Stuck in San Diego, Bryan knew he wanted to invest, but not in the million-dollar houses around him. The best bet? Move to a cheaper market (Arizona), buy a home, and try to invest there. A HELOC-funded house flip with a friend turned into a six-figure renovation, but they both walked away unscathed. After returning to San Diego with his newborn son, Bryan was determined to invest somewhere affordable, scalable, and profitable.
Henry Washington:
You can build a salary replacing rental portfolio all from your computer. That’s what Brian Field did, buying rental properties throughout the United States in markets that made the most cash flow. His portfolio of less than 10 rentals produces over $65,000 per year in pure profit, and he never even saw most of his properties before he bought them. Brian wanted something that could help replace his nine to five job in the healthcare industry, but buying rentals in San Diego was not going to cut it when the average home price is a million dollars. So he went where the deals made sense. Arizona, South Dakota, Arkansas, Virginia, he’s done long-term rentals, short-term rentals, and even seller financing to buy six units with just $53,000 in cash. The best part, he did it all while working from home. The key to his income producing rental property portfolio, a type of financing that many homeowners in America have access to right now.
Let’s hear all about that and more as we jump right in. What’s going on everybody? I’m Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today’s guest is investor Brian Field from San Diego. Let’s bring him on. Mr. Brian Field, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.
Bryan Field:
Thanks, Henry. Good to see you. Happy to be here, man.
Henry Washington:
Why don’t you give us some background? Tell us what you were doing before you got into real estate.
Bryan Field:
Yeah. Before real estate, I’ve had a pretty lengthy career in healthcare staffing, so placing travel nurses across the country. And so I’ve had probably about a 10-year career with two or three different companies doing that. And it’s certainly gotten me in a position to be able to buy real estate and make that leap.
Henry Washington:
Is that how you got exposure to real estate investing, like placing travel nurses in other people’s investments or was there something else that kind of gave you the bug?
Bryan Field:
The bug was wanting to get out of the general nine to five workhorse and find alternative investments, avenues, things to get me out of W2 income and corporate employment. So I stumbled across bigger pockets on online rabbit holes and found an interest for real estate. And so I started my learning journey, all the podcast books, et cetera, while I was still working there. And then once I started investing, I put two and two together like, “Hey, maybe this travel nursing could be a good niche for what I’m doing.”
Henry Washington:
What year was it when you started learning and researching?
Bryan Field:
2017, 2018, and a couple years down the road we bought a primary house and used that to fund everything else that we’ve got.
Henry Washington:
Did you buy that primary with investing in mind? Did you plan on it always being an investment down the road or did it just happen that way?
Bryan Field:
Well, the story with that was my wife and I were living in San Diego, priced out of the market based on what we were earning. We had some friends in Arizona, so talking to him about, “Hey, I’m interested in real estate investing. You’re interested in real estate investing.” We could work remote with our W-2 jobs. So we actually were like, “Let’s go plant roots there. Let’s buy a primary house. And then from there we can sort of pick our neighborhoods and work with our friend out there to flip houses, buy rentals.” So we ended up buying that primary to go out there purposefully for real estate investing.
Henry Washington:
Tell us about the numbers on that. What’d that first primary look like?
Bryan Field:
Yeah, so we bought it for 395. We had been making offers really sight unseen from San Diego with a realtor. People were waiving all the contingencies, all cash. We were up against a lot, but we managed to find one. So we bought it for 395. We waived appraisal and inspection. And yeah, it was a nice starter home, three bed, two bath, 1800 square feet, 1990 build, so pretty good shape.
Henry Washington:
It’s interesting hearing stories like this because man, you essentially uprooted your life, moved to a different state, bought a house almost sight unseen. You never saw it in person. You saw pictures and videos and you did it all with real estate investing in mind. So once you got to your house and you got settled, how long did it take you before you actually bought an actual investment?
Bryan Field:
It took about a year of us being there before we bought our first investment. So while we had that whole year to save up our cash, we were also in this incredible equity ride that the Arizona Phoenix market saw. So our house a year later appraised for 550. So my wife and I and our friend and his wife, we both pulled out HELOCs on our primary residence. At the time, we could do 90 or 95% of the value. So we had these massive, each of us had like a hundred thousand in HELOC funds that we could access. And so with that, we combined forces and we bought a flip.
