Deal Diary: How Lucy Hinds Turned One HELOC Into Three Rental Properties

In This Article

Name
Lucy Hinds

Location
Cincinnati, Ohio

Occupation
Real estate investor

Assets
Single-family rentals

Investment strategy
Long-term rentals

Financing
Conventional + HELOCs

Lucy Hinds spent years living the Dave Ramsey playbook: no debt, aggressive saving, and total avoidance of leverage. Then she read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and everything she believed about money got rearranged.

Lucy had built up significant equity in her primary home after the COVID pandemic price spike, and she realized she could use it. She opened a HELOC for $176,000 and bought three rental properties in 90 days, all sourced off the MLS and leased before her first mortgage payment was due. 

She started in July 2022. By September 2025, with just five properties, Lucy had retired from her W2 entirely. Here’s how she did it.

You took out a $176,000 HELOC and bought three houses in 90 days. Walk us through those numbers.

House one was $215,000, a three-bed, two-bath, with no basement. I put 25% down, about $54,000, using cash and HELOC funds. Rent came in at $2,150 against a $1,227 mortgage, so $923 a month in cash flow. 

House two was a stone’s throw away: $240,000, fully turnkey, and no work was needed on it. The mortgage was $1,480, and the rent was $2,225, so there was $750 a month in cash flow. 

House three was a townhome for $157,000, the cheapest of the three, with a $1,288 mortgage, including HOA, and $2,050 in rent. I put about $10,000 into renovations on that one. 

All three were leased before I made a single mortgage payment.

Why did you take a break after those first three deals instead of continuing to scale immediately?

The HELOC was getting big, and I was tired. Buying three houses in 90 days while still working a full-time job is a lot. I wanted to let the dust settle, pay the line of credit down, and make sure everything was stable before I added more risk. 

I didn’t buy my fourth property until almost a year later, in July 2023. By then, rates had climbed to around 7.5%, up from the high-5s I started at. The deal still worked. It was a $235,000 turnkey property bringing in about $550 a month in cash flow. 

The rate doesn’t make or break a deal. The numbers on the actual property do.

You never refinanced or pulled cash out. How did that discipline accelerate your path to retirement?

Every dollar the business made went straight back into the business. I used the cash flow to pay down the HELOC while I kept working my W2 job. I didn’t touch a cent of it personally until I had already hit financial freedom. 

That’s the part people skip. They start cash flowing on property one and immediately start spending it, then they’re scrambling when something breaks, or they want to buy the next deal. I reinvested everything until the portfolio could fully support me, and that’s what got me to retirement in just over three years.

You had a goal of 10 properties but stopped at five. Why?

Somewhere around property five or six, I did the math and realized that was enough to call it financial freedom. I didn’t need to keep growing just because I’d set an original number. 

We do a yearly ROI assessment on every property, and last year we actually sold one entirely so we could pay off our primary residence outright. Now we just owe taxes and insurance on our own home. 

Knowing you’re enough is the whole game. It’s not about keeping up with anyone else. It’s about building something that supports the life you actually want, not the biggest portfolio you can technically manage.

What does life actually look like now that you’re retired on five properties?

I live on $40,000 a year by choice, and it covers everything I actually want, including travel and getting my hair and nails done. The portfolio brings in $45,352 a year, so I’m investing the difference toward future goals, like a vacation home in Florida we plan to buy in the next five to eight years and eventually turn into our primary residence.

I still self-manage every property myself, collecting rent, coordinating repairs, and signing leases, with help from a handyman or plumber when something’s beyond us. My husband is still working. He’s got his own retirement date locked in for early 2029. 

We’re just building this at our own pace, on our own terms.