Do you dream about real estate investing replacing your active income? Make no longer having to report to an employer every day, being able to sit back, and collecting mailbox money on a monthly basis a reality.
Today, Clint Coons of Anderson Business Advisors talks to Dustin Heiner, founder of Master Passive Income and Successfully Unemployed.
Dustin is a real estate rental property investor who was able to make enough passive income from his business to quit his job when he was 37 years old. With his podcast, books, courses, and coaching, Dustin now helps other people quit their job by investing in real estate rental properties. He is passionate about his mission to help others become successfully unemployed and never need a job again.
Highlights/Topics:
- How did Dustin get started in real estate investing? He needed to find a job to make sure he could provide for his family and never have to worry about needing a job again.
- What value does Dustin put on himself? Value does not come from your job. Your value is so much more than anybody could ever pay you.
- What did Dustin decide to do? Rather than losing money working just over broke (JOB), start a business:
- As an investor, what did Dustin focus on? Single-family? Commercial? Residential, it’s not single-family homes only. It’s four units and below because that’s what the IRS classifies. Dustin buys more rental properties that make a minimum amount.
- What are ways that Dustin got financing? Conventional mortgage, private money, and portfolio/commercial loans.
- Where does Dustin buy homes for $10,000? There are places that have good homes that other people would want to live in—you may not—that are lower in price.
- Who are the experts and what does Dustin do to vett them? People that live there on the ground. Seek property managers that you trust, can communicate, and have experience.
- What areas is Dustin looking into beyond residential? Syndications, other people that find, buy, and manage multifamily homes, apartment complexes, and hotels.
Resources
Master Passive Income Podcast on Spotify
Free Real Estate Investing Course
Full Episode Transcript:
Clint: What’s up, guys? Hey, it’s Clint Coons here. In this episode, I want to talk to an individual who has been investing for years. In fact, he’s done so well with his investing that now he is successfully unemployed.
I know that’s where many of you want to get in your lives, or real estate can replace your active income so you can drop the W-2. You no longer have to report to an employer every day, be able to sit back, and collect that mailbox money on a monthly basis.
Well, this individual that I have on here, I’ve been following him for some time. He’s been doing this for years.
He’s going to talk to you about how you can go out there and create your own rental real estate business income so you no longer have to work. With that, I want to invite Dustin Heiner.
Dustin, how are you doing?
Dustin: Hey, Clint. I’m blessed. Thank you very much for asking. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
I love real estate. It’s more that I love what it affords me to do with my life—not having to work a job, [inaudible 00:00:59], hang out with the family, go to the gym, build businesses, travel the world, and do whatever I want.
Also, be on great shows like yours and talk to great people like you. I really appreciate you having me on.
Clint: Great. Well, thanks for coming on. I know that the people that come to my YouTube channel or listen to our podcasts, they’re going to really want to get out of you—your life story—what it takes to get to that point where you can replace your W-2 income. Maybe we can start out, how did you get started in all this?
Dustin: Yeah. I’ll fast forward to the end.
When I was 37 years old, I was able to quit my job. I call it successfully unemployed because I had enough rental properties making me money and passive income every single month that I didn’t need to work. All my expenses were covered by my properties.
Now, I’ll go back to the beginning. I’ve always been entrepreneurial in my life—starting businesses and that business mindset type of personality. I was taught and we are all taught this: we go to school, we get good grades.
Then we go to college, get good grades, get thousands and thousands of dollars into debt. From there, you get a degree. It’s a piece of paper that you get. You go around to other businesses and say, hey, can I have a job?
Hopefully, you’ll get a job. They’ll call it a career. Hopefully, you’ll worked there a long time and you’ll retire when you’re 65 years old, 70 years old.
I was following that journey. Even though I was entrepreneurial, I still was following that journey.
Now, being entrepreneurial, I started really, really young. I had a newspaper route. That’s where you ride your bike and you have your newspaper. You throw them at 05:00 AM and bang them on garage doors, waking people up. I did that.
