rewrite this title From Homeless to Homeowner with a 7-Bedroom Rental Property

Ashley:Today’s guest was sleeping in an empty box truck with his friend’s eviction boxes piled around him one week before closing on a seven bedroom house.

Tony:And not only did they almost lose the deal mid-contract because their lender messed up, they had to switch to FHA, cut down trees themselves before they were approved, and almost had their closing reversed after signing.

Ashley:Now the three of them are living in the property, paying about 450 a month each and projecting over a thousand dollars in monthly cash flow when they move out.

Tony:If you’re young or if you’re broke or if you think, I can’t afford real estate, this episode is for you.

Ashley:This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr.

Tony:And I’m Tony J. Robinson and Isaac. Welcome to the Showber. I’m excited to have you on, man.

Isaac:Hey guys, glad to be here. Huge fan.

Ashley:Well, Isaac, take us back to the week before closing on your investment property. You were sleeping in a box truck, your partner just got evicted and you’re launching another business. So what is actually happening at this point in time?

Isaac:Yeah, it was pretty busy. It was pretty crazy that week. We had a lot going on. Yeah, we decided to switch to FHA, and so we had to conform to the FHA requirements, which meant we had to go cut down some trees at the property and do some painting all before we knew if our financing was approved. It’s one of the situations where we had to really go out on a limb to enable ourselves to even have a chance at the property. And that’s how we were thinking about it.

Ashley:What was the financing you were trying to do before the FHA loan?

Isaac:Yeah, so we had one lender and he gave us a pre-approval pretty early. We’d only talked to him for a couple weeks and we were telling him about this house. We wanted to go buy a seven bed, five bath, and he was like, “Yeah, you guys are approved. You’re all set.” Which felt a little bit early. Our finances were kind of all over the place, but we were excited to hear that. So we got under contract and we were still deciding between FHA and conventional. And then a little further along, it became super clear that FHA was the way to go.

Ashley:What were some of those deciding factors between the two? Was it the lower down payment? Were you getting a better interest rate?

Isaac:The down payment wasn’t the biggest deal. 3.5 compared to 5%, we were just going as low down as possible. But with all the fees and the rates, it actually came out to three or $400 a month difference on the payment, the monthly payment. So we decided to go with the FHA mainly because of that.

Tony:Isaac, just one question that pops out to me because you said that the deal almost fell apart because of your lender. And you said, “Hey, it was a little shocking that everything was moving so quickly.” I do think that that’s a more common than it should be experience for a lot of people looking to buy a home where they go talk to a lender, the lender promises them everything under the sky, everything under the sun. And then when it gets close to the closing table, they’re like, “Actually, this isn’t going to work because of X, Y, and Z.” So I have a question for, before I say that, I guess my point to everyone that’s listening is when you’re working with a lender, don’t ask them, “Can you give me a loan on this property?” Because that’s like asking a car salesman, is today a good day to buy a car.It’s always a good day to buy a car. A better question is, how many of these specific types of loans have you written in the last year? Or what percentage of your book of business is this specific type of loan? And if they’re like, “I maybe write one of these or underwrite one of these or sell one of these loans once every couple of years,” versus, “Oh yeah, 90% of my client base is the type of loan that you’re working on. ” Those are two very, very different experiences. And I know that from firsthand experience because I had a deal that I almost lost. I think we were less than three weeks out from closing. I think it was like 18 days out from closing. And then my lender came back to me and said, “Hey, actually I can’t close this deal for you. ” And I had to scramble to go find another lender who could actually get it done in that timeframe.So it’s super important to not only understand can they write this loan or can they give you this loan, but what level of experience and expertise do they have with it? So for you, what did they say when they called? Did they give you a reason? What was the reason they couldn’t actually get the loan done?

Isaac:Yeah, great questions to ask. I think there was a lot of factors. We had a lot of 1099 income and a lot of tips between the three of us, and so it’s all kind of hard to show on paper. But when he called me, he was just like, “Hey, I know you guys wanted the 450. We can only approve you for 380. I don’t know what to tell you. ” And so that was kind of all he said. And I was like, “Oh, okay. So what do we do? ” And he’s like, “I’m sorry, man.” And we’re under contract at that point. And so I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy.” So we ended up going with the lender that our real estate agent recommended, which hindsight, we should have did that from the very beginning.

