Troy Meyers - From 1 Foreclosure to An 18 Unit Apartment & 2 Short Term Rentals

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Troy Meyers is a former college athlete turned successful real estate investor. Troy's journey began with flipping motorcycles in college, eventually transitioning to flipping houses alongside his wife. Together, they have tackled single-family homes, multi-family properties, and ventured into the realm of short-term rentals. Despite maintaining a W2 job, Troy's dedication to real estate investment has led to significant success, including amassing six multi-family properties generating $8,500 per month in cash flow. In a strategic move, Troy liquidated these assets to scale up, acquiring an 18-unit apartment complex and investing in short-term rentals in Marco Island, Florida, with plans for expansion into Gulf Shores, Alabama. Learn from Troy's experiences, strategies, and insights into building a thriving real estate portfolio while balancing a W2 career. Troy's story offers valuable lessons on perseverance, growth, and scaling in the competitive world of real estate investing.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master the essential real estate entrepreneurship insights to kickstart your journey with confidence.
• See how Troy and his family were able to scale up from smaller properties into larger ones.
• Learn how purchasing and managing Airbnb properties can maximizing returns and help diversify your portfolio.
• Take deliberate steps in real estate to build a strong and sustainable investment portfolio over a long period of time.
• Discover valuable resources to guide you through every stage of your real estate journey, from novice to expert.

The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Getting Started in Real Estate Investing
00:01:18 - Real Estate as an Entrepreneurial Playground
00:03:01 - Taking on Foreclosures and Short Sales
00:07:01 - Leveraging HELOC and Scaling Up
00:11:23 - Transition to Multifamily Investing
00:13:40 - Unexpected Investor Interest
00:14:47 - Progression in Real Estate Investing
00:21:09 - Adding Short-Term Rentals
00:25:36 - Future Plans and Life Balance
00:27:59 - Conclusion and Thanks 

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Troy Meyers
Started doing duplexes, acquired two duplexes a year for three years. And so at the end of three years, we had six properties that were netting, that were netting about $8,500 a month in cash flow.

Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to REL Freedom real estate leverage freedom, talking about building time and financial freedom through different opportunities in real estate. If you're looking to grow yourself, if you're new to the industry, feel free to check out our website, freedom through realestate.com, and get started, because there's so many amazing things that can happen in real estate, and so many people think you have to go into it full time, but you actually don't. And today's guest is just a great example of somebody who's still working a w two job and yet has a ton of amazing things happening in real estate and isn't necessarily in one lane. I always talk about how real estate is an entrepreneurial playground where you can do a lot of different things. And so that's what we're going to cover today. We've got Troy Meyers. Troy was a former college athlete who actually got started selling and flipping motorcycles in college and now works a w two job flipping houses. You've done multifamily. You just got started with some short term rentals. So we'll dig into all that and share your story. So, Troy, welcome to the show.

Troy Meyers
Sounds good. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you having me on.

Mike Swenson
Why don't you just share a little bit about your background, what you're doing, and how you got started in real estate.

Troy Meyers
Yeah. So in college, like anybody, I was broke, wanted to make some extra cash, and I grew up riding dirt bikes, and so always interested in motorcycles and dirt bikes and that kind of thing. In an effort to try and convince my mom that she should let me buy a motorcycle, I found a motorcycle that was a good deal. And I said, hey, mom, I could buy this and I could sell it and make money. And that was kind of my efforts to my last pitch, effort to be like, hey, mom, I should be able to buy this. And so she agreed, and I bought that first motorcycle from there, wrote it all summer, and at the end of the summer, I was like, I think I could actually make some money on this. And ended up selling it for about $1,500 profit. And I was like, well, that was easy. And I was able to have fun with it while riding it. Ended up doing that about 20 plus more times while I was in college. Made some good side money, and then after that, that kind of spurred that hustle game for me, and that transitioned to, okay, well, I've seen HGTV. Why couldn't I do this with houses? My wife and I, or fiance at the time, we decided to buy a foreclosure, and that kind of just spurred the process from there.

