I Started BRRRR-ing in My Mid-40s, Now I’ll Retire a Decade Earlier

Dave:This investor had no exit plan from a demanding and dangerous day job, working a full 30 years to vest. His pension just didn’t feel possible, but then he discovered real estate and now just five years later, he owns 16 investment properties and is on track to retire 10 years ahead of schedule. And he’s doing this while investing thousands of miles away from his expensive California hometown. This is the path to financial freedom. What’s up BiggerPockets community? I’m Dave Meyer, housing analyst, rental property investor and head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. Welcome to the show. Today we’re bringing you the story of investor Brian Waters from Huntington Beach, California. Brian loves his job. He’s a firefighter, but he’s seen friends and colleagues struggle trying to reach retirement in a very dangerous line of work. So he started looking for a long-term backup plan and he bought his first rental property during the pandemic. Now he’s amassed a very impressive out-of-state portfolio that puts him on path to financial freedom well before his sixties. On today’s episode, Brian’s going to share what he’s been doing, why he started investing with a turnkey company instead of riskier value add properties, how documenting his journey on social media paid off huge when he needed capital to expand and how he’s proving every day that the burr is far from dead in Midwest American cities. Let’s bring on Brian. Brian, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thank you for being here.

Brian:Dave. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited. It’s good to finally get to meet you and I can’t wait to talk about some real estate.

Dave:Let’s do it. Tell us a little bit about yourself first. Where were you in life when you first got the bug or started thinking about investing in real estate?

Brian:I was in my early twenties. I became a medevac pilot in Hawaii, a commercial airline pilot. I was living at home and I wanted to buy a house. I live out in southern California. It’s super expensive. So we had talked to a real estate agent in the area and he kind of had the inside of this place, and I knocked on the door, a lady answered, and I asked her if she would be willing to sell her house to me, and she said, yeah, but I’m not ready to move. So we bought it, we’d rented it back to her for a year. And then for the next over 10 years, I had roommates. I was a pilot, I was gone. I flying all over the country, so who cares who’s in my house? So my mortgage was pretty much free, and that allowed me to build all that equity, which later became the golden goose to my investments.

Dave:So what’d you do from there after a house hack? I think a lot of people either stick with just house hacking over and over and over again, but what did you do after that first deal?

Brian:So it was years until I actually got back into the real estate game. So I let that property just increase in value. I’m lucky Southern California, the home prices go up over time, but that kind of fast forwards me to getting in the fire service and being a 33-year-old with brand new twin boys and kind of almost in panic mode like, Hey, I don’t want to work till I’m 63. And also I’m one injury away from actually having to retire.

Dave:Wow, that’s scary. That’s hard.

Brian:Yeah, I’ve been part of our peer support team for over 13 years and you see a lot of mental and physical stuff going on, and I just had to come up with a plan. So the very next property was, it was right around when COVID was happening. I had enough equity in my house that I was able to refinance. I don’t even want to say the rate because going to make people, it’s going to trigger some people, but it was very low.

Dave:Does it start with a three?

Brian:It starts with a two.

Dave:It starts with a two. Oh man. Yeah, so

Brian:Just don’t hate on me for that. But

Dave:I

Brian:Was able to pull out some money and I wanted to get in real estate because I love my children to death. And as a father, I didn’t want to have to have them live in Timbuktu and not be around me. So selfishly I was looking for property where I could buy early and kind of make them have to be around me forever. So as I was looking around southern California, I found a house that was for sale, and I call it the firefighter special because the realtor was a fireman. The seller was a fireman and I was a fireman. And so the seller, he was three years from retirement and he wanted to sell his house, but he wanted to live in it for three more years. His son was in high school and finish off. And so I was like, perfect. That was my first rental and that property stow one of my better properties today. But what happened eventually is I looked at my bank account and I was like, well, I can no longer afford houses in California.

Dave:Yeah, I It’s crazy.

