How to Invest in Real Estate on a Middle-Class Salary ($70K or Less)

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you make a middle-class income ($70,000 or less) per year and want to invest in real estate? This is how you do it. You don’t need a six-figure salary to buy your first rental property and start building generational wealth and early retirement. Dave is a testament to this, buying his first rental with barely any money, zero experience, and working as a waiter. If you’ve got a stable salary and some savings, you’re already leagues ahead of him. Today, we’re showing you how to put that money to work. We used median income and savings data to create a complete middle-class investor plan to get you on the fastest (and safest) path to financial freedom. We’ll walk through three investing strategies anyone in the middle class can use to buy their first rental, define how much money you’ll need saved, what to do if you don’t have enough in the bank, and how to repeat the system to finally retire early with real estate. Stop waiting, start wealth-building. This is how to escape the “middle-class trap” and move up the rungs to financial freedom even if you’re starting with a $70,000/year salary! In This Episode We Cover: The three best real estate investments for a middle-class income earner The “middle-class trap” that most Americans are stuck in (how to escape) Pro tip: How to get more money for your first deal if you don’t have enough How to retire in just a decade with rental property investing (even starting from scratch) The one high-profit, low-money-down, tax-free strategy Dave is using right now! And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1164 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 is how you buy a rental property with a middle-class income.
0:04.1	Are you stuck in the middle-class trap?
0:07.2	You got a good salary.
0:08.3	You're saving where you can.
0:10.2	No frivolous spending.
0:11.6	But you just can't get ahead.
0:13.5	Real estate investing is this unmatched tool for people in the middle-class to gain greater financial security,
0:19.9	to take control of their financial futures,
0:22.4	and to move towards true financial independence. Today, I'm going to tell you the exact
0:27.6	investing strategies that work in 2025 on the middle class.
0:37.2	Hey, everyone, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer, and I'm so glad to have you
0:42.5	here for today's episode. This one is going to be a good one. One of the fun parts of my job
0:47.9	is that people send me a lot of questions about real estate, about the market, about my sandwich
0:52.8	preferences, but one of the things I've been hearing a lot about recently, whether in these exact words
0:59.3	or something similar, is can you get started in real estate investing from a relatively
1:04.8	normal financial background, like a classic, solidly middle-class income and savings.
1:11.2	Can you get into real estate given what are some real affordability challenges in the market
1:17.4	today?
1:18.1	And to me, it's not just can you, which you certainly can, but you absolutely should.
1:24.5	I think real estate investing is an incredible tool, dare I say, the best tool to help
1:31.1	ordinary Americans find a sense of financial security and success. Don't get me wrong,
1:38.1	being middle class is great. It is sort of by very definition where the average American is.
	...

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