Henry Washington:
Awesome. Yeah. So tell us about that deal. What’d you pay for it? What did you have to put into it?
Bryan Field:
Yeah, so we bought it for 345. It was on the other side of Phoenix in a little town called Sun City. So while we were investing in our own backyard, it was still an hour away from us. We did a full gut renovation. We turned an office into a bedroom, new flooring, new kitchen, new bathrooms, picked out all the tiles. All in all, we probably spent 130,000 in renovation and holding costs. So it was a pretty big one.
Henry Washington:
Were there problems or mishaps that popped up that really taught you something along the way? Because that’s a big renovation for a new investor.
Bryan Field:
Yeah, I think there were certainly some missteps. So one thing that comes to mind is the idea we had versus the idea the contractor had. We wanted to be very hands on and choose all of our finishes and pick out the color coordination of how everything looked. And our contractor was builder grade, was going to do very basic, basic, basic. And so when we started getting into change orders, that’s when we started butting heads and we didn’t expect to have any change orders. We though, okay, here’s the price that he quoted us and we could go pick within that price. And that just didn’t turn out to be the case at all. So lesson learned to make sure that you find a contractor and that you guys are both in understanding of the type of work that you’re going to be doing. So yeah, lesson learned there, but certainly a fun one to go for our first deal.
Henry Washington:
135. So I assume that’s not what you originally budgeted. Did you go over budget because of the change orders or did you end up pretty close?
Bryan Field:
Oh, we went way over budget. We were probably in the 75, 80,000 range. Renovation probably ended around 90 to 100 and then the extra holding costs, utilities, things like that. So definitely went way over what we had envisioned.
Henry Washington:
Kind of what you’re talking about with the managing the expectations with the contractor, honestly, that’s a simple communication issue. We make a lot of assumptions as investors and contractors also make assumptions. And so I think the more open communication that investors can have with their contractors on the front end, the better you’re going to be. Usually when I work with a new contractor, those are a lot of things that we’re talking about on the front end. As they’re giving me a bid, I expect and tell them, “Hey, I need you to tell me what your assumptions are with this bid. Is this bid assuming we’re using a certain type of flooring or a certain type of tile? Is there a variance for me to change it?” And when I do the scope of work, it might say LVP flooring. And then at the end of that, I’ll put who’s responsible for picking the materials.
So I’ll put my name, LVP Flooring, Henry. That means I’m going to pick the flooring. And so I can at least have a budget to go pick what I want based on that bid. So that way I know if I pick something that’s more expensive, then my bid is going up from the beginning. But man, it saved me a lot of time and effort just putting the who’s responsible for making the selection because yes, I want to pick what style floors we use. I don’t want to pick the drywall we use. I need you to go pick that. So having that conversation on the front side really helps clear a lot of those things up. All right. Those are great lessons to learn on a first deal because you got to remember, your first deal isn’t just about profitability. Your first deal is about learning how to do this business.
So you paid 345, you ended up at about 130 on the renovation. What’d you sell for?
Bryan Field:
Just under 500 at 497.
Henry Washington:
And if my math is right, it shows that you were profitable, maybe not hugely profitable, but profitable. So what were you able to walk away with net profit?
Bryan Field:
It was around 25,000 split between my partner and I, and we just kept it and sat on it and we’re hoping to roll it into another deal.
Henry Washington:
All right. First flip, I’m going to call it a success, man. Made a little bit of money, learned a whole lot because that’s a big renovation to pull off. Ended up walking away with some cash. So I’d love to dive into what the next step looked like right after the break. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast with investor Brian Field, who just told us about his successful first flip with a pretty hefty renovation price tag. But you made money, you learned a lot along the way. So I’m assuming you wanted to repeat that process, but what actually happened next?
Bryan Field:
Yeah. So as life happens, my wife and I had our son and we ended up going back to San Diego where we were still priced out of the market. So the good news is we ended up renting out that primary. So we technically had our first rental after the flip and we were cash flowing like 750 bucks because we had –
Henry Washington:
That interest rate.