I had a graphic website design company, skateboard manufacturing business, a pizzeria, and a convenience store. Starting it all from the ground up, but at the same time still working my job.
It was a nine-to-five job working for the county in one of the counties in California, doing IT work—technology work.
I bought one or two properties at the time, and I knew that I needed to become an investor. I knew that life would change if I became an investor. Honestly, life, like for everybody, got in the way.
I paused and stopped investing in real estate because my wife started and I started having kids.
I got to tell you this quick story. By the time my wife had our fourth child, I went on paternity leave. My wife gave birth. I went on paternity leave—that’s where the dad stays home with a mom—changes poopy diapers, bonds with a baby, and all that good stuff.
About two weeks, it goes by, and then I go back to work. In that same week that I go back to work after my fourth child was born on a Friday at 3:30 in the afternoon, I get a call from my boss’s secretary, like the top dog, and she says, hey, Dustin, would you please come to the boss’s office? I said, sure. Then, I hung up the phone.
I’ve seen plenty of movies. This isn’t good. This is Friday at 3:30 PM. This is not normal. This is weird.
As I sat there for a second, I started thinking about two months prior to me going on paternity leave, there were some rumors or some ramblings going on in the county that there could potentially be layoffs. There was a shortage of money coming in.
I immediately shook that off. Like, no, I’ve been following what everybody told me to do. I’m secure. Nobody gets fired and laid off from the county, from the government. Nobody does. My boss’s think I do a great job. I have 12-13 year seniority here. Everything’s going great. So, I shook it off.
Then I got up and I started walking down the hallway to my boss’s office. Now, Clint, this hallway isn’t very long. In fact, it’s kind of short. But every single step that I take, it feels like the hallway gets longer and longer and longer. It feels like my feet have become lead bricks.
The reason why is because it’s starting to dawn on me. This could potentially be the time that everything is all taken away from me. While I get it to the end of the hallway, I turned the corner and I saw my boss’s door. His doors’ closed. When I see his secretary there—she’s a super sweet, really nice lady—and sheepishly, she kind of grins at me.
She’s trying to console me with her eyes because she knows everything about what’s going on. I know nothing about what’s going on. She says, “Dustin, would you please have a seat?” I go and I take a seat.
I sit there and I start thinking about, oh, my goodness, all this time in my life, building up to have a “career,” if that’s taken away from me, was that all a waste? Then I start questioning, well, if I can’t provide for my family, does that make me a failure as a father? That makes me a failure as a husband, as a man trying to provide for his family?
Well, as I’m sitting there, my hands get all clammy and my forehead gets all sweaty because the nerves are just racking me. The weight of everything is starting to crush down on me.
Then the door to my boss’s office opens up and out walks a lady, a co-worker of mine, with a piece of paper in her hands. She is noticeably distraught, noticeably upset, but not necessarily crying. You can tell her world has been rocked. She passes by me, and my boss says, “Dustin, would you please come into the office?”
I get up, I go into his office, and I get laid off. Remember, this is the government. Nobody gets fired or laid off from the government, but I did. It happened to me. It could happen to anybody.
I take that layoff notice. I went back to my desk, I sat down, and I realized two things sitting there. This is the reason why I’m telling you a story.
The first thing was I needed to get another job. I need to be able to provide for my family. I was really, really blessed. Praise the Lord to be able to find another job in the same county, hold another Sheriff’s Department. Great, great job and everything. Same position, which was great. So, check.
As I’m sitting in that chair, I realize the second thing that I’m trying to encourage everybody else to realize.
The second thing was I need to make sure that this never, ever happens to me again. I need to make sure that nobody has the ability to take away my ability to feed my family. Right then and there, I realized whenever anybody would ask me the question—we all get this question—hey, what do you do? They’re basically asking you, what value do you put on yourself?
I was just answering my job. I work for the county. I do IT work, projecting my value as being my job.
No, my value doesn’t come from my job. My value comes from my God, myself, and from my family. Right in there, I realized my value is so much more than anybody could ever pay me.
