Ashley:
Most rookies think you need savings, family money, or years of climbing the corporate ladder before you can buy your first rental. Today’s guest is 22 years old, moved from Kenya just nine years ago and just closed on a Baltimore duplex with $0 out of her own pocket.

Tony:
Crystal Lloyd pulled this off all while working a full-time job, commuting two plus hours per day and she stacked first time home buying grants with a house hack and then rented out the second bedroom inside of her own unit. The day she closed, 97% of her mortgage was already…

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

Tony:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson and let’s give a big warm welcome to Crystal. Crystal, thank you for joining us on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast.

Crystal:
Thank you guys both so much for having me. It’s really an honor to be on the show that’s taught me so much.

Ashley:
And Crystal, you were at BP Con last year, right? Volunteering?

Crystal:
Yes, I was. That’s actually how I got to the…

Ashley:
Okay, yes. I knew you looked so familiar, but I just have this phobia of saying to people like, “I know you, right?”

Tony:
And that’s actually where we met. Yeah, I met Crystal there at BP Cons like, “We got to get you on the podcast.” And here we are as come full circle.

Ashley:
Yes, yes. So finally. Geez, Tony, it only took you like six months.

Tony:
Well, as you’ll hear in the story actually, she was still working on that first deal, so we have to get through the first deal first.

Ashley:
Okay. So Crystal, I think for anyone listening that’s ever had a long commute, this is going to hit home your episode for them. You just spent your entire summer traveling and then suddenly you’re two hours into your car every single morning on your commute. What was the moment that you started asking yourself, “What kind of life do I actually want here?”

Crystal:
I think it was mainly just the shock of going from full-time freedom as you mentioned over the summer into the daily grind. The commute kind of just forced me to confront the life trajectory that I was on. And so the transition from commuting from being… Sorry, could I start that one over?

Ashley:
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, whenever you want.

Crystal:
It was the shock of going from full-time freedom into the daily grind of working from nine to five. The commute kind of forced me to confront the life trajectory that I was on and that transition kind of shocked me because I had just spent the summer traveling and suddenly I was up to waking up really early in the morning and commuting over two hours a day and then working eight hours before driving home again and after about a week of that constant schedule I just remember thinking that I don’t know if I could do that exact lifestyle forever.

Tony:
I think first kudos to you, Crystal, because I mean, you said it took you a week that’s pretty fast. I think a lot of people who are listening are maybe like a decade or so older than you and they’re still kind of coming to terms with that. So I think kudos to you for that. But just to clarify, so was it two hours one way or two hours total?

Crystal:
It was two hours total. It was about like an hour 10 each way.

Tony:
And for a lot of people, right, they get in their car whether it’s one hour, one way. I mean, still that’s a lot of time in the car one way. People use their car a ton differently. Some people listen to music, some people listen to nothing, but I’m curious, once you had that realization of like, “Man, I’m seven days into this whole regular job thing. I don’t know if this is what I want. ” What did you actually start searching for? Because again, there’s a lot of financial information out there, but you turned your car and flat your education on wheel. So what did you search for? What did you land on as you started that journey?

Crystal:
So it actually started kind of over the summer. At first, I was just consuming a lot of general personal finance content on YouTube, but then as soon as I started driving and realizing how much of my life was being eaten up by this drive, I wanted to continue learning more. And so I ended up typing in real estate investing into Spotify and that’s how I found BiggerPockets. And then eventually the Real Estate Rookie podcast and for months, every commute became kind of like my mobile university and I was just constantly listening to podcasts and audiobooks and eventually listened to Brandon Turner and Joshua Dorkin’s books where they explained the cow hacking and that was the first time that real estate kind of really clicked for me because I realized that it actually might be a way for me to move closer to work, eliminating that commute.
And I would also get to own a home and start building that portfolio.

Ashley:
And now Crystal, you took the leap to actually go to BPCON last year too. So what kind of pushed you over the edge to actually sign up and go there and what was different about you on that flight home than when you were actually going to BP?