Bryan Field:
Yeah. And rents were skyrocketing because people were not able to buy houses because of all the competition. So moved back to San Diego, had a rental in Arizona and our course of action sort of led us to out of state where we could buy some more cash flowing assets at a little bit lower of a price point. And so we started researching where to buy and ended up getting our next couple of rentals that way.
Henry Washington:
What went into your evaluation of markets to consider to even invest out of state? Because I guarantee you there’s people listening right now who are in San Diego who want to invest out of state and are not quite sure where to start.
Bryan Field:
So this is going to tie back into my corporate W-2 job in healthcare staffing. So COVID was wild. We were working with hospitals across the country. I could see all the travel nurses going to all these different places. My wife also worked in the industry. And so that’s what fueled our market exploration was where are we sending nurses and kind of the aha moment for us. My wife had this account, a hospital in South Dakota. She was booking a lot of nurses there and they were canceling because they couldn’t find housing. So a light bulb went off. We started researching how can we invest in this market to provide housing for nurses that don’t cancel and they can go serve the patients and be a win-win, right? So that’s how we got into the exploration of the different markets was where are the nurses going outside of California and more of the affordable markets.
Henry Washington:
First of all, that’s really cool. A really smart thing to do because you’re leveraging your expertise to try to pick a market. And in terms of affordability, what did that mean to you?What did a property cost in that market?
Bryan Field:
Yeah, so we bought our first duplex there at 130,000.
Henry Washington:
130,000? Is that a duplex that needed a ton of work or is that a duplex that’s turnkey?
Bryan Field:
It could have been lived in right away, but we renovated it and we actually did a partial burr, so it worked out in our favor. And I think 130, what did we put into it? Another 30 or 40,000 in just the flooring, kitchens, paint, fixtures, a lot of the basic stuff. And then we reappraised for hire, took out some cash and ended up renting it out.
Henry Washington:
Sounds good. Like buy something for 130, spend 30 on a renovation and then rent it out, but you didn’t live there. So what was the process like of even finding contractors and managing a renovation from that far away?
Bryan Field:
Yeah, so I’ve always been about referrals. So naturally, when you’re looking for investment properties, I’m on Zillow and I’m looking at places and I’m thinking the numbers look okay, but I’m not sure. And so I just called a couple different real estate brokers, started telling my story, telling them what I wanted to do, narrowed it down to one or two brokers and had them both looking for deals for me and they helped it pencil and make sense. And so from there, that person also ended up having a property management leg and then they had a ton of different contractors. So really it was the broker agent that referred us to everyone we needed out there.
Henry Washington:
So you paid 130, you put about 30, 35 in it. So you’re all in 160, 165. What kind of rent were you getting out of this thing?
Bryan Field:
So they were both two bed, one bath, and we got about 900 a unit for those. So 1800.
Henry Washington:
That’s a solid deal, man. That’s a solid cash flowing deal. Now you placed travel nurses. Did you not want to do a furnished rental in this?
Bryan Field:
So this was the caveat that we learned after doing the renovations. The realtor, investor realtor was like, “You could get really good rents for this completed unit for a long-term tenant and you don’t have to do the management headaches of every month or three months turning over a new tenant and you don’t have to buy the furniture.” So we were like, oh, we were super happy and excited to place travel nurses, but it just penciled out more for us to do long-term tenants at that time after the renovations. And it was hands off. She was going to be the property manager, so we just ended up taking that route and it was probably for the better too, that we didn’t have to invest the extra and the furniture and all that.
Henry Washington:
I like that. I like that you evaluated it after you bought it. You didn’t just throw furniture in there and hope for the best. You said, “Hey, long-term tenants, I’m going to get good enough rent. Your cash flowing. That’s awesome, man. Great deal. And way to pull off a out-of-state renovation while you’re living in San Diego with a wife and a new baby. That’s impressive on its own. So what did you do next? Did you keep buying in South Dakota or did you move to somewhere else and buy somewhere else again?