Everybody, listen, you could realize this as well. Your boss is only paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money as taking money out of their pocket. I realized my value now that I knew I needed to be an investor.
Life got in the way. I said, no longer will I ever let life in the way. I started telling every single person I am an investor. It might so happen that 100% of my money comes from my job. That’s now my part-time job. I’m a full-time investor.
Now, fast forward the story. I started buying property after property after property, each one making me $250 or more in passive income. After 30 plus properties, it took me about 5-6 years to actually get enough properties, where I realized even though I’m making $75,000 a year here at this job, it’s a JOB. You’re living Just Over Broke—I like that acronym.
You’re living Just Over Broke. With that, I said, you know what? I’m losing money working here. I need to build my businesses.
I went to my new boss and [inaudible 07:50] went to my new boss. New boss is great and everything. I went to him and said, boss, I’m laying you off. Here’s your two weeks notice.
He said, “Dustin, what are you going to do?”
I said, I literally don’t have to do anything. I have real estate that makes me money without working. I don’t do a thing. I left.
I’ll round up the story by sharing. If you remember that hallway, that short hallway that got longer and longer where my feet became lead bricks. While I walked to my car—I worked downtown, a mile and a half walk. I’ve done this a thousand times. I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I invested in real estate, I didn’t let life get in the way ever again, I now would never, ever need a job again.
I’ll pause the story. You probably got plenty of questions, but that’s how it got me. I want everybody to realize that if it happened to me, it can happen to anybody.
Clint: Yeah. That’s the thing why a lot of people invest so that they don’t have that fear of loss any longer. I’ve seen real estate change lives. My daughter is an investor now. She’s 23 years old, she has three rental properties.
Every day she sits there. Well, not every day, but she’ll sit and talk to me about it and say, “Hey, dad, I just need 10 more and now I can completely replace all of my income that I’m currently earning.” That’s encouraging when I see that.
As an investor, what did you focus on? Single-family? Commercial? What? Where’d you go?
Dustin: My bread and butter is residential. When I say residential, it’s not single-family homes only. It’s four units and below because that’s what the IRS classifies. The banks are different when you get above. Loans are different when you get above five units. I love four units and below. Those are my bread and butter.
What I focused on was buying more and more rental properties that would make me a minimum of $250. I think your daughter is 100% brilliant in thinking, I just need this many more. That’s how I got to be able to quit my job.
I realized if every property made me $250 or more in passive income—remember, that’s the minimum, then it’s just scaling or just multiplying it out. If I had one property making me $250 a month, that’s $3,000 a year without working. Then, 10 properties is $2,500 a month, $30,000 a year without working. Then, 20 properties, $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year without working.
You’ll hear me say this all the time, we build the business first. That’s how we do this business, right? We don’t just buy a property and hope it goes well. We build the business. If we do that, then we can scale the business so we can quit our jobs.
Client: Okay. The thing is, if I’m sitting back and I’m listening to this right now, that sounds great and all, but the number one impediment that a lot of people are going to have is how do you qualify for a purchase?
You need that income still coming in. Is your wife working? What do you tell people that want to get to where you want to be? They’ll say, well, if I buy and have three properties, I’ll quit. But that’s not going to be enough income for them so they can buy more, right?
Dustin: Totally not. Everybody has different risk tolerances. I have a wife and we have four kids. She wouldn’t let me quit until we had enough properties that we were well above.
Other people have a little more risk tolerance. They can quit sooner than that. For me and to answer your question about the financing aspect, what’s interesting about real estate investing is most people believe there’s a couple of ways to buy properties.
One major one—everybody knows this because we buy houses for ourselves to live in—you find a realtor and a mortgage broker. You put them together and you buy a house. That’s just one way.
In fact, I counted, I think there’s 15 different ways to get financing for a specific property. I will say if you have money, it’s much easier. It is possible to buy properties with low and no money down, but it’s just very hard.