Tony:Where’d you find the initial lender? Where did that person come from?

Isaac:I was on Google searching, first result.

Ashley:Been there, done that for many things. Actually, a plumber today.

Isaac:I feel like that’s one thing that as a rookie I think is good to know is everybody in the process wants to talk to you and sometimes they’re a little too eager, but if you’re worried about, “Oh, is it worth the time of day for this agent or this lender?” They’ll talk to you, man. They’ll approve you, even if they’re not sure about it. But not always. But I feel like that can be a good thing is people are excited to talk to you, but you obviously got to make sure that everything’s on the up and up.

Tony:So one piece that we started to talk about in the intro, but I didn’t get the final answer to is what was going on with the box truck? Why were you sleeping in a box truck? How did this story lead to that moment?

Isaac:Yeah, so I’ve been working on a box truck for a while. I’m trying to build a house in the back of a box truck and then go drive around the country. Oh,

Ashley:Like a camper van or something or like a schooly. Yeah.

Isaac:Yeah, doing the van life. Yeah. So I was in the process of getting that all set up and I actually moved out of my place to move into my truck, but it wasn’t going great. I was mostly just crashing with my girlfriend and then we kind of split the week of. And so that left me just in a truck.

Ashley:I feel like this is a country song, the beginning of lyrics.

Isaac:Yeah. And then my partner was evicted, so I had a couch and a bunch of books and DVDs. It was a crazy week.

Tony:But the deal ends up closing. And I guess what motivated you at that point, or maybe prior to that point, Isaac, to even think about trying to buy real estate? Because I mean, it sounds like you didn’t have an abundance of cash going into this, right? You were crashing on couches, your friend had just got evicted. So it wasn’t maybe these big piles of cash that someone would think is necessary to actually go out and get a first deal, but you guys somehow found a way. But I guess what was this about? Was it more about trying to save on money or to save on rent? Or what was the genesis of this idea and what made you believe that you could actually do it?

Isaac:I didn’t realize this till I was living in the house for a couple months, but two years ago, I was done paying rent. I hated paying rent in kind of in any way, shape or form, just feels like your money’s not working for you. It’s just disappearing every month. And at one point when I was working a different job, I was paying half of my income to my rent and I was getting nothing out of it. And so I just wanted to do anything I could to get away from paying rent. And so now I’m in a situation where I pay 450 a month and I’m poised to get every dollar out that I put in. Pretty much all the interest is paid by our tenants. And so I can feel good about paying my mortgage now because I’ll get it back. I might as well be putting my rent payment in a bank account, which is one of the huge benefits of real estate.So that was the big motivator where I was just done paying rent.

Ashley:How did you guys structure this deal? Did all three of you go on individually as partners? Did you guys have any kind of written contract or agreement for this deal?

Isaac:Yeah. So we bought this house in June. In March, together we three of us bought a cargo van. I just saw it on Facebook Marketplace and I got my friends. We all split it. So we went three ways on a cargo van. We had some business ideas with it. We ended up doing a soda truck. It’s big in Utah. I’m sure Tony knows. But so because of that, we formed an LLC and we had a contract of how to handle the truck, the van. And so ownership of that kind of led us organize into making a bigger purchase. And when we bought the house, we obviously drew up another agreement as to how we were going to operate with that.

Ashley:I think that’s a really important piece though, that you guys actually started with something smaller before just jumping into a $450,000 loan together, is being able to test out your partnership with something smaller and see how that goes before investing yourself into something bigger.

Isaac:Yeah, totally. It makes you feel a lot more confident going in that you like working with each other and you know each other.

Ashley:Well, Isaac, we have to take a short break, but when we come back, we want to hear more about your story. We’ll be right back. Okay. And we are back with Isaac who partnered with two of his friends to purchase their seven bedroom house. So Isaac, now that you’ve got your loan approved, you’ve had your week of living in the box truck and now it’s closing time. So did you need to do any rehab or anything on this property before you moved in or while you lived there?

