How I’m Making “Passive” Income with 4 Rentals (Working 9-5!)

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Think you need to be a hands-on landlord, do your own renovations, or sacrifice time with family to invest in real estate? Think again! Today’s guest is making “passive” income and building long-term wealth with just four rentals—without swinging a hammer or fixing a single toilet. In this episode, he’ll share the secrets to a profitable real estate portfolio that virtually runs on autopilot! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! When Mike Buska realized his home state of New Jersey was outside his budget, he turned his attention to a Midwest market hundreds of miles from home. But rather than trying to self-manage rental properties from afar, he poured his time and resources into smart deal analysis and assembling the right team. By committing most of his spare time working on the business rather than in it, he’s been able to scale quickly to four cash-flowing rentals! In this episode, Mike will walk you through the exact steps he took to build a full-fledged real estate business in another part of the country—from picking a market and working with local lenders to creating systems and hiring a property manager you can trust to take care of the day-to-day! In This Episode We Cover Why you DON’T need to quit your nine-to-five to build a profitable rental portfolio How to choose a market that delivers a mix of long-term appreciation and cash flow Building your investing team from scratch (even in a market you’ve never visited!) Why the stability of long-term rentals beats the cash flow upside of short-term rentals Must-have systems and processes to create for each rental property The tax blunder that cut Mike’s projected cash flow in half (and how to avoid it) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-593 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 living proof that you don't need to be handy, quit your 9 to 5, or even live near your properties to build a profitable real estate portfolio.
0:10.7	He started with a single rental, made plenty of mistakes along the way, but use systems and focus to grow his business all while working a full-time job and being there for his family.
0:25.3	Yeah. business all while working a full-time job and being there for his family. Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where we help investors take action and get
0:30.3	their first, second, or next deal. I'm Ashley Care. And I'm at Tony J. Robinson. And if you've
0:36.2	ever thought, man, I'd love to invest
0:38.0	between my job, my family, and everything else going on, I just don't have the time.
0:42.5	Then this episode is for you. Let's give a big warm welcome to our guest, Mike Busca. Mike,
0:47.6	thanks for joining us today, brother. Thanks for having me. So, Mike, your first property was a single
0:52.1	family house in Warren, Michigan, which you've called your training wheels.
0:57.3	How did you even find that deal while you're living in New Jersey and what made you feel confident enough to actually move forward?
1:05.6	That deal was brought to me as kind of a pocket.
1:10.0	I'm going to call it a pocket listing. It wasn't really
1:11.6	a pocket listing, but hadn't hit the market yet. And it was through my agent at the time.
1:17.7	I, through bigger pockets, found a local brokerage that kind of markets themselves as beyond
1:26.4	investor friendly. They really seem to work like their bread
1:28.5	and butter is working with investors.
1:31.2	And that was far in a way the biggest confidence boost because of just the level of detail
1:36.4	they would give as far as breakdowns on deals and anything they'd ever send you.
1:41.5	It was super detail oriented as far as the cash flow and the
1:45.4	capex and the maintenance and they would actually break it down like an investor would,
1:48.6	not just like an agent saying, here's a house, you do the work. And this deal was an off-market
1:55.1	deal until one of their clients, I guess, was looking to sell soon. And before they listed,
	...

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