inspiring interviews with today's top landlords this is the rental income podcast and now

dan lay we've got a great guest on the show today joining me from maryland is rich levin and rich

has a great story i i would give you a little tease about his story but let's just get right into it

rich welcome to the show why don't you tell us a little tease about his story, but let's just get right into it. Rich, welcome to the show.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started buying rentals.

Hey, Dan, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it was probably around 0405 and the market was heating up.

I was in the tech world. I was kind of an internet marketer and had made a few

dollars and wanted to get into real estate. I was just a little bit gun-shy because the markets

were getting so expensive. I remember looking at stuff for myself in 2002 or 03 and then by

04 is this much more or that much more? So I was trigger shy.

At the same time, I had a good friend of mine who was a realtor whose parents actually moved to Cumberland,

Maryland, which is a slightly distressed town about 100 miles north of Washington, D.C.,

kind of an old coal mining type of town.

And he was telling me the numbers there were really good. He's like, I'm buying properties at 35. an old coal mining type of town.

And he was telling me the numbers there were really good.

He's like, I'm buying properties at 30, 40, 50 grand.

They rent for 800 a month.

They cash flow so good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I went with him up there and took a look. And it just wasn't for me.

I was a little bit scared of that particular spot. And sure enough,

some of his renters were starting to have distress issues or drug problems or just lower end

of the latter type of problems for rentals. And he said, well, what about Frostburg, Maryland,

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