Once you have experience, now, I buy properties with no low and no money down because people want to invest with me.
I’ll jump right back to, if you’re going to start, you want to start, and you realize how much money I have or all these sorts of things, what is really interesting is there are so many ways to get financing.
If you have a really good deal, you’re going to find somebody that wants to invest with you. I’ll give you a couple quick run through of ways that I’ve actually got financing.
Definitely a mortgage—regular conventional mortgage. We can definitely do that. I’ve got private money—friends, family members, other businesses, people that I know. I’ve got hard money as well. Not banks, but other institutions or other companies that are lending their money.
I’ve even done portfolio loans. That’s where the bank loans you the money and they hold onto the asset instead of selling it. This is another one, a bundle loan. I’ve done a commercial bundle where you bundle a bunch of properties together, pull the equity out. Done that many times.
Commercial loans. I’ve even done a signature line of credit with a bank because I wanted to buy a property. This is an advanced strategy. Again, these are all advanced strategies, especially this one. I’ve used a credit card to buy a property because I knew—remember, that’s an advanced strategy—I built the business first.
If I buy, let’s say a box of something. Let’s say Widgets. If I buy it for X dollar, but I can sell it for twice that, of course, you would figure out a way to buy it with whatever cash you have because you know you can sell it.
For me with my real estate investing business, I know that I build the business first. I could definitely walk you through how to build a business first the right way. But, I built the business first and then all I do is I make sure all my expenses are accounted for before I buy the property.
Then when I buy the property, I make sure I make money in passive income, which I suggest $250 or more in passive income.
Long-winded answer to share, you don’t need a lot of money to get started. In fact, I also coach people and show people how to do this. I don’t take on any students that have less than $10,000.
If you have $10,000, we can do a lot with $10,000. Less than that, it’s just really hard. I’ll quickly say that people might say, well, Dustin, where do you buy homes for $10,000?
There are a lot of places in the country that have really good homes that other people would want to live in—you may not—that are lower in price. The Midwest is fantastic. Get out of the Carolinas and into Florida. Really great properties.
I had a student. I’ll say this last thing and I’ll let you ask your question. I have had one student recently. He lived in Sacramento. He’s a pastor. He has a house that’s appreciated a lot. He didn’t have any extra money, but he knew he wanted to have investments.
Working with me, we did a home equity line of credit on his property. He had $200,000 to invest. Well, we took that $200,000, and used that home like a line of credit to buy a house. What was it? Was it Tennessee? Ohio? I have numbers but I can’t remember exactly.
He bought a house and he bought it for $47,000. It’s appraised for $103,000. What’s great is as an investor, we buy it for less than it’s worth, capture that equity. Since he had that $47,000 of his own equity in his house, he’s now refinancing that property, pulling 75%-80% of that money out.
Remember, it’s appraised for $100,000, so he could pull out $70,000. He’s up maybe $20,000. He’ll pay off his own equity line of credit and he has $20,000 extra by the next property. Fast forward to say it’s 100% possible if you have the idea or if you know where and how to do it.
Clint: I think a lot of that comes down to where you’re going to invest. That’s always been a challenge for many people who want to get started in real estate, but they live in a blue state where everything is really expensive and high taxes.
Between the property taxes or I got some mayor that’s going to come in and tell me I can’t collect rents or evict my tenants, where do you direct people to go find these deals?
Dustin: I direct people to landlord-friendly states, number one.
Let’s say I do invest in Akron, Ohio. That’s one city that I invest in among many. They say, hey, you invest in Akron, you’re the expert. Tell me about it.
I said, no, no, no. Just because I invest there doesn’t make me an expert. I’m not an expert. Who are the experts? It’s the people that literally live there on the ground.
Zillow is not an expert. Trulia, Redfin—all those websites—they’re not experts. They don’t live there. They don’t know what’s going on.
I actually want to walk you through how to build a business first. When you do that, then you can invest anywhere, all over the country. It doesn’t matter which state you live in. In fact, when I first got started, I lived in California. I started investing in Ohio, Texas, and Arizona.
