Tiny Investments, Killer Cash Flow, and Starting with Just $12K

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Tiny” investments with BIG upsides? Today’s guest turned a $12,000 down payment (all the money he had) into four rental properties and a unique real estate investing business. After an injury from his time in the Army left Manny Reyna with altered life plans, he had to decide what to do next. He didn’t have much money but wanted to provide for his wife and young son. The best option: use his VA loan to buy a house. With every dollar he had, he bought a home, knowing it could one day be a rental, but little did he know that it would kickstart a very different real estate investing journey. Fast forward a few years later, and Manny has a glamping/tiny house business that he started with just $20,000. This tiny home brings in some respectable cash flow but wasn’t without its struggles. In this episode, we’re going through the big ups (and big downs) of Manny’s journey, from having to literally move a house to bad guests ruining his first short-term rental, installing utilities on completely raw land, and managing his properties from very far away (he’s in Japan right now!). In This Episode We Cover: Why every veteran or active duty military member should use THIS loan to buy a house How to start investing without much money by buying “tiny” investment properties Whether you should hire property management or self-manage your first property Why lowering your rent price is worth it to avoid prolonged vacancies (don’t make Manny’s mistake!) How much it cost Manny to install utilities (electrical, septic, etc.) on a raw land for his glamping properties And So Much More! Links from the Show Ashley's BiggerPockets Profile Tony's BiggerPokckets Profile Join BiggerPockets for FREE Real Estate Rookie Facebook Group Real Estate Rookie YouTube Follow Real Estate Rookie on Instagram Get Casita on Instagram Sign Up for BiggerPockets Momentum 2025 to Supercharge Your Investing This Year Grab the Book, “Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth” Property Manager Finder $11,000/Month with One VERY Unique Rental Property w/Garrett Brown Connect with Manny (00:00) Intro (02:10) First House for $12K Down! (06:00) Hiring Property Management (09:34) I Can't Get Tenants! (10:37) $50K Tiny Homes and Land Investing (16:15) Setting Up Utilities on New Land (21:21) Tiny House Amenities (24:11) Cash Flow and Current Rent (26:37) Tenants Trashed My Property! (29:58) Buying MORE Tiny Homes (33:44) Managing Properties from Abroad (35:09) Connect with Manny! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-518 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Are you looking for out-of-the-box ideas and strategies to find killer cash flow?
0:04.9	Our guests today used a seller financing strategy and a super small investment of money to begin his real estate business that's now generating crazy cash flow.
0:18.1	I'm Ashley Care.
0:19.5	And I'm Tony J. Robinson and welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. And I'm super excited to
0:24.0	welcome to the show, Manny. Maddie, what's up, brother? How are you doing, man?
0:26.7	Hi, Tony. I, Ashley. Thank you for having me. It feels very surreal to be here. So happy
0:31.8	to be on the show. And I appreciate the invite. Yeah, well, we're excited to kind of dig into your story, Manny. So can you give us a
0:38.2	snapshot of your life before real estate investing and kind of what motivated you to actually
0:43.7	want to start investing? I didn't really know anything about finance and real estate until
0:47.7	after I got out of the Army. Before then, I didn't really have, I guess, a pathway, if you will.
0:56.0	A lot of people around me were kind of just kind of like skating by almost and didn't
1:00.5	really feel like they had a plan.
1:01.8	And I was kind of the same, to be honest.
1:03.8	So I joined the Army a little bit later when I was like 24.
1:07.4	And that's kind of what catapulted me into this real estate career pretty much by complete accident
1:12.7	too so how did how did that accident occur what was the thing that kind of made that like light
1:18.8	ball click like i need to do this yeah so i was in the army from uh 2018 to uh 22 um while i was in the army from 2018 to 2022. While I was in the army, I would, so I was a medic, right? So I was a
1:33.4	medic, so I would be out a lot like on mission and stuff. And a lot of the time as medics,
1:41.2	we don't really do much unless somebody gets hurt. So I would have a lot of
1:46.1	downtime for what it's worth. And in that downtime, I would read as many books I could about
1:51.9	business, about real estate, about finance. Obviously, I'd listen to Bigger Pockets podcast too,
1:58.3	to try to get like my business acumen up, if you will. I got hurt in 2021
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BiggerPockets, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BiggerPockets and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.