Bigger Isn’t Always Better: Lessons from a Painful Investment With Max Emory (Ep 542)

Rental Income Podcast With Dan Lane

Rental Income Podcast

Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 836 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Emory was crushing it with the BRRRR strategy on duplexes. His system was working, steady cash flow, solid equity gains, and growing confidence as an investor. But like many of us, Max wanted to scale up.

He heard that buying bigger properties would accelerate his success — until it didn’t.

When Max bought a 6-unit and a 3-unit, things started to fall apart. The deals didn’t perform the way he expected, and he ended up losing a lot of money, even having to sell his successful duplexes to cover the losses.

On this episode, Max shares what went right with his duplexes, what went wrong when he tried to go bigger, and the lessons he learned the hard way.

If you’ve ever thought about scaling up your portfolio, you’ll want to hear this story first.

https://rentalincomepodcast.com/episode542

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Transcript

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0:00.0	inspiring interviews with today's top landlords this is the rental income podcast and now dan lane max i want to
0:10.8	figure out what went wrong so you were buying duplexes you were fixing them up renting them out
0:16.0	you were making money everything was going great but then you decided to go bigger. You bought some
0:23.9	bigger properties and ended up losing those duplexes. What happened? You know, we decided we wanted
0:30.4	to get out of our comfort zone. We were doing the birth strategy with the duplexes. It was working
0:34.8	like a charm. But we decided to purchase a six unit and a
0:39.2	triplex kind of to add to the portfolio and try to run the same strategy with. And yeah,
0:45.6	lots of things went wrong with those two properties, primarily the six unit. And so,
0:52.2	so yeah, that's kind of like high level my experience in the real estate
0:58.6	investing space. Today on the podcast, we're going to see if we can figure out what went wrong.
1:03.1	Did Max make some mistakes or is this just a case of bad luck? I also want to figure out how
1:09.5	making some mistakes on a six unit and a three unit can
1:13.9	lead to you losing so much money that you have to sell off a bunch of duplexes.
1:20.0	Joining us on the podcast today is Max Emery, who invests in South Carolina.
1:25.5	We'll take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We'll come right back
1:28.9	and we'll talk to Max. Are you thinking about investing in rental properties, but maybe you don't
1:34.2	know where to start? My friends at Mid-South homebuyers make it simple. For over 23 years,
1:41.2	they've been selling fully renovated turnkey rental properties in Memphis and Little Rock.
1:46.9	We're talking new roofs, plumbing, electric kitchens, bathrooms.
1:51.4	Everything is brand new and done right.
1:54.0	And here's the best part.
1:55.7	Every property comes with a well-qualified tenant in place before you close.
	...

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