Since then, my students and I have been investing all over the country. It doesn’t matter where you live. It only matters where other people will live. This is what we do.
Actually, let me quickly give you the wrong way that the “gurus” will tell you, this is what I did. This is the wrong way. I did this. Within six months, my property manager started stealing from me because I did it the wrong way.
The gurus will tell you, you buy one property, that property is your business. They’ll also tell you, okay, you find a property anywhere in the country, then you run the numbers. Run the numbers meaning calculate expenses, make sure you’re making a little bit of money. They’ll suggest $50 a month in passive income because you’ll get appreciation.
Pausing that, I don’t invest for appreciation. This is generational wealth that I’m creating. I have four kids. I’m literally going to give these properties to my kids as well as teach them how to do it.
Getting back to it, they’ll tell you, run the numbers. Anywhere in the country, run the numbers. Then spend thousands of dollars to buy the property. Then spend thousands of dollars to fix up the property. Then find a tenant to live in there. Then find a property manager to manage the property.
In my opinion, that’s just about backwards. What I do with Master Passive Income, all my coaching and everything, is we build the business first. Remember, that was the wrong way. Here is the right way that you’re going to do it. We build the business first. I’ll give you an example of what that looks like.
Clint, if you’re going to create a convenience store—candy bars, soda machines, and stuff like that—you’re not going to sign a lease on a location, open the doors, and set a box of candy bars in there on the ground. No, you wouldn’t do that. You’ll go out of business in two seconds.
What you would do, though, is you build a business. You’ll get the gondolas. Those are shelving units that all the candy bars are on. You get the countertops, cold storage, fountain machines, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance employees—literally everything in the business before you buy any inventory. Same thing with real estate investing.
Remember, my property manager started stealing for me because I did what everybody else was telling me. Then I approached it. I said, you know what? I love business. Maybe I should approach this as a business mindset.
In doing that, I made sure I had the experts who live there on the ground do the work for me. No matter. I don’t want to visit these States that I invest in. It’s not necessary, so I don’t. I have the experts there.
What we do is we find the property managers, the contractors, the roofers, the plumbers, inspectors, mortgage brokers, realtors, and wholesalers. We find all these people who are experts who literally live there that are going to help us to make sure we’re doing it right because they don’t want to lose our business. They’re going to make sure we’re doing it right.
With that, what we do then is we buy inventory. We build the business and every property that we buy is a piece of inventory that we put into the business. That’s how we’re able to scale our business so quickly. Our property is not a business, our business owns inventory.
We can do this all over the country. In fact, I even have people that live out of America, like Canada, Switzerland, and Israel. I have students from there. They want to invest here and they do. I just show them the principles.
My goal is to show them how to fish, not just give them a fish. I want to teach them how to fish. That’s how we can do it literally anywhere, all over the country.
Clint: Yeah. What you mentioned there about building the team, I have similar stories as well, where I got screwed over by a property manager.
Finding a great property manager, I found when you’re coming into a new market, it can be essential to opening up deal flow for you. Those property managers, they know who the investors are, who the property owners are. When those property owners are looking to sell, they’re communicating that back to the property manager. Those become those opportunities for you to step in.
Plus, you get an idea of the rental income that’s coming in from those properties in that area so you can make better decisions, what I found, in investing outside of state.
When you talk about the experts, how are you vetting these experts?
Dustin: I love that question. It’s a brilliant question. If you listen to the “gurus” who tell you to do everything the wrong way, like I shared, you’re going to go and eventually try to find a property manager. You might not find one.
In fact, you might talk to the property managers and all of them are saying, well, I’m not going to rent there. Or, I’m not going to manage that property because I’ll get shot there. I don’t want to go there. Then you no longer have an asset. You now have a liability.
With that liability now, you’re not going to be making money. You’re worried completely about your property.
