Building Long-Term Wealth With Just 3 Properties (Less = More!)
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Today's guest is an active duty U.S. Army soldier who bought his first property at 21 and didn't even realize he was a real estate investor. From a meth house disaster to a lake house short-term rental portfolio, Matthew Morneau's story shows how to take a messy first deal and turn it into momentum, even while moving every two years for the Army. ♪

This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And Matthew, welcome to the show, brother. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. So Matthew, take us back to your first deal. And I'm specifically interested in what happened with that house in Oregon. Well, that was in 2006. So I was in a really bad car accident when I was 18. And I got a settlement and I paid my reconstructive surgeon to rebuild my face. And I was in a really bad car accident when I was 18.

And I had about 20 grand left over. Those were the HGTV days before streaming. And I don't know, everybody was like, you need to buy, you know, everybody, it was like buying a house was the thing. You're supposed to buy a house. And I was like 20 years old. I was in college and I was paying rent. So I'm a simple guy. It's like, yeah, paying rent seems bad. Buying a house seems good. Let's do it.

I bought like a one and a half bedroom house that probably the other half of the house had burned down. The attic had been converted into a bedroom built in the 40s. I had a really terrible realtor. She like, I think really gave me bad, bad advice all around. I had a really, I was a subprime mortgage holder. If you guys remember that interest only. And I gave him student like scholarship money.

documentation and he used that as income. Like I never should have been able to get a mortgage, but in 2006, anybody could get a mortgage on anything. Hence 2008. Yeah. This house had a bad foundation. It had all kinds of problems. So I move in,

I didn't have any money because I was in college, so I had to learn everything myself. So when the washing machine would back up into the bathtub, I had to go figure it out. And I realized that the sewer line had been crushed by the landscape company in three different places. And I dug it all out by hand, repaired it all by hand. I realized that kind of the meth industry

that is mentioned I think was from the owner trying to renovate it himself all the water lines had been primed and put together PVC but no glue applied

So anytime anything went under pressure, it would come apart. And we had a well. So the well was erupting in the front yard. Now I was young. You could sleep four hours a night back then. And I had all the energy in the world. So anyway, so fixed everything. And it was livable. Kept hearing birds chirping. That seemed really nice. And then eventually realized the birds were actually living in the wall. So got the birds out. 2009, I graduated college, commissioned the army. It was like, okay, it's time to go get a real job. And I've got this house.

And the crawl space was so low, you couldn't get a conventional mortgage on it. Now at this time, everyone's learned, right? The crash came down. I think I bought the house for $72,000. I put zero money down, but still ended up paying like 20 grand in closing costs. So again, totally bad advice from everybody.

And I actually ripped up the floor and with five gallon buckets, dug out the crawl space and carried it out bucket by bucket. Matt, I just, I want to, I want to pause you, man, because like the, the level of insanity that's gone into this first deal is, is like otherworldly to me. But I, I think my biggest question is after going through all of those challenges, what stopped you from saying real estate has to be the dumbest thing that anyone has ever done? Well, I think, you know, I learned a lot of lessons.

Right. And I had worked when I was 18 for a home builder. So I had seen new construction and he wasn't a he was a custom home builder. So he wasn't doing, you know, subdivision factory homes. And it just gave me like I believe like if you face your fears, then you're not afraid of it anymore. Right. So I had all these bad experiences. But now I was like, there's nothing wrong.

There's nothing that can scare me. And now that I've experienced it all, that's value, right? That's value that no one else, that other people don't have. A lot of people haven't dug up their own sewer line, right? So when I call a plumber, I'm pretty confident in how I talk to the plumber, even though I don't really know much about plumbing by education. But Matt, I appreciate you sharing that because Ash and I talk about that so often about the purpose of that first deal, right?

And it's not to retire yourself from that first deal, but it's to learn. Now you have one hell of an education because you went through, I think like every conceivable challenge from like a renovation perspective I've heard of, but I appreciate hearing that. But it's like when you go through those challenges,

it makes the next deal even easier. Right. And I guess that does take us to your next deal, Matt, because obviously you kept going after that. But I think based on what I've heard, you actually took down a few deals before you even considered yourself a real estate investor. So I guess what was that shift that finally made you realize, OK, I'm doing this as an investor? Sure. Yeah. So we rented that house long term to to try to pay the mortgage because it was 2009. Right. The market hadn't recovered. It couldn't sell it.

Then we moved to Fort Drum, New York. We lived on base. I went to Afghanistan, came back. Eventually in 2014, I got stationed in North Carolina and we bought new equipment.