Brian:Imagine my next journey was into the outstate

Dave:Stuff. Now Brian, I want to hear how you scaled. I’ve sort of gone down a similar path where I started in a more expensive market. At a certain point it gets super hard, and so you have to come up with a new strategy. You don’t have to go out of state, but it sounds like you did. We’re going to hear about that, but we do have to take one quick break. We’ll be right back. Stick with us. Managing rentals shouldn’t be stressful. That’s why landlords love rent ready. Get rent in your account in just two days. That’s faster cash flow, less waiting, no need to message a tenant. You can chat instantly in app so you have no more lost emails or texts. Plus you can schedule maintenance repairs with just a few taps so you’re not playing phone tag. Ready to simplify your rentals. Get six months of rent ready for just $1 using promo code BP 2025. Sign up at the link in the bio because the best landlords are using rent ready. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with investor Brian Waters who is just talking about how he turned his primary residence into a small portfolio in southern California. But Brian sounds like you hit the point most people in California do where it’s just not really logical to keep going, at least if you want to buy rental property. So what was your solution to that challenge?

Brian:What I decided to do instead of going into the flips or the burrs, which I later got into, I decided to go the turnkey method. And for me, that has been an amazing transition to out-of-state properties.

Dave:People call turnkey different things. Some people say a property that you buy directly that is just fixed up and nice is turnkey, but you’re talking about buying from a turnkey operator.

Brian:Yes, absolutely.

Dave:So maybe you could just tell our audience a little bit about what that entails and why you were attracted to it.

Brian:So number one, this is a great strategy for an active, hardworking W2 super busy person. I’m a firefighter, I’m a dad, I coach full-time football for my kids. I don’t have a lot of time to go do this stuff. And those other strategies aren’t wrong. But what these turnkey providers are, there’s companies all over the country and they internally do everything. They go out and door knock, they market, they cold call, they find the houses. Once they do that, then they go out and have their own construction teams that fix the properties and they put in new flooring, new kitchens, new bathrooms, new water heaters, new roofs, everything. And then what they do is they turn around and they have a property management company that finds a tenant and signs a lease. Then they put it on their website. It never goes to the market and investors can go buy it. So I love this strategy because literally they give you the numbers. You already know what that it’s rented for. You already know that all the major CapEx items, like the roof and water heater is brand new. Those are going to be deferred for later. You have a good quality product and you could run the numbers because you know what the price is, you know what the insurance is, you know what the rent is, and you just have to analyze it. And that’s what I did, and I absolutely love that strategy for beginners.

Dave:Yeah, I think what you said is so important that where you are, the kind of investor you are will usually dictate if this is a good strategy for you. If you’re busy and you’re out of state, this is a great idea. This just makes a ton of sense. Being able to go out and buy something, get the benefits of a value out opportunity, but not having to go out and source all of the contractors or subs yourself knowing that the repairs and CapEx and maintenance and all this stuff is going to be a little bit less is really appealing. But I have some questions. I think this is a really interesting option for our audience. I’d love to dig in on, so did you know the market you wanted to invest in? Did you go out and find the turnkey operator first or how did you find a deal that you were comfortable with?

Brian:So what I did is I called multiple turnkey providers, and this is kind of a buyer beware for all the listeners. There’s some really, really good ones out there and there’s some really bad ones. So I am a big believer of follow the herd mentality. So I was talking to other investors through forum, through Facebook groups. The cool part about that is is you’re protected in a lot of senses here. You’re protected by the inspection report, you’re protected by an appraisal. You already have a lease signed, and people will argue, well, you’re not going to cashflow on these. I want to tell you a little bit about some of the incentives these people are offering, which is actually blowing my mind when I talk about it. So a few of the ones out there that are really good, they will buy the rates down to 5.5% 30 year conventional fixed, which is amazing. That’s awesome. They have a one year tenant guarantee where if the tenant moves out, they’re going to pay you that rent that was talked about. They often will have a lower incentive property management fees of 5%. We’re investing in these states that have low property taxes, and again, the CapEx items are all taken care of. So I am very conservative when I underwrite stuff, but every single one of these cash flows.

