New Investors: 3 Easy Ways to Get Started in Real Estate (Ep 142)

Summary

The BetterLife Podcast

Episode 142: "New Investors: 3 Easy Ways to Get Started in Real Estate"

Hosts: Brandon Turner & Cam Cathcart
Date: April 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Brandon Turner and Cam Cathcart break down three straightforward, accessible strategies for new investors to begin their real estate journey. With a focus on actionable steps and minimizing complexity, they share personal stories, practical advice, and encourage listeners to make their first move towards financial freedom through real estate—without compromising their values or lifestyle.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Simplicity of Starting Small

• Brandon sets the tone by acknowledging that real estate can get complicated with strategies like BRRRR and complex deal structures ([00:00]).
• The episode is targeted at beginners who want “easy ways to buy real estate” to “just get your foot in the door, get in the game” ([00:32]).

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2. Strategy #1: House Hacking

• Definition: Living in a property while renting out part of it (bedrooms or units) to offset living expenses ([02:31]).
• Brandon credits himself as one of the early adopters and promoters of the term "house hacking."
  • “I said, how to hack your house and get paid to live for free. There was no name for it. … It became like this worldwide phenomenon in the investment world called house hacking.” (Brandon, [02:31])
• How it Works:
  • Buy a property (single-family or small multi-family) with a low-down-payment loan (e.g., FHA, 3.5% down).
  • Live in one part, rent out the rest.
  • Option to rent out bedrooms even if you don’t own the property.
  • Appeals to both low-budget starters and those with significant resources (example: $4M Hawaii house).
• Benefits:
  • Low barrier to entry.
  • Gain equity while offsetting mortgage.
  • Flexibility to “ride with training wheels.”
• Cam:
  • Shares his experience renting a house in Denver and subletting rooms:
    • “We were paying 50 bucks a month to live there and then saving up money. So…” (Cam, [02:23])
  • Affirms it’s ideal for people with spare bedrooms, especially young couples or singles.

Memorable Example:

• Brandon advises his friend Scott (Hawaii) to buy a $1.3M house and rent out bedrooms, potentially generating $10,000/month in rental income ([04:22]).
• “So you'd be cash flowing thousands of dollars a month to house hack that house? … That could really work forever.” (Brandon, [05:17])

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3. Strategy #2: Keep Your House as a Rental When You Move

• Concept: Instead of selling your current residence when upgrading or moving, turn it into a rental ([05:37]).
• Brandon:
  • Shares his decision to rent out his previous Maui house rather than selling, to keep building passive income.
  • “You don't even have to buy a property, you just own a rental.” (Brandon, [06:17])
• Cam:
  • Suggests creative sacrifices: living with parents or in a cheaper rental while renting out the former residence ([06:26]).
  • “Real estate’s hard, but so is not having money. … You could make a sacrifice and say, hey, I'm downsizing into a cheap rental and going to rent this out.” (Cam, [06:46])

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4. Strategy #3: The STR (Short-Term Rental) Hack

• Background: Some locations restrict short-term rentals (e.g., Airbnb), but exemptions exist for primary residences ([07:26]).
• Cam:
  • Details the workaround: “If it is your primary house and you are living there, you can still Airbnb that.” ([07:33])
  • Friends rent rooms in primary homes through Airbnb, earning up to $3,000/month, far exceeding their mortgage ([07:35]).
  • Stresses the need to check local regulations:
    • “You do have to … follow the rules on it. But I think that's another great strategy for people.” (Cam, [08:09])
• Brandon:
  • Offers practical upgrades: add a private entry to a bedroom to increase privacy and appeal for guests ([08:35]).
    • “For a couple thousand bucks, all of a sud now you have a really nice rentable unit.” (Brandon, [09:04])
  • Real-world scenario: House in Hawaii has a room with an exterior door perfect for STR opportunities.

Memorable Story:

• Cam tells of a friend with a split-level house renting the lower level to travelers passing through, reducing interaction and maximizing efficiency ([09:17]).
  • “Most of those people get in at midnight and they're out by 6 o’clock. He never sees them, he never hears them.” (Cam, [09:35])

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5. Encouragement & Closing Thoughts

• Brandon’s Key Message:
  • Don’t reject these strategies because they seem hard—“They're not hard. They're very, very simple. They're very easy. Yes, they might require sacrifice, but you can do it.” ([09:50])
  • Emphasizes the domino effect of getting your first deal:
    • “The first deal is so important. Get that first deal and then you'll [do a] second, third, fifth, hundredth, and then you get financial freedom.” ([09:50])
• Cam's Final Advice:
  • “I think everybody should get into real estate. There should be. There's a lot of money in that.” ([10:17])