Crystal:
I could talk about that conference for hours on end. It was just so amazing and I just really loved being there so much. I was really terrified going into it, but I left feeling really empowered and just really supported by everybody that I met there and just finally feeling like I’d found what I was passionate about because all throughout college studying architecture and I tried out a bunch of different majors, but none of them really felt like my passion. So that feeling was really nice feeling like real estate was what I had been looking for. But yeah, I was honestly terrified to go alone because I thought that everyone there would be way ahead of me in their investment journeys, which they were, but it turned out to be kind of the exact opposite. Everybody was really nice and not intimidating at all and just really welcoming and encouraging.
And for the first time, real estate investing kind of stopped feeling like a distant thing that people online did and started feeling really attainable. But yeah, BPCon completely changed my trajectory because of the relationships that I built there and those relationships eventually led me into local meetups and then more connections and then eventually found my realtor and my first deal. So the conference changed everything for me.

Ashley:
Now, Crystal, when I met you, it was like literally I’d been at BPCon I think for like an hour and I was going through and it hadn’t even started yet, but you were helping stuff the bags I think right in one of the big expo halls. How did you get to do that? How was your first time ever at BPCon? You just started learning about real estate investing. How were you able to get to be there and see the behind the scenes and get to meet everyone that worked at BP and how did that happen?

Crystal:
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about this, but basically I started texting people that were going to the conference, the people that were organizing it and I knew that I wanted to save every single dollar that I could. So I didn’t want to spend the like 700 plus dollars on a ticket. And so I just kind of asked them like, “Hey, do you have any volunteer positions in exchange for a ticket? I’ll do literally anything that you want just to be in the rooms.” So one person said no, and then I reached out to another person and they eventually said yes. So luckily that worked out and that’s how I ended up getting to volunteer, meet everybody there and just be at the conference, which was nice.

Ashley:
That is so awesome.

Tony:
Yeah. And I think one of the parts of this story that resonates with me the most is the fact that you didn’t know anyone there. You didn’t have any preexisting relationships like you went to this conference by yourself, if I’m understanding that correctly. There’s so many people listening, Crystal, who maybe like the idea of going to a big event like BPCon and hopefully having an experience like what you had, but they’re not going because they’re too afraid to go by themselves. So what would you say to those people who are listening right now who are fearful of going into a 2000 person conference and not knowing anyone?

Crystal:
I think one thing that has always helped me is that people kind of perceive you the way that you put yourself out. If nobody there knows you, you can kind of just fake it till you make it. You can be whoever you want to be over there and they’ll interpret you the way that you’re presenting yourself. And the more human to human conversations that I was having, it was just really easy to talk to anybody there. So just kind of forcing yourself past the comfort zone and letting the rest kind of play out as it’s supposed to.

Tony:
One last question on that. Do you remember who you met first, like the person that you started hanging out with, if you remember that interaction, how did you two connect? Who opened up that dialogue? And I know this is super specific, but the reason I ask this is because that’s oftentimes, I think the scariest part for people going into a big conference like this is like, how am I going to talk to someone? How am I going to meet someone? What do I say? It’s like you’re in junior high all over again and you’re looking for the cool kids table. So what was that experience for you in meeting that first person and building that initial relationship?

Ashley:
And this is still true to me. I dragged Tony to a finance conference with me just in last September because I didn’t know anyone and didn’t want to go by myself.

Crystal:
It was actually somebody that I met off of the podcast. She interviewed with you guys a while back. I’m not sure what episode she did, but Tori, she lives in Florida. She does real estate investing with her dad and does flips. But I listened to her episode and her story resonated me for one reason or another and I ended up reaching out to her on Instagram and just texting back and forth. I found out that she would be at the conference on my way there when she started posting about it on her Instagram and I was super excited and just organized the time to meet with her. But it was just nice to know that there was at least one familiar face in the sea of thousands of people.

Tony:
And I think that’s one of the best strategies, right? It’s just like see if you can connect with folks beforehand and build some of that digital connection before you actually get there and reaching out to previous guests is a great way to do that. Now Crystal folks will be reaching out to you before BPCon in Orlando saying, “Hey, are you coming?” So by the time BPCon ended, you knew that you were going to pull the trigger on something, but before we get into the deal itself, just walk us through how you actually defined your buy box because I think a lot of rookies skipped this step, right? They just kind of look at whatever’s on the market. What were you actually willing to wait for?