Mike Swenson
So talk about the foreclosure piece, like, jumping into that with being your first property. There's a lot of people that have been real estate a long time and are like, I would never touch a foreclosure. I don't even know the process. How does that work? And so, for somebody like you, saying, this is going to be our first house, how did that process work for you?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, so, like I said, my wife and I were both. We were engaged at the time. We were both still living at home. So it's not like we had anything to risk if it didn't come to fruition. Because actually, I say foreclosure. It was technically a short sale, but they say short sales can even take longer than foreclosures sometimes just the paperwork and the process. But it was kind of near where my parents were living, so I was comfortable going into it. HGTV. Right. I always heard, hey, the more work you have to put into it, the better. The bones of the property were good, but it needed a facelift, which scared a lot of people off. That's where I saw the opportunity and was confident to be able to go into that and see if I can make some money like I did on the motorcycles.

Mike Swenson
Now, did you do a lot of the work yourself on that, or just kind of some of it, and then maybe hired out some of that. What did you take on?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, like I said, the property just needed a facelift. And so at that point, I was able to put some sweat equity in paint. We did all the painting. We did all the switching out. The hardware throughout the house, from the brass to the satin nickel, did pay contractors to do the new countertops, the new flooring. It was more lipstick stuff. And so I took the stuff that I was comfortable doing, but then didn't mind hiring some of the more precise, labor intensive things out.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, I was going to say that kind of sounds like our first house. So our story is, right after we got married, we bought a townhouse. So a few years before you, and we actually rode the wave all the way down. So we were completely underwater on our townhouse, and that's how we got started into renting, is we found a tenant to rent that, and then we bought a short sale. So we kind of had the wave down, but then bought a short sale as a way to hopefully ride the wave back up. So I totally get it. And finding something that was enough where you felt comfortable taking on the work because, yeah, I'm not a plumber and electrician, but kind of the lipstick pig type stuff is what we did as well. So then how long did you guys stay in that property and what happened next?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, so we lived in it for two years, and we did that because tax purposes, if it's your primary resident for two years, you can sell it and you don't have to pay any money, don't have to pay any taxes on the gain of that property. So lived in it for two years and actually took out a HeLoC because we had increased the value on it. So we took out a heloc and used it as a down payment for the next house so that we could live in our fixed up house and use the heloc as a down payment, and spent the first couple of months fixing up that house before then we sold the first house to then transition to living in the next one. And so that was kind of our process. People could argue that it was a little bit risky because you took out a heloc. So took out a second mortgage on that first house. I knew what it was worth. I had enough experience at that time. We talked about my w two job. My w two job. I'm fortunate to being in real estate, in the real estate market, in my w two job. So I knew enough to be dangerous to know that I had enough value there that I didn't feel like it was too big of a risk to take out a second mortgage and put that as the down payment on the next property. And then my wife and I both worked w two jobs, and we had no kids, so we had the income coming in. That just gave us the confidence to do that. And so it worked out very well. We were able to sell that property and get what we thought we were going to get out of it. And that paid off all the first mortgage and the second mortgage on the first house. And then because we bought the second house as kind of a foreclosure short sale as well, and I had already fixed it up before we moved into it, we had immediate equity into that.

Mike Swenson
Second house as well, kind of thinking about relationship with your wife, how much was she in on wanting to do this, or was she kind of along for the ride? Or did she play a different role? Because I know for me, I'm the one excited about it. She did some of the work, but I wouldn't say could care less. But she saw it as like, okay, Mike understands this strategy. So kind of what was her role or how excited know was she throughout this process?

Troy Meyers
I would say that she's super supportive and we compliment each other well, so even down to the smallest things, like when it comes to painting, she likes to trim and cut. I like to roll. So we do compliment each other in that way. Well, we're both also grinders, so if we see an end in sight, we can put our head down and grind through it, which helped us get through the renovations, and we saw the end in sight that we'd be able to move in and this property would be a lot nicer than our first property. So we continue to scale up and upgrade our current living situation, which I think was very helpful throughout the process of her being on board with the next property. The next property and the next property also, we were both young and dumb, too. So coming out of college and being newly married, being able to our first house have be a three bed, two bath house in a nice neighborhood, in a decent neighborhood with two car garage. That's different than a lot of our friends who were living in apartments at the time. So I think she saw the value in that as well, of being able to start there and then upgrade from there more than maybe our friends and family who were kind of going about the more traditional route.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, I think when people ask me about getting started and investing in real estate, I think it's one of the best ways to get started. Some people don't come to that realization in their early years without kids, and so you've got to kind of find different ways. Or maybe you're not willing to tolerate living and working and taking on that hustle of fixing up the house at the same time as your job. But I do think for young people, it's about the best way you can get started, because you get the advantage of the low down payment. There's not a lot out of pocket. You put the work into it, you get the equity gain. You can do something like a heloc. So it just opens up so many more doors in the future versus if I were to start real estate investing now, you just don't have those same opportunities because we're already living in a house that is fixed up and we can't take advantage of a low down payment option. So for those people listening out there that are young, your story is a great example of laying out a path of, here's how we can get to our future goals much more quickly because we endured some of these challenges early on.