Dave:Well, good on you for doing your due diligence. I think that’s the real thing that people get hung up on about, right, especially in 20 21, 20 22, everyone was calling themselves a turnkey rental company, and I would just encourage you all to look for people who have a track record. There are great reputable companies who do this. I am sure they’re frustrated by some of the people in the industry that give them a bad name, but there are very good reliable companies that do this, and I love that you called the investors too. These businesses, they’re different than traditional home sellers. And I think it’s similar to something we’ve talked about on the show recently, which is that new construction is becoming more appealing because builders just have a different business model. They need to move inventory. And the same thing is true with turnkey operators too.They’re doing volume and they’re willing to buy down your rate to sell something a month faster, whereas home sellers, Brian gave us two examples. People are like, I’ll just wait three years. It’s just a totally different mindset. And so if you’re the kind of investor one who can move quickly, two might buy at volume, might buy more than one, people will potentially work with you and give you really great deals. So Brian, how did you actually ultimately pick a deal? Did you settle on the operator first or the market first, or what order did you go

Brian:In? I settled on the market first, which was Memphis. And Memphis was a market that a lot of people were talking about. Never been there, still have never been there, but I asked around different people who had used them. Some of these investors had multiple ones, and when I interviewed them and talked to them, I mean these people sometimes are turning over hundreds of properties, and so I was using them as the subject matter experts in that area.

Dave:That’s great. And have you scaled that up since then?

Brian:Yeah, so I currently have a total of 16 properties. 15 of those are out of state, and I’ve kind of spread my wings a little bit to other markets as well. The first six properties minus the California one, were all turnkey at that point. I kind of opened the wallet again and was like, oh, where’s all my money? And so I had to start getting creative, and at that point, I felt like I’d really learned a lot about the industry, even though they were easier to do. I understood how to analyze stuff, how to find stuff. I started really digging into the BiggerPockets communities and understanding, and so then I transitioned into the B stuff.

Dave:And so how many turnkey properties do you have total?

Brian:Nine turnkey totals, and then the rest are all burs.

Dave:And you’ve never seen any of ’em?

Brian:Never even been to the state that That’s

Dave:Incredible.

Brian:I know.

Dave:Yeah. I mean, you must have good reporting then. That to me would be the thing that I would be nervous about. I invest out of state too, but I’ve just hand selected. The property manage was clearly you’re happy with the property management

Brian:And they use all the fancy online portals where they send you stuff, and truthfully, it becomes easier by the fact that it’s away from me. It have to have better systems, and I have to have a better team to do it so I can go to the fire department and take care of the community, or I can be on the football field coaching my kids’ stuff and not have to worry about, Hey, the tenant called me and first off, I’m not even good at that stuff. I’d go over there and probably break more than I would try to fix. Right?

Dave:Oh, I know all about that.

Brian:Right? So by the fact that it’s far away, I’ll wake up in the morning and like, Hey, you had a little plumbing link, don’t worry, it’s fixed. The tenant’s happy. We’re good. I’m like, cool, thanks.

Dave:Yeah,

Brian:On. That’s

Dave:Incredible. Well, good for you. I know it is a big leap for anyone listening to this to invest out of state, but I completely agree with you, Brian. It forces you to just take a different position on the team. When I lived and invested in Colorado, I did so much myself just because I lived down the road and it just seemed silly to go hire someone to do that, and that worked well. I don’t regret doing that, but as soon as I started investing out of state, I’m like, oh, I could concentrate on what I am good at, which is finding markets, analyzing deals, doing asset management, and find people who are way better at property management that I’m, I wasn’t doing myself any favors fixing stuff. Absolutely not. And so I think it’s almost like this forcing function that allows you to just mature as an investor if you do things out of state, but it takes a certain personality, not everyone’s going to be comfortable with that. I do want to hear more about how you moved onto Burrs and what you’ve been up to recently, but we got to take one more quick break. Stick with us.Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with investor Brian Waters talking about how he moved from investing in his own backyard in California to doing out-of-state turnkey properties in Memphis. Brian, what came next for you?

Brian:So as I did a few of the turnkey properties, I kind of analyzed what these providers were doing and I had really started to educate myself. There was so much that I learned early on and it was less risky. Those turnkeys had a lot less risk, but I knew that I couldn’t just continue saving up for a property and buy, saving up for a property and buy. So I wanted to scale faster. One thing that was super, super important, and I had this discussion with this awesome couple at the BiggerPockets convention we just had is one of my friends early on told me is you have to start using social media when you first start, and I still to this day cringe when I watch my own videos. It’s just uncomfortable,

Dave:Right? Oh, it sucks At the beginning. It’s so

Brian:Hard. The reason I’m talking about this is because this allowed me at a certain point to raise over a million dollars in private money, which is I’m super, super happy about that. I have some amazing partners, but it creates that gap between that awkward conversation of me asking them and them coming to me when they come to me. I could just have a conversation. I won’t even talk about private lending until they say, Hey, I want to do this too, but I don’t want to put in all the work. And then it’s easier. It’s more of an organic conversation. So all my lenders have come from pretty much my warm circle, friends, family, aunts, uncles, people that came to me and I was able to take that money and now I’m like, well, now I got to start brewing, right? Because I have

Dave:You better do something. People need a return.