Crystal:
So I knew pretty early on by reading the book that I mentioned by Joshua Dorkin and Brandon Turner that I wanted a small multifamily property because househacking is what aligned with my goals and the time that I was able to give towards real estate, given the nine to five schedule. And I figured out that I wanted something in a market that I could realistically afford while reducing my housing expenses significantly. So I wanted something near work and near a strong rental demand, especially around universities, which right now I’m located between like three of the major universities in Baltimore. And I tried to stay disciplined and not chase every opportunity that popped up because you guys and a lot of other authors and podcast hosts warn a lot of rookies not to get distracted by shiny object syndrome and just have kind of like a clear buy box that helped me and my agent stay focused throughout the search process.

Ashley:
We’re going to take a quick break, but after the break, Crystal says yes to a deal and we’re going to go over the math that made it work. The grant stack that got her to zero out of pocket and the layer of the house hack most rookies never think about. We’ll be right back after this short break. Okay. Now that we know that Crystal got herself into the rooms and what she was looking for, let’s get into the deal she said yes to. The math here is something most rookies have never seen done. Crystal, take us back to the day where you actually saw this duplex for the first time. Walk us through what you were seeing, what was the property and at what point did you say, “Okay, this one is it? ”

Crystal:
Sure. It’s an updown duplex located in Baltimore, Maryland, and it’s two bedrooms and one bathroom per unit. So the bottom unit already had a tenant, so I inherited a tenant there and he pays 1,299 a month, which just immediately helped the numbers and the property fit almost everything that I had been looking for and it just gave me the ability to live in one unit and rent out the second bedroom in my own unit and that significantly offset the mortgage from day one. I just kind of remember the first time that I came to see the property with my realtor and it looked great to me and looked great to her, but it was the third property that we had looked at and most of all, all of the numbers worked and I just kind of looked at her and we were like, “Okay, now what?
” Because I had not anticipated finding a property so soon after we started looking, I was like, “Am I not supposed to be underwriting 700 properties before this? ” So yeah, it was just really exciting.

Tony:
I was going to ask how many deals did you have to look at, but three, I mean, that’s pretty efficient. Was this just listed on the MLS, Crystal? How did you find this deal?

Crystal:
Yes, it was. So I gave my realtor the buy box that I had just talked about and just mainly mentioned the things that I was super strict about and she put that into the MLS, sent over listings and I would just analyze and run the numbers on all of the properties that she sent my way. But we would only go see the ones that I was fully interested in or the ones that she thought were a good opportunity. So this was one of those three and the third that we looked at.

Tony:
I think for a lot of rookies, Crystal, they show up to their first deal with their finances kind of all over the place, right? They’re not quite sure, but you showed up with no suit and debt, a pretty clean balance sheet. You have some reserves intact. Walk us through how you were actually able to set yourself up financially at a relatively young age, pretty early in your career. How were you able to set yourself up financially before this deal even came along?

Crystal:
So a huge part of this started before I ever even bought the first property, as you mentioned. During college, I worked multiple jobs. I’ve been working ever since I was like 16 and just didn’t stop. And eventually during college, I became a resident assistant, which covered my housing while I held that position, which was really only for a semester. But during college, I would also apply for jobs that allowed me to do my schoolwork while I was on the clock, like front desk jobs at buildings that didn’t really get a lot of traffic on campus so that I could double up on that time. And I was also aggressively saving everything that I made from those jobs and using that money to pay off any student costs or anything and just aggressively applying for scholarships and grants instead of assuming that they weren’t available to me.
And so eventually by graduation, I was able to pay off any of what was left of my student debt and use the savings from working and that gave me kind of like a clean financial foundation before I ever started looking at properties, which was nice.

Ashley:
So now let’s kind of look at the actual funding on this deal because when most people think about closing on their first deal, they think they probably need at least 30 to 40 to $50,000 in cash just sitting around to actually buy your first property. But how did your math work out? Did you have to have this huge down payment and kind of walk us through step by step what your funding looked like?

Crystal:
At first, I thought that it would be like that. And so I was saving aggressively from the moment that I started working. I would save about like 70% of my income, which thank goodness I lived within a drivable distance to work because I could save a lot of that by not paying rent.

