{"id":188470,"date":"2026-07-02T12:28:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?p=188470"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:28:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T18:28:53","slug":"if-i-had-to-start-over-in-real-estate-today-id-do-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/if-i-had-to-start-over-in-real-estate-today-id-do-this","title":{"rendered":"If I Had to Start Over in Real Estate Today, I\u2019d Do This"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 22, I went to work for a <\/span>hard money<\/span> lender doing <\/span>purchase-rehab<\/span> loans.<\/span> I bought my first rental property at 24, which kicked off a decade of active real estate investing before I accepted how badly I\u2019d bungled my early investments and unloaded all of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

By my late 30s, I\u2019d wiped the slate clean. My early losses and later wins offset one another, and I did end up starting over from scratch. <\/span>After that, I <\/span>managed to go<\/span> from <\/span>nothing to $1 million in under <\/span>seven<\/span> years<\/span><\/a> despite a modest household income.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This<\/span> is all to say this isn\u2019t just a theoretical exercise for me. So, knowing everything I know today after 23 years in real estate, how would I start over today?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d House Hack for \u201cFree Housing\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n

When I bought my first home, I rented out the other bedroom to a housemate I met on Craigslist. To this day, she and her now-husband are two of my closest friends. <\/span>At one point, we spent a week in northern Italy <\/span>together<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, I was in my early 30s at the time and single. Today, I\u2019m married with a daughter\u2014and I\u2019m still looking at buying a two-unit home to <\/span>house hack<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you can knock out your housing payment by having renters pay your entire mortgage, you can <\/span>supercharge your savings rate<\/span><\/a>. And that means building wealth extraordinarily fast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know, because I spent 10 years <\/span>living overseas<\/span><\/a> with free housing, which helped us invest huge amounts each month even with a middling household income.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Plus, house hacking gives you a first taste of rental investing and landlording. I discovered that I hated the constant hassles with contractors, tenants, property managers, the permit office, city inspectors, tax assessors, and lenders. But I refused to learn any lessons the easy way and had to learn them the hard way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully, you can do better than I did in that regard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d Start Passive, Not Active<\/span><\/h2>\n

Active investing requires dozens of micro-skill sets. A few include:<\/span><\/p>\n