Isaac:Not really. It’s been pretty easy so far. We had a couple things, like small things, and we actually had a leak in our back room, which you guys know about. Leaks is a pain. So we had to tear down some drywall for that and put it back up. And we were just doing all that ourselves, but other than that, it’s been pretty much unchanged from when we bought it. It was a single family was living in here, and so they kept it pretty well maintained, so we haven’t had to drop a lot on renovation.

Tony:And then what was your total out- of-pocket cost to get into the deal?

Isaac:Yeah. For each partner, it was like $6,500, 6,500, which is a lot less than I thought it would be to buy half a million dollar house.

Tony:Yeah. But I mean, even all together, 6,000 … There’s three of you guys?

Ashley:Yep. Yeah.

Tony:So we’re talking about $19,500 across the three of you guys to buy a seven bedroom home.That’s a pretty good trade. And so I mean, there’s seven bedrooms, only three of you guys. So what’s happening with the other four bedrooms right now?

Isaac:Yeah, so we got three of our friends to be our tenants. And so we have three guys renting from us. We’re everything legit, got a lease in place. It’s important to make sure you’re doing everything, even among friends to make sure there’s paper behind it all. But yeah, we’re renting out three of the rooms. It gets pretty crowded with seven out of seven rooms. So one of them is just an office and I think two of our guys use the office. And so …

Tony:Man, you combine a couple of strategies here, right? You have the partnership strategy of getting together with some other folks to acquire the property. Then there’s the house hacking component of, “Hey, we’re going to rent out the extra space,” but then you also layered on, we’re going to rent out each room individually. So we got room rentals, house hacking, partnerships, all coming together in one deal, which man, talk about being scrappy. I think one of the questions though that a lot of folks might have is the sacrifice maybe that comes along with sharing your space with so many people. How has that experience been for you? We have a friend in the podcast, his name is Craig Krolop, and I always bring him on when we talk about house hacking because his first deal, his first house hack, he was sleeping on the couch. He bought, I don’t know, it was like a four or five bedroom and to maximize the revenue, he was sleeping on the couch and renting out all of the four or five bedrooms.Do you feel like you’re in that position or just what’s it been for you so far going through this process?

Isaac:Yeah, totally. It’s been pretty good for us because we’re just a bunch of 20 somethings. And so we’ve all been living with roommates for the last seven years. And so it hasn’t been a big adjustment for us. Most of the guys that live here, I’ve either lived with before or they’ve been my good friends for a while. And so for us, it wasn’t a big deal at all. But yeah, I love those stories of people who buy a whole house and they just live in the garage and rent it all out. I get stoked on those just because it’s like just maximizing the space and-

Ashley:Yeah, Isaac, you’re not doing enough. You got to be living in the box truck in the driveway,

Isaac:Man.That’s the goal. Yeah. I want to get a house with a big backyard, park the truck back there and rent out the whole house.

Ashley:Actually, the living flip I’m doing right now has an RV hookup outside too.

Tony:I can’t remember which guest it was. We definitely interviewed someone who did something similar to that, but they had a camper van or an RV and a bunch of land and they would stay in the camper van and they would, I think they were short-term renting or maybe midterm renting out the main house, but they would stay in the camper van. And like, man, what a great way to really drive some extra revenue through your property.

Ashley:Isaac, let’s break down the actual numbers on this property. So what was the … And did you find this deal in the MLS? We didn’t even talk about that.

Isaac:Yeah. Yeah, it was on Zillow.

Ashley:And how much was it listed for?

Isaac:Yeah, so I’ll kind of go day by day more or less, but we found it, we saw the listing in April and it was listed at 470,000. It was already down from 570. It was going down month by month. I could see the price history. And so my eyes just lit up like, “Oh, wow, they need to get rid of this thing.” And so we were tossing around the Zillow link in our group chat and thinking about it. And so I just set up a tour. We went and checked it out and at 470, it was pretty expensive. While we were talking about it and thinking about it, the price goes down to 460 and I’m like, “Man, they needed to sell this thing. We got to get on this. ” And then we were still reaching out to some lenders, talking about different things, and it goes down to 450 and we were like, “Oh, man.” And so we finally got approved and we made an offer at 428.We’re seeing it go down, and so we wanted to see if we could … Yeah. But it was like, I guess everybody’s getting the Zillow emails that the price goes down. And so when we put our in our offer, there was three or four offers at the same time. And so we ended up going back up to 450, which was the asking price at the time. And then they said, “Give us your highest and best offer.” And we went to 4575. So that was the official purchase price when we got it under contract.

