https://www.listennotes.com/e/1c82ef3e10564091b89e6c4cf2408c51

This investor found a real estate formula that worked so well, he bought five nearly identical properties, all on the same block. Now he's cash flowing, $12,000 per month, and plans to retire before age 50. On today's episode, he'll explain exactly how he did it. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets, where we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through rental properties. Today on the show, we're bringing you the story of investor Andre Taylor. Andre made his first investment in St. Louis back in 2007 and then took nearly a full decade off from acquiring new properties, because sometimes life just gets in the way. But eventually, he got back in the game. He moved to Chicago, where he developed a new investing formula that perfectly aligned with the goals he'd set many years earlier. Andre was so committed to this strategy that he now owns five very similar buildings, all on the same block. And this is a really cool story because it's a story of an investor who set a goal at the start of his career for exactly how many units he needed to achieve financial freedom. And he stayed determined to achieve that goal even as he worked a day job and saved his money one property at a time. Now he's reached it and is financially set for life. We can all learn a lot from this super fun and valuable lesson from Andre, so let's bring him on. Andre, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Oh, it's a pleasure. So honored to be here with you, Dave, and the whole BP community.

Yeah, this is going to be a fun episode for you because you have a really interesting story, and I'm excited to get into it, but let's just get the background. How did you first start investing in real estate?

My mom actually put real estate in me at a young age, so she always would tell me, buy real estate when you grow up, buy real estate. And fast forward. When I undergraduate in 2005, I was moving to St. Louis. So she was like, go to St. Louis. Make your money. Travel the world, buy real estate. I was a college student, so I had to pay off debt. So from 2005 to 2007, I was saving, paying off my debt. Went to carpentry school as well, too. And leading up to me purchasing my first property, which is a duplex, and in July of 2007.

And were you working full time at this time or were you just doing real estate?

So I have my degrees in electrical engineering. I got a job right out of school with a aerospace company in St. Louis. So I moved to St. Louis like two weeks after I graduated in May 2005. Still with the company 20 years later.

Oh, very cool. Nice.

Yeah, yeah.

So tell me about your deal. You bought a duplex.

Yes.

How'd that go?

It was actually in foreclosure. It was purchased a year prior for 115,000. It was in foreclosure for $89,000. I used at that time. It was like a first time home buyer with 3% down. And so the day before we closed on it, my real estate agent called me up and said, hey, wasn't there water running when we did the inspections? I said, yeah. She said, I think the copper pipes are stolen. And so, yeah, somebody came in, took the copper pipe. So I went back to the bank and we got the price down to 75,000. So I bought the duplex for, yeah, pretty much $75,000. Yeah, it was. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. I had to bring $2,800 to the closing table, and I only had 3,000 in the bank. So, yeah, it was crazy.

So what do you have to do to this property? I mean, obviously reinstall some pipes, but how much other work was it?

It was a lot of cosmetic. From July of 2007 until January 1, 2008, when I got my first rent check, first tenant moving in. It was back and forth sweat equity that we were painting, installing cabinets, tile, those different things.

And then was it just one deal that you bought in St. Louis?

So I bought a second deal. In December 2008, I bought another duplex maybe three blocks away from the first one, and I bought it for 80,000.

And at that point, did you have a goal for real estate or was it just something you did on the side?

So my real estate agent, her husband, who actually owned property as such, and they said, andre, you need to figure out your freedom number. And I said, freedom number? And they said, yes, you need to figure out your freedom number, because then you can work your way back and understand how many doors you need to get to get to that number. And I said, okay. And so at the time, you know, you read rich dad, poor dad, and knowing that and Robert Kiyosaki, him and his wife, when they walked away, was 10,000amonth residual income they had. So I said, 10,000amonth. I want, you know, 10,000amonth, say, okay, we'll figure it out. And so I think I was averaging about 300, 325 cash flow from each one of my units of both my duplexes and So I just took 10,000 divided by 325 and it was like, okay, you need about 32 doors to get to your freedom number. So the goal set forth was like, 32 doors. Got to get to 32 doors.

That idea of coming up with a goal and working backwards to what you have to do is probably the single best thing any new investor can do. And so few people do it. I encourage everyone who is listening to that do exactly this, figure out what you actually need, and work backwards. It will help every single decision that you make as a real estate investor going forward. It will get easier if you just go do this because you'll be figure out what price point to buy out, what markets to use, what strategies to use, how much leverage to use. All those decisions will get easier if you could just figure it out. So what brought you back? You took what, an 8, 10 year break? What brought you back to the game?

It's kind of like I had to recalibrate my mind and real estate came back around because I wasn't finished with what I set out years ago to do, which was, Andre, you want that financial and time freedom, 32 doors and such. So at that time in 2017, I was living in Vegas and my manager was saying, hey, we want you to stay out here permanent versus move back to St. Louis. And if you do, there's this per diem stipend that you'll get extra $2,000.

A month for gambling to take to the tables.

Yeah, you know, exactly, exactly. And I was. And I was really considering it because I had coworkers say, hey, the 2000, I take that and pay my house and my car note and, you know, my salary. I do whatever. So I was getting. I was close to selling my two duplexes, and I was going to reinvest the money and go into purchasing a laundromat. And I sat at the pool. I remember I sat at the pool. I said, didn't finish what you started, Go back. And so I went in, I said, hey, I'm going back to St. Louis. No. And then I had bought. I actually came out the gate buying in 2018, a four unit and a duplex on the same day I closed on.

Oh, nice. That's awesome. Well, I want to hear about those deals, but I just want to mention that I think your story is very relatable. A lot of people who get into real estate, I think are just entrepreneurial by nature and by spirit. And I have this myself. Like, there's so many shiny objects. You know, you're like talking about a laundromat or an app or like all these things. If you have that entrepreneurial spirit, it can be very, very tempting to sort of like go out and try and do things. And sometimes you do have to go try out a bunch of things to see what you're good at and see what you like. But I do agree, like, over time, you do have to sort of come back to what you're actually good at and settle down and not just be dabbling in all of these different things and just like focus on one good thing. So I want to hear how you started pursuing this Freedom number again, but we do have to take a quick break, so we'll be right back.

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Welcome.

Back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with investor Andre Taylor. We just heard about how he took nearly 10 years off of his investing career. But Andre, now I want to hear how you got started. You teased us a little bit. You had owned four units in St. Louis. You got back into the game, you closed on six units in one day. How'd that come about?

So I got on, you know, Red Family Realtor, because still during that time you can find deals on Red Family Realtor. And I found a four unit building. It was selling for 85,000. It was in really bad shape, bad tenants or whatever because I did go and look at it. And then also I saw a duplex. And mind you, this four unit in this other duplex that I saw was a half a block walking distance from my first duplex. So I was trying to buy back closes. And so what I did with the, the four unit, I said I put down a contract to get conventional financing for that 20%. And then with the duplex I did FHA and so that's how I closed. So the four unit, it was pretty interesting because we, the day of the closing, we're sitting at the closing table and then they said we can't fund this deal because the seller is on the terror's watch list.

What?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is a new one on me. Okay.

So I was sitting there at the closet table saying, what? Or like, okay, what do we do? And I'm not gonna lie, I kind of got. I said, so if they're on the terrorist watch list, can I get the property for free? Cause they gonna get arrested or something like that. So I don't know what happened in the background, but the next day I got keys and the deal closed.

But you paid for it.

Yes, I paid for it.

Okay, and so now you're up to. I'm trying to keep Track. You're at 10 now, right after on your way to 32. And once you did those six, how aggressively did you try and build from there?

Oh, it was very aggressive. After I did the four unit and I had to put the 100,000 into getting that up to par. Now we're into the summer of 2019. I moved back and it was like this duplex building across the alley was boarded up and I always would see it. So my neighbor, he was like, hey, Andre, you might as well buy this one across the alley. And I was like, nah, we'll see. And I kid you not. Two days later I'm at work and I get the pings from Zillow, Redfin and different things. That property popped up on my phone for $60,000, foreclosure as such. And I called my agent. I said, hey, can you meet there later on when I get off around 2? She said, yeah. We walk into the building, we both was like, okay, you just need to paint, change some fixtures. Like, because I was thinking it was condemned inside because it was boarded up as such. Not knowing until two weeks after I closed that the building had black mold in it.

That's why. Okay, so how did you deal with the black mold?

So I said, I'm going to have to rehab this myself. And this is going to be my first fully rehab project. I've updated rental properties that I've owned, but this is going to be the first rehab.