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Notable Quotes

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|----------| | 02:31 | “I said, how to hack your house and get paid to live for free. There was no name for it. … It became like this worldwide phenomenon … called house hacking.” | Brandon Turner | | 02:23 | “We were paying 50 bucks a month to live there and then saving up money. So…” | Cam Cathcart | | 05:17 | “So you'd be cash flowing thousands of dollars a month to house hack that house? … That could really work forever.” | Brandon Turner | | 06:17 | “You don't even have to buy a property, you just own a rental.” | Brandon Turner | | 06:46 | “Real estate’s hard, but so is not having money. … You could make a sacrifice and say, hey, I'm downsizing into a cheap rental and going to rent this out.” | Cam Cathcart | | 08:09 | “You do have to … follow the rules on it. But I think that's another great strategy for people.” | Cam Cathcart | | 09:04 | “For a couple thousand bucks, all of a sud now you have a really nice rentable unit.” | Brandon Turner | | 09:35 | “Most of those people get in at midnight and they're out by 6 o’clock. He never sees them, he never hears them.” | Cam Cathcart | | 09:50 | “They're not hard. They're very, very simple. They're very easy. Yes, they might require sacrifice, but you can do it.” | Brandon Turner |

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00 – Episode introduction & framing: Start small, keep it simple
• 01:32 – Personal stories: How Brandon and Cam got started
• 02:31 – House hacking defined & explained
• 04:22 – Real world example: Hawaii house hack math
• 05:37 – Strategy #2: Keep your house as a rental
• 06:26 – Creative ways to leverage low-interest rates and cheap living options
• 07:26 – Strategy #3: STR (Short-Term Rental) Hack
• 08:35 – Practical upgrades to homes for rental potential
• 09:17 – Cam’s friend’s walk-in rental example
• 09:50 – Encouragement to act & closing thoughts
• 10:17 – Final takeaway: “Everybody should get into real estate.”

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Takeaways

• Start simple: House hacking, keeping your current residence as a rental, and utilizing your primary residence for short-term stays are all low-barrier entry points into real estate investing.
• Sacrifice and creativity can open doors—literally and figuratively—to building wealth.
• Get your first deal done; momentum and confidence will follow.

This episode offers actionable, encouraging, and relatable guidance for anyone considering their first steps in real estate investing—grounded in the authentic experiences of both hosts.

Transcript

[A]

This is the Better Life podcast where we talk about real estate investing, building wealth, and all in all, living a better life. My name is Brendan Turner and I've spent my life investing in real estate to achieve financial freedom. And alongside My co host, Mr. Cam Cathcart, we want to help you do the same. On the show, you're going to hear from world class guests who have been handpicked to help you level up your investing, your leadership, your goals, your habits and more to become the very best version of yourself. So join us as we explore the habits, the actions, the beliefs that it takes to build wealth to through real estate investing without losing your soul. There's a ton of really complicated ways to invest in real estate. I teach this stuff all the time, like the brrrr strategy and set up a CRM and do all the complicated stuff. And you should learn that stuff eventually. But what if you just wanted to buy a real estate deal? What if you just want. You're just getting started, you're new to this thing and you just gotta get something. You gotta get your foot in the door, get in the game. What are easy ways to buy real estate? Well, my name is Brendan Turner, here with my friend Cam Cathcart.

[B]

Cam Cathcart.

[A]

What's up, Cam Cathcart? And today we're about three really easy. Just like right away. Easy. You can just get in the game of real estate by doing these strategies. If this is helpful. By the way, make sure you click that little like like button below the video and subscribe to this YouTube channel if you want to learn how to build wealth through real estate without losing your soul. Yeah, Cam, what's up? You got into real estate, what, four or five years ago? Something like that.

[B]

It's going on. It'll be five years and three or four months.

[A]

And you got a pretty complex system right now.

[B]

You got. Yes.

[A]

You have CRMs and staff and employees and the whole thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But when you got started, it was probably a little more simple.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It was your first deal.

[B]

First deal, we bought a flip house.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Okay. Yeah. House to flip.

[A]

And that's a little more complex. Right. Like, it takes a little bit of work.

[B]

It was. We went 0 to 100 really quick. We went 0 to 100 really Quick. But we bought our first one and it was just because, like, I knew it's what I wanted to do and so I dove all in.

[A]

Yeah. My very first deal ever was actually one of the strategies we're going to talk about today. Sort of. I didn't actually Plan it that way. But it actually kind of worked out so well.

[B]

Actually my f. What helped me put the down payment because we used bank financing, our first house. And what helped me put the down payment actually is one of these where some kind of. I rented a house. It was like rental arbitrage. I rented a house in denver.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For 1200 bucks a month. And then I had a friend who moved out who's a traveling nurse, and we rented a room to him in that house for 800 bucks a month.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

And then it was a three bedroom. We didn't have kids and we rented another room for 350 bucks a month. So we were paying 50 bucks a month to live there and then saving up money. So.