What we do is we vet the property manager just like you are going to find a manager for that convenience store that you hypothetically would build. You’re not going to just grab somebody off the street and say, hey, you say you’re a manager. Let me bring you in here, put you in there, and run the business. No, you got a business. They might steal from you. They might just run it wrong.
What you would do is you would interview the managers for your business. Same thing with real estate investing. That’s the number.
Clint, you’re 100% right. Our property manager, they are our quarterbacks. If you think of a football team, they’re going to help us. They’re basically the leaders of everything. They’re going to make sure we make money. They’re going to make sure we save money. They’re going to protect us from anything going wrong, and make sure that since they’re the experts, they’re giving us the right advice. They’re not going to want us to go wrong. With that, we’ve got the property managers.
My suggestion, this is what I teach all my students, is we don’t just call, let’s say two or three property managers. We literally call six or more property managers and we interview them multiple times.
Texting is not an interview. Email is not an interview. An interview is a Zoom call. If you can get them there, which they’re probably busy with, that’d be hard to do. Just call them on the phone, talk to them on the phone, and interview them multiple times.
The big reason why, we’re looking for property managers that we can trust, that can communicate to us, and that have experience.
In phone calls, most people, in talking to one person one time, can get a sense personally, if they feel like they can trust a person. Some people can kind of pull the wool over your eyes for one call, but over two or three calls, it’s harder for them to continually pull the wool over your eyes. That’s one.
If your property manager doesn’t call you back before they have your business, meaning communication, trust, and the communications next, before they have your money, imagine how bad it is when they have your money.
Like, oh, this guy again, I don’t want to talk to Clint. I’m going to hang up or not even answer. When they have your money, it’s so much worse. I experienced that.
Also with their experience, we want to make sure that they have the experience in their background as well as in the interview. I give my students literally a list of 22 questions that they need to ask in interviewing every single property manager and the answers for what they should answer. With that, they’ll see if this property manager has experience.
I’ve had countless students say, you know what, Dustin? I went through your questions and they couldn’t answer them. They didn’t have an answer for some of these questions. It just shows that they have a lack of experience. They might still be great, but it just helps us to formulate the right person to hire for our business.
Your 100% right. The property manager is literally the quarterback of our entire business.
Clint: Yeah. I’ve told people in the past or they’ve seen me talk about this before. We started in a certain market in Winston-Salem. We actually went out and went to the used appliance store. We started figuring out who the property owners were by asking the used appliance guys who are the big landlords in this area. Then we start canvassing them and seeing if they’re willing to sell any of their properties.
A lot of times you’ll find in more mature markets, you have older owners and they’re looking to retire to get out of that. That’s what we found in our own investing.
Now we’re buying typically on average, 50-100 properties, in these pools from people who just want to get out of the business because they’re tired of rental real estate. They don’t see it as generational wealth as you’re talking about. That, I think, is important, and I hope people understand that.
In this market today, though, it’s a little different than it was five years ago or even just 2 ½ years ago. Things started to heat up.
Now, when you’re out there trying to find deal flow, what has changed for you in that deal flow?
Dustin: Every single year, every single market cycle is going to look different. When I first got started investing, I didn’t have very much money. It was in 2006. The crash was in 2008—when the real estate market crashed.
Here’s the great thing about how I invest in real estate. Remember, I don’t invest for appreciation. Appreciation is great. I love it. But, I’m going to give these properties to my kids, I’ll refinance that appreciation—that equity out—and buy another property. That’s what I do.
I did not, in 2006, invest for appreciation. I knew many investors that did invest for appreciation. They’re the ones that went bankrupt because they weren’t doing it right. What I did was I invested for passive income, and every single property made a minimum of $250. No matter if the market went up, if the market went down, or if the market went sideways, I still made money.
In 2008, when the properties crashed, I was like, oh, my goodness, the value is cut in half. Oh, well, I’m still making $250 a month in passive income. Now, those properties are now double or triple what they were back when it crashed. My rents are double and triple what it was back then. There was a minimum $250. Now some are making $500, $600, or $700.