Ashley:And what was the date of this? What year was this?

Isaac:2025 this past year, we got it under contract at the end of May. That’s just how long it took to get financing and everything figured out. And then that set us up for a closing at the end of June.

Tony:And with three different partners in the mix, Isaac, how do you guys actually come to a decision on, yes, pull the trigger versus no? Was it everyone just kind of felt good about it? Was there some healthy debate? Was there, “Hey, we’re going to take a vote in majority rules.” How did you guys go about actually saying, first, this is the property, but then second, this is the number that actually makes sense for us.

Isaac:So as far as the property, you never want to get too attached to a deal, but this one was kind of a fluke, a seven bed, five bathroom. And when we were looking at different houses, this was kind of the only one that penciled out for what we wanted to do. And so we looked at three other houses, but for me, this was always the one that we wanted to get. And so talking about when it was time to pull the trigger, this is maybe a tip for the rookies out there is if you have an agent and you’re deciding on whether or not to make an offer, if you ask me, make the offer because you can always back out before your deadlines. And so one of my partners was feeling he was a little hesitant to put down an offer on a $450,000 house.And I got on a phone call with him, “Hey man, this is no commitment. It’s a great house. It’s what we want. If we need it back out, we can. ” And so that gave us a lot of confidence to move forward with it.

Ashley:What did your mortgage payment end up being after you did 3.5% down?

Isaac:So our mortgage payment is like 3,150.

Ashley:And that’s with escrow, your property taxes and insurance too?

Isaac:Yeah, that’s P-I-T-I.

Tony:What’s your interest rate, Isaac?

Isaac:We got 5.99.

Tony:Wow, that’s pretty good in 2025.

Isaac:Yeah, I was kind of surprised.

Tony:So hold on, let’s pause there for a second. I mean, because sub 6% in 2025 wasn’t super common. I don’t know if you guys just got lucky when it dipped or was there some sort of bonus or promotion? What bank did you go with? Was it a local bank, a regional bank, a credit union?

Isaac:They’re not like a local bank. They’re not like a little branch. They’re a lending company.

Ashley:So like a brokerage?

Isaac:Yeah.

Ashley:Did you pay any points, do you know, to get the interest rate down?

Isaac:I don’t think we did. They gave us a closing credit is what they call it, I think. They credited our account towards our closing costs, which I think we could have paid that and not taken the credit and gotten our rate down a little bit more. But maybe one factor is like when we were looking at the conventional versus FHA, the conventional was a lot more expensive and I think that was into the six percentage. But when we went to FHA, it was, yeah, we got it to 5.99.

Tony:Ashley, I haven’t seen anyone close, at least from the conversations I’ve had aside from like, I think one person I know used some weird Chase thing, he had a lot of money with them, but most of the investors that I know and I talk with, I don’t know anyone that closed below 6% in 2025. Do you know anyone or even-

Ashley:No. Darrell was doing a loan for a VA loan and usually you can get a lower interest rate. And he started the loan process in December and that was a 6.125%, but me have to negotiate since things have changed from them and we still haven’t closed. So now we’re locked in at a 5.99% even right now.

Isaac:Yeah, I don’t know. We’re also owner occupied, so that could be a factor. And yeah, in June, I don’t know. I guess we got lucky.

Ashley:So what do you guys end up charging for rent from your tenants and then how much are you each contributing every month yourselves, if any?

Isaac:Yeah, we get about 700 per person on average per room, and that’s maybe a little bit more than we were hoping we could get. One of our rooms has like … Well, I guess let me take it back. We have five full bathrooms, and so we’re able to charge a little bit more because two of our renters have their own bathroom and they actually have their own basement, both of them. It’s a weird house. Yeah, we have two separate basements and they don’t even share a wall. It’s crazy, but …

Ashley:That is terrible. I like trying to imagine. So is the access to the basement in their bedroom or they just get that access to the basement?

