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From Military to Rentals: VA Loan Strategy, Airbnb vs. Long-Term, Market Outlook & Beginner Tips

By October 7, 2025Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Curtis Bellenot discusses the historical context of mortgage rates, emphasizing that current rates, while perceived as high, are not unprecedented. He explains the influence of Federal Reserve policies on interest rates and the market’s reaction to these changes, providing insights into the economic landscape.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Curtis Bellenot (00:00)
    you can make tons of money. I mean I had turned a long-term rental from 1500 bucks a month to 9000 dollars a month just with the Airbnb. So there’s a huge huge opportunity in that. That being said it’s a lot

    Kristen (00:07)
    Wow.

    Curtis Bellenot (00:11)
    more active. You have to make sure, you know, if anything goes wrong it needs to be fixed ASAP. If someone’s gonna stay there for two days and the AC goes out the first day, I mean it needs to be done that night.

    Kristen (01:54)
    Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Curtis Bellenot He is out of Savannah, Georgia and he’s an investor who focuses on long-term rentals and house flipping. And he’s in various markets we’re gonna get into. Thank you so much for being here, Curtis. Awesome, so I wanna get into your background. You kind of used to have this as a part-time passion and now you’re doing this full-time. I would love for you to talk about kind of what got you to this place.

    Curtis Bellenot (02:07)
    Brum, thanks for having me.

    Sure. So I grew up in Los Angeles, ⁓ middle class, and I had friends growing up that would get picked up in a Lamborghini while, you know, I got picked up in a Toyota Corolla. And so I was, was, you know, interested in like, what’s the difference between them and me? You know, my parents, you know, love them. They stayed together. They provided everything that I could want, ⁓ but, or everything I needed. And ⁓ so I tried college, it wasn’t for me, ended up joining the military and

    You know got a lot of skills from it and but realized hey, I’d like something more in life ⁓ You know monetarily So I ended up having some great NCOs and great bosses that were doing some long-term investing and kind of got me on the real estate path and After a couple deployments, I’d saved up some money

    I bought my first house in El Paso, Texas right at the bottom of the market in 2012, which was wild. These neighborhoods were…

    you know, five miles by five miles and every other house was ⁓ empty or for sale. mean, HUD had actually come in and cleaned out all these houses, gave them a paint job, replaced the carpets. ⁓ And my realtor at the time, Roberto, love him to death. ⁓ He was broke, broke real estate agent, you know, he just started right before the crash. He was like teaching real estate at the local college. And I think we, visited like 80 houses before I bought my first one.

    Kristen (03:25)
    Yeah.

    Curtis Bellenot (03:46)
    was a long term. I was going to move into it. Then I got orders. I rented it out and we lucked out because the agent had, um,

    advertised it as a 3-2 and like I said, there’s thousands of houses available. And so 3-2s were going for like 82 and 4-2s were going for about 92. And we walked the house, I think it was a 3-2, turned out it was a 4-2. And so it was basically 82,000 versus 92. So instant equity. So I bought it, lived in it for a bit, got deployed and put a renter in there.

    And then that was the first one. yeah, had a good time with that.

    Kristen (04:24)
    Wow, that’s kind of rare that

    the first one going so well is a rarity.

    Curtis Bellenot (05:19)
    Well, you know, I had good mentors. ⁓ I read a couple of great books, like The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller of Keller Williams. mean, that if anybody takes anything from this podcast, just read that book. ⁓ It’ll make you tons of money. ⁓ All the gurus, they basically are teaching that formula. I do agree, you should get into masterminds and gurus and pay coaches and all those things. But that book has most of that information if you want it. ⁓

    And so then I deployed and I just, you you had a lot of time over deployment. So I just read everything I could about starting a business and doing those other things. And so when I got down to Savannah, Georgia, I was blown away. mean, you could have a house that was worth, you know, half a million dollars and then a quarter mile away, a house worth 26,000. So there was just tons of opportunity, especially coming from a big area.

    I mean, Savannah, Georgia, it’s so small that the neighborhood that I bought my first house in in El Paso is larger than the entire city. So there was a lot of opportunities with evaluations and, you know, at the time, 2014, lot of people were, know, gentrification, moving to cities, more affordable places.

    and they wanted the charm of the city. mean, it was a beautiful city, beautiful live oaks, had an art college, also a military presence, it had a great port, you know, it had a bunch of manufacturing jobs, was a real, and lots of tourists, so it was a really well-balanced economy.

