How We Found and Funded Our First Rentals (Low Money!)

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One messy, imperfect, low-cash-flow rental property could change your life forever, but maybe not in the way you’d think. No one retires off ONE property, but that first property can provide the education, mindset, and momentum to fuel your second, third, and fourth deals. Today, we’re breaking down our first real estate deals—the ups, the downs, and mistakes we made that YOU should avoid! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! In this episode, we’re winding back the clock and sharing how we got started in real estate. While Ashley invested in her own backyard and found a partner to help fund the deal, Tony invested out of state and managed renovations remotely. You’ll hear how we stabilized the properties, rented them out, and, eventually, sold them for a big payday! Whether you’re new to the world of real estate investing or struggling to take action, this episode has something for you. We’ll share why finding your first deal is more important than finding the “perfect” deal, how to use real estate partnerships to fast-track your investing journey, and what we’d do differently if we were starting over today! In This Episode We Cover How Ashley and Tony found and funded their first real estate deals The secret to managing a successful renovation project from afar Creative ways to buy your first rental property with little money out of pocket How to use the power of partnerships to scale your real estate portfolio Why we ended up selling our first properties (and how much we made!) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-573 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	On this episode of Real Estate Rookie, we are going to be breaking down our very first deals.
0:11.1	Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Care.
0:14.6	And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And today you get to hear the origin story of Tony and Ashley.
0:21.2	So we're both going to break down how we got started and what our deals look like,
0:25.0	what lessons we learned, and maybe what even we do differently.
0:28.2	We were starting over today with that in there as well.
0:30.3	So we'll talk about how we found our deals, how we funded those deals,
0:34.2	how we went through our renovation periods, how we stabilized those assets.
0:37.6	And then hopefully all of our rickies that are listening can get some good lessons learned.
0:41.0	We definitely have some lessons learned to share. That's for sure. So, Tony, I think because your
0:48.0	first deal is kind of famous on the podcast for all of our OG listeners, hearing me stumble
0:53.8	over Freeport, Streeport, Shreveport.
0:57.7	So long when you had your rental property there, let's start with that property, your first
1:03.4	deal. Funny enough, I was actually just back in Shreveport for all of our Rikki's here listening.
1:08.4	I was just back in Shreveport this past weekend because my cousin
1:11.6	got married there. She just so happened to marry a guy who grew up in that city, a small world.
1:17.4	But I drove by that first rental. And I was like, man, this is the place that started at all.
1:22.6	And it was nice to kind of get back there. But in terms of how I found it, I live in California.
1:27.2	I decided to
1:28.3	invest in Shreveport, Louisiana because my mom and my stepdad have briefly lived there after they
1:35.0	retired. My stepdad had some family out there. So they were, you know, I think two years they were out there.
1:39.8	And while I was here visiting them, I was like, man, real estate is really cheap here. And I said,
	...

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