Late Start to Real Estate? Investing in Your 50s/60s (Rookie Reply)
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What if you had $100,000 in cash, a successful career, and a five-year runway, but were just getting started at 61 years old? Or what if your first flip was nearly a $1 million property and you're trying to get it funded as a first-timer? Or what if you had $100,000 in cash, a successful career, and a five-year runway,

Maybe you're a high income young couple sitting on $70,000 and a 3% mortgage, wondering if you should cash out, move out, or even go out of state. Today, we're answering three real high state questions from our BiggerPockets community, and every one of them touches on challenges we know many of you are facing today.

This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let's get into our first question for today. So our first question here comes from Teresa. And this question says, first, I'm on the forum. I'm 61 years old. My husband is as well. And we're just starting out in real estate investing. Truth be told, if I knew earlier what I know now, learning I could have started so much earlier. But

All I can do now is move forward. I currently own a successful business with no plans to exit for at least the next five years. My husband is a project manager with a local construction company. With that said, what is the best strategy for building wealth and creating cashflow with real estate in today's market? Is it buy and hold? Is it fix and flip? Is it burr? Is it wholesaling? We're not really interested in house hacking.

We have a good amount of equity in our current home, and we've saved a good nest egg in standard investments that we can tap into, and we have $100,000 plus in cash.

Is it too late to really build wealth in a timely fashion so we can enjoy our golden years eventually? She goes on to ask, what is the best type of loan to acquire funds to start? Is it a HELOC, a hard money loan, private money loan, no money down, sub two? We've reached out to an investor realtor who has referred to us and who so far has been a wealth of knowledge. We'll be talking loan and money strategies today as well, but would love to hear from all of you. Everyone's input is greatly appreciated.

So a lot to unpack here. Well, first, I guess, let's just say, Ash, what a great position they're in. And I think, too, something that caught my eye was, if only I knew then what I know now, I think everybody is thinking that. Okay, I want to start off with talking about their current equity in their home. So if they have a mortgage, what is your interest rate on it? What are the terms? Is this a

great mortgage you don't want to get rid of, then a home equity line of credit would be a great opportunity to tap into that. They also mentioned that they do have $100,000 plus in cash. So one option that they could do with this cash instead of having it sit is actually invest it into the stock market, put it into a brokerage, and then get a line of credit on their brokerage account.

So they have this money invested. It's still pretty liquid for them to draw, pull that money out of it instead of putting it into a property. And then they have this line of credit now that they can go ahead and use that line of credit to deploy, to actually purchase a property or invest in real estate in somehow. So you're actually getting to invest in two different asset classes with this 100 K the 70,

stock market and then investing in real estate with using the line of credit. With this line of credit, you're going to get great terms. You're going to get a better interest rate because your stock account is so much more liquid and easier for them to just take your money if you don't make your payments on your HELOC, where if the collateral is property,

They have to go through a whole foreclosure process, which makes it not as liquid. So you're going to get better terms because their risk is less.

So that would be a great starting point, I think, to look into is taking that $100,000 in cash, putting into the stock market, and then getting that line of credit with your stock market account as your collateral. I know. I love that idea, right? And I've used the stocks to get loans in the past, and it works pretty well. But I think just like the main thing that we're focused on is like, is it too late?

And yes, 61 is later in life. But I don't think it's too late to get started. And I just want to make that point very loudly for everyone that's listening. 61 is not too late to get started. I don't think it's ever too late to get started. If you're here and you're listening and you're seeing this, yeah, then you've got time to get started. If you look at the history of billionaires or even multimillionaires, a lot of them don't

make it to that until they're in their 60s that I wish I knew the stat off the top of my head, but usually most people don't really accomplish something great until then. Like if you look at a lot of, you know, high net worth individuals, they'll say like, yeah, they work this and work this. And then they had their big break at, you know, age 60. So it's

Definitely not too late. Now, in terms of what actual strategy I think works best in today's market, I mean, all of these have a way to work in today's market. Buy and hold, fix and flip, or wholesaling. We know investors who are doing all of these strategies today to much success. So I don't know if it's necessarily the strategy or what's working today that you should focus on. I think the bigger question is what's going to allow you to achieve your goal in the timeline that you've got in mind.

And buy and hold, I think, is obviously a great way to build wealth over the long run. But it does take time, right? Like if you were 25 and asking this question, then sure, buying one single family home every five to seven years, like that's going to add up over the course of three or four decades. But if you're looking to really accelerate the amount of cash you have coming in, I might opt for a different strategy. And in my mind, I would probably do one of two things.