So I bought a brand new house with a one year home warranty. And I was like, that sounds like amazing. One year and one year I can call the builder and he's going to come fix everything that's broken. I'm in now. The realtor was like, you know, you've got to be a full price offer. And so we made a full price offer. We bought a brand new house and we owned that house for nine years and I never made any money on nine years. Um,

maybe it cost me a hundred bucks a month, you know, needed a new microwave. I had to pay for a new microwave, whatever. I mean, and after nine years though, and refinancing, eventually we got down to a two and a half percent rate. We had zero money down because there was a VA loan, um, which you can talk more about later. Um, all the VA lessons I've learned, but, um,

I had $100,000 in appreciation, so about 30% appreciation over nine years, plus my renters had paid down amortization. So I had about $150,000 in equity. And at nine years, I could sell that house because I had to move away from it for military orders with no capital gains tax. You have 10 years to sell your home with no capital gains. So I don't need to worry about 1031 exchange or anything. I just sold it and took my money and then reinvested it.

Yeah. In Maine. That's so interesting. I didn't know there was a 10 year, 10 year time period. If you're in the military and have orders to move that, that timeline extends to 10 years. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I think the IRS kind of looks at it as, you know, most active service members are not investors and you had to leave your primary residence for duty to the U S government.

And so they give you 10 years to sell it. And it's kind of like a grace period. So that's kind of my new model is, you know, every nine or 10 years I'll sell. So how many properties do you have right now in your portfolio? I have a long-term rental in Colorado. I have my primary residence in Arizona that we're turning into a midterm rental. And then we have the property in Maine. So really we only have three addresses, three properties, but in Maine, we have five units, four cabins and a cottage on a lake.

and they're all short-term rentals. What's that? Five plus two, seven. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. And you've obviously sold some of your primary residence, those two, so you've done even more deals. Yeah. Yeah. We owned a primary residence in Washington and owned it for only two and a half years. And we had such good appreciation at the time. And we had a renter need to move out for an emergency, and it was just a good time to sell. So,

turned that appreciation into the down payment for the house we bought in Colorado, also primary resident. They've all been VA primary residences other than my first purchase in Oregon when I was a college student with no money and the commercial property in Maine. Yeah. And Matt, it seems like you've, even with the properties you've purchased, you've experienced different types of properties, different asset classes. But as you go from, you know, the first property in Oregon to the new construction in North Carolina to, you know,

what you're buying now, how has your approach changed when it comes to what you're trying to buy? Like, are you, are you looking at certain things now that you weren't paying attention to on that first deal in Oregon? Like what, what's your filter look like today? Yeah. I mean, big time. You know, I think Kiyosaki says like, always get something extra.

Right. So I'm not interested in any property if it doesn't have the ability for me to add value. If I can't add an ADU or I can't add, you know, in Maine, I added three RV pads. Those rent for like twenty five hundred bucks a summer. People rent for the whole summer or some land you could sell off. You know, I got a buddy. He just bought a house with enough land that he could build another house and then subdivide it. Right. So that is kind of my main thing right now. And also, you know,

I don't ever want to do a single family home long-term rental. Like the cash flow to me is just not worth my time. Now I did it for a long time, right? And that was just when I didn't, I thought I didn't think I was an investor. I was just trying to not go bankrupt and not have the bank call me about the mortgage. I was like, if they can just cover the mortgage, right? That's not an investor. So I prefer multiple doors at the same address, I think is definitely something that's got to be just...

because it gives you more flexibility. - Yeah, more economies of scale. And I've felt that same experience in my portfolio as well, going from single family, short-term rentals to our first hotel and just the benefits that come along with having multiple units under one roof. Well, Matt, I wanna talk about how you bought lakefront cabins in a town of 300 people and you were able to turn sweat equity into almost $100,000 in actual annual revenue.

with properties that don't have bathrooms. So we're going to get into that story right after a short word from today's show sponsors.

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It's a good idea to review your rates and coverages every year on your rentals. So go get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance today. Steadily, landlord insurance for the modern investor. Okay, welcome back from our short break. We are here with Matthew. So Matthew, you bought these cabins in Maine. Why this deal and how did you finance them? Sure, yeah. So I grew up in Portage Lake, Maine, population 300.