Troy Meyers
You have different opportunities when you're younger that you don't have once you're more established and you have a career or kids and stuff like that. So if I asked my wife to have a roommate, she'd be like, what are you talking about? Whereas when you're just out of college, you know nothing else other than having a roommate. So house, hack something. Buy a house that's going to appreciate and get roommates. And even if you're not living rent free, you're living for a lot less in more of a luxury place. And so I do think that there's a lot of opportunities when you're younger to take advantage of. That's not to say, though, that I feel like if you're more established, that you shouldn't take advantage of investing as well.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, because I had a friend of mine that bought a house right out of college and had all of our friends living with him for about three years before he got married and had all of them paying his rent, paying him rent, paying off his mortgage. And it opens up future doors that you get a little bit of a leapfrog, start on building wealth through real estate when you take advantage of some of those things. Okay, so talk about kind of dipping into multifamily.

Troy Meyers
Yeah. So we ended up flipping our primary residence. So we lived in the first property for two years, flipped it, lived in the second property for two years, flipped it, and we did that, I think, three or four times. And then once we were in more of an established house, kind of more of an estate type of atmosphere, and we were looking to have kids at the time. So my wife's like, hey, probably don't want to move every two years going forward. And I was like, I totally get that. Like I said, I've been blessed that my day job is in the multifamily development industry. So I saw how multifamily was a good option to complement in investing as well. And so I was like, okay, well, instead of flipping our primary resident, let's start to get into multifamily. And the easiest way to do that is in duplexes, triplexes, or quadplexes, because most people know, but at that time, you're still getting a regular residential loan, and it's just a non owner occupied residential loan, but it's the same process, basically. And so me having experience with multiple different times flipping our house, I knew the residential loan side, so started acquiring duplexes. My goal at the time was acquire two duplexes a year, and each one of them cash flowing $1,000 a month net. And this was in 2019 that I started doing that. And like I said, the capital that we got was either capital that we had because we were prudent with flipping our primary resident. So we were able to have a huge, very large heloc on our house that we could then pull out, use it as a down payment, or it was just capital from just working cash flow, because my wife and I continued our w two jobs that whole time, and so started doing duplexes, acquired two duplexes a year for three years. So at the end of three years, we had six properties that were netting about $8,500 a month in cash flow, which was super awesome, and I was super blessed with. And at the time, that was just the trajectory and said, okay, this is working out well. But then I had an investor actually reach out to me because all of my properties were in the Indianapolis suburb area. And he said, hey, what would it take for you to get for you to sell all these properties? And that was never in the cards. I never saw that coming, but I'm an entrepreneur, so I gave him a number. I couldn't resist, and he didn't bulk at it. I ended up liquidating all those properties at the end of 2022. And at that time, then it was like. And I told my wife, I said, I don't know what God's got in store for us, but I feel like this is the right move. And so we did it. And a few months later, I was able to tap into an 18 unit apartment community and use some of that equity that I was able to cash out of the six duplexes and acquire an apartment community, which then gave me the experience in the commercial loan side. And that's kind of the process from going from the single family to the small multi to the. A little bit bigger multifamily.

Mike Swenson
And I think it's such a great example, and I wouldn't say easy example, because certainly your path hasn't been easy, but it also shows how one thing naturally leads to the other. And so many times when I talk to people looking to get started investing in real estate, it's like, well, I want to be there. But there's a little bit of a progression. Like you learn some lessons as you get going, fixing and flipping your own properties. You learn about time management and scaling and analyzing money and that sort of thing, using equity that you have in other properties, well, then that just grows a little bit larger, a little bit larger, a little bit larger. And so certainly people can start with an 18 unit if they find a partner or something like that, or they happen to have that money saved up. But you've learned so many life lessons along the way and naturally scaled into that. It's just such a natural progression of, do this, do this, do this, do this. And now all of a sudden, boom, here you go. You've got an 18 unit complex, right?