Bryan Field:
Yeah, I think I took a chapter out of your playbook, Henry, and I’ve listened to you guys for so long. I know you’re in Arkansas. I had been listening. I started looking in Arkansas. Your Fayetteville market was a little bit overpriced for me. It’s expensive.
Henry Washington:
It’s
Bryan Field:
Getting
Henry Washington:
More expensive. I got to shut up. I keep talking about it and the prices keep going up.
Bryan Field:
Yeah. You had mentioned though, I think it was one of your podcasts about sleeper markets and you guys kind of pull data and you had mentioned Jonesboro, Arkansas. You actually led me to invest in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Henry Washington:
All right. So let’s hear it. Jonesboro, Arkansas. What did you end up looking for and then what did you end up actually buying? I
Bryan Field:
Was looking for small multifamily and I was specifically trying to get seller finance deals at this time. I wanted to use a combination of our HELOC and seller financing because interest rates were at this time back up to the six and 7%, I believe. So nothing was penciling super great via traditional financing or DSCR even. So I made a ton of calls. I was cold calling owners of buildings via LLC search online. I was Google mapping buildings that I saw multifamily and finding out their LLC and calling them and saying, “Hey, I’m looking to invest. I was wondering if you had anything you’re potentially trying to offload.” And after a couple hundred calls, I found an agent investor who was willing to seller finance me some of her properties. So that’s exactly what happened next for us.
Henry Washington:
That’s super cool, man. I love that you picked up the phone and you made calls and you landed something. So talk us through what that deal looked like that you landed.
Bryan Field:
Yeah. So luckily an investor friendly agent who owned many of her own properties, and so she had some stuff that she was trying to offload so that she could move on to her next project. And she helped package a few properties that she was willing to get rid of. We discussed seller financing pretty early on. Since she was an agent, it made it easy for me to be like, “Well, I’m looking for this, this and this.” And she was like, “Oh, we do seller financing all the time.” Love it. So she packaged a couple of the properties together. It ended up being three single family houses and a triplex. It was about $53,000 down. So it makes the property values all together $530,000.
Henry Washington:
Did you go out there and look at these properties? Because this is a market you’ve never been to, right? It’s not even a place you have ties to. So how did that process work?
Bryan Field:
I did not go out there. I think what put me a little bit more at ease was that this person was also an agent. And so there’s a bit of that trust that has to come with being an agent. And I don’t know if you’d call that a fiduciary or whatever, but there has to be some level of trust with that person. They’re an agent, their license could be at risk, et cetera. So I trusted and I got videos and pictures and I did inspections on all the houses. After everything came back, I felt comfortable. We were mostly occupied at that time too with tenants in place, so I was cash flowing day one as well. So it all just worked out that way, but not a whole lot of negotiating back and forth. She had a good term sheet. I adjusted it a little bit and we met in the middle and again, 10% down.
Our interest rate was about 5% and we were cash flowing a couple hundred dollars a door for that too.
Henry Washington:
What did your debt service or your monthly payment end up being and then what were you bringing in monthly?
Bryan Field:
So we were grossing about $3,800 total between all those units. And then my monthly mortgage was about 1,900. That included taxes and insurance.
Henry Washington:
Awesome.
Bryan Field:
Yeah. So we were cash flowing after saving for reserves and maintenance and everything about a little over 12, $1,300 a month on that deal.
Henry Washington:
Sounds like a great owner finance situation. If you want owner finance folks, Brian just gave you a formula. Cold call high equity owners and just talk to them. If you do it over and over again and you start building some rapport with the people you’re on the phone with, you might land yourself with a deal. That’s awesome, Brian. So this is what, the third market? You’ve got a formula that’s working. You just repeated this process again in Arkansas, right?
Bryan Field:
I mean, yes and no. So we did buy another duplex that we did Burr in Arkansas. Okay.
Henry Washington:
Okay.
Bryan Field:
So that one, we bought it under value. We did put another 30, 40,000 into that and then did a cash out refi. So that brings our total in Arkansas up to seven units.
Henry Washington:
Okay. So purchase price was what?