Okay. And how to go.

So I did get a more remediation company in there. I mean, when I say we got it out, gutted it to where you got to get it to where just the floor joist was only in there. Like, literally you can open the door and look to the basement and look all the way up to the ceiling. That's how it was. Just only thing wood in there was the floor joists. So From December of 2020 into July of 2021, I constructed it and redid that building, made it into a single family. At that time, I had got my real estate license because I wanted to. I was going to sell it. That was going to be my first flip sale project.

Okay, well, good for you. I mean, that sounds like a huge project, but it sounds like, again, it worked out well. It's timing probably worked out well because property values just started going crazy during that time.

So when I had it ready in July to sell now, this property I had was like in a C class area such. And so I had interest in people, but they were like. And again, people are buying crazy around that time. And I'm like, I can't get this sold. And it was keeping me up at night because it was like, I got a lot of debt on this. And at this point, I knew I was going to pretty much break even until I got the idea to furnish it and make it an Airbnb.

Oh, okay. That work out?

That went really good. I turned that into a Airbnb in September. September, October. I made about $11,000 with that property. And when I sold the property on Halloween of 2021, the buyer was inheriting $8,000 in future bookings from me when I sold it as an Airbnb.

Oh, wow. Okay. That's a pretty good way to sell it. I' helps helps a bit.

Yep.

So take me through this. We're now in 2021, like after this sale. Where are you on on your path to this freedom number?

We were at 13 because I did buy a building, another duplex building, in January of 2021. It was a from a wholesaler off of Facebook Marketplace. I got them down from 80,000 to 35,000. It was going to be another gut rehab project, so I had another duplex that was just sitting waiting for me to get done. So you can kind of say I had 13 units, but two were not active.

Okay, just yet. All right, well, I want to hear about the last couple of years because it sounds like you've made some really cool progress towards your journey. We do have to take one more quick break. We'll be right back.

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Welcome Back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm here with investor Andre Taylor. Where we left off, you had 13 deals. Tell us where you are today because that was still like 2021 ish. So like what have you been up to the last couple of years?

So from 2022 up to this point, it's been crazy because now we are officially pretty much at the 32 door mark.

Wait, do you just. As of like when? Most recently this last year.

Last last month? Last month.

Oh my God.

Congratulations. That's so cool. And what's wait was. So I want to ask how you got there, but did 32. Is that is the cash flow actually what you want it to be?

Now we're talking cash flow wise of 12 to 14,000amonth.

You did it. Congratulations. That's so cool. I love that. You know, we talked to so many people on the show, are growing and have these numbers and usually people are on their way, but we rarely, very rarely get people who have actually hit their number. So congratulations. That's super cool. So tell us what happened. You went from 13 to 32 fast.

So what happened was I was Just bit by the commercial bug because I literally came home and I put everything up for sale. That was the mole house went up for sale, the four unit, the duplexes. Oh, I put all those up for sale. Yeah. At that time I had seven properties and so I put six of them up for sale. Because the property I bought off of Facebook Marketplace, it was gutted out. So I didn't sell that one. And I put those six up for sale, which I got sold by November of 2021. So I had about, after paying off a lot of expenses and stuff like that, I had about a quarter million dollars in profit.

Wow, congratulations. That's awesome. But you're going in the wrong direction, man. I thought, I thought you were going to say you started adding to your, your portfolio, but. Yeah, okay, so you started selling. Did you know what you were going to buy or were you just kind of like, I got to liquidate, I need this capital so that I can go buy something bigger?

Yeah. So what happened was when I was getting ready to liquidate my real estate agent, her. Her husband at the time, who was my mentors, and they owned about close to 100 doors in St. Louis. So they had a 32 unit apartment complex that they were selling. They would say, hey, once you buy this from us, my finance guy Jerome said, hey, why don't you stay here in the St. Louis market? He got me in contact with U.S. bank and U.S. bank was like, since you're a local investor, we only want you to put down 15% to buy this 32 unit. So, you know, at this point it's like, stay in St. Louis, but then Chicago, the numbers work better with Chicago. And this is my opportunity because I did wanted to, you know, own back in my city. And so there was a lot of properties are for sale. So in Chicago you have a lot of six unit buildings. And so I look at those as the red hotels for Monopoly. So I was like, I'm on some six unit buildings. So I was under the gun. I was 1031 a quarter million dollars. I have 45 days to find. And I did find two six unit buildings that were going to purchase, but they fell out of contract within like two weeks as such, whatever. So it was like, yo, you got to hurry up.

