8 Rentals on a Teacher’s Salary by “Reverse BRRRR-ing”

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Within three years, this high school teacher bought eight rental units, giving him an extra $1,600/month in pure cash flow and helping him pay for his child’s future. Through a combination of affordable markets, “reverse BRRRRs,” and beginner-friendly renovations, Ben Vidovich has built financial freedom that middle-class America rarely achieves. With his first child on the way, Ben knew he needed something more than the retirement account he was throwing his money into. As a high school teacher living in one of America’s most expensive markets, buying a rental property nearby was far from possible, and Ben wasn’t sitting on piles of cash. So, Ben hunted down “affordable” markets across America, took the leap, and bought his first rental property, a duplex, for under $200,000. Three years later, he’s perfected the reverse BRRRR strategy to scale quickly, using local banks to fund renovations and rehabs on multiple homes, all from thousands of miles away. Now, he’s starting to buy these houses in cash for better passive income and the ability to leverage them to buy even more rentals. This is a repeatable, middle-class investing strategy anyone can follow, and Ben is actively using it in 2025! In This Episode We Cover How to invest in real estate on a middle-class salary (while living in a pricey market) The “reverse BRRRR” strategy that you can use to put $0 down on renovated rentals Inherited tenants: worth it for the instant cash flow or problem for your portfolio? Beginner-friendly renovations that rookie investors can perform from out of state Is it worth it to buy rental properties in cash? How Ben uses paid-off properties as leverage to scale faster And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1213 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This investor has acquired eight units in only three years.
0:03.6	Now, he's cash flowing $1,600 per month and is on a path to financial freedom that would
0:09.7	have been impossible with only his middle-class day job.
0:12.9	He didn't start with a huge pile of cash or any other built-in advantages.
0:17.8	Some of his Midwest properties cost less than 100 grand, and he's buying and managing
0:22.9	them all from his home in California thousands of miles away. This is a simple, repeatable investing
0:29.6	formula, but it yields life-changing results.
0:37.2	Hey everyone, I'm Dave Meyer.
0:39.2	Been investing in rental properties for more than 15 years.
0:42.4	I'm the head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets.
0:45.1	Today's show is an investor story with Ben Vidovich from Santa Clara, California.
0:50.7	Ben is a high school teacher, and he's passionate about that job, but he knew it didn't
0:55.4	provide the financial upside that he was looking for. So in 2022, he bought his first rental
1:01.1	property in Indiana. Since then, he's scaled a portfolio by repeating the same investing
1:06.8	formula, buy affordable homes, fix him up a little bit, then rent them out. There's no tricks
1:12.2	here, there's no gimmicks, just a proven path to a better financial future for Ben and his family.
1:17.8	During today's episode, we're going to discuss how Ben found the confidence to buy his first
1:22.6	investment property in an out-of-state market he'd never visited, why he's comfortable
1:27.4	buying properties with
1:28.6	existing tenants in place, and how he decided putting more money down could actually
1:33.9	accelerate his timeline for purchasing additional units. Let's bring on Ben. Ben, thanks for being
1:40.7	here. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Great to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me on.
	...

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