Scaling my rental portfolio

[Harold Soto]

Hi everyone, 

I live in the Raleigh area and am somewhat new to real estate investing. I purchased a SFH in Clayton, NC back in 2022 and I've had long term tenants in there. I then purchased another SFH in Franklinton, NC using funds from a HELOC on my primary home and I have long term tenants in there as well. I closed on a SFH in Goldsboro yesterday using a hard money lender. This one needs some work but not much and already has tenants in place. I plan on refinancing in a few months and hope to pull about $40k worth of equity out of it.

I also have friends that own some properties in Paducah, KY. I had never heard of Paducah or even been to Kentucky, but their properties have been cash flowing really well so I bought a small duplex from them in March of this year and then 2 SFHs last week. I've gotten to to the point where I have some reserves in case things go wrong with maintenance, loss of occupancy, etc. but not as much as I'd like. I plan on re-building my emergency fund before purchasing more, but my question for the more experienced investors is how have you scaled? I know that the BRRRR method is a good way to do it, but are there other ways to buy properties that don't involve having 20% cash? Even the hard money lender I used for a recent purchase required me to have 20% because I'm a newer investor.

Would love to hear how you all have gone about it.