I Built a $12K/Month Rental Portfolio While Working 9-5

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After a fateful encounter with a real estate investor on vacation, Pratik Shah's eyes were opened to the possibilities of real estate investing. Now, just eight years later, he has a rental property portfolio producing $12,000 per month in pure profit. Even better, he accomplished it all while working a 9-to-5 job, buying rental properties on the side, and managing them from afar. No creative financing strategies, no off-market deal hunting, just picking the right properties in the right markets. Pratik's secret to a six-figure passive income stream in under a decade? Move markets when deals no longer make sense. Pratik has switched investing markets three times now, going where the cash flow is and the prices make sense. This has helped him grow his real estate portfolio while other investors complain that prices in their markets are too high. The proof that his repeatable strategy works? An income-replacing amount of cash flow every month that could easily give him the financial freedom many of us dream of. Pratik turned a bad tenant who burned down his house into a huge payday, simple networking into rare real estate deals, and a duplex into a portfolio of just under 20 rental units! In This Episode We Cover How Pratik built a $12,000/month passive income stream while working 9-to-5 When it's time to switch real estate investing markets for better opportunities How Pratik made a six-figure win out of a burned-down house No more rentals? Why Pratik is pausing on rental properties for a different strategy Want more off-market deals? Why you need to go to meetups and connect with investors on the BiggerPockets forums! And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1171 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 investor bought his first property less than 10 years ago.
0:03.9	Now, he makes $12,000 per month in net cash flow, even though he lives in a high cost of living area.
0:10.9	This could be you if you just go out there and take that first leap.
0:15.1	Today, we're going to hear his basic, repeatable real estate investing formula that almost anyone can follow to take control
0:22.4	of their financial future.
0:28.6	Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, and the head of real estate investing here at Bigger Pockets,
0:32.7	and on this show, we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate.
0:37.9	Our guest on the show today is Pertique Shah.
0:40.6	He's an investor based in New Jersey, and Pertique discovered real estate investing and
0:45.0	bought his first property in 2017 when he wanted a way to use the earnings that he got
0:51.4	from his W-2 to generate additional wealth and some passive income.
0:56.4	And that is still his philosophy eight years later, work a day job, save money, and buy a new
1:02.4	property when the time is right. That approach has helped him grow to almost 20 units in eight
1:08.1	years, spread between three different markets. And today we're going to
1:12.3	hear the lessons Prateek learn from overcoming a very difficult tenant situation with his first
1:17.6	property, how he got comfortable investing outside the expensive market where he lives,
1:22.7	and why keeping his day job has allowed him to scale even more quickly. Let's bring on Prateek.
1:29.0	Prateek, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
1:32.4	Thanks for having me, Dave. Yes, it's going to be a good time. Let's just jump right into it.
1:36.2	Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background how you first got into real estate.
1:40.5	Sure. So I'm a pharmacist by training, live in Jersey. I got into real estate. I was actually
1:46.5	on vacation with my wife in Italy, and we met an investor on a boat to Capri. And we're just
	...

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