Troy Meyers
And it's really about cultivating an environment for those opportunities, right? I never thought that I was going to sell those duplexes and the triplex, but the opportunity came to me because I cultivated an environment that I had acquired that many properties and they were cash flowing and it was attractive for an investor. So I just think setting a plan and setting a path and being disciplined to accomplish those things, but then not being closed minded for future opportunity or opportunities that come your way because you were disciplined to follow the path that you set yourself on.

Mike Swenson
Now, was the thought process behind the 18 unit just economies of scale, being able to like, okay, now if I learn an apartment complex, I can apply those lessons in a different way. And I'm curious then going back to your duplexes, were you managing those yourself or did you have a management company that was helping with that?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, so I managed those all myself. And I've said this twice now. Third time, I'm super blessed that I'm in a multifamily development company for my day job. So I'm able to bounce questions off the real estate attorneys, the management company. I'm in an environment that gave me the confidence to be able to do that and do it well. And so that's the answer to your first question. The second question on why the 18 unit did I just want to scale up? It was about scaling up, and it was also about, honestly, if I'm not currently managing that 18 unit, but I probably will in the future. And that gave me the opportunity to say, okay, it's a lot easier when they're all in one location. Whereas my duplexes, you have one here, 120 minutes away, 130 minutes away. So it was just a little bit of a, put everything under one roof, put it all in the same location. And I know enough from what I'm doing here, that when you have one roof over the entire thing, that's going to be better for your expenses than if you have six individual roofs for the same type of asset size, one.

Mike Swenson
Insurance policy that you have to renew every year, one set of utility bills that you have to pay every month versus having to deal with that. So yeah, there is an economies of scale there. And I think a lot of times we do see the small multifamily folks feel that eventually, depending on how they've set up their systems. But yeah, it is a lot more efficient to be able to do that. And then in terms of numbers, you might be able to see some numbers with an 18 unit because of the economies of scale that maybe you wouldn't be able to see, like on a price per unit basis that you can't necessarily touch with that small multifamily.

Troy Meyers
And not only, Mike, the economies of scale from just sale price, but as you know, when you're buying duplexes, triplexes, even quadplexes, you're valuing that based on sales comps, whereas in the multifamily game, when you get above that, you're valuing that based on cap rate. And so like an increase in $5 on 18 units and you decrease the expenses because you implemented a utility bill back program. When you times that by a five cap rate or whatever it is at the time, you see a lot more exponential growth in that price for that asset versus the individual duplexes and triplexes.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, you're in control of the value of your property because. Yeah, it's not based on comp. So you don't have to worry about what your neighbor does. You're in control of that based on income, expense control. Why don't you tell us real quick, because I think this is a cool story. Just talking offline how you found that property.

Troy Meyers
Yeah, so I'm just playing golf. Deals are made on the golf course, and I'll tell my wife that all day, every day. So literally.

Mike Swenson
Sorry, I got to go find that next deal. I got to go golfing again because you never know what round it's going to pop up. It could be this round or the next 50 rounds, but I got to be out on the golf course to figure that out.

Troy Meyers
Definitely. So just played golf with some buddies from church, and one of them is a broker who got wind of somebody who might be willing to sell a deal. And I reached out to him, and so it was off market and it ended up being a great deal for us.

Mike Swenson
We've talked a little bit about offline some short term rentals. So what was kind of the thought between adding that to your investment journey and kind of, we talk about building time and financial freedom and living the life you want. So certainly that checks a few different boxes for you now doing some short term rentals.

Troy Meyers
Yeah. So full disclosure, I'm very new in the short term game, so I'm not an expert at all. We acquired two short term rental properties this year, both of them in the last six months. And one of them is in Marco island, two bed, two bath condo. The other one is a six bed, six bath house in Gulf shores. And so those two properties, the reason that I acquired them is because, as I've mentioned, my wife and I are both w two. So we have healthy active income. And the only way to shelter our active income is through active losses, which in the IRS code, the long term properties are considered passive income, which is passive loss. And so I'm going to air quotes a loophole right now, but an incentive for short term rental property owners who manage it themselves, that's considered active income, which in turn is active loss. And so the thought process was to take down these properties in areas that my wife and I would like to frequently travel to, but also in areas that we're going to appreciate greatly. And so this is more of an appreciation play, not as much of a cash flow play. And it's a tax play. So we were able to acquire these properties and I'm going to be managing them on Airbnb myself. And we were able to do a cost segregation study on those to accelerate the depreciation so that it's going to provide a healthy paper loss for my wife and I to offset our active income.

