How I saved $72,000 dollars on one real estate deal

They say that wealth in real estate is made at the buy. 

And my first deal vs the ones after that are a perfect example of that. 

My first deal cost me $46,750 to acquire a $187,000 property. Since then, I've done over $1 million in real estate deals and spent only $75,000 total to get them.

So what changed?

Let me take you back to my first deal.

I had just finished saving for months — grinding through extra shifts, watching my bank account slowly crawl toward a number that felt big enough to act on. I finally pulled the trigger on my first investment property. Already renovated, C-class area, below market rent. It cash flowed maybe $200 a month.

I sat with that number for a minute. Two hundred dollars. I'm a dentist. I make that on a few fillings.

Meanwhile, I kept seeing people making a quarter of my salary buying property after property. No long saving stretches between deals. No sitting on the sideline waiting. They were just... moving. And I couldn't figure out how.

That frustration sent me down a rabbit hole. And at the bottom of it was a strategy called BRRRR — Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat. In short, it's a way to buy distressed properties at a discount, force the value up through renovation, and pull your capital back out through a refinance so you can go again without saving up a fresh down payment each time.

Want a full breakdown of how each step works? Read my complete guide to the BRRRR method here.

The BRRRR Method at a Glance

Stage 1  ·  The Deal

This deal didn't come from a listing site. It came from a relationship.

I had been working with the same contractor on previous BRRRR deals, so when I asked him to walk through a property I was currently evaluating — one that ultimately didn't work out — I asked him straight up if he knew of anything else. Turns out he did. A friend of his was trying to sell a property but couldn't find a buyer at his asking price of $190,000.

We worked out an arrangement. I'd buy it at a discount — $160,000 — and in exchange I'd use this same contractor for all the renovations. And here's the part that made it even better: anything over the agreed $113,000 rehab budget, they would cover. I had built-in cost overrun protection before we even broke ground.

To purhcase the property/rehab it, I had a hard money lender pay all of the $273,000 (for more on hard money lenders check here).

The hard money lender was someone I'd used on multiple deals prior, so the conversation was straightforward and closing was smooth. No convincing needed, no explaining how the strategy works from scratch. That's what building relationships in this space actually looks like.

Stage 2  ·  The Rehab

Here's something I briefly touched on above. I'm not local to the Columbus area where all my properties are — I'm based in New York. I never saw this property in person. Not once. The entire deal was run remotely through a team I had built and trusted over multiple deals. The contractor, the lender, the property manager — they were my eyes on the ground so I didn't have to be.

That's not a detail I share to impress you. I share it because the excuse of "there are no good deals in my market" is exactly that — an excuse. Your market doesn't have to be your backyard.

Walking through the property for the first time told the whole story — or so I'm told. Collapsed ceilings. A flooded basement. Gutted walls. Outdated electrical and plumbing throughout. Everything except the roof and foundation needed to be touched — new HVAC, electrical, plumbing, drywall, flooring, windows, doors, kitchen, bathrooms, appliances, landscaping. All of it.

The rehab ran about 8 months. It was mostly smooth, but we did hit one delay — the city held up permits while an electrical line that had gone down needed to be reattached to the house. About two weeks lost. At $3,000 a month in hard money interest, delays aren't free. Timeline management isn't just about convenience — it's about cost.

Stage 3  ·  The Appraisal

Here's a tip that saved me a lot of uncertainty: before the official appraisal, I paid $400 for a desktop appraisal with the appraiser beforehand. He reviewed the scope of work, the comparable sales, and gave me a number to work with before we went through the full process.

I think getting this desktop appraisal is worth every penny — it tells you whether your numbers actually work before you're too deep to turn back. 

With that, the official appraisal came back at $385,000. Exactly where we expected it.

Stage 4  ·  The Refinance

I refinanced into a conventional 30-year mortgage at 75% LTV of the newly appraised value through the same lender I'd done all my previous refinances with. New monthly payment: $2,465 including taxes and insurance.

The Numbers: What I Actually Spent

If I had bought that same $385,000 property the conventional way — 25% down plus closing costs — I would have written a check for $108,000 and gotten a used property with no upside already baked in.

Instead I spent $35,800, walked away with a fully renovated property worth $385,000, and retained $112,000 in equity.

Where It Is Now

The property is now an Airbnb within walking distance of Ohio State's campus and football stadium. It's been booked consistently since last year. The location does a lot of the heavy lifting — game weekends alone drive demand that a property in a C-class area never could.

That's the other thing the BRRRR method gave me that my first deal never did: a property I'm actually proud of, in a market with real upside.

You Can Do This Too

I want to be straight with you. This deal didn't happen overnight. The contractor, the hard money lender, the refinance lender — those relationships were built over multiple deals before this one. The first deal teaches you how it works. The second deal teaches you how to do it better. By the time this deal came around, everything moved smoothly because I'd already done the work of building the right team.

That's the thing most people miss when they look at a deal like this and think "I could never do that." You're not supposed to know how to do it perfectly on day one. You just have to start.

You don't need to find a $273,000 deal your first time out. You need:

I'm a dentist. I see patients full time. I don't flip houses for a living. If I can build a portfolio of over $1 million in real estate while running a dental practice — from New York, without ever setting foot in the property — the barrier isn't your schedule, your salary, or your zip code.

It's just knowing the strategy exists.

Now you do.

Dr. Mike Mackney, DDS  ·  Invest with a DDS  ·  investwithadds.com