My sister still lives there. My mom recently moved back there. I have four children. So anytime I go visit my family, you can't just show up with six people and invade their home with little boys. And it's just that's not a fun. That's not a vacation. So I'm kind of a type A aggressive person. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to buy a place there. So I have a place. And then I started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The

Why the Rich Get Richer, Bigger Pockets, Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat. So I read all these books or I listen to them as I'm traveling and I'm like, okay, I'm going to buy something that's going to pay for itself and it's going to pay me to own it. And I had been watching this property on the lake where my sister lives and they started at $670,000 and they came down and they came down and now we're down below $500,000.

And it was the right time to sell my house in North Carolina. And I had about $140,000 in equity and took that money and reinvested it there. But how we got it financed, the seller was really smart. It's a really small community, right? So they went to the two local credit unions. There's only two. And they basically kind of got the board of directors of those credit unions on board with commercial lending on that property.

So when I called the bank, they already knew about it, that, you know, all lending decisions go to their board of directors, right? It's a very like, you know, you're dealing straight to the top. And I basically had to pitch myself, right? Which I'd never done before. I'd never done a personal financial statement. And they weren't used to seeing pro forma rent projections. They didn't know what AirDNA was. And I was just like, hey, here's my BiggerPockets calculator printout.

and here's my AirDNA rent projections, and this is who I am. I work really hard. Give me a loan. And they were like, okay, you need 15% down. And I was like, I want 10, but okay, fine. And your medium risk, because you've never done this before. And I was like, medium risk? And that made me upset, right? 7.7% interest on a commercial loan. I just sold a house at a 2.5% interest rate. And

But the numbers still worked out. They let me finance in some of my closing costs. They let me take $10,000 back from the seller, which was a concession for repairs. So we got that property for $480,000 and I got $10,000 back for repairs. And we came away with five rentable short-term rental units, waterfront, 300 feet of lake frontage, five acres. I added three RV paths. One of the cabins needed to be finished.

But that's kind of how that deal came about in that community. There are so many things to touch on with this property. But the first thing is, if you are selling a property, what a great idea, especially if it's a unique property, to go to a local bank so that when you have buyers, you already have done some of the legwork to make it more appetizing to the buyer because there's already customers

sort of financing lined up for the property in a sense. Yeah. I didn't know what I didn't know, right? I'm a rookie and I was like, what's a commercial loan? And so they educated me. And I think 15% down too is pretty good. I mean, most of the time you see 20 to 25% down for a commercial loan, but that's a great point with, you know, the small lenders where it goes just to the board of directors. There's so much more flexibility and

And I did that same thing before I brought in my bigger pockets calculator report, showed the commercial lender and like he was impressed also as to like, you know, I've never seen anything like this. And for that deal, he offered me a 90 day unsecured loan to buy the property in cash. And then as soon as I closed, go and refinance with the bank.

with a longer term mortgage. So those bigger pockets calculator reports, you never know what they're going to do for you. And I was going to say, Ash, like, I wonder how many deals have been closed on the backs of these BP calculators. Like it's got to be thousands and thousands of deals that have been done because of those calculators. My first deal too, the first partnership I did was on the back of a BP calculator. So, but Matt, so it sounds like an amazing deal, right? Like you go from

You said one and a half bedrooms, which I'd never heard before to, you know, multiple lakefront cabins, RV pads. So there's definitely some progression there. But I guess like what were maybe some of the biggest challenges or mistakes or learning lessons with this deal? Like was it was it easier than that first property in Oregon? Yeah.

Or was it maybe more difficult because there were more moving pieces to it? I think it was to get financing was similar as first property in Oregon, right? Because in Oregon, I was a college student with no real income. And I was like justifying to Countrywide. If you remember Countrywide, they went out of business for giving people mortgages they shouldn't. And then this was this commercial loan, which required a little more legwork.

But I definitely learned some lessons after purchasing the property. One, you just have more infrastructure, right? So more older infrastructure, you're going to have more repairs. And when you're doing short-term rentals, you got to immediately repair things. But I also learned that

I don't know why. I was in grad school during COVID and I took the AirDNA data and I was like, this is great data. If I'm half wrong, I'm going to make money. And I was half wrong. During COVID, everybody went to the countryside, right? Everybody went and worked by the lake. Everybody went, any waterfront property that had Wi-Fi was booked. Occupancies were amazing. And then everybody went back to work and I didn't see that. And we also get a lot of revenue from snowmobilers.