To answer what’s going on right now, the biggest thing that we need to do is watch out for passive income, how we’re going to be making passive income from the property, and then also guarding against spending too much money for a property.
I’ll give you an example of what that looks like. You don’t want to buy a house that you’re getting a $500,000 loan to make $250 a month in passive income. What if your tenants move out? You have a mortgage that’s going to be costing you, what, I don’t know, $2000-$2200 a month? Well, at $250 a month, that’s only $3,000 a year that you’re trying to feed your family on.
If you have one month where it’s $2,200 hit, that only leaves you $800 if there’s anything else that’s basically feeding your family.
What we try to do is buy lower priced homes. Remember, we’re buying inventory. Just because you might not want to live in a certain state, let alone that specific house, it’s totally fine.
Just like in a convenience store, I’m going to buy so many different types of candy bars. I may hate every single one of them, but I’m not eating them. My customers love them, so I’m going to provide a service for you. Same thing with real estate investing.
You need to find the areas where people are renting and prices where I would suggest anywhere from, let’s say $60,000-$70,000 to maybe $180,000-$200,000 to get reaching the top because there are places where you can buy them for much lower, capture a lot of equity, and get a lot of passive income.
Trust me, people will love to live in those properties. Just because you don’t, doesn’t mean that everybody else won’t either.
That’s the thing that we do. We look for passive income by the prices for the properties for much lower in price, and capture equity. On top of that, we make sure that we have a business that runs it.
People heard of the book The 4-Hour Work Week. I think working four hours a week is for suckers. I don’t want to work four hours a week. I don’t want to work four hours a month. I literally work maybe 30 minutes a month.
I have one right here, one property management statement from one of my property managers. I just pull up the statement and look at it, to make sure everything is good. Then set aside and go back to play with my kids.
When you’re looking at today’s market, there are deals. They’re just harder to find. If it’s hard to fish in a certain pond, then you go to somebody that actually has done it before and say, hey, this is where you fish.
That’s what I love doing with my students—show them new areas where they can invest and all that sort of stuff.
Clint: Yeah. That’s where a lot of people are looking for right now—finding those areas.
One of the things that you mentioned about 2006 and the crash, what I found with my own investments in that period of time is you’re right.
If you buy too high, unfavorable terms, and you think you’re going to get appreciation, you’re going to screw yourself on the back end because those people are all going to lose those properties. Your income isn’t going to support your debt.
If you buy right, that is going to ensure that I’m not investing for appreciation. It’s always about cash flow. I always have enough to cover my debt. Many times when you go through a correction in the market and there’s a compression in the availability because banks are taking properties back, what I experienced was that my rents went up.
There was a period of time between 2010 and 2013 that I was just pinching myself with how much I could make because people were displaced. They didn’t have a home anymore. They had to rent.
As I saw more deal flows or more properties start coming back onto the market, I had to start lowering my rents again to stay competitive. When that fear comes into people’s mind, how the media is talking about rates going up, potentially there’s something going on with the mortgages, and might be a collapse. I tell people, like you said, as long as you buy right, you shouldn’t have any fear there.
Dustin: You’re totally right. I found that most people have a fear of investing, even if you’re just getting started, they feel like it’s too risky. What’s really even more interesting than that, I can teach literally anyone how to invest in real estate. I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of students. But to get them over that hurdle in their minds of that fear, I can’t do that. That’s on them.
Now, what I had to realize, the reason why I told that story the very beginning, is that I now believe and know it’s so much more risky to put my life, my family’s life, our food, and being able to pay our bills, in somebody else’s hands where they can literally take it away is more risky for me and my family to do that.
Fast forward now, I literally have five businesses including on top of my real estate investing businesses. Imagine 40 plus hours of your life back on top of the freedom that you have as well, that you can create even more businesses.
I love the term passive income streams or streams of income. I love that. Even though I have lots of streams of income, they all flow into my river of income, which is my real estate investing. That’s where all my money goes back into.
That’s where the wealthy lock in the value of their money in real estate. They make money in real estate. They get tax benefits in real estate. There’s so many great things.