Mike Swenson
It's like you're going by the book here. It's fantastic, all the little things you're doing so well based on so many people that I interview. And like you said, kudos to your day job, being able to put you in a spot where you're able to do that. But you're a great balance of working the w two and taking advantage of the opportunities as a real estate investor and really marrying those two well and having great places to go vacation now that are tax write offs.

Troy Meyers
Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I've said it before, I'm super blessed to be able to learn from the things that I've done here in my day job. I've learned a lot from bigger pockets and just trying to educate myself even outside of my work as well. But one of the things that I did want to mention is I'm all about portfolio architecture, which to me means you need to have cash flow. But you don't make your wealth in cash flow. You sustain with cash flow and you maintain in cash flow, whereas I think your wealth is made on appreciation, whether that's forced appreciation and value add or whether that's natural appreciation because you purchased in places that are just land restricted or are more appreciation type of areas. And so that's where my goal in my process is to have the multifamily that I can either force appreciation in or just as my cash flow play. But then the Airbnbs that we're taking down are in areas that are going to appreciate greatly. And at the end of the day, I want them, even the first year that I buy them, I want them to be able to cash flow neutral. So that's what I'm analyzing on the front end and doing a pro forma on. So I want them to be cash flow neutral at minimum, because I don't want to buy something that we're sinking a bunch of money into. But at the end of the day, I know that in five years and ten years, these things are going to appreciate a lot because I've seen it the last five to ten years and even before that. And so that's kind of the thought process behind kind of what our whole portfolio of investing looks like.

Mike Swenson
Well, and I think, too, there's a balance. A lot of early investors are focused on cash flow.

Troy Meyers
Right.

Mike Swenson
Build the cash flow to be able to do some future things. Now, as you have more income and more wealth, you're more looking. I wouldn't say it's a little bit more defensive than offensive, but at the same time, you can afford to handle cash flow neutral because there's so many other benefits that come as a result of that, where somebody looking early on are like, geez, Gulf shores, that's such a high price point area. I can't get this to cash flow. I'm not going to even consider that opportunity. You're looking at it as like, oh, for today, it's okay because I can hold it because there's so many other benefits that aren't necessarily cash flow based. But you've earned that opportunity through all your previous years of experience.

Troy Meyers
Correct.

Mike Swenson
So what does the future hold? What are you thinking about for kind of some next steps here in the next three to five years?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, I'd say next steps is to continue kind of the trajectory that we're on with. I'd like to scale up the multifamily side now that in order of purchasing, we kind of went selling the properties, then purchasing an 18 unit, and then purchasing two Airbnb units. And so I'd like to now put another multifamily unit as our next purchase. I'd like to scale up the multifamily in really just trying to see where the Lord takes us. I do think that my wife and I, we have one, one girl right now, and we are expecting another one. So a little bit of this is a life w two and side gig balance, because at a certain point, it's going to be a capacity thing and we'll see if the Lord takes me to do my own thing full time. That would, of course, be a goal of mine, but it's also a scary thing as well, so I'm going to slow play that as long as possible.

Mike Swenson
It is, yeah. As somebody that went w two to finally went on their own, I happened to do it, actually. My first day unemployed from my w two is the first day of COVID shutdown. So that was a different set of circumstances that I didn't see coming at the time. But, yeah, it's fun all along the way. And so congratulations to you on all the stuff that you're building, all that you've done, and it's going to be cool to see where you go in the future for people that want to kind of reach out to you, maybe connect with you and chat. How can they do that?

Troy Meyers
Yeah, it'd be social media. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, and so my instagram is Troy underscore Myers. Underscore on Instagram and then on Facebook, it's Troy Meyers. So we'd love for people to follow me. I a lot of times post about our Airbnb properties. So if you guys are looking for a place in Marco island or Gulf shores, we'd love to have you.

Mike Swenson
And that's Myers. M-E-Y-E-E-R-S for people that might be wondering. And we'll link to it as well. Thanks so much, Troy, for coming on. Best of luck to you. And yeah, if you want to get started with your journey in real estate, check out freedom through realestate.com. A lot of great content to be able to get started. Figure out what your path is and you can follow along with Troy way and kind of see how one step leads to the next.

Mike Swenson
So thank you so much, Troy, for coming on.

Mike Swenson
We appreciate it.

Troy Meyers
Thank you.