In this interview, host Cody talks with 24‑year‑old full‑time real‑estate investor Soley Cayetano (Instagram: lattes.and.lisas) about how she built a portfolio of 31‑32 rental units and an office building across Ohio and Georgia while living in expensive San Jose. Soley explains her first purchase—a $98k single‑family home bought sight‑unseen and financed with a conventional 20% down loan—followed by a BRRRR (Buy‑Renovate‑Rent‑Refinance‑Repeat) that left her with only a few thousand dollars invested. She discusses the challenges of saving for a down payment, using side hustles, and the decision to invest out‑of‑state after learning from books and podcasts. To scale quickly, she raised private money from a family member and later partnered with a colleague for a flip, using creative financing when personal funds ran out. Throughout, she emphasizes resourcefulness, the importance of community, and building confidence by surrounding herself with other investors on Instagram. She advises young aspiring investors to seek mentorship, join supportive communities, and audit their social circles, while offering her Instagram handle for further contact and announcing an upcoming community platform.
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Hey YouTube, this is Cody. Welcome back to the channel. Today we're joined by Soley Cayetano and we're talking about investing at a young age. Soley, welcome to the channel.
Thanks so much for having me.
Can you tell us a little bit about number one, who you are, and two, what you've done, and three, how old you are?
Yes, I guess I'll start with how old I am. So I am 24. By the time this video probably comes out, I might be 25 because my birthday is on Sunday the 8th. So happy, happy birthday.
Thank you.
So I— you might know me on Instagram as Lattes and Lisas. I am a full-time investor. I've built my portfolio out of state because I'm living in— literally, it was voted the most expensive market in the entire country. It's in San Jose, California, so kind of smack dab in Silicon Valley. I have 31 units, will be 32 units next week, in a combination of long-term rentals, midterm rentals, and a couple short-term rentals in Ohio and in Georgia. So that's kind of a little bit about me.
That, that's phenomenal. So you're at, you're about to be at 32 rentals at 24 years old. You're You're going to be 25 here this Sunday.
Slowly but surely. Well, 31 rentals and an office building with 8 tenants. So I don't know how to count that.
Wow. That, that's pretty baller. So what did you start with? Did you start with office? Did you start with Airbnb? Did you start with long-term rental? What did you do?
My very first property was a single-family house in Cincinnati. So I just bought it. Literally, I bought it sight unseen off of Zillow, off the internet. Which seems kind of crazy now, I was thinking back at it, but in 2020 everybody was kind of stuck in their house. Where I lived, they were actually on like patrol. And so we couldn't go out and about. And I decided that I was going to invest in real estate. So I bought that first property, single family, for $98,000. I renovated it and successfully BRRRR'd it and left just a couple thousand dollars in that deal.
Okay, so you started with a house, you went Black Friday shopping, you basically bought it on Amazon, and you're able to pull all your money back out. How did you finance that first deal? Because someone might be thinking, okay, well, it's about $100,000 to buy a house and you pull all your money back out, but how do you actually go about buying something like that?
Yeah, so I started working pretty young. I started working a almost full-time job while I was going to college. I was 19 working in commercial real estate. And so I had a— I think at the time I even had a 1099, not like a W-2 job. But what— by the time I was going to buy my first real estate property, I was a senior in college. I had 2 and a half years of work experience. And so I actually just got a conventional loan by myself, 20% down. I know you guys do all the creative financing, but at the time I didn't even know that existed. And so I did the traditional thing and kind of saved up $50,000, put down my $20,000 down, renovated it with the rest of the money, and then refinanced it to recoup my initial investment.
So work hard, save money, put it down, and you can still get started. You don't have to do anything crazy to get into real estate.
The boring way. I mean, it took me 3 years to save that money, but I was like very, um, big on like side hustles and getting other jobs and like working seriously, like working full-time through college. And I lived in the teeniest little rooms I could to save money. And so, um, yeah, I think it's definitely— I, I worked really hard to save up that money. Um, but if, if that's the path you want to take, I think that's a great way to do it as well.
And you also didn't let location stop you, because a lot of folks have reached out to us anyways and said, well, I live in an expensive area, I live in Seattle, I live in Miami, I live in New York, I can't do the out-of-state thing. What made you feel comfortable? I know you just mentioned maybe you shouldn't have felt comfortable doing it, but what got you over the hump of, okay, I'm going to buy states away from where I live, I'm buying a sub-$100,000 house. Why did you just jump into it?
I was blissfully naive at what it even meant to buy out of state. No, I mean, I had a couple of friends who bought out of state, so I had two friends specifically who had bought properties in— though one of them was in the Ohio area, one of them was in the Florida area. They seem to do okay. And so I was like, okay, well, they're okay, so maybe I can be okay. And then I read David Greene's book, uh, I think it's called Long Distance Real Estate Investing, and it kind of gave a pretty good roadmap for how to do it. Yeah. Um, and then I also listened to the BiggerPockets Rookie Show, which had come out I think in 2020. And so during the pandemic, I was just like binge listening to the story of tons of investors buying their first deal, people who sounded just like me, who didn't have any real estate experience, who wanted to invest in estate. And so I was like, okay, I've heard, you know, hundreds of stories of people doing it. Why, why can't it be me too?
Yeah. So fast forward, you knocked out your first deal, home run. You have no money, or close to no money in it after you did your BRRRR. What did you do next? Did you buy another house? Did you go into office? What'd that look like?
