She Bought Rentals And Everything Went Wrong With Anna Mendoza (Ep 565)
Rental Income Podcast With Dan Lane
Rental Income Podcast
4.8 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Living in an expensive market, the $60,000 she had saved wasn’t enough to buy anything locally. But in other parts of the country, that same money could buy multiple rental properties. It seemed like a great way to build cash flow and start growing a portfolio.
Instead, things quickly went off the rails. What looked like a promising investment turned into a nightmare.
Anna dealt with unreliable contractors, break-ins, unexpected repairs, and tenants that required far more time and money than she anticipated. The expenses piled up and the cash flow she expected never materialized.
On this episode, Anna walks through exactly what she bought, why the properties didn’t perform the way she expected, and the hard lessons she learned from trying to manage rentals from a distance.
But the story has a happy ending. Anna eventually sold those properties and used the money to pivot into a completely different strategy.
Instead of chasing cash flow in distant markets, she began buying properties closer to home and focusing on appreciation. That shift changed everything.
Today Anna has built a portfolio that has made her millions in real estate. We also talk about how she’s able to come up with the down payments for more expensive properties and the strategy she’s using to continue growing her portfolio today.
https://rentalincomepodcast.com/episode565
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | inspiring interviews with today's top landlords this is the rental income podcast and now dan lane anna you made a couple of |
| 0:11.0 | real estate investments that didn't work out that great what happened hi there dan yes i was investing out of state |
| 0:18.6 | long distance and i did that because I thought it was a better |
| 0:22.4 | deal for me since it was cheaper than my market in San Diego. |
| 0:25.9 | But I learned quickly that that was definitely not the case. |
| 0:30.1 | I have had, you know, appliances stolen on me twice, burglaries. |
| 0:35.8 | I've had cops called on my, uh, my tenants, nightmare tenants, um, |
| 0:41.8 | that called me all the time for every little problem. And just not being able to go there and see, |
| 0:47.9 | and vet my, my contractors myself and see their work. I've had them lie to me, take my money, not show up when |
| 0:56.6 | they said they did. So yeah, it's just been quite a nightmare. On top of that, I invested in an area |
| 1:03.9 | which I was not familiar with that was historical. And I had to deal with the historical committee that ended up taking almost like a year and a half for me to get the permits cleared. |
| 1:18.3 | So yeah, it was quite a nightmare for me. |
| 1:20.8 | Anna had a horrible experience buying rental properties. Basically anything that could have gone wrong went wrong. |
| 1:29.5 | But this story actually has a happy ending. Anna ended up selling those properties starting from scratch and building a |
| 1:35.6 | new rental portfolio. And she's actually made millions of dollars by doing this. So on the show today, |
| 1:41.6 | we're going to figure out what went wrong and what's going |
| 1:45.3 | right with Anna's investing today. Joining us on the show today from San Diego is Anna Mendoza. |
| 1:52.1 | We'll take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We'll come right back and we'll talk to Anna. |
| 1:56.6 | Billion dollar investors don't typically park their cash in high yield savings accounts. |
| 2:02.3 | Instead, they often use one of the premier passive income strategies for institutional |
| 2:07.2 | investors, private credit. Now the same passive income strategy is available to investors |
| 2:14.0 | of all sizes thanks to the Fundrise income fund, which has more than $600 million |
... |
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