Yeah, that's scary.

Yeah, it was very scary because I'm like, I cannot, I do not want to give the government about $50,000, you know, taxes. So I just went back to when I was studying for my real estate license in Missouri and I remember reading something they said realtor.com has the most listings or whatever. So literally I went to realtor.com I found two six unit buildings selling. One was for 450,000, one was for 425,000. And again, underwriting commercial debt that I learned going to the summit with Grant Cardone. I was like, yo, these buildings are way undervalued. I come in and bring the rents to market value. I call my age. I said put full price offers in, let's get it done as such or whatever. And that's. Yeah. So I had to put down 25%.

That's not bad for a six unit.

Not bad at all.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Really good. Because In Chicago there's three unit buildings that sell it for $400,000.

Yeah, right.

So at the time, my, my finance guy in Chicago, he found me a lender up here and I closed on both of those buildings the same day. I got a five year fix for 3.6% on both. On both of those properties.

Okay, so you sold them all. So you're back to 12, right? Back to 12 units. Because you just said two.

Yep.

Okay. How, how have those two deals? Because you, it sounds like you sort of bought them under the gun, which was everything in 22. Right. It was so competitive. Everyone was buying. How have they performed for you?

We'll talk about the one building that I bought for 450. We, my cousin, we called it the Taj Mahal because it's really huge. And it's the building that we're doing the renovation in that you guys will see when you go.

Just so everyone knows, Henry and I are going on a road show and Chicago is one of the stops. July 15th, we're having a meetup in Chicago. It's free for everyone. So you guys should definitely come if you're in the Chicago area, definitely come check it out. And one of the things we're going to do, Andre and I were talking about before the recording started, Henry and I are going to come stop by and see what Andre is up to in Chicago. So if you're in the area, we're going to have a little lot of fun. It's gonna be great. So come check that out.

Definitely.

But keep going. Tell me about the Taj Mahal.

So there's a six unit building and so the, the gross rents that were coming in were, was about $5,400, close to 900amonth, average wise. And these are all two unit apartments. Square footage on those, about 1200 plus square feet. It's really, really huge.

Yeah.

And so the market rate for two bedrooms in this area is 1450.

Okay.

And when I did the numbers and stuff, this building is worth was like $750,000 where it should be, you know, So I was like, this is a no brainer and stuff. So because of the, the renovation that we're doing on the building, the units are in this building we rented for 1650. So just off pure rent, it's going to be bringing me in 9,900 gross a month, not including the garage spaces and the laundries that the tenants would be paying for in that building.

Okay. And then fill us into the gaps. Like how did you get back from there to now hitting your goal last month?

So when I came and bought this building, there were other buildings next door to it. And I was like, I'm about this block up. I said, I'm going to buy the rest of these buildings next to it as such. Because another thing that I learned when early on, investing is the best real estate to buy, and I say this all the time, is the real estate next door to you.

Yeah.

So one of the buildings next door to me, which brought me to the 18 door mark, I call it the Freedom Tower because it hit that number. For me, the 10,000 mark is such.

Okay.

And so like with that, I became real friends with the, with the owner of the building because I would see him come over, he was an older guy, would come over, do his lawn and different things in that age. I said, hey, if you think about selling this building, here's my number, you know, just give me a call. Whenever the case. His wife called me the next day, said, you want this building? We're selling it. Because I'm he, I'm tired of him going over to that building every day to work. And this, this building that I'm in right now is the Freedom Tower. We met in this basement because they had a little office set up down here. And we worked out the deal to purchase it. So I purchased this building April 2023.

That's awesome.

Yeah. So now I go to 21 doors later on that year because my duplex building in St. Louis that I bought off Facebook Marketplace for 35,000, I started renovating that property. We put a basement apartment in that duplex. So I had to get the zoning redone and different things of that nature. So I have the three unit building in St. Louis that took me to 21 doors. So now it's like, okay, the other two buildings, that's next door to the. On the other side of the Taj Mahal. One is a six unit and one is a five unit. What I did was I looked up and coincidence is one owner who owns both the buildings, the six unit and the five unit, and he lives out. He lives out your way. He lives in Seattle.