I would focus on flipping or I would focus on the BRRRR strategy. The only reason why I'm not saying wholesaling is because I think that's a very specific skillset. And if you've got that skillset, great, but I'm leaning more so towards the flipping because your husband works in construction already, right? So I'm making an assumption here.

but I would focus on Fix and Flip or BRRRR. And the reason why is because you could take that $100,000 and you can recycle it with either of those strategies. If you go traditional buy and hold, maybe you get one or two properties out of that 100 grand and then what are you going to do next? You're gonna have to liquidate funds or go get some from someone else. But if you've got 100 grand, which is a really great starting spot, you can use that money over and over again through flipping or through BRRRR. Through flipping, you take your 100 grand,

You put that as a down payment, your portion of a hard money loan or a private money loan if you know someone. And then once that deal is done, you get your money back and you go recycle it into the next deal. Same thing for BERT. You could go into many markets today even still with $100,000 and buy something cash. And you renovate it and you recycle the funds that way. And I think if speed and –

moving quickly and scaling quickly and stacking up some wins is the goal. I would focus on one of those two strategies. Tony, I am going to disagree with you. We are about to get into our first argument. Live on air. I would have to say that I am not going to recommend flipping. I am very risk adverse in looking at today's current market conditions where it's becoming more

a buyer's market instead of a seller's market, it makes me want to find deals and buy deals, but hold on to them until it is a seller's market again. And like by the time this podcast episode airs in three weeks, we could see another shift and I am completely wrong.

But from what I am seeing right now is that there are like 500,000 more sellers and buyers. Okay. So there is this huge shift going on in most markets. And I would be

be less likely to flip a property, especially if this is your first time ever doing it where, you know, a couple of years ago, if you were to flip a house, it would sell no matter what, because everybody just wanted to buy a house and the inventory just flew off where now you would have to be way more strategic because you're going to be competing against so many other sellers in the market and just not as many buyers.

So I would take flipping off the table. What I would do instead is I would not use all of your money. So say you decide you're just going to use your cash. You're not going to go with the line of credit option. I would use some of it and I would use it as a down payment on a rental property, but I would not buy for cashflow. I would buy for appreciation because it looks like in your circumstance, you're, you're doing well. You don't need the cashflow. You're not planning to, you know, quit your job, quit your business. So, um,

I would buy a property where you're looking at the market, analyzing it to bank on appreciation. And in five years, maybe when you sell your business, that property has appreciated. You have mortgage pay down from the tenant living in there. And then you sell the property for a gain or better. Yeah, it's you do a 1031 exchange into a bigger property.

that has more opportunity for appreciation, maybe has some more cashflow. And I wouldn't get something that's negative cashflow per se, but I would get something that breaks even or has a little bit of cashflow and a couple hundred dollars in cashflow isn't going to be a huge financial difference for you, but at least your money is growing with the appreciation and then having that

principal pay down so that you can cash back out of that property with a 1031 exchange or even refinancing down the road to tap into that equity to purchase something else. But I would say no to flipping for your first investment right now in this strategy, especially because you do have that resource, but maybe do a BRRRR, do a rental of your husband being a contractor. But if you're both running really busy businesses,

and they're already successful, I don't think you should create a third business for yourself by flipping a property. And I'm also very, what's low stress, low risk. Zen Ashley is here in 2025. So-

I don't know. I just think about, you know, those types of things. So take into consideration your mental and emotional capabilities too, as to if you want to go ahead and grind to flip a house and what it might take in today's market, maybe very different than what you've seen on Instagram from the last couple of years. You know, I'm going to agree with you, actually. Actually, I think you make a very, very valid point that, you know, like we both have properties that I think we're,

were that are listed as flips that have been sitting for longer than we anticipated. So there definitely is some softness in the market. You know what I think might be a really good idea is if we bring on, and maybe we do like a, like a flippers round table where we bring on someone like James Daynard, you know, Henry Washington, um,

We recently had on Dominique Gunderson, who flips remotely out of New Orleans. But just bring some people in from different markets and let each of them say, like, hey, how are we adapting to the current times? Because you're right. Days on market is increasing in a lot of places. But there are also markets where maybe it's not. And just how are flippers kind of adapting in that environment? But it sounds like what we agree on is the BRRRR strategy, right? Like, hey, maybe this is the best because you're building –

the passive income while also leveraging the capital and the, and the skillset that both you and your, your husband have. So maybe that is the best path forward here. Yeah. And I think too, like knowing that they have this money sitting that they want to deploy, but it's not like they immediately need that cash back to complete the perfect project.

So it is okay to leave money in the deal. Like that is money you were investing to let the property grow. So I think that's even better if you have capital that you can let sit in the property forever.

that you don't need to immediately recapture. You're going to find it's going to be easier at least to find deals that way. Okay. Well, if you guys want us to do that round table idea with some flippers in different markets, make sure to comment below if you're watching on YouTube and let us know and we can get working on that for you guys.