Ashley:
70% of your income you were saving?

Crystal:
Yeah.

Ashley:
That is a huge savings rate. That’s awesome. That takes a lot of diligence.

Crystal:
Yeah. My friends would make fun of me because we would go out to eat and I would be choosing something small just that I could still spend the time with them, but I just was not willing to spend my money because I had meal prepped at home. There was no way that I was going to put this goal on hold. But for the math part, I ended up using a conventional loan with like 5% down and combined that with a lot of first time home buyer grants and assistance programs in my area and those helped me cover about 5% of the down payment and closing costs. And so my main out – of-pocket expenses were inspections and due diligence items during that process. And my realtor structured the sale of the property so that the purchase price was actually higher than the seller’s asking price to help the seller walk away from this deal feeling satisfied, but also to help me pay my closing costs, which meant less money out of pocket to closing for me.
My realtor, she’s really amazing. She made the deal work for both the seller and I’s interests. And one thing that I’m really grateful for is that this structure of that sale allowed me to keep my reserves intact after closing because the stabilization costs and all of the unexpected expenses are absolutely real and would’ve been really scary to deal with if I didn’t have those reserves.

Tony:
Crystal, how did you find these additional grants? Were these found through your lender? Were you doing research on your own? Where were these grants coming from? Tell us more about the grants you were able to secure.

Crystal:
It was all hands on deck. I was doing all the research that I could. Just like if anybody mentioned something, I would immediately write it down and go look into it. When I met you at the conference, you mentioned NACA, and so I looked into that until a final point. I would just sign up for all of the first time home buyer classes and they would always mention something there. So I would just compare all of the programs that they had and just using the time in the car to listen to more and more about each of these programs and seeing every idea to an end. I also communicated this with my entire acquisitions team. So all throughout, they were also looking for similar programs for me. So everybody on my team was geared towards the same goal.

Tony:
Do you remember the, I guess A, the amount, but B, the terms of those grants, was it truly just free money? Or like for example, when I bought my first primary residence, we went through this program called CalHAFA, which is the state of California. I think it’s like the, I just looked it up. It’s like the California Housing something Association, but basically they gave me a loan that operated as a silent second mortgage on my property. So it wasn’t my full down payment, but it was a good portion of my down payment was funded through this Cal Half a loan and it was a silent loan so I didn’t have to make any payments on it and only until the original loan was either paid off or refinanced or we didn’t have to make payments on that loan. We ended up refinanced a few years later we paid that off and we don’t have it anymore, but that’s how ours was structured.
So I’m just curious if you recall the actual terms. Is it truly free money or like it’s just a grant that they gave to you or is it like a loan product that you’ll have to pay back at some point?

Crystal:
So it was kind of mixed. We stacked a couple of them. About 8,550 of it was seller credit and then I had a $5,500 grant in there from the lender and then there was also a home buyer grant stacked in there. So the home buyer grant was really the home buyer grant and the grant from my lender were the two free money portions of this, but there was also a 4,477 project reinvest grant and that is going to be like, do you want sale if I ever refinance or sell the house? So that will be the only piece that I have to pay back.

Tony:
It’s incredible. It’s incredible. It makes me think of like, man, have I not been looking for enough grants even for myself? So the funding part makes sense here, Crystal, but I think the other piece that’s important is how you actually layered, not just your kind of funding strategies together, but you also layered the actual real estate strategies together. And I think that’s part of what makes your story unique. Most people hear the word house hack and they just picture a duplex where you live in one side and you rent out the other, which you did do, right? You’re renting out one side, but then you went one layer one step deeper. So walk us through how the roommate inside of your own unit changed the math and the profitability on this first house hack.

