I Traded My Rentals for “Passive” Real Estate (Worth It?)

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Want passive income? We mean truly passive—no tenant phone calls, no toilets, no evictions—just checks sent to your account. This is the dream of every real estate investor, and today’s guest, Chris Lopez, actually achieved it. He did what we preach on every single episode—bought single-family rentals and small multifamily buildings and ran them right—but at some point, he realized the cash flow was too low, and the headaches were too high. So he switched, finding a type of real estate that is truly passive. At one point, Chris’s rental property portfolio was only making him a meager $20 per hour. Doesn’t sound like financial freedom, does it? He dipped his toe into passive investing, invested a little more, then a little more. Now, he’s heavily on the passive side. Chris is on today to show you how to do the same. Got a lot of equity but low cash flow? Turn that rental into bigger, better, and more passive income. Tired of dealing with tenants but still want financial freedom? You can exchange your rentals for a passive income stream. We’re talking about debt funds, value-add syndications, and other passive investments that enable investors to earn more while doing less. Join Chris’s 5-week cohort to learn how to transition from active landlord to passive investor (while multiplying your cash flow). In This Episode We Cover Real estate investments that make double-digit returns (without the work) The one (easy) calculation every investor must perform annually How to vet a passive investment (and the person running it) before you invest Significant economic risks to be aware of before you start passive investing Keep, refinance, or sell? How to know your rental is past its useful period And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1150 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 found a strategy to make his real estate portfolio almost completely passive.
0:05.5	Now he can sit back, reap the benefits, and enjoy the lifestyle of financial freedom that
0:10.5	he wanted to achieve when he first got into real estate.
0:13.5	Let's hear exactly how he did it.
0:24.6	Hey everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets. I've been buying rental properties for more than 15 years, and on this show, we teach you
0:29.3	how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing.
0:33.4	Today's guest on the show is investor Chris Lopez.
0:36.7	Chris was last on the show on episode
0:38.7	662 in 2022, so I wanted to catch up with him and hear how his real estate journey has progressed.
0:46.6	And what I learned is that Chris has moved more of his portfolio into passive investing
0:52.0	during the last few years. Almost a decade into his real estate career, he realized that the return he was getting
0:58.3	on the time it took him to actually acquire and manage his properties was as low as $20 per hour.
1:06.6	So Chris made big changes and redeployed his capital into passive investments that allowed
1:11.3	him to maintain all the benefits of real estate like cash flow, tax advantages, appreciation
1:16.9	without all the hands-on work.
1:19.6	I was really interested to hear how he did this and he has some great advice for how you
1:23.9	can make a similar transition in your own portfolio if you're in a similar situation. So let's bring on Chris. Chris, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thanks for being here again. Dude, I'm glad to be back on the podcast and talk shop with you today, Dave. Yeah, this is going to be a great time. If you guys don't know, Chris, he's been a friend and contributor to Bigger Pockets for a long time. You were on
1:45.2	episode 662, so if you want to know more about him, go back and check that out. But for people
1:50.3	who haven't listened to that episode, maybe let's just start at the beginning here, Chris.
1:54.2	Tell us a little bit about why you got invested, where you were at that point in your life
1:58.9	when you started on this journey. I went to college at Virginia Tech, so Go Hokies, and went there for engineering and military
2:06.4	and realized both of those were not the calling for me in life. And like a lot of people,
	...

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