robinson:There was like at one point he like slept in his car and he was able to build up a really big amount of cashflow from his real estate business from just hustling. And the reason why I highlight that is because there are so many people who are listening right now who started off in such an easier position and still haven't taken the action, that there's literally no excuse when there are folks like you, Casey, who have come over here, built a life, built that income, and built the business. And it's just about taking action. So I just want to give you credit because it's an amazing story. And even more so given the fact you didn't even come to America until you were almost 18 years old.

28:02Ashley Kehr:So I want to go over your portfolio that you've built. So what rentals, what properties do you have right now in your current portfolio? So we have two in Austin's. One of them, one, it's a long term rental, the other ones were rented by the room. We have two in North Carolina, Raleigh area. We have a four unit in Palmer Heights, Ohio. And one unit in the building next door is a very interesting situation. We bought all five. And then we have our primary home and our Airbnb in the Red River Gorge. So now you, and congratulations on building that impressive portfolio. And you had, you had slightly mentioned that a lot of the income from these properties was like covering your current mortgage and other expenses for you.

28:53Ashley Kehr:How has work shifted for you and your husband. Are you still selling real estate in Kentucky? Are you just managing your properties? What has both of your careers kind of shifted since you've made this move? Yeah. So my husband, we're very lucky. My husband got to still work at the same company in the Bay Area. He has to go to California once a month. I'm still selling in California. I have a team there. I do have listing on the market. So it's very easy. I just signed a listing, do the negotiation. My team will clean stage and do everything else. Wow. So like all the showings and everything for you to not even have to be there.

29:36Yeah. All the showing I can pay agents, you know, per show to show, but usually I only work with listing because with buyers, you have to be there. You It's really hard to do that over the phone. I find that a little bit difficult when I moved to Lexington, Kentucky. And then I just got my license here in Lexington, Kentucky. I don't know if I want to sell real estate again. I mean, it's a really easy job to make good income, but I just don't have the drive to do that anymore. I don't know.

30:13Ashley Kehr:And you have the team already built, too. If you wanted it to be the same model, you'd have to go and build a team from scratch here too. Right. Yeah. So I'm still thinking about it. I do have the license, but I really want to focus in real estate investing for now. Well, that's awesome. Congratulations on outsourcing what seems like 90 % of your job to having other team members do it. That's great.

30:37Tony J. Robinson:Okay. So we got to bring you back for two separate episodes. One just to do a deep dive into dog sitting. And the second one is like, how do you automate your real estate agent business so you can do it from halfway across the country? Because both of those are incredible stories. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they picked the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey new construction homes, often 10 % below market value in top rental markets across the country.

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34:51Ashley Kehr:Okay, so you said earlier that all of this, the burnout, the reset, even the dog setting set you up for a much bigger move, leaving California entirely. When we come back, I want to unpack what it took to sell the Bay Area home, pocket nearly half that million dollars tax-free, and then start fresh in Kentucky. We'll be right back. Before the break, you teased the big leap of moving to Kentucky, making that$460 ,000 gain off of your house in the Bay Area. But let's go into that move into Kentucky. And you actually saw an opportunity in one of these markets, the Red River Gorge, to buy your investment property.

35:29Ashley Kehr:So tell us about this market. So this market is pretty interesting. It's an area where people go to do all the outdoorsy. And it's funny because I'm not an outdoorsy. You can pay me money to sleep on the floor. I'll pay you money so I can go inside. But it's so we actually had a neighbor. So we move into our neighborhood and are across the street neighbor. My husband came home one day and he was like, I met the neighbor. Guess what he does? I said, I don't know. He does Airbnb. And my mind just like, let's go over right now and talk to him. exactly like everything happens for a reason and so we chat with the guy and it's really funny we did no research and tony this is probably gonna scare you we did zero research before we buy this property in red river gorge simply because we trusted the neighbor he said it's doing really good the number is great and we said okay we found our property bought it now we're gonna get it ready.

36:34So it just, yeah, everything just happened.

36:36Tony J. Robinson:I'm glad it worked out for you guys. And I definitely want to get into a little bit about that, that property. Cause I know it was a, it was a cool project for you guys. But yeah, I think it does make me a little bit nervous cause I definitely don't want people to follow in your footsteps. Cause there, there maybe is a chance that the neighbor maybe gives some bad advice, but I guess when you, what did he share with you that made you guys feel so confident? I think that's really what I want to know. Just numbers, you know, how much the potential of how much it's going to make. And then I think two things about Lexington, the Red River Gorge and UK is like, it's very popular here.