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Today, our second question comes from Jacob in the BiggerPockets forums.

I've got a great deal lined up in Miami, Florida, in a strong neighborhood with solid comps and demand. Here are the numbers. The purchase price is $699,000. The rehab estimate is $150,000. The ARV is between $1.1 to $1.25 million, and that's conservative.

The comps are a house that's three blocks away sold for $1.25 million, another two blocks out sold for $1.19 million, and then one about three blocks away sold for $1.1 million. Mine is 2,000 square feet, which is larger than all of those comps.

My question is, can I realistically get this funded? I'm already speaking with the seller and the deal is very much in motion. Just wondering if lenders or even capital partners would consider working with a first timer when the numbers are this strong. Appreciate any honest feedback or direction.

Hey, this is a great question as to your rookie investor. You've got this exciting deal that you feel has great potential. You've run the numbers, you've looked at everything, and you want to get this deal done. And I think you definitely have more of an advantage with your confidence, Jacob. The fact that he understands this deal, has already worked through the numbers, and he wants to get this deal done because he understands that, yes, this deal is going to work out.

I do think that, yes, it can be difficult your first time, but I wouldn't present it that way because really it's not your first time. You've been involved in doing these other flips. That's just like me when I worked as a property manager. I wasn't owning these properties, but I worked as a property manager. So when it came time for me to get my first loan on an investment property, I

The bank I worked with also worked for the investor that I worked for. And we already had an established relationship because I worked for this other investor. And it was a super easy process. It wasn't like, oh, this is your first time. Are you sure you know what you're doing? They had seen firsthand what I was doing with these other properties. And then I knew what I was doing. So my first recommendation would be talking to your brother-in-law and who is he using to lend on his flips?

And that could be a great connection, a great referral to start right there with that because they already see firsthand what your brother-in-law is doing. And if they know that you've been a part of making that happen and been involved in those deals, they could be way more likely to lend to you than somebody else who doesn't know any history about you or your brother-in-law. Couldn't agree with you more, Ashley. And I

I don't really watch a lot of NASCAR. So if there's NASCAR fans out here and I get this wrong, don't beat me up. Oh, I was when I was younger. Me and my dad, big NASCAR fans. OK, so you can check me if I'm wrong here. Right. But like one of the strategies in NASCAR is to draft behind the vehicle that's in front of you. Right. So they're shaking, shaking, bake. There you go. Never heard that. But that's even more. Yeah.

So the basic premise is that the car in front is taking all the wind. They're the ones getting beat up. And you're behind them. And then once you slide out, you're able to shoot in front of them because you've got all this upward momentum. And Jacob, it's basically the same thing in real estate investing. You're drafting behind this other investor who's taking all the lumps, who's learning all the lessons. And you're picking some of that up so that way when you do step out on your own, you can shoot off yourself as well. And I think that's one of the best ways to get started in real estate investing.

It's exactly what you just did. So to Ashley's point, I wouldn't discount all that you've learned. So Jacob, in theory, you're doing exactly what we want real estate rookies to do, where you're learning from someone else that's already taken the lumps, learned the lessons, and now you're stepping out on your own with that knowledge. So I think you're...

grossly, grossly underestimating the value and the knowledge and the skillset that you've developed working with this other person. So to answer your question, would anyone consider working with a first-timer?

I believe absolutely yes, right? To Ashley's point, working with the same lender, great idea. But even if it is someone new, like put together your resume of all the deals you've done with this other flipper, and that is your proof of concept, right? That's your track record of what you've been able to accomplish. And Jacob, even the spread on this deal feels pretty solid. You got a purchase price of 700, rehabs 150, so you're all in for 850, and you've got comps at 1.1, 1.4,

one, two, 1.25, right? So you've got some spread there as well. So the numbers feel good. Your experience feels good. Assuming that you can actually hit all those numbers, I don't see why you wouldn't move forward with this deal. All right, we're going to take a quick break before our last question. But while we're gone, if you haven't yet subscribed to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel, be sure to hit that follow and subscribe button. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform, make sure to subscribe and follow there as well. And we'll see you guys after this short, short break.

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All

All right, guys. So welcome back. So our last question for the day comes from Garrett.

Garrett says,

Over the last couple of years, we've become more and more interested in real estate investing with the specific goal of becoming financially free. However, with the current house prices near us and high interest rates, buying a cash flow positive investment seems impossible where we live. And they're in Kitsap County, Washington. Even our current house at a 3% interest rate with a $2,100 mortgage could only rent for about $2,800 per month.