Isaac:The house is laid out. It’s got a living area with a living room and a kitchen and two bedrooms. Then you go up a half flight of stairs and there’s a bedroom with an en-suite, and then there’s a master bedroom with an en suite. And then below that is one basement, and then below the first living area is one basement. And they’ve all got their own doors and everything. So yeah, it’s a weird house. Anyways, I think your first question was, we get about 700 per room and with three guys, we pull in about 2,100 from rental income, which leaves the owners with about, what is that? Yeah, 1050 and then utilities and all that.

Tony:How much were you paying in rent for your loss place, Isaac?

Isaac:In our last place, I was paying like 850.

Tony:So you cut your rent or your living expenses in half, and you got to own the place that you were actually paying money toward every single month.That’s a big win.

Isaac:Yeah, it was a huge improvement for us. It was great.

Ashley:So what about utilities? How are you guys handling that? Do you split it between the six of you or how does that end up working out? And even common area stuff, are you sharing food in the kitchen that you’re sharing costs, paper towels, things like that? How does that all work in the co-living situation?

Isaac:Yeah, so we split utilities six ways, and so that’s on top of what we get for the rent, but it’s not too bad with six people and just a single family house. Normally, for most of the time we’ve been living here, it’s been like 60 bucks per person. In the winter, it’s been closer to 100 or 110 bucks per person. As far as sharing spaces, most of us have our own bathrooms, which is super nice. And so that’s not as big a deal. The paper towels, a little bit of a contentious thing. That is another thing are-

Ashley:They’re expensive.

Isaac:They are. They are. Got to get that bounty, but we only have one kitchen in our house. For six people, that’s a little bit tight. But I don’t know, it’s pretty workable because most of us have just a mini fridge or a personal fridge. And so that’s probably the biggest bottleneck that we’ve been able to just fix that way.

Tony:And just to clarify, the consumables like the toilet paper paper towels, that’s something that you guys all put in for together as well?

Isaac:We’re all friends. We just switch off. We just text in the group chat, “Hey, I got it this time. Somebody else get it next time.”

Ashley:Tony, we should start doing that with our kids like, “Hey.”

Tony:You

Ashley:Guys got savings accounts. It’s your turn to pick up the toilet paper today.

Tony:Well, Isaac, I want to get more into your story and specifically around some of those challenges you saw with the FHA inspection, because I think that is one of the things that detracts people or deters people from wanting to go toward an FHA loan. And we’ll cover that right after a quick word from today’s show sponsors. All right. We were back here with Isaac Mann and Isaac before the break shared with us how we found the deal, how he structured with his partners, how he’s combining partnerships and co-living and all these different aspects. But one of the things we didn’t touch on earlier was the actual FHA inspection. And there are a lot of pros to the FHA loan, one being that you have the ability to get them with a very low down payment. They’re a little bit more flexible on DTI and things of that nature than a conventional loan.But one of the big challenges or one of the big detractors of an FHA loan is the inspection process. What was the inspection process like for you on buying this deal? And was it all a pretty reasonable request or I’ve heard horror stories about the things that FHA has asked folks to do. So what was that experience like for you?

Isaac:Yeah, they gave us a laundry list of things to do. So we had our inspector come out and do a regular home inspection, which was good. And then I think they sent out an appraiser as well. It was kind of just in that process. They also sent out an FHA inspector and we’d heard like, “Oh, if there’s any peeling paint, I feel like that’s the big one.” And so we expected a couple things and they gave us … So they did the inspection and then they gave us a list of there can’t be any trees touching the house and there can’t be … They gave us a few spots that we needed to touch up some paint and they gave us … In the back, part of the gutter was hanging off a little bit. They said we needed to repair that. And so it was pretty reasonable.Nothing was … Oh, they also told us we had to fix something in the bathroom. We just had to repaint with some mildew resisting paint. So we hired a handyman for that. That wasn’t a big deal. But the biggest one was the trees. The house, it wasn’t super overgrown, but there were definitely trees all around it. And I thought it looked fine, but after they mentioned that, we came back and we were looking at it and the trees were in the house onto the eaves and onto the gutters. And so I think it was a good thing, but we asked the sellers, “Hey, do you guys want to cut down all your trees?” And they were like, “Nope, we’ve got backup offers.” But they said we could come and do it if we wanted. And so we were like, “Okay.” So we showed up-

Ashley:So you guys actually cut down the trees?

