We Bought Our First Rentals with Almost No Money (Here’s How We Did It)

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Your first real estate deal doesn’t need to be a home run. If it gives you a little cash flow and the confidence to keep going, it’s worth it. Ashley and Tony had very little real estate investing experience and almost no money saved when they found their first rentals, but they took action, and the rest is history. YOU can do the same! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! In this episode, Ashley and Tony are breaking down their very first real estate deals, step by step. They talk about everything from building their buy boxes and analyzing rental properties to funding their deals with help from real estate partners and local banks. Of course, you’ll learn what went right, but you’ll also hear about some of the rookie challenges they had to overcome. Their first deals weren’t perfect, but they didn’t need to be. These properties gave them the knowledge, skills, and experience to scale their real estate portfolios. Copy their rookie blueprint and you’ll be buying your first, second, and third rental properties in no time! In This Episode We Cover How Ashley and Tony found and funded their first real estate deals How to buy a rental property (step by step) without a big bank account Low-money-down financing options you probably haven’t heard of Matching your buy box with your investing strategy and long-term goals How to manage and complete a home renovation project in a different market And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-644 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	Today, we are talking about our very first deals.
0:03.8	Tony and I are going to break down how we implemented action as rookie investors.
0:09.6	That's right.
0:10.1	Now, both of our first deals happened a while ago, but there's still lessons to be learned about how we found them, how we finance them, the lessons that we learned.
0:17.8	And the goal is that you guys can take our first deals and use it as
0:21.1	motivation to get your first.
0:27.5	This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Care. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And with that,
0:33.4	let's take a trip down memory lane and get into the stories of how Ashley and I both got started.
0:39.5	So there's two things we'll talk about here.
0:41.3	We'll talk about prior to close and then we'll talk about post-close what happened after that.
0:45.9	So the first thing we want to talk about is market selection.
0:49.3	So drum roll, Ash, how did you choose your first market?
0:53.3	I was a property manager in a market,
0:56.7	and so I decided to invest in that market because I was already managing properties there.
1:02.7	I knew what I could rent them out for. I also had gone to high school in that town, so I knew
1:07.9	the streets. I knew the area. And that made me very comfortable.
1:12.4	I have to be completely honest. I didn't even know about out of state investing or even think
1:19.0	about another market. I just, this was the one that I knew. And I just thought, if I'm going to do
1:24.6	this, this is the only place possible in the world. Yeah.
1:29.4	Me is a lot different, right?
1:31.6	I mean, so you essentially invested in your backyard.
1:36.2	I went into a market I really didn't know much about.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

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.