Crystal:
Sure. So the tenant in the bottom unit, as I mentioned, pays 1,299 a month and my mortgage is 2,054. So he pays about like 63% of my mortgage, but I kind of wanted to get closer to having most of it paid or even clash flowing. But right now I’m baking even because of the roommate. So when I added in the second bedroom of my own unit, my roommate pays 700 a month. So between the two renters, about 97% of my mortgage is covered now. And so that layered approach is really what changed the math because it just kind of outset my housing. Instead of just offsetting my housing by 63%, I now have 97% of my mortgage covered from the beginning, which was really nice. And it just made me a lot more confident in the property because now I know that when I do move out of this bedroom, I could get similar rents as my roommate pays, which would help me cashflow as soon as I move out.
And so yeah, just adding the roommate layer to this deal made a massive difference, but it’s definitely based on personal preference and I didn’t really need the extra space in my unit. And so since I just graduated college, I was already used to having roommates and it also meant that instead of potentially having to find a place to rent and spending over $1,000 on rent, I’m only spending about like $55 a month out of pocket to cover the other like 3% of the mortgage and paying like half of utilities, which are split down the middle by my roommate and I, because the bottom unit is separately metered. So adding in the roommate changed a lot.

Ashley:
And Crystal, when did you close on this deal? What month?

Crystal:
March 9th.

Ashley:
So March 9th of 2026 and everybody says there’s no deals out there. You can’t cash flow. You’re tactically not cash flowing, I guess, but you’re also living in the property. You’re spending $55 a month to live in a unit that you could potentially rent out for $700, or like you said, you’d have to pay $1,000 to go and rent somewhere else. So that is incredible that from attending BPCON to March 9th, you were able to find a deal and there’s people out there making excuses that they can’t find a deal, but I think you showed how much work you are putting into it, how much research you are doing it. You’re analyzing the deals, you’re sending a buy box to your agent. So many people talk about building out their buy box and stuff like that, but very few people actually send that out to their agent and are having leads sent to them.
I think just all of the little action items that you did just shows how valuable it is to do those next steps. Tony, what does Brandon Turner call that the –

Tony:
Most important next step.

Ashley:
Yeah. Okay. Going to be more obvious.

Crystal:
Yeah. A lot of those next steps were kind of defined out from listening to this podcast. So I’m really thankful to you guys as well because I took notes. I had my phone in my hand and I would take audio notes whenever I was driving. And so just like whenever I would hit the next step and go like, “Okay, what do I do now? I have to keep the ball rolling.” I would just look back and it’s like, “Well, Ashley said this on this day and Tony said this. ” So I always had a good frame of reference because of you two. And then

Tony:
You

Ashley:
Picked what Ashley said and now it’s all like…

Tony:
I wouldn’t disagree with that. But Crystal, you took action, which is incredible, but I also just want to highlight what an incredible story. I mean, you were obviously super tenacious in doing the work, but let’s just think about what you just said. You have this deal where you have now control and ownership and equity and this appreciating asset with virtually $0 out of pocket and you’ve reduced your living expense down to zero. So you’ve got loan pay down that’s happening from your tenants, like 97% of your mortgage is being paid by someone else. So your loan pay down is there. This property will continue to appreciate year over year and it literally costs you nothing but some time and some hard work. Where else can you do that? That is the beauty of real estate investing that I think so many people should be taking advantage of.
So man, I just absolutely love, absolutely love the story here. How did you find the roommate for your actual unit? Was it a friend that you already had or how’d you find that person?

Crystal:
No, I hadn’t met her yet, but the tools that I learned on the podcast with screening tenants kind of made me confident that I could pick a stranger and verify that they were actually safe to move into my house. So I went onto Facebook and I joined a bunch of groups for the universities that are in the surrounding area and luckily I’d just graduated, so I feel like I seemed like a lot less intimidating. So I reached out to a bunch of students that were looking for housing and just kind of told them about the property and told them, “Reach out if you’re interested.” So I sent out about 15 different messages. I pre-screened a couple people and then eventually ended up continuing with just my one roommate and she’s been great so far. What

Tony:
Kind of questions, because I do think that when you’re house hacking in a traditional sense and there’s like walls separating you and your tenant who’s in a different unit, obviously you still want to screen really well, but it’s a different element when you’re in the same unit together. Do you remember, Crystal, what kind of questions you were asking to screen to not only get a sense of this person will be a good tenant, but will this person be a good roommate for me personally? And if she’s a terrible roommate, then we can skip that question. You don’t have to answer that.