And that first winter was like, and I grew up there in the 90s. There was no snow. There were no snowmobilers. It was the worst winter that we've ever had. And so I lost a lot of revenue there also. Now, we broke even that year, that first year, we broke even. And I think people are saying it takes three years to really stabilize a short-term rental. And

So, yeah, AirDNA data, I should have done a little more due diligence there. And then I had a friend who's also a BiggerPockets member who's kind of a really good friend of mine and kind of the guy that I go to when I have questions. He talked to me about cost segregation. And that's really where I've made money is, oh, you're an active participant in this business. You can deduct this as an active loss from all your other W-2 income.

And all you do is pay an accountant some money upfront to basically front load your depreciation and take I took about half the value and divided over five years and

really reduced my adjusted gross income and got a lot of money back from my taxes. We actually just had somebody on the podcast who gave a nice breakdown of doing a cost aggregation. And we have a guide. If you go to biggerpockets.com slash resources, you'll find the guide in there. You know, it's

especially rookie friendly as to what is a cost seg? What do you need to do? I'm actually in the middle of doing my first two and I was completely unprepared as to what they would need from me, what they would want. And so it's been like, it's,

It's not anything difficult to do at all. It's just I was completely unaware of what actually goes into doing a cost seg. Yeah, I was frustrated that appraisals that I had paid for recently didn't separate the land value.

So I had to pay for another land appraisal because that original appraisal didn't do that. And so that was frustrating. Well, Matt, those were some of the challenges, but I guess there had to be some wins along with this as well. So what do you think were some of the good things that came out of this big first commercial deal of yours? So, you know, we grossed $91,000 in revenue the first year, despite all of those setbacks.

So that's a big win. I'm able to take my kids there and get out of the suburbs. Yeah. And Matt, I guess real quick, like how much do you actually get to stay there that you're making money and you get to stay there when you want to? Yeah. I,

I take leave in the summer and go there with my family, usually around the 4th of July. So once a year, I would say. And then in the fall and the winter, I'm sorry, in the fall and the spring, I've started going because I have to pull the dock in and out.

Now I've kind of built a team now that I can pay people to do things like that for me. But I also go visit my mom and things like that. So that's a pretty big win. And I have, like I said, four kids. So I really look at this as like a generational place we can go. You know, I want a place where my kids can bring their kids.

And like we can all stay and be comfortable as opposed to what I've learned in my life is like, well, we can go visit grandma. But after dinner, we got to leave. You know, I've also been exploring additional revenue opportunities. I just got a grant approved to put in some electric vehicle chargers, which will bring in revenue for me and my kids forever. Right. I'm just selling electricity. You just got to buy the chargers. Matt, let me ask you that on the grant side of things. Yeah.

What did you do to actually find out about this grant? The state of Maine has Efficiency Maine. They're an energy department of the government. And I just looked, I was really looking at, can I get any rebates for my heat pumps? Right, because I buy heat pumps for the cabins and sometimes they have rebates. Or if you buy new insulation, they have rebates. And randomly I saw this thing was like, hey, we'll pay 80% of your EV installation fee

If you comply with these requirements and you have to apply and show that you're going to come through. I never even thought about checking for that. You know, like we just got we launched our first hotel last year. And I wonder if we could get some sort of like grant or rebate for installing EV chargers there because there's only one hotel.

I think two other hotels in that town that I'm aware of that have EV chargers. So yeah, it might be beneficial. You owe Matt a royalty if that goes through. I'll give you a free night at the hotel in Zion. I could use a BP con ticket. There you go. You have a butter. Well, Matt, it sounds like that deal learned a ton, started dabbling in the short-term mental space.

But now you're in Arizona currently and you've kind of transitioned or maybe added the midterm rental strategy to your portfolio as well. So why that strategy for the Arizona property? So like I said, I've moved 10 times for the Army in 16 years.

I've had four VA loans and I've always found myself having two at the same time. Typically, a lot of people don't know that you can have multiple VA loans. The VA just is like PMI basically, right? They guarantee you the lack of down payment and they guarantee that your entitlement is up to the median home price of the nation, which right now is like $806,000.

So I bought a $415,000 house in Colorado and I was able to get another $415,000 house in Arizona. Now there's a funding fee. So I always tell people like that funding fee puts you underwater immediately because you put zero down and now you're adding $14,000 on top of it. You're already above your appraisal value. And the VA is like, that's okay because you're paying us.