Oh, really? Oh, cool.

Yeah, he lives in Seattle. So I wrote him a letter. I just wrote him a letter, say, hey, my name is Andre Taylor. I'm an engineer. I work for this aerospace company. I'm sure you would know because it's out there in Seattle, really big.

I think I know which one you're talking about.

Yes, exactly, exactly. And so I said, listen, I own the building. I own these two buildings. I said, I'm not looking to force you, but I said, I do like the integrity of the block. If you ever decide to sell, please give me the first opportunity to purchase. Here's my information.

Did they ever respond to you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He actually called me right away.

This was December 2023. He called me in January of 2024 after the holiday. He said, hey, you know, I'm actually thinking about retiring in about a year or two as such, whatever. And he was like. He said, yeah, you know, I have no problem selling it to you. You going to own the block after this?

You're like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, exactly. And so he said, hey, I would love to meet you. I'll be in Chicago when it's warm, and we'll meet. And so it went cold. Dave, he was supposed to reach out to me in May. I email him. I said, hey, how's it going? Nothing. So he reached out to me back in this past January, said, hey, I'm ready to sell now.

I'm like, that's just how it works, though, right? It's just like, you got to put the iron in the fire and wait. And like, you can't rush that because especially if someone's retiring, that's going to be on their own timeline.

I use my credit, business credit line, which I had no PG guarantee. I use that to help me close on the new properties and stuff. I also pull some equity out of the Taj Mahal because the Taj Mahal was valued at $700,000 on the appraisal. Now, the 5 unit, we actually, we closing on that soon. So we were supposed to buy both the buildings. And so he was like, I'm waiting on to see what's going to happen with the big beautiful bill. Because he like, Capital gains the 100 most depreciation. So we went back to the table, we wrote up the contract where it's a two part. So this one is executed and we execute the second one after the big beautiful bill comes out. So right now 27 with that 5 that's going to get added on later on, which will make it 32 doors.

Wow. Amazing. Well, we do have to get out of here. Andre. We're, we're running long, but I love this story so much. I'm, I'm happy to do it. But I just had one last question for you. So you've had this sort of interesting career. You started, you took 10 years off, then you came back to it. You never have quit your job. Right. You've stayed with your career. Is that intentional? And do you think you'll keep doing that?

So here's the deal. I know people always talk about this with the job, like literally me being able to get these deals is because I still work. Don't get me wrong, I have a, I have a great job and pays very, very good and stuff. And because of that, that strategically is going to allow me to walk away. I'm 43. I'll be, trust me, I will be done before 50. But at the same time, I don't have to rush. I'm in a stabilization mode right now. I'm not looking for no more properties. I'm still stabilizing the property to get, to maximize everything so I could reinvest my profits, my cash flow into the buildings to even bring them up even more and all this other stuff. So. And I can live off my W2 money.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So it's like, it's no rush of stuff. I can prepare strategically on my exit.

Yeah. And you'll be done by 50. That's amazing. I think that's, that's super cool. And just a lesson to people. There's no right answer. But, but I do think in this industry a lot of people over sell the idea of quitting when quitting has trade offs. And I just wanted to point out to people that, Andre, you've had this super cool career.

Yeah.

And a lot of it seems to be in part because one, you're doing this, you're good at it and you're diligent about it. But also you've sort of like gone with the slow, steady approach of trying to, you know, keeping your job, being lendable, getting conventional mortgages. That kind of stuff really seems like it's helped your career.

It definitely has. There was no special hack that I did or anything of that nature with the finance. It was just I leveraged money off credit cards. I had a pool for 401k, had money saved up, just that norm. And then of course, appreciation. Real estate is long term appreciation game, so it's definitely been a ride.

Awesome. Well, congratulations on your success, Andre. Super cool story. Really appreciate you being here today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't wait to have. Can't wait to have you guys over at the Taj Mahal.

Looking forward to it.

It's going to be great. And Everett, again, if you want to hang out with me, Henry, Andre, we're going to be in Chicago the night of July 15th. We have a free meetup for BiggerPockets listeners. It's going to be a great time. We're doing the cash flow roadshow stopping in Chicago. Make sure to check that out. Thanks again, Andre, and thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.

Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calico, content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com.

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