Crystal:
She’s been an amazing roommate. I actually have the questions. I could pull those up. So I developed a rental pre-screening questionnaire using obviously the tools that you guys have given me, which is every part of this, but I just basically asked for some basic information, like name, email, phone number, and then asked about when they would want to move in and how long they wanted to occupy the room for. And then I asked about income and employment and what their current employment status is, how much they make per month before taxes and what their source of income is, what their credit score is. And then I moved into the rental history section, asking how many times they’ve been evicted and if they have any prior landlord references. And I took the time to call the past landlords and just verify that all of this information was true and then just asked a bunch of housing fit questions if they’re comfortable living in a shared unit with the owner of the house and if they smoke, which was a really big one for me and if they have any pets and what their reason for moving is and what they’re looking for in their next living space, just a bunch of questions to make sure that we were actually a good fit as roommates.
And so that kind of helped me to weed out a couple of the people that either smoked or would’ve been disqualified for one reason or another.

Tony:
I love the screening portions though. Sounds like you had a really good sense of who this person was. But now with you guys actually living together, how are you divvying up responsibilities? We’ve interviewed some folks who have a cleaning schedule for the folks when they’ve got the co-living strategy kind of going on. It’s like, “Hey, this week it’s Crystal’s turn to clean the bathroom and next week is this person’s turn.” Do you have any sort of mechanisms in place to actually make living together run smoothly like groceries and the household essentials like toilet papers and paper towels? How are you handling the part of actually sharing that space together?

Crystal:
It’s been really nice so far. I added something into the lease about us deciding on a shared set of rules when she moved in, but I’ve kind of held back on doing that because we’ve been just working really well together. She kind of just naturally does some of the chores and I naturally do some of the others. So far it’s been really good, but I do have that part of the lease that allows me to enforce a shared set of rules later on if this system stops working. All

Tony:
Right. Coming up, the part of the story most first time investors don’t see the day she questioned whether she could actually handle all of this and the lesson with a contractor that cost her real money. We’ll get into it after a quick break. All right, this deal closed, the numbers work, the keys are in Crystal’s hand. Now comes the part of the story that most rookies aren’t ready for. The moment you realize you actually have to run this thing. So I’m curious, Crystal, about the lowest points in all of this, because so far the story’s been phenomenal, but I’m sure that there’s some parts that maybe weren’t as glamorous because you’re juggling the full-time job, the two hour commute, the property, the contractors. There’s got to have been a moment where you said, “I don’t know if I can actually handle all of this. ” Walk us through what that day looked like and what got you through it.
So

Crystal:
The hardest part honestly came right after closing. I was juggling having the full-time job, commuting really long, dealing with contractors for any work that needed to be done, like dealing with paperwork, tenants, having to keep up with fitness and trying to learn everything at once and not being able to let anything slip through the cracks because at this point it felt like even if I wanted to put anything on the back burner, I couldn’t because all of this felt like a priority. So there were definitely moments where I questioned whether or not I could handle all of it, but I would stop sometimes and kind of just realize that I was in the middle of exactly what I had been praying for for so long and that once I got through the adjustment period, it would just be easy going forward because I could replicate the same thing and everything would get easier to manage, which it did, thankfully.
And what got me through it was lots of praying first of all and being really grateful that God had given me these opportunities. So just recognizing that I was entrusted with such blessings kind of kept me pushing forward and my family and friends were also really supportive throughout this time. My family especially, they helped me move in and just kind of kept up with all that was happening and celebrated every milestone with me, which was really nice. But looking back, I kind of learned throughout all of this that growth throughout these different transitory stages of life can feel really stressful, not because you’re failing, but because you’re doing something that’s really new and really important and that stress is always worth pushing through because growth can really get really uncomfortable, but your dreams and goals that are on the other side of that are so worth it.

Ashley:
And that is so well said, Crystal. Now during this time you did have a stressful time, like something happened to you with a contractor. So how did you handle that and what actually went wrong with this contractor? So

Crystal:
You know how I mentioned that I was really grateful to have all of my reserves still intact

Tony:
You’re like, “There’s a really for that. Yeah.