So if you put 5% down, that'll reduce that fee to only 1.5%. So I always tell people, try to put 5% down. And let's explain that real quick, why you would do it that way. Because that fee is going directly to the VA, where if you're putting that 5% down, that's taking that amount and putting it towards your purchase price that you're going to have to pay anyway. So-

Over time, you're paying less by paying that money to your mortgage, your principal, your purchase of the property than to the VA for another fee. That's interesting. I didn't realize that. Yeah, exactly. And that's something nobody told me. I had two VA loans before a broker ever told me that. Interesting. Yeah, I'd never heard of that before either. So my buy box is very simple, right? The Army says, hey, on this date, you have to be there and you have to be at work.

And I have four kids, so I have to buy a house that I can live in. And so that rapidly becomes like, you're never going to find the perfect deal. You're never going to find a slam dunk deal, but you're going to find something that works. And then...

I pick us then two years later when it's time to move again, I find a strategy that's going to work for that, you know, that property. And so I think in this area, um, I like the midterm strategy because it reduces the risk, um, from, you know, compared to short-term rentals. Cause it's very seasonal here in Yuma, Arizona. It's 115 degrees today. Nobody wants to come here in the summer, but in the winter time, the population doubles. Um, so not really, I don't really want to subject myself to that seasonal fluctuation as much.

And I think we've got a pretty good opportunity to take advantage of the growth in Yuma and our proximity to the hospitals and things like that. This will be our first time doing a midterm rental. And what I've learned from that, I was, like I said, 19 years old in a ditch digging a sewer line. So

Sewer lines, HVAC systems, you know, concrete, like that's fine. That doesn't bother me at all. I just hired an interior designer and she sent me all this stuff. And we like, we ordered all this new furniture and like,

That's where my energy and my motivation to be a real estate investor stopped. I think Tony has the same experience after watching a couple of Instagram reels of him and his wife putting together furniture. Yeah. Like, what do you mean I bought the wrong painting? It looks fine, but it looks amazing now. We did exactly what she said and it looks amazing. And

In fact, we just had the photographer here yesterday. And if you want to talk about stress, one thing I'll never do again is try to get a home ready to be world-class photographed for furnished finder listing while living in that house with four children. So Matt, just to make sure I'm tracking. So is the plan is to midterm rent the property that you're currently in that you're currently living in? Right. Once we move out. So come August, we're going to move out. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So they're just putting it up as a listing so they can start getting bookings already.

Exactly. Right. Yeah. I don't want August 1st to roll around and then no bookings. And then which you mentioned Furnished Finder. So is that the platform you're planning to use or using any other methods to try and get folks into the into the property? So I was planning a multi-pronged approach. To me, one is none, like no single points of failure. That's kind of a mantra. So Furnished Finder, Airbnb with a 30 night minimum.

I want to get connected to the local film bureau. We have a Goodyear test track here. Traveling professionals come to test things. We have a university, and I want to get connected to the HR departments at both of the hospitals.

Um, so I'm going to cold call some people. I've got some connections through networking that I can, you know, basically give our listing to like, Hey, here's our furnace finder ad, check it out. Um, also, uh, it's a small town. There's only about a hundred thousand people in Yuma. So, um,

We've met some travel nurses, so we can send them the listing and they love to share with their friends. Right. And I've heard that Facebook and Instagram is another way. I think Facebook Marketplace will probably put on Facebook Marketplace. We have one property right now that we have it listed as a short term rental, as a midterm rental and as a long term rental.

So we have it on our property management website and sent out to like Zillow, things like that as a long-term rental. Then we have it on Furnished Finder as a midterm rental. And then we have it on Airbnb for short-term rental. And then we just like update the dates. So like as a short-term rental, it does okay, but it's not like completely filled. So we'll say, okay, this is our last booking. Let's update our dates for, you know, the other websites on this date that we could have a longer term rental. Okay.

But what we've had is the last three like midterm rentals where people who are moving to the area and didn't find a house yet.

And, or they were building a house. So like, I think it's next week. We have another guy that's coming to look at the property because they're moving back to the area and they want to find land and they want to build. So they're like, it will at least be a year that we would be here, but they're willing to pay our furnished finder premium rather than what we would be charging as a long-term rental with no furniture or anything in it too. So we've kind of like,

picking and choosing. It's a little more work to navigate the calendars, but it's definitely helped us keep the property booked for sure. Yeah, we actually did that when we bought this property. We bought it in April, but we knew we weren't going to be here for a while. And the seller wanted to stay for three months because they were building a house.

And so they immediately started renting their house from us. Interesting how that works, huh? Matt, we interviewed Jesse Vasquez a while ago, and he's built a relatively good-sized midterm rental portfolio. And one of the tactics that he shared that really stuck with me, I'd never heard it before, but he would drive for tenants, right?