Brian:I learned about the private money process and I found a gem of a contractor in the city of Detroit, and I’ve been hammering Detroit, and I know you talked a lot about this on a few podcasts recently, and I love that market and I’ve in the past two years of bird, we’re on our seventh property there right now, and for those who say the bird is dead, I disagree.

Dave:Yes, I love it. Brian, we’re just breaking down. Myth. Brewer is not dead. Your primary residence is not a bad investment. I love it.

Brian:Lies.

Dave:Well, I just want to commend you for the social media thing. I know from personal experience, it’s very awkward to get started, but it is a really powerful tool. It takes a lot of guts, man. So good for you. And I know not everyone’s going to do that, but it’s a really repeatable strategy that almost anyone can do. If you are willing to laugh at yourself the first couple of times you make it real, they’re not going to come out well. They’re going to be very cringey and then you’ll get better over time. Well, in the spirit of getting uncomfortable, tell me about doing the Burr long distance. I’m sure that was a little bit uncomfortable too.

Brian:Oh, it was completely uncomfortable and not all of ’em went perfect. I will say that my last two were actually home runs

Dave:In the last couple years.

Brian:No, in the last couple days, the last week. Love that. Amazing. So I had heard about the Detroit market. I actually listened to episode 1, 3, 2, 5 on the BiggerPockets Daily where they read the articles out,And I highly encourage all the listeners to go and listen to that one. It’s an article that someone wrote about the Detroit market, and it blew my mind. I was like, oh, here’s an opportunity. I had never been there, so this was one of the one markets that I actually went to. Everyone told me, this city is super dangerous, don’t go there. But you know what? I’ve learned not to listen to people that have not done what you want to do. The downtown area had people driving around on those beer cars, kegs on ’em. There’s rooftop bars, super clean companies like Rocket Mortgage have their headquarters there. They just bought Redfin, by the way.

Dave:Yeah,

Brian:All of those factories have been coming back up. The Detroit Lions are doing good go Lions if you’re a fan. It’s one of the only cities or one of 10 cities in the country that have all five major sports. They’re building a Detroit FC soccer stadium there.

Dave:Oh, cool.

Brian:And so they’re just putting, it was so bad for so long. So there’s only one way that it can go and it can go

Dave:Out. Yeah,

Brian:Great. So what I did is I contacted a realtor before I went again, interviewed a few, made sure they were investor friendly, asked them to give me some neighborhoods. I already knew a bunch of houses that were for sale and that had sold. And so I was kind of doing a little bit of detective work in that area and it just blew me away.

Dave:People always generalize things about cities, whether it’s Detroit or Chicago or Indianapolis or whatever it is. Go there and decide for yourself. I have learned a lot. I’ve gone to a lot of markets. I love doing what you’re doing, by the way. I do the same exact thing. I have a map. I drive around, I just walk into random stores. I just try and get the vibe. It’s a vibe check. I don’t know how else to describe it, but you do that. I have gone to markets that people love and I hated them. I’ve gone to markets that people hate and I’ve loved them. It’s just depends on who you are, what you’re comfortable with, what you’re trying to accomplish, but think for yourself. I think that’s really the thing. And honestly, it’s one of the reasons why on this podcast, people always message me and they’re like, what markets do you invest in the Midwest? And I don’t tell them because I don’t want you to do what I do because what I do is for me and my strategy, and you shouldn’t just blindly listen to me or to Brian or to anyone else. You should come up with your own strategy and find the markets if you want to do out of state that work for you. So maybe walk us through one of your recent deals. What are the numbers on these look like?

Brian:What I do is I go on to Redfin and I put little areas and that sends me a message right away when something pops up. So I knew where I wanted to go first. I already had a private lender ready to go, and when this property came up, we just struck on it right away and it was $70,000. And the scope of work on it was 40 grand.

Dave:And so when you say you’re doing the private lender, are you just straight up buying a hundred percent of the acquisition price and the renovation with one private lender? Is that kind of the goal?

