How This 22-Year-Old Bought a Duplex with 5% Down and Zero Experience

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

He had no money, no experience, and no idea how to renovate a house... but he still pulled off two real estate deals by 22. Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Today’s guest, Steele Evangelisti, shares how he went from a 16-year-old stock dabbler to a full-time W2 employee buying a duplex right out of college. With just a 5% down conventional loan, $3K in seller assist, and pure hustle, Steele pulled off a house hack/live-in flip hybrid that came with a leaky roof, an electrical nightmare, and a totaled car…all within the first month. But he didn’t stop there. Steele saved aggressively, moved back in with his parents, and six months later had enough to buy property #2 using the same creative financing tactics. Whether you’re looking to buy your first property or scale without big money, Steele’s blueprint is proof that you don’t need perfect timing or deep pockets to get started. In This Episode We Cover: Buying your first property with just 5% down and seller assist How to handle costly surprises like leaks, bad wiring, and tenant turnovers Using YouTube (and now AI!) to self-renovate without experience Saving $30K fast, even on a starter salary How to confidently push past fear and analysis paralysis And So Much More! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	One of the fastest ways to get into real estate is house hacking a small multifamily property.
0:05.7	But what if your first house hack also came with a leaking porch, a $3,000 electrical issue,
0:13.0	and a car breaking down right after closing?
0:15.9	Our guest today, Steel Evangelistee, didn't let any of that stop him.
0:19.9	At just 22 years old, he's two deals deep and
0:22.8	showing a whole lot of hustle. This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Care.
0:33.0	And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And Steele, welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Thank you for
0:37.4	joining us today,
0:38.0	brother. Hey, what's going on, guys? How are you? We're so excited to have you on today, Steele.
0:42.8	Why don't you start with telling us a little bit of your background and what your life was like
0:47.0	before you started investing in real estate? Yeah, I think that's a great place to start. So when I was about 15 or 16 years old, I had roughly $1,000
0:56.4	worth of bonds saved up for my grandparents because they were super old school. And every birthday,
1:02.2	every Christmas, they would give me these bonds. And once I turn 16, I'm like, okay, I'm going to
1:07.1	cash it in, took all the money from that. I ended up being right over $1,000 and put it into a bunch of stocks.
1:13.7	And like at the time I was just putting in the hype stocks, a bunch of Apple, bunch of Tesla, whatever.
1:20.4	You can do what's called a custodial account, which is like where your parent allows you to buy stocks pretty much on their behalf. And that was like my first introduction into investing.
1:31.7	Long story short, I play around with the stocks for a little while, got introduced to real
1:35.7	estate and said, dang, this is actually a pretty sweet gig.
1:39.3	Once I got into it a little bit, I couldn't stop it.
1:43.3	You know, everyone caused it the real estate bug. Once I
1:45.6	had the bug, I could not get rid of it. And the last five or six years, it's been crazy. The amount
1:51.1	that I've learned, the amount that I've like experienced has been absolutely nuts. And it's,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 1 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BiggerPockets, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BiggerPockets and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.