So like he would he would drive around and say, say there's like a Holiday Inn Express or something in Yuma. And he would try and find like where the construction crew trucks where it looks like there's a bunch of guys from this construction place that are staying at this hotel. He would cold call those companies and say, hey, I just saw six of your trucks at the Holiday Inn Express. I can give you a five bedroom property fully furnished for a fraction of the cost. You know, so there's maybe something to test out if you haven't tried that yet is just drive around town and see who might be a good fit for you.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Right. And I have we just put a solar system installed like we've had contractors out. That's a great idea. Also, too, on the flip side, like go to builders, too, and say, hey, if you have people that are building a house and need somewhere to stay before their house is complete.

like, you know, set up something where they can recommend you as to, oh, here's this place that you could stay too. Yeah. And I plan to do it with the realtors also for people that are waiting to close. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a great idea. Okay. Well, we have to take our last ad break, but when we come back, we're going to be talking a little more on the

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Okay, so what do you think was probably one of the biggest failures you had, but really taught you the most in the long run from your investing journey? Probably buying a house without an inspection. That taught me so much. You know, it's one of those things where you're like, that sucked.

But thank God it happened. Like I should never go back and get in, get that inspection. If I go back in time, think of all the value that I got from that horrible mistake. And it gave me a lot of confidence. Um, you know, I think I learned if you take action and you, you can learn from all those things you were afraid of. And, um,

Then you can turn that into value later. Matt, did you ever back out of a deal because the inspection came back bad or renegotiate because of the inspection results? We definitely renegotiated in Maine on that property. There's a lot of infrastructure there. There's two different septic systems. There's an artesian well that we actually draw water from for all the cabins. It's drinking water.

But so there's a lot going on. Metal roofing. Everything's got metal. There's a lot of metal roofing, but the ice really beats up metal roofing. I would never recommend anybody in the northeast don't get metal roofing. Ice is going to put holes in your roof and that's not what you want. So we we renegotiated a lot of those things. You know, the main house is built in the 50s, so it has some electrical issues and stuff.

Yeah. So definitely when I bought my house in Colorado, realtor recommended getting the sewer line scoped and cleaned.

And so we went forward with that. Definitely value. Like I place a lot of value in that inspection now, for sure. Matt, now you've again, you've moved, you said 10 times as you've progressed in your career in the military. What advice would you give to other military service members who are thinking about investing in real estate? Yeah. One, if you can do the full do it yourself move, you can move all your stuff yourself.

Um, that's gives you, it's a serious side hustle. You're looking, you're looking at 10 to $25,000 that you can make in that move and take the stress out of it. You know, I was always so like, I got to hustle and do everything myself, pay two guys to come to movers, like literally their business card says big guy moving. And for 250 bucks, they'll come and they'll load your moving truck with everything you boxed up. Right. So get some help. Don't try to do it all yourself. You're going to stress yourself out. You're

And then take that money after you get paid and put that aside to your next investment. That's kind of been my biggest takeaway. And then don't be afraid. I had a seller back out on me at the closing table. I had to get an attorney to get my money back. Yeah. I mean, it's not without its challenges. And I think your story, if anything, Matt, is...

inspiration for the other folks who are listening, or maybe not even inspiration. Maybe it's more so just, it's a really good reminder. It's maybe a better way to phrase it, that the path to success is not linear. There's a lot of bumps and hiccups and peaks and valleys, but the goal is that when you zoom out, you start to see that upward trend. And I think you've illustrated that so, so beautifully. Yeah. And be patient, right? Like I said, for nine years, I probably lost a hundred bucks a month.

And that wasn't a great deal, but it paid off in the end. And I would also say like, I didn't know the concept that every property has a price. So I always thought, man, I'm just, this world is stacked against me. The realtors are stacked against me. The builders are stacked against me. You just got to pay what they're going to ask for. Well, no, you don't have to. And any market, you can go to San Francisco and there is a price for that apartment that'll cashflow.

Now, maybe they won't sell it to you at that price, but then move on to the next one. Right. And learning that gave me a lot of confidence that you can really mitigate a lot of your risk if you just get the right purchase price. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on as our guest today. And also, thank you for your service to our country. We really appreciated you coming on, sharing your story, giving great advice to rookie investors who want to get started.

Where is the best place that they can reach out to you and find out more information? Yeah, probably contact me on LinkedIn or BiggerPockets. I'm not a big social media guy. I've been off social media since 2014. And those are the two places where you can get a hold of me. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm Ashley and he's Tony. And we'll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.