So I actually didn't wait till I burned my first property to buy the next deal. So after I bought the first one, I flew out there, renovated it, had a ton of fun, vlogged the whole thing on Instagram, which is kind of where I got my first little following from. And then I just like got obsessed. I wanted to buy my first property, a second property. I didn't want to wait 3 more years to save up enough money to, to buy it, and I was getting a bit impatient. So I then figured out how to raise private money from— I did it from a family member. And so it's kind of funny because I didn't reach out to them, they reached out to me and said, hey, I've been following you on Instagram, I'm like really proud of everything that you've done, I want to be part of your second investment. And so that's kind of like, oh, I can use someone else's money to invest in the next property. Again, I guess I was kind of unaware of— I guess a lot of people get really scared using other people's money because, oh my gosh, what if I can't pay them back? But for me, it was just an opportunity to get into that second deal. So I ended up buying a triplex just a few months later with that private money as the down payment.
And this was in 2020?
2020. Yeah, that one closed in December. So my first one closed in July or August and the next, next 3 were in December.
Wow. Okay. So first year you got 2 properties, 4 units. What did 2021 look like as you started building it? Because you realized you could use other people's money to expand. Did you keep going down that path with family? Did you start seeking other investors? What, what do you do? Because now we still got another 27 units over the past couple of years.
Yeah, that was all the money my family had. There was no more like trust funds to kick into or anything. But I actually bought a fifth unit in 2020. So in the 6 months, my first 6 months, I again ran out of money. Uh, I didn't have any money. My mom didn't have any money. My family didn't have any money. And so I kind of was like, okay, well, I can find a partner who has money. And so that fifth unit was a partnership with someone who I worked with at time in commercial real estate. And we bought that property to be a flip. So we flipped that property in 2021. So that was, that was kind of a whole bunch of ways that I explored because I literally had no money. So I had to get a little bit creative on how to buy properties.
So what's your biggest learning lesson? Because there's a lot of folks that are going to listen to this and want to repeat what you did. You started saving money, ran out, then you went to your sphere, your family and friends, then they ran out, and then you found an equity partner and you flipped it. What's your biggest learning lesson in all of that as far as just getting into it, getting your first deal done, like for someone that wants to replicate what you did?
I think it's being resourceful and figuring out like you go, you're going to run into a lot of walls, obviously. Like I ran into a wall, I didn't have any money, and then you just learn to jump over it. A lot of people get stuck at the wall and then make excuses for why they can't jump over the wall. But if you can like figure it out, there's always a way to figure it out, whether it's by reading, whether it's by talking to a mentor, whether it's by just tripping and falling and getting back up. There's always a way to get around hurdles.
And for those who are watching this, maybe they're in their teens or early 20s, they wanna get started at a young age. They realize they're gonna hit a lot of hurdles. How do they go about getting the confidence boost or feeling comfortable talking with people? Because in the beginning, I don't know if you felt the way that I did, but I was really nervous when I made my first pitches to raise other people's money. I botched most of them. How do you feel comfortable with that conversation?
I think you really have to— with a private money conversation or just like jumping into real estate in general?
Just getting people to take you seriously, whether it's a private investor, whether it's an owner or a real estate agent. How do you get someone to take you seriously if you're in your teens or early 20s?
I think it's just about building more confidence, and I think you build more confidence partially by experience. And so it's like chicken or the egg. Do you do the thing, gain confidence, or do you gain the confidence to do the thing? It's like you kind of have to do both at the same time. In order to like gain the skills, gain the confidence all at once. But the other thing I would say is to surround yourself with other people who are doing the same thing. So if you're in like a corner by yourself and everyone's telling you you're crazy, you're not going to build your confidence. You're going to be scared because everyone's telling you you're crazy. But when I first started, I— that's why I started my Instagram. I didn't know any really real estate investors, and so I was like, okay, I'll just find my friends on Instagram and started messaging people who had 5 doors, 10 doors, 15 doors, and they think I was crazy. They thought I was brave. They thought I was persevering. And so it was a big, like, shift of the people that I was hanging out with. And I think that really gave me the confidence to keep going, because they were like, you're doing the right thing. I know you're coming into hurdle after hurdle, but like, we're proud of you for overcoming it. And that's kind of the mindset that helped me scale, was being in a community that was supportive.
If someone wants to reach out to you because they want to do something that you just mentioned. You used to reach out to people that had 5, 10, 15 units. You've got 31. There's not a lot of 24-year-olds out there that have 31 units. How could people reach you on Instagram?
Hmm, I mean, you can DM me. I am launching a— this is the first place I've announced it— but a community later this year. And so, um, I have a bunch of like different waitlists that you can join if you just go to my Instagram, click the link in my bio, you get all sorts of different information on resources, free and otherwise, that you can use just to use for your own journeys.
And, and what is your Instagram handle?
Oh, Lattes and Lisas. I should have mentioned that. So it's lattes.and.lisas. Well, is there—
we appreciate that. I'm sure a lot of people are going to go check that out. You've got a ridiculously big following on Instagram, so we'll maybe push a couple more people your way. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the young folks that are watching this, nervous about jumping in and investing at a young age?
Ooh, I really would go— just go back to the community. It's— you don't have to join like a paid mentorship or anything if you don't want. If you can just put yourself out there, like, I, you know, I didn't ever think I'd have a big Instagram. I didn't intend for it to happen. It just kind of organically grew. But Changing who I hung out with changed my mindset, which then changed my actions, which then changed my life. And so if you're young, you can— you are the sum of the 5 people that you hang out the most. And so do like a quick audit of who you spend time with, what they value, what their goals are, what their trajectory is, and then ask yourself if that's the circle that you really want to be in.
Love it. Well, thank you so much for joining the channel and, uh, We really appreciate having you on.
Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, see you, YouTube.