[A]

So that's. Yeah, that's like house hacking light. So that brings us to the first strategy today. That's an easy way to get into real estate. It's called house hacking. It's actually based the name house hacking comes from a blog post I wrote like 15 years ago where I said, how to hack your house and get paid to live for free. There was no name for it. I was like, this is what I've done a number of times. Why don't we talk about it? It became like this worldwide phenomenon of in the investment world called house hacking. Here's how it works. You have a house, you. You buy it. Usually though I have also done the rental and then rented out the bedrooms. But you buy a house typically, because then you get equity and then you just, you buy a house for three and a half percent down. Typically FHA loans, any bank can do them just about 3.5% down. You gotta live in the property for at least a year. But then you either rent out the bedrooms if it's a house, or more common, I would say is you buy a small multi family duplex, triplex, fourplex. Now you might be thinking like, well, I don't want to live with a bunch of tenants. Well, first of all, sometimes you got to sacrifice. But two, you're not just buying a crappy necessary property in a bad part of town. I'm house hacking here in Hawaii in a $4 million house. So it's doable no matter where you're at on the spectrum of finances. But by house hacking, it's such a low down payment, it's easy entry. It's like riding a bike with training wheels. You get in for low down and you just rent out the other room or rent out the extra unit. Easy.

[B]

I love house hacking. I house I think house hacking super great too for people that are like, I don't have money to buy. Like maybe you own a house, but you don't have money to buy a new house. You don't have time to go look for deals or anything like that. And it's like, it's, it's that simple. Like just rent out a bed, a bedroom or two. Rent out. If you do have a, you know, a triplex or a duplex, you could rent out the other side, which I'm sure you're doing that already. But especially for people that own just like rent out bedrooms. If you're young and don't have any kids and, or maybe you're married and you don't have any kids and you have a couple bedrooms, like you can, you can cover your mortgage by just doing that.

[A]

Yeah, I got a buddy right now, he lives out here in Hawaii. Scott, Shout out to Scott. And Scott is looking to buy his first property. And so he's in my program First Deal, which is first deal.com, where I help people buy their very first property. But he's in this program and he texts me the other day, he's like, hey, here's a house that we're looking at. I don't see how to make this work, but I really like this house. It was $1.3 million. That's a lot for house. Well, it's just Scott and his wife, so just two of them. And the house had five bedrooms and it had the potential for adding a sixth bedroom. So I said, well, Scott, how much does the bedroom rent for in Hawaii? And he's like, oh, I mean, I rent a bedroom right now. He said, I rent a bedroom right now for 2500 bucks. I'm like, okay, so you're saying you could rent out $2,500 for that bedroom and that one and that one and that one. And now you got ten grand a month in income and you guys live in the fifth bedroom. Maybe even there's another bedroom now. Will that pay, will that cover the mortgage payment? What's your mortgage payment going to be on that property with your down payment, all that. And it was like, it was like seven grand. I'm like, so you'd be cash flowing thousands of dollars a month to house hack that house? He's like, oh, shoot. Yeah. So like he's looking into buying that house now. That's a, that's a strategy. You're house hacking. And he can buy that thing for very low down because he's going to live in it. It's easy to manage. And when he moves out someday you only have to deliver for a year. You don't have to refinance at the end. You move out and yeah, dude, that could really work forever.

[B]

Yeah, you get the appreciation. I mean, it's such a great way to start.

[A]

Great way to start. Easy way to start. Number two, maybe even an easier way to start. And it doesn't apply to all of you, it applies to some of you. One of the easiest things you could ever do to start investing in real estate is simply turn your house into a rental when you move instead of selling it. Most people, when they move from one house to another, they just sell it, but instead they could rent it. In fact, I just moved from one house to another here in Maui and I'm going to turn my house into a rental. Yes, I can sell it and make a bunch of money.

[B]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[A]

Maybe camel rent it, I don't know. I'm trying to talk them into it.

[B]

I think we just worked out a deal. I think we're working on.

[A]

Well, I don't know. We're working on a deal. So. So I'm going to rent my house out because then I get to keep it as a rental. I didn't have to go out and buy something new. Now, not every house in the world works for that. But if you can run the numbers and find out that you can make a cash flow off of turning your existing house into a rental property, how easy is that? You don't even have to buy a property, you just own a rental.