All my passive income or all my income streams go into my river of income and I just get more and more properties which is great. I can literally, just like I said, give them to my kids in generational wealth. Bye.
Clint: Yeah. So before we got started today, we were talking about your various investments. As you accumulate assets, you begin to diversify and find other opportunities. What areas are you looking into yourself beyond just residential right now?
Dustin: Yeah. I really appreciate the syndication. Basically, other people, what they do is they find multifamily homes, apartment complexes, 50,000 units, or whatever variation between. Multifamily, lots of people in one general apartment building type thing, as well as hotels. I love investing in hotels as well. Hotels, they’re money makers.
With that, now that I’m blessed, I don’t actually have to do the work to find the apartment complexes. It’s just like Monopoly. You buy land, you put a house on there, you get more houses, and eventually move it to multifamily. That’s where you start making money.
I don’t have to because I have enough money, and there are good syndicators—people that find deals, manage them, and buy them. They need investors—people with money to go and invest with them. Now, I’m blessed to have enough money where I can actually just give them the money.
With the multifamily, what’s great is I literally just invest my money, I lend it to them, and I get equity in it. It’s not like literally a loan, but I get equity in the deal.
I got two hotels in a syndication deal. I make, I think, 9% a quarter on all the properties. Plus within 2-3 years, I think they’re trying to sell to where I get twice my money back. It’s looking really, really good. That’s what happens with syndication.
My bread and butter is with residential, four units or below. If I’m going to do it myself, that’s super simple. I have businesses built. I just buy more properties now, from multifamily, even land investing. I love land investing as well. I’m not a big fan of mobile homes, but I love storage units. Storage units are fantastic.
There are so many ways to invest in real estate. You just need to figure out what’s the right one for you. Like I said, my bread and butter is the residential. I know that like the back of my hand. I could do that with my sleep. Now I’m able to branch out and do other investing.
Clint: Great. Well, now you have a number of resources available. I’ve been to your website, you got a book making money in real estate that you’ve put together. You have the Successfully Unemployed Podcast.
If somebody wanted to learn more and connect with you because of all those free resources, where would you direct them?
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I have a real estate investing course I love just to give away for free. Do you mind if I share it with everybody?
Clint: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes as well.
Dustin: Awesome. I’ll give you my real estate investing course for free. I just want to help people. This is just fun for me. I’ll show you how to find an area of the country to invest in, how to build the business first, how to buy the right properties, make $250 a month, and scale your business to quit your job.
You can text the word “rental” to 33777 or you can go to masterpassiveincome.com/freecourse. I’ll literally give it to you. I just want to help as many people.
In fact, my first goal was to quit my job in 10 years. When I was 27 years old, in 10 years, I’m going to quit no matter if I have the ability or not. I was blessed to be at 37 to be able to quit my job. Now, my new goal is to teach and show a million people how to invest in real estate.
I’m just going to try to give this away. Plus, like you said, the Successfully Unemployed Show, where I interview great people like you and other people who are successfully unemployed, My Master Passive Income Podcast, the YouTube channel—it’s literally just me.
I don’t really do interviews on that because it’s just me teaching, just giving away all this information. Get it and take advantage of it. I want to see you invest in real estate.
Clint: Those of you who follow me on YouTube, you know that what I do is all about education. That’s what I learned about Dustin as well.
When I started following him, I saw that he takes the same approach. That by giving, you’re going to help so many more people be able to achieve their dreams. Some of that will come back to you as well because they’ll want to maybe possibly use your services.
That’s not what he’s about. He’s about showing you how to take it, get started, and how to take it to the next level. I’ve watched many of his videos. I definitely think you should check that out.
Dustin, anything you want to say in [inaudible 00:35:22]
Dustin: The biggest thing is when you’re investing, go for passive income and build the business first. I’ll show you how to do that.
I really appreciate you having me on, Clint. It’s been a lot of fun.
Clint: Excellent. Thanks for coming.