Bryan Field:
We bought it for 115. It initially appraised for 135, so we had equity on the purchase.
Henry Washington:
Okay. So you’re all in, again, similar to your very first deal, 165, and then you refinanced. What did it appraise for when you went to do the refi?
Bryan Field:
207.
Henry Washington:
Okay. So you were able to pull out a good chunk of your money and do a traditional BRRR deal?
Bryan Field:
We pulled out probably just over our renovation cost out, so we still had a couple thousand left in the deal, which was equivalent to our down payment.
Henry Washington:
Great, Burr. All right. So I’ve got questions on why you decided to shift to a new market once again, but I want to talk about that right after the break. All right. We are back on the BiggerPockets podcast with investor Brian Field, who lives in San Diego, decided to invest in Arizona, did a flip, went back to San Diego, picked an out-of-state market. Why not South Dakota? Did some deals in South Dakota and then decided, you know what? Arkansas sounds awesome. Did some deals in Arkansas. And after you successfully pulled off a couple of deals in Arkansas, you though, “You know what? Let’s change it all up again.” So what did you do next?
Bryan Field:
I was doing everything I could to help my wife retire from her job, and it made sense for us to keep those properties, but look into a higher cashflow play. Short-term rentals, everybody knows what those can do. And we found a new market and invested two short-term rentals in Norfolk, Virginia.
Henry Washington:
How did you end up with Norfolk, Virginia as your destination for short-term rentals?
Bryan Field:
I took a look at my living situation in San Diego and said, “What coastal markets are like San Diego, but don’t have the same house price tags?” So I started looking everywhere from Florida all the way up the East Coast, and I learned through that exploration that Norfolk has the largest Navy base, I believe, in the world.
Henry Washington:
They sure do.
Bryan Field:
And I learned that Norfolk had prices in the low 300s, and so that made the cash flow light bulb just tick off in my brain. I did some research, air DNA numbers, pulling out just random addresses that were listed for sale with this pencil, with this pencil, and things were cash flowing really, really well. So I just decided to make the move there.
Henry Washington:
All right. So tell us about the first deal you bought in Norfolk.
Bryan Field:
We had a opportunity to buy a single family house, a turnkey, fully renovated, and it had already been operating as a short-term rental. We hired an interior designer to actually go in and we put wallpaper up. We did some cool artwork and things like that and really revamped the inside, but leaving the core furniture inside. And so we bought that for 325, used a straight DSCR loan on that, and it’s cash flowing net about 25,000 a year, so almost 2,000 a month with some seasonality.
Henry Washington:
Man, that is phenomenal. What a great short-term rental deal. And you still got it, it’s still operating, and it’s still killing it.
Bryan Field:
We bought one more, the same exact style as that house, same price range, turnkey, not furnished, but we went in, furnished it, and then now we’ve got two identical within a mile going on short-term rentals out there in Norfolk. All
Henry Washington:
Right, man. Brian, this is a really cool story. I love that you definitely aren’t afraid to take a very educated risk. Sounds like you’ve been great at doing your homework in selecting markets. Sounds like you’ve been great in building out-of-state teams, managing renovations out of state. These are all things that people who want to get into real estate investing think about that scare them away. And I love that you have executed these things and executed them successfully. This is all something that anyone can do with the tools and resources that are available out there for us right now, especially now that we have AI that can even help us even further. So tell us what’s next? Are you going to continue to grow and expand in any one of these markets or have you done something else?
Bryan Field:
We actually did make a very big pivot, but a parallel one to say the least. Okay. So being born and raised in San Diego, still somewhat priced out of the market because all of my investments are out of state and back down to almost no cash reserves or savings. I started looking into small businesses, but I wanted to stay in the real estate niche. I found a home inspection company here in San Diego that was for sale, and that’s what was next for us is we recently on New Year’s Eve of this year, closed on a home inspection company locally here in town. So now I’m the owner and operator of a small business that is in the real estate niche.
Henry Washington:
Man, that is really cool. Congratulations on that new business venture. Congratulations on the success you’re already having in that new business venture. I do have one last topic that I want to cover with you about your real estate business before we get out of here. But before we jump into that, can you give us a recap of your overall portfolio? How many units do you have? Where are they situated?