We currently have $70,000 in cash set aside, ready to invest, and about $118,000 in equity in our home. So a few questions. Number one, after estimating vacancy, maintenance, and CapEx expenses, it does not make sense to rent our current house. Do you agree?

Number two, should we sell our house and move to a more favorable market for cash flow? If so, where do you recommend? Number three, should we keep our relatively low mortgage and interest rate for our area and start investing out of state? Number four, what strategy would you recommend we start with? Long-term, single-family homes, house hack with a small multifamily, BRRRR, or something else? Okay, the first thing to look at is, because they asked about it's not worth investing

renting out their current house. And do we agree? So they're

Mortgage payment is $2,160 per month with taxes and insurance. And then they could rent it out for $2,800 per month. One thing that I love about single-family homes is that like any other expenses, you can really pass on to the tenant. So the utilities, the landscaping, the lawn care, snow removal, so things like that. And then they were correct in saying, you know, vacancy maintenance cap X doesn't make sense to rent out our current home.

So what I would do in this situation is if you're trying to decide by two of these, first of all, in the BiggerPockets resource hub, I just discovered this a couple weeks ago that this was in there. I think it was Scott Trench who created it, but it is actually...

a sell versus keep spreadsheet. And you enter in all of your information about your property and it helps you decide based on the numbers if you should keep this property as a rental or you should sell it.

So you can find that at biggerpockets.com slash resource hub or just resource. I think it is. So when you, you go in there, you can input it and you can see the difference. So they wrote in their question, according to Zillow, our house has appreciated 50,000 over the last two years. So I would look in comparison as to what your cashflow would be compared to that 50,000. And what the difference would be in two years, because you're getting your principal pay down. You're getting a,

appreciation, more appreciation in the property by keeping it longer. Also, I would look at how long, so they've lived in the house at least two years. So they also wouldn't pay taxes on the sale of that property where your cashflow, you're going to pay taxes on it. So that's,

I would go and check out this calculator at biggerpockets.com slash resource and look for the sell versus keep calculator that's in there and run the numbers to see the difference. Yeah. I just, in my gut, I have a hard time encouraging them to walk away from a 3% interest in a $2,100 mortgage. Yeah.

if if if the goal and you know you you guys are relatively young right you said you know we're a couple years outside of our college careers and you know just kind of starting things out so it seems like you guys have time on your side right um and i know that there's a desire to get started but you've got an amazing asset in that primary residence and i would i would want to i think protect that

That said, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't move somewhere else. I know you said in your area, buying cash flow positive investment seems impossible. But I wonder, could you keep that home that you're currently in, rent it out? And yeah, even if you're not making crazy cash flow, you're still...

getting some level of cashflow. You're still going to get the equity growth over time. You're still going to keep that 3% interest rate. And can you maybe go get a small multifamily where you house hack in Kitsap County, Washington? And maybe it's a duplex where you guys live in one side and rent out the other side. Maybe it's a duplex where you rent out the other side by the room to really supercharge your cashflow. So I just wonder if there's maybe other strategies you could look at

And then like the question of like moving to a more favorable market for cash flow. Yeah, I think that's fine too, but I don't think you need to sell your house to do that. You can still keep your house and go invest in a less expensive market with the capital that you have set aside. $70,000 I think is enough in plenty of markets across the United States to get in for something.

And it's just a matter of identifying those markets and then finding the right deals within those markets. And then the last part of Garrett's question here is what strategy should they start with? Again, you know, this kind of goes back to the first question, but it does somewhat vary depending on you, your risk profile, what your skills are, you know, and all those different factors. But I think based on the limited information that we have in front of us,

I would either go buy a buy and hold property in a less expensive market and just repeat that process every three to five years as you save up another 70,000 bucks. Or I would try and do a small house hack somewhere in the county that you currently live in. Right. Again, small multifamily, something to that effect that where you you you aren't losing the asset that you've already got. But yeah.

You guys are in a great spot. To be a young couple with good income, you've got an amazing investing career ahead of you if you just take your time, buy right, and keep chugging along. Dave Meyer, we just recently did an episode for the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast, and he even mentioned that when he was on the Real Estate Rookie podcast that he's been investing, I think he said, for 15 years. And his goal was just simple, easy investing for 15 years because he knew if he did that, 15 years from now, he would be in a great position, and that's exactly where he's at.

So we don't have to overcomplicate it. Sometimes the simplest approach is the best approach.

And it sounds like you guys have a simple solution ahead of you. Thank you guys so much for joining us for today's Rookie Reply. If you have questions that you want answered, go into the BiggerPockets forums and write your question there. And probably before we even get to it, you'll have tons of responses from other like-minded investors like you, other people trying to get started, or expert, experienced investors.

I'm Ashley Kerr and he's Tony J. Robinson. Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll see you on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.