Crystal:
This was the part where my pockets were tested and tried. I was in the process of getting the home move in ready for my roommate who was moving in five days from the moment that I realized like this. I realized that the shower was loose and that was a problem because moisture from showering could get into the wall and that leads to a bunch of other issues that I really hope to God never to have to deal with. So I found a contractor through my realtor to come in and fix that. And in the process he found that the hot water heater in the basement was no longer working and also needed to be replaced. And so all that together was a little over a thousand out of pocket, which if I didn’t have my reserves could have gone a lot worse than it eventually did.
But basically I ended up paying the contractor too much upfront because before the work was fully completed and he ghosted me the very second that I put that money out there and hading it finished ceiling off the shower, which was quite possibly the most important part. And so that kind of taught me the very important lesson about structuring my payments carefully because the cost wasn’t really just financial. It was also emotional and time related because fixing mistakes took a lot of energy and more importantly time, which I didn’t have much of seeing as my roommate was moving in a couple days. But anyways, now I’m a lot more intentional about milestone based payments as you guys have taught me and making sure that the work is actually completed before the final payment, no matter how nice and trustworthy the contractor sees.

Tony:
Where did you find that contractor, Crystal?

Crystal:
He was referred to me through my realtor, but she hadn’t personally worked with him. So I reached out to her as soon as he hosted it. I was like, “Hey, have you ever had any issues with such and such?” And she’s like, “No, I’ve never had that happen, but he’s definitely off my list now.” So I think it ended up working out.

Tony:
How’d you finish the job? Did you have to hire someone in to come and do it or was it just like YouTube University to finish it yourself?

Crystal:
YouTube University.

Tony:
Fair enough. It gets the job done. It gets the job done. So Crystal, your why here when it comes to investing in real estate is freedom and impact, right? Being able to be present for a future family, being able to travel, volunteering without being financially constrained. So I guess the last question for you is for a rookie that’s listening to this right now, maybe two hours into their own commute questioning whether any of this is actually worth it. Is it worth it to keep listening to the podcast? Is it worth it to save 70% of your income? Is it worth it to spend the time going to the conferences and making those connections? For this person who’s listening and is questioning those things, what do you want them to take away from your story and from this conversation?

Crystal:
I think the first thing would be that it is 100% worth it. And I think that there’s also just a couple things that I’d want them to be able to take away from this episode. But the biggest thing and something that my mom always told me is that the world is already hard enough without you constantly telling yourself that you can’t do something too, not add to the negative voices. And you don’t need to know everything before getting started. Just start, learn, ask questions, build relationships, research. All of those things are absolutely necessary, but eventually you kind of have to take action, which was something that was drilled into me by listening to all of these podcasts and books. You can only learn so much by listening to other people’s experiences. You kind of have to take that step for yourself. And a second thing is to build a strong foundation with the right team around you.
When I first started out, I was really nervous and didn’t feel prepared. And so I’m really grateful for the team that I had working alongside me throughout all of this and my mentor who I met at the conference last year in Vegas because they all played such unique but really integral roles and see me through this goal and just to be really careful about whose advice you take. A lot of people tried to discourage me from pursuing real estate investing because it had not worked out for them or something or they had heard a bad story, but a lot of them hadn’t actually invested themselves. And so now being on the other side of that, I can say that if I had taken their advice, I would probably be spending a really good chunk of my salary on rent and still feeling really stuck wondering how to break out of the thinking that I’d be tied to the same nine to five schedule for many years to come.
And the last thing would just be that there’s almost always a way forward. And if you can stay resourceful, committed, and willing to keep learning that you can do quite literally anything that you put your mind to.

Ashley:
Crystal, not only real estate investor, but motivational speaker throughout this whole thing. I really, really. But thank you so much for taking the time today to come onto the show to not only share your wisdom, but also to share your journey with real estate investing. We really enjoyed having you on the show. So where can people reach out to you and find out more information about your journey?

Crystal:
Thank you guys so much for having me as well. It’s been really nice speaking with you guys today. Anybody can reach out to me. I’m mostly reachable on Instagram. My Instagram is crystal.loyd with 3Ds at the end. So C-R-Y-S-T-A-L dot L-O-Y-D-D-D.

Ashley:
Well, thank you, Crystal, so much for joining us. Everybody else, thank you for listening. And if you’re not already, make sure you are subscribed to Real Estate Rookie on YouTube. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys next time.