Bryan Field:
So right now we stand at seven long-term rental units. All of those are in Arkansas. So we have sold the Arizona single family that was rented at one point. That was where my HELOC also was, and we sold that Aberdeen duplex to help fund this business and some of those short-term rentals. So right now, the total unit mix is seven units in Arkansas and two units, there’s two short-term rentals in Virginia.
Henry Washington:
And as a practice, would you say you like being diversified across multiple markets or would you recommend people stay in one market?
Bryan Field:
We feel super comfortable and stabilized right now. So the short-term rentals have their peak seasons. The long-term rentals are kind of the buffer when the short-term rentals have a slower season, and it’s nice to be in a couple different markets. I would’ve loved to have held the other properties, but for us, repositioning and harvesting what was available to us was something that we took advantage of to get into the business. And I think it’s nice to have some diversity. Absolutely.
Henry Washington:
And do you have a total cash flow that your portfolio’s producing or maybe broken out by long-term and short-term?
Bryan Field:
Yeah. So the two short-terms, the big ones are about 50,000 a year net. So each of those is about 2000 a month on average. And then the long-term rentals per month cumulatively on those seven units is about 1400 a month.
Henry Washington:
Man, that’s awesome. That’s a great, just solid cash flowing real estate portfolio. The one thing I wanted to circle back on was this tool that you used that really sounded like it kind of started everything, which was this line of credit that you had access to. What do you say to those people who maybe have that as an option or considering that as an option?
Bryan Field:
I would absolutely 100% redo what I did by leveraging my HELOC with one condition, and everyone really needs to understand this. If you are not paying down that HELOC, whether it’s your BRR money that’s recycling back in and/or your W-2 job or some other type of income, if you keep racking up on that HELOC, you will never get out of it. So if you’re going to do it, you need to have means to pay it back. So for us, the strategy was burr. We took out cash from those refinances. We put it back into the HELOC to pay it back down, but we didn’t have it fully paid down ever. So we also rolled in our excess W2 income to help pay it down as well. So that would be my one piece of advice if someone was going to use a HELOC is to make sure that you have means to pay it down.
Realistically, the smartest way is to flip, pay 100% of it back. If you’re burring and you’re not paying 100% of it back, you still need to have maybe roll in that cash flow or other means of income to make it paid off.
Henry Washington:
I like the idea of leveraging a HELOC to help you get started investing in real estate. Conceptually, I think it works. Where people screw up is they don’t do enough research about what types of deals to buy and they go out and they buy a bad deal. If you aren’t comfortable enough with the market that you’re investing in to know what a good deal looks like, don’t touch your HELOC to buy a deal because if you buy a bad deal with your HELOC, now you’ve got to lose money on that deal and you have to focus on paying back a HELOC. And if you leverage your personal house for that HELOC, you’re putting your personal home, your family in jeopardy. So you’ve got to buy good deals. But if you can buy a good deal, I think a HELOC is a good strategy and you’ve got to have discipline to be able to pay it back.
But if you don’t have the fundamentals down yet, I’d encourage you to stay away from doing it until you have fundamentals down and you’re more comfortable. Ryan, this is a really cool story. Thank you so much for coming on the BiggerPockets Podcast and sharing how you’ve grown your real estate business and now how you’ve acquired a whole new business that’s in the real estate industry. Super cool. If you’re listening and you think you’ve got a cool story that you’d like to share on the BiggerPockets Podcast, well, you can head on over to biggerpockets.com/guest and fill out the form and we may select you to come on the show and share your story just like Brian here. Brian, sounds like you’ve been a fundamentally sound real estate investor. You’ve analyzed markets, you’ve bought deals out of state, you bought deals sight unseen, you managed renovations third party while you had a new baby at home.
All of these are things that people say they can’t do or it’s too hard to do and you’ve done it well and you’ve done it with grace. So thank you for sharing that story with us.
Bryan Field:
Happy to do it. Thanks, Henry.
Henry Washington:
All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and we’ll see everybody on the next episode.
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