Brian:Correct. I’ve mixed before, but I think it’s easier for me and for that lender just to do one-offs together.

Dave:Okay. So you basically borrowed 110 grand. Do you mind telling us, is that hard money kind of terms? 10, 12% interest,

Brian:No points. And I pay that lender 10%. Wow, that’s awesome. It’s a great deal. And again, getting back to solving people’s problems, my lender was on a fixed income. She’s an older lady that has, she had to have roommates and she’s in her seventies. And so I came to her and I said, you deserve to live alone and make some

Dave:Money.

Brian:How do we solve that problem for you? And I was willing to pay whatever, and we came to terms on that and the next month she moved her roommate out. She has her own space and she is loving our relationship and I take really good care of her because she deserves that.

Dave:That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s amazing. I love that. Again, always talking about this mutual benefit. Real estate is not a zero sum game. Your contractor can win, your realtor can win, your tenants can win, your lender can win, and you can win all at the same time. That’s when you’re doing it right.

Brian:Not only can they win, I want them to win because I want to be their favorite customer when they’re coming back and they’re going to do better work for you if they’re winning with you.

Dave:A hundred percent. I love that approach. So tell us, finish the deal. So again, one 10 is this one of the home runs that you’re talking about?

Brian:This is one of the home runs. So they cranked it out. We ended up putting a Section eight tenant in there. The process was pretty simple because we put in new everything, and I’d planned to keep it for a while. Please don’t lipstick on a pig stuff. You guys, it’s important if you’re going to keep this for a long time. The tenant deserves a nice place to live, and if you’re going to keep it, it’s going to have less headaches for you later. So we’re all in for one 10. And when we got the section eight tenant in there, it was 1350 for the rent and it just appraised for 180 and I was able to pull out 75% of that. I paid back the lender all their money. I still have a ton of equity in the property, and I was able to actually put money in my own pocket. I know this is rare, but they’re out there still, so

Dave:Wow, that’s unbelievable. And I’m curious, what is your deal flow? Are you having trouble finding these or can you kind of do as many of these as you want?

Brian:Yeah, I could do as many as I want. I mean, in that market, there’s so many, just because a burr is not perfect and you’re not getting all your money out, I would argue that if you can get half of your money out, that’s still better than a normal deal.

Dave:A hundred percent.

Brian:If you can get a hundred dollars back, that is a win. I totally agree. You have to change your expectations of what is perfect. But to answer your question, I look for on market stuff. I also have now have a contact with a really good wholesaler out there. And third, my GC is always on the move looking for, because he is a realtor, he’s always sending me deals. So I have more deals than I could fund, but I also am a busy working professional. So I’m trying to start with my strategy. I don’t want to do a thousand, I’m a busy, busy person, so I’m doing five a year right now, and that’s plenty for

Dave:Me. That’s plenty. And how much time does that take you on an average week or month?

Brian:I think the hardest part is probably the underwriting, getting the property going. But once we do that, I’m using the same flooring, the same color paint, the same windows, everything. I literally have a spreadsheet and I do this in case I have to change contractors, but all the way down to the item number at Home Depot or Lowe’s where it becomes super simple for them to do it. Also, I could predict my costs better. Once I get that, I am spending a couple hours here and there. If problems come up, then obviously it takes me more, but it’s part of that who not how. Find that team member that’s going to be really good at their job and it’s going to be less work for you. It’s not passive it, it’s less work that I have to

Dave:Do. Awesome. Well, I love it, Brian. Well, congratulations on your success. I really admire the way you’ve sort of adapted over the course of your career. I think a lot of people come into and say, I’m going to be this kind of investor. I’m not going to be this kind of investor, but you got to learn. I wrote the book star strategy. You have to have a goal, but the path towards that goal is going to shift and switch. And if you just educate yourself, work hard, you can absolutely do it. So congratulations on all your success.

Brian:Thank

Dave:You. And thank you for being here. I loved hearing your story. We’ll have to hear how you’re doing in a year or two. You have to come back and join us again.

Brian:Thank you guys for the opportunity. This has been an amazing opportunity for me. And yeah, keep growing, keep learning, and I would love to come back at some point if you have me.

Dave:And thank you all so much for being a part of this community and for listening to this podcast. We’ll see you in a few days for another episode of the BiggerPockets podcast.