[B]

Then I've even seen people, and this is for, like you said, you have to make sacrifices if you want to get into real estate. What's that whole saying? Like, real estate's hard, but so is not having money. Yeah. So is being broke. And so like I've had friends that have bought houses with really good interest rates in 2020 and 2021, where they're paying their interest rates at 2.7%, they've lived there, it works as an incredible rental. And they need to save money to go buy another house for them. Where they've moved out and they've moved back in with their parents, or they went and bought a, or rented a one bedroom house for 700 bucks a month. Where the cash flow from this is paying for that. So you don't even have to go buy another house if you really wanted to. You could make a sacrifice and say, hey, I'm downsizing. Into a cheap rental and going to rent this out, or if you're able to and your family would let you out. I'm moving in with friends or I'm moving in with my parents.

[A]

Yeah, totally doable. I like it, man. All right, let's go to number three. The third strategy is one that you brought up to me as we were brainstorming this thing. Why don't you talk about the STR hack?

[B]

The STR hack. So in, in a lot of states, they've made rules where you can't do airbnbs anymore.

[A]

Like Hawaii, we can. Like almost every major city now.

[B]

You can, yes. But there's a loophole to that rule in a lot of places where if it is your PR primary house and you are living there, you can still Airbnb that. And so I've got friends that are renting out rooms in their house and they're Airbnb. And yes, that's weird. You have people that are coming into your house that you don't know and you don't trust. You can still look at Airbnb and look at their reviews and stuff like that, but they're making 70, 80 bucks a night on a house at 70% occupancy. So it's an extra, what, 2500, 3000 bucks a month, something like that, every single month on houses that their mortgage is only 1100 bucks on. And so they're able to do that. They're able to save up if they want to invest into other real estate or they want to say that for themselves. And so I love this strategy for people. And you do have to look at the loopholes or look at the rules, follow the rules on it. But I think that's another great strategy for people.

[A]

I do, too. Especially if you start looking at your house. And most people don't realize how much a house can be changed very simply. Let me give you an example. So let's say you have a large bed. Let's say you have a four bedroom house.

[B]

And.

[A]

And by the way, this doesn't have to be vacation areas. This could just be anywhere that people happen to go. Like, people are always traveling for weddings, funerals, whatever. So you just have a house. And let's say you got four bedrooms in it, and one of those rooms is a little bit larger and has like an en suite bathroom. You could lock the door to the main house, put in an exterior door for 1,000 bucks, have a contractor for $1,000, put an exterior door on that bedroom, and now you don't have to ever talk to the person. They come in with the exterior door with a little code. They stay there. They can't get into your house because it's locked, like double sided lock on both sides or you even remove the door entirely. So for a couple thousand bucks, all of a sud now you have a really nice rentable unit. In fact, the house I just bought here in Hawaii has a room just like that. Already has an exterior door there. I'm not going to do it right now, but I might do it at some point.

[B]

So that's one of the people I was talking about. He has a walk in. It's a split level, but on the bottom level you can walk in from the basement. So essentially he just put a door down there and he lives right off of Highway 70. And so people that are driving across the United States that would rather stay in a house and have their own bedroom and a little kitchenette versus paying 150 bucks for a hotel. Book his place. And the great thing about like his situation is most of those people get in at midnight and they're out by 6 o' clock in the morning. He never sees them, he never hears them. They sleep there, they take a shower, they jump in their car and they keep driving.

[A]

Awesome. Yeah. Remember everybody, these strategies might not be for you, but I would not just throw them away because they sound complicated, because they sound hard. They're not hard. They're very, very simple. They're very easy. Yes, they might require sacrifice, but you can do it. If you want to start building wealth through real estate. The first deal is so important. Get that first deal and then you'll second, third, fifth, hundredth, and then you get financial freedom. So go out there, get your first deal and use one of these strategies. Maybe let me know if you do in the comments. Love it. Anything you want to close with?

[B]

I think everybody should get into real estate. There should be. There's a lot of money in that.

[A]

Get into real estate. Thank you everybody. Have a great day and subscribe for more. And that, my friends, is the show. Thank you for tuning in. And hey, before you go, if you enjoyed this episode or if you just enjoy the show in general, please consider leaving us a rating and review Wherever you listen to podcast. We really do value your feedback and we read the comments, we make future decisions about topics and guests and everything else. Plus it helps us reach more people and the more reviews we get, the more people hear it and watch the show and share it and it's awesome. Last but not least, please head over to social media. Consider befriending me, following me, subscribing to all that stuff at Better Life and my personal page at beardybrandon, especially over on Instagram, YouTube, and really everywhere else. So thank you again for listening. I'm honored that you would bring me along on your journey toward building wealth through real estate investing without losing your soul. Now, this show is about living a better life, but if you want my opinion on what it takes to live the best life ever, just go to abetterlife.com bestlife to hear some of my views on life and spirituality. I think you'll like it. Abetterlife.com BestLife with that said, thanks for listening to the show. We'll see you next week.