First, let me say that real estate sales is a great profession with unlimited earning potential and you have the ability to create your own "pension" with contractual recurring income with rents with your own properties or supplement your income with rehab projects on your own fix-and-flip properties. 

I supplement those with STR bookings to fill in the gaps.

Even for realtors — especially for realtors — this is a moment to diversify how you serve and how you earn.More broadly, with nearly half the economy now operating in some form of gig or alternative work, it’s simply smart to know what other earning avenues exist — whether that’s side income, supplemental income, or something more scalable over time.When big life shakeups happen, the most common question I get is simple: How do I plug in quickly?

Since I’m approaching retirement age, my goal is to develop a portfolio that provides supplemental income and equity.I live in San Francisco, so I’ll be starting out smaller by looking into properties in my home state of Louisiana that I can rehab and hold as LTRs, or possibly STRs.My plan is to focus exclusively on BRRRR for now, doing everything by the book—specifically, the David Greene ones.

In ten years, it will be worth the same as $748 today.The takeaway is that no matter how many properties you own in a city where rents do not outpace inflation, sooner or later you will be forced to get a job to supplement your declining rental income buying power.How do you select the city?

I actually just posted a topic with deeper thoughts on the supplemental benefits of doing a cost seg study. 

For underwriting always use the conservative of any range.4200 * 0.5 (50% expense/vacancy rule) - $4200 (P&i: 75% LTV, 30 year, cash out refi) = negative $2.1k/month Are you prepared to supplement this brrrr $2.1k/month?

If your focus is flexibility and you only need partial access to equity, a HELOC can serve as a supplemental tool. 

I have seen many investors using real estate to substantially supplement their retirement plans in this way.

I suspect on this property vacancy/expenses will be ~60%.The math$2800 * 0.4 (60% allocated to vacancy/sustained expenses) - $2,663 (P&i) = negative $1,543/month = $18,516/yearAre you prepared to supplement this property over $18k/year?