37:13Everybody that you talk to, they would talk about UK and they would talk about Red River Gorge. So it's kind of like a destination where the local goes already. It's really popular. The second thing is we actually visited. We went there for the weekend. It was pouring rain. So we didn't do anything literally to stay in our Airbnb. But when I was there, I really do see a lot of potential. And I think for the next five to 10 years, it's going to grow so big.

37:42Tony J. Robinson:Casey, the property that you're actually purchasing, tell us a little bit about that. How big was it? What was your purchase price? Did you have a sense of what the revenue might be before you bought it? And if so, did those numbers match up? Just walk us through the idea a little bit. I am not a number person. You're asking the wrong person. Did I look at the revenue? No, I didn't do any numbers at all. the property is a two-bedroom two-bath condo sitting on a one acreage lot and it's surrounded by tree it's really really beautiful it was so somebody bought it remodel it and if you ever go to the Red River Gorge you'll see they remodel everything black and they pick I'm sorry but the ugliest appliances, the ugliest color.

38:34I don't know why. Everybody has the same thing. And so this property was newly renovated and it needs a lot of work. So I see the potential. We bought it. We kind of fixed it. This morning I listened to a podcast and Tony, you literally nailed it in the head, you said you have to account for the remodel and what is that furnishing cost$30 per swept foot and I did the calculation I'm like, Oh my god, he's so right. And we didn't account any of that. So yeah, so we're getting hot tub cold plunge sauna and kind of make the property nicer for the audience?

39:20Tony J. Robinson:It is something that we see a lot where folks get maybe enamored with the property and the amount of revenue that it can do, but then they only focus on the acquisition costs, which is your down payment closing costs. And they forget about like, hey, we've actually got to put stuff into it. And we definitely don't want to skip there. You said that you think this area is going to grow a bit over the next five years. What are you specifically seeing, Casey, that leads you to believe that? So the property itself is$350 ,000 that we bought. We put down 20%. And it's going to bring in around$50 ,000 to$60 ,000 a year in revenue.

40:03So what I see is the area is still a little bit underdeveloped. A lot of people are buying and building these newer, more desirable Airbnbs. And then they're putting a lot of shopping in the area. So it's had the potential to grow like Gattonburg.

40:24Ashley Kehr:Okay, Casey, before we started recording, one of the things you had said that has stuck with me, don't be afraid to change. And you've really gone through an incredible amount of change yourself. So what does freedom mean to you now that you have completely shifted and pivoted your life? And how do you define success today? So when I first started investing in real estate, my goal, to be honest with you, is to not work anymore, just move to, I don't know, Southeast Asia, be on the beach and just, you know, hang out every day. That's no longer the goal, because I think if you live a life with no purpose, it's just really boring.

41:06having my son is really give me a new purpose as up to you know spending a lot of time with the family take him travel the world so my ideal of success is to just get to spend time with my family go on vacation doing working in a really meaningful field that would give you a sense of purpose.

41:36Ashley Kehr:Well, Casey, thank you so much for sharing your story today with us and your lessons learned. And also congratulations on the portfolio and also being brave enough, having that courage to completely pivot in your life and what you're working for. So where can people reach out to you and find out more information? You can follow me on Instagram. I don't really go on there anymore, but it's at Casey Z Nguyen. Thank you guys so much for listening today. I'm Ashley. He's Tony. And we'll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.

42:08Tony J. Robinson:Hey, rookies, if you're watching this, we want you to apply to be a guest on the Real Estate Rookie podcast. That's right. Ashley and I are looking for amazing stories just like yours to be a part of our Real Estate Rookie podcast. Now look, you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to have done thousands of deals. Even if you've done one deal, your story could help inspire the next listener.

42:27Ashley Kehr:As a rookie investor, especially if you just got your first deal, it is all fresh in your minds and you are the best person to tell your story, give your experience on how you got it done to help someone else get their first deal.

42:39Tony J. Robinson:So head over to biggerpockets.com slash guest. If you want to be a part of our show again, that's biggerpockets.com slash guest. And we'd love to have you on.