Building Long-Term Wealth With Just 3 Properties (Less = More!)

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Think you need a dozen rental properties to create generational wealth or retire with real estate? Today’s guest is proof that less is often more, especially if you’re not in a rush to scale your portfolio and aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty. Want his personal playbook? Then don’t go anywhere! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Matthew Morneault didn’t consider himself a real estate investor when he bought his first property, a former meth house plagued with all kinds of issues. But learning how to renovate on the fly, renting the property out, and eventually selling it for a profit gave him the knowledge and confidence to go out and find his next investment. Today, he has three profitable properties—including one that brings in over $90,000 in annual revenue! As you’re about to hear, Matthew has targeted value-add opportunities with bigger margins, refinanced his mortgage at the right time, and pivoted to other investing strategies when things haven’t worked out. In this episode, he’ll show you how to build a modest portfolio that catapults you toward your investing goals! In This Episode We Cover How Matthew brings in $90,000 in annual revenue from just ONE rental property Turning a “messy” first investment into three profitable properties How to identify the best value-add opportunities for any investment property Little-known VA loan hacks you can use to grow your real estate portfolio The hidden value of building relationships with local credit unions And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-581 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	Today's guest is an active duty U.S. Army soldier who bought his first property at 21 and didn't even realize he was a real estate investor.
0:09.1	From a meth house disaster to a lakehouse short-term rental portfolio, Matthew Moreno's story shows how to take a messy first deal and turn it into momentum, even while moving every two years for the army.
0:26.0	This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast, and I'm Ashley Care.
0:29.6	And I'm Tony J. Robinson.
0:31.4	And Matthew, welcome to the show, brother.
0:33.0	Thanks so much for joining us today.
0:34.3	Thank you.
0:34.9	It's an honor to be here.
0:36.1	So, Matthew, take us back to your first deal,
0:38.6	and I'm specifically interested in what happened with that house in Oregon. Well, that was in 2006.
0:45.3	So I was in a really bad car accident when I was 18, and I got a settlement, and I paid my
0:50.2	reconstructed surgeon to rebuild my face, and I had about 20 grand left over.
0:55.6	Those were the HGTV days before streaming and I don't know, everybody was like,
1:00.1	you need buy, you know, everybody, it was like buying a house was the thing.
1:03.9	You're supposed to buy a house and I was like 20 years old.
1:07.2	I was in college and I was paying rent.
1:10.6	So I'm a simple guy. It's like, yeah,
1:12.3	paying rent seems bad. Buying a house seems good. Let's do it. I bought like a one and a half
1:17.5	bedroom house that probably the other half of the house had burned down. The attic had been
1:22.7	converted into a bedroom built in the 40s. I had a really terrible realtor. She like, I think really
1:28.7	gave me bad bad advice all around. I had a really, I was a subprime mortgage holder.
1:34.7	If you guys remember that, um, interest only. Uh, and I, I gave him student like scholarship, um, documentation and he used that as income.
	...

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