Isaac:Yeah. That week was crazy. So I used to do events and me and both of my partners were going to go work an event from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and our financing deadline was Friday. And so on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’m getting ready to leave on this job and we’re going over during the day with a chainsaw and clippers and a ladder. We’re climbing up on the roof of these people’s house, and the seller’s great. They’re just super nice. They’re like, “Yeah, man, do your thing.” They bought us pizza one day.

Ashley:I just think about cutting down a tree. What if you get hurt, first of all, on their property or the tree … My mind just immediately goes to liability with anything, but that’s great that they didn’t make you hire a licensed tree trimmer.

Isaac:They weren’t huge trees. I’m not talking like a enormous trees. They were probably six inches around type of thing.

Tony:Man, I was thinking the big oak trees that grout and covering shade and all that stuff.

Isaac:Nothing too crazy. Yeah. But yeah, we had to … Yeah, six or seven of them. And we got up on the roof and chopped off the first 10 feet and then we chopped off the next 10 feet. And so it wasn’t too bad, but it was a bit of a crazy week because we had to go and do that. And we didn’t know if we were approved for the house yet. That was the thing because we were still dealing with all that financing and stuff. And so it was a situation where we could have gave them a tree trimming and then found out the next day that we weren’t going to get the house. So we kind of just went for it and it worked out.

Ashley:Well, Isaac, what’s next for you? Do you have any future plans for this house to hold it for so many years? Do you plan on buying another property with your same partners? What’s the plan going forward?

Isaac:We are not planning on selling this house anytime super soon. When all the partners move out, I think we’ll get a either property management company or just manage it ourselves, continue to manage it ourselves from afar. And then we are expecting to get 1,200 cash flow when we do that. And so actually one of our guys just moved out 30, 40 days ago. So we filled his room with another renter. So right now it’s two owners and four tenants, and he’s actually getting cash flow.

Ashley:Oh, for that room. That’s actually a good way to structure it too, so that you’re not stuck living there because you own it. If you wanted to move out, you’ve got the income from your room.That’s cool. Yeah.

Isaac:Yeah. You guys book the first time home buyers really emphasizes the exit strategies. And I actually didn’t read that until a few months after I bought the house, but I think going into it with the exit strategies in mind is super important. And so yeah, we’ve got it set up so any of the owners can move out and once their room is filled, they’ll just start taking a dividend basically. And so when we are all moved out, we all expect to take around 350 a month. And so probably just hold it for a while. As far as looking forward, we are touring a few more houses on Friday. We’ll see how that goes.I think this one is a good situation and we won’t be able to do an FHA again, but I’d love to get a couple more houses in this area and see what we can do. But I’ve actually been looking around … Utah is a little bit tough. The median house price here is like over 400, which is kind of hard to get into, but I was looking in Buffalo actually. I feel like that place is great. I saw one of your guys’ reels and it was like Binghamton, New York. And so I was looking around Bington. I was like, wow, this is cheap compared to Utah.

Ashley:The thing you have to … I don’t know about Utah property taxes, but that’s the one thing that will get you in New York is very high property taxes. So that’s one thing to look out for.

Isaac:Yeah. There’s a couple of things in New York, like the certificate of occupancy.

Ashley:Well, the tenant landlord laws are very tenant friendly too. Yeah.

Isaac:Yeah. So yeah, lots of stuff to think about. I love thinking about real estate. I feel like before … We can cut this out maybe, but before we got this place, when I was living in my box truck, I was just always talking about, dude, we got to get a duplex and live in one half of it. And yeah, I remember my friend said to me, he was like, dude, you talk about money a lot for someone who’s practically homeless. I was like, huh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I guess I hadn’t thought about

Tony:That. You got to speak it into existence, man. You got to speak it into existence.

Ashley:Well, Isaac, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information about your story?

Isaac:Send me an email, manmakeslc.com. Yeah, I’d love to chat.

Tony:And that’s man with two Ns, right?

Isaac:Yep. M-A-N-N-M-A-K-E-S [email protected].

Ashley:Well, thank you rookie listeners for tuning in today. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.