    And I just kind of got hooked on flipping these old Victorians and craftsmen’s with, you know, 12 foot ceilings, big giant pillars on everything and intricate details. I just fell in love and it was dirt cheap to do. ⁓ And I learned a lot about houses. ⁓

    I used to fix helicopters in the military. Everything’s engineered to go together and houses aren’t. ⁓ I had no idea about that. I had no idea about the quality control. I had no idea about construction and how crazy it is. ⁓ So it was a…

    Kristen (07:09)
    Okay.

    You’re in it.

    Yeah, and you were doing all your

    own construction, correct?

    Curtis Bellenot (07:23)
    ⁓ Well, I had general contractors do a lot of the work at the beginning, ⁓ especially on the bigger ones. And I got to a point where I was like, you guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I can do it better. And so that’s how I my own construction company in 2019, right before COVID. Don’t recommend doing that, but you know.

    Kristen (07:42)
    Yeah.

    Yeah, well that’s awesome. I mean, that’s a really good story to how you got there. And I mean, I can tell that you’re so passionate about the industry. I know that kind of getting started as a veteran, you say that there’s a lot of resources available that you want people to know about, and that made your journey a little bit easier. Can you share some of those?

    Curtis Bellenot (08:05)
    Yeah,

    definitely. Having a military job, a lot of people say, oh, you’re working all the time. Get out of here. If you’re in Garrison, you’re working quite a bit and you’re physically at somewhere, but there’s plenty of times to look on Zillow, look on Redfin, talk to people, field phone calls, do all those sort of things. So if you really want it, the military is a great spot to kind of do both of those things and start a business.

    this. A lot of my friends in the military as I was getting out were part-time realtors. And if you want to make money on the side, you can become a realtor. All you have to do is just, hey, you’re PCS and you’re changing stations. If you got a realtor license, then you can find out who’s moving there. And wherever you’re buying, probably other military people are going to live next to you. And so you can just use that as a ⁓ funnel for all your new clients. ⁓ And even if you’re doing two

    three

    houses a year that maybe twenty thirty thousand dollars extra in your pocket for you know maybe a hundred hours of work a year very very simple same thing as you’re very bankable you know you got a nice w-2 you have you know a set contract so banks would love to lend to you you also have the GI bill excuse me yeah we have the GI bill but you also have VA loans which I don’t know the exact things right now but depending on what you do it’s you know either 97 % loan devaluation

    which is great and then other loan terms you can actually take the closing costs and move them into the loan I think the highest I’ve seen is like a hundred and seven percent LTV which is crazy you know you’re basically getting free money at a very discounted rate and then you can buy up to a four unit apartment complex with the VA loan and so if you have your BAH which is the basic allowance of housing ⁓

    You can live in one unit and that your BAH should pay for that. And then the other three units are going to pay down that mortgage.

    And then as soon as you PCS, you can put a new renter in there and then that thing should be cash flowing pretty well. So that’s just a huge jump in your bankability, your net worth with just one property. this, you you can be in the military for two years and get this stuff. So it’s.

    Kristen (10:53)
    Wow.

    Curtis Bellenot (10:55)
    it behooves people to understand the amount of leverage that they’re willing to give you.

    Kristen (11:00)
    Absolutely, you know, take advantage of what’s out there and the resources you’re being given. I think that’s incredible that you can leverage so much, you know, in one property. So now, you know, you’re rolling with investing and you have a really nice portfolio set up. I know that you are in the long-term rental space. Can you talk about the opportunity there and what you like about that specific sector?

    Curtis Bellenot (11:22)
    Yeah, I

    mean I have short-term rentals. had executive rentals. I had long-term rentals. They’re all good. They’re all different and you know depending on what your wants and needs are at the time if you’re active and and wanted to really pursue growth ⁓ certain like Airbnb, VRBO,

    Kristen (11:28)
    Thank

    Curtis Bellenot (11:41)
    you can make tons of money. I mean I had turned a long-term rental from 1500 bucks a month to 9000 dollars a month just with the Airbnb. So there’s a huge huge opportunity in that. That being said it’s a lot

    Kristen (11:48)
    Wow.

    Curtis Bellenot (11:52)
    more active. You have to make sure, you know, if anything goes wrong it needs to be fixed ASAP. If someone’s gonna stay there for two days and the AC goes out the first day, I mean it needs to be done that night.

    ⁓

    there’s leaks, if there’s issues, if there’s parties, ⁓ know, know, quell the neighbors, make sure that they’re cool with that. ⁓ And then some of the executive rentals, we kind of did some long-term stuff, which is great if you have a certain amount of people in your city that are doing that. ⁓ We had a big plant that was getting built over here. So the executive rentals worked out great. That plant has since been completed and we watched that kind of, you know,

    come down in value. And the same thing with that, you have all this furniture, have TVs, you have art. So even though the deposit may be a lot compared to your regular rental, ⁓ you still are going to lose a lot of money if there are issues.

    So the long-term stuff is great. You don’t make as much money, but it’s long-term. you you’re not going to get rich off one or two or five, but you get to a certain point where you get 10, 15 long-term rentals at 30-year fixed rates. And over the course of five, 10 years, you’ve increased the rents by a thousand dollars. And if you start paying those things down fast enough, it becomes like the snowball effect. And you can take your, you know, if you’re not pulled

    and all that cash out for your living expenses. know, pay off one, move that to pay off the next one, then those two will pay off that next one, and pretty soon you can really pay down debt really fast and watch the returns really come in once those loans are paid off.

    Kristen (13:31)
    Yeah, I mean that’s incredible. And I think that, yeah, as you said, people have different strategies and they have different goals with real estate. I think playing the long game is always beneficial to build wealth. But yeah, with short-term rentals, some people are looking for that high monthly income. ⁓ Yeah, there’s just pros and cons with everything. And then, so you are invested in multiple areas. How do you find the best places where people actually want to move?

    Curtis Bellenot (14:40)
    Well, there’s a thing called like the path of progress and so in any area you’re gonna have a place where the people are moving to whether it’s you know, ⁓ let’s say vacation homes or in a city and you know, there’s a place where it’s not quite as good but you got like the cool artists and you got the cool coffee shops ⁓ then those sort of places are gonna be increasing in value. ⁓

    When it comes to different markets, it’s really important to have an economy that can support it. So not just like a mill town in Ohio. ⁓ The returns are going to be great, but as soon as that mill closes, boom, you’re done. Your investment’s gone. ⁓

    I had an uncle who he focused on accounting at nuclear plants and he always bought houses. And then so he was the last one out and then was always wondering why he could never make money in real estate. And it’s like, yeah, because you’re literally shutting down the biggest employer in the area. ⁓ So even very smart people can make horrible mistakes in real estate. He should have just rented. He would have saved a lot of money. ⁓

    Kristen (15:46)
    you.

    Curtis Bellenot (15:48)
    So in where I’m at in Savannah, Georgia, ⁓ it’s a smaller city than Charleston. Charleston is about two hours ⁓ north of us. And the saying here is we’re 10 years behind Charleston. And then there’s a town below us about an hour south called Brunswick, which is very similar to Savannah. And they’re about 10 to 15 years behind Savannah. So it was very easy to be like, what’s going on in Charleston is going to happen here in Savannah, which is then going to happen down in Brunswick. knowing your local market, knowing where people are going,

    understanding the local economy, what’s happening, ⁓ then you can basically make some pretty good predictions on where these things are gonna go. That being said, sometimes it takes a bit longer than expected. Hence why I like to buy long-term ⁓ in these places where as long as the cash flow works, I’m happy at the current levels. And then all the appreciation that comes with the more growth and more ⁓ opportunities that happen there ⁓ is just the cherry on top.

    Kristen (16:44)
    Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s really good advice. I think that’s applicable for people who are trying to expand maybe outside of exactly where they live, kind of find different markets that sort of replicate what the market you know is doing. And just in general, I would love for you to talk about just getting into real estate in the market. I think there’s a lot of information being thrown out. People are confused. People have trepidation about it.

    What’s your perspective on where we’re at today?

    Curtis Bellenot (17:14)
    ⁓ Yes, there is a lot of information going out and it depends on what you’re doing, who you’re at, where you’re at in life, those sort of stages. ⁓ My biggest thing is if you’re renting, then you’re throwing that money away and paying somebody else’s mortgage. ⁓ even if you do rent,

    and you have a great place and have dirt cheap rent, you should buy something that you can rent out. And that way somebody else is paying your mortgage costs. So, you know, obviously if you’ve got a sweetheart deal and you love your landlord, you’ve been there for 10 years, you don’t want to move, I’m not saying buy a house for you to live in. I’m saying buy a house so that it will supplement your income ⁓ and then create… ⁓

    you basically a savings account that somebody else is paying into that you can, you know, pull that equity later on and or, you know, if you make enough money off your rental properties, then you don’t have to pay rent. Your rental properties will supplement your rent. The other thing is while everyone goes, oh mortgage rates are so high and da da da, historically they’re not. 67 % is actually a normal rate in a good economy. Obviously 2%, 3%, 4 % rates that happened recently, those are not gonna

    Kristen (17:54)
    Yeah.

    Curtis Bellenot (18:19)
    happen again anