I Started with Just $3,500: How I Bought My First Rental Property

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’ve got little savings but want to buy a rental property. You see so many “no money down” investing strategies, but how do you know you won’t get burned trying them out? If you want to learn how to invest in real estate with no money, the right way, you need to take tips from those who have done it successfully without overleveraging themselves. Today, we’ve got two experts who bought rentals with very little savings and did it the legitimate way. Deandra McDonald went from $5,000 in credit card debt and a $28,000 salary to financial freedom with rentals in just a decade. Dave Meyer (your host!) was waiting tables when he bought his first rental. Both did it without sketchy loans, running up credit card debt, or getting in over their heads—and they started with barely any money. In this episode, we’ll walk through the steps you need to take and strategies you must try to buy real estate with no money. We’ll talk about how to fix your credit and become lendable, improve your income so you have cash reserves, down payment assistance programs that can get you into your first property for under $1,000, and the minimum amount you’ll need to invest safely. No money? No problem. This is the blueprint for buying rentals with little to no money! In This Episode We Cover How to invest in real estate with no money and a lower income Down payment assistance programs that can cover thousands in closing costs The #1 best strategy for beginner real estate investors that requires the least amount of money How to fix your money habits and build saving skills so you’re ready to buy rentals Real estate partnership setups that give you equity in exchange for work What to do when a bank won’t approve your mortgage application And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1192 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	Can you buy real estate with no money? Today, we're talking about how to invest without much
0:05.7	savings. It is possible and getting from your current financial starting point to buying
0:11.0	your first investment property might actually be easier than you think.
0:19.5	Hey everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. I've been investing in rental properties for more than 15 years,
0:24.2	and I'm the head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets. When I started investing, I had almost no
0:30.1	money. I was waiting tables and got my first deal by partnering with three other people
0:34.6	and agreeing to manage the property, even though I had no idea what I was
0:38.3	doing. So it is possible to invest without much cash, but it means you'll need to get creative
0:43.8	and find other resources or skills that you can bring to the table. We're going to deep dive
0:49.1	into all of that today, and joining me to do it is DeAndre McDonald. DeAndra is an investor in Virginia and one of
0:56.2	our most popular guest on this show. She also started when she was not making a lot of money,
1:01.9	only $28,000 per year and had thousands in credit card debt before starting in real estate
1:08.4	and growing a life-changing portfolio. DeAndre and I are going to
1:12.5	talk about how she was eventually able to get funding for properties after getting denied by
1:17.6	multiple lenders, the best investing strategies for people without much starting cash, and what
1:23.1	types of strategies people in this position should consider. DeAndra, welcome to the show.
1:28.5	Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you back. If you all have not
1:33.9	listened to Deandra's full story, definitely go listen to it. It's one of the most fun
1:38.9	interviews we've done this year, episode 1105 from April 7th. But maybe you could just provide us a brief recap, DeAndre,
1:47.2	before we get into today's topic. Tell us a little bit about your financial position when you
1:52.4	first started investing, what you were doing, and maybe how you got to your first property.
1:56.8	Yeah, so I started as a house hacker. Right after I graduated college, it took me a while to get a job, I finally got one as a lab tech making $28,000 a year. And what really pushed me into homeownership wasn't that I wasn't making a lot of money. It was my first rent increase notification. And getting that was really like, wow, no matter how low I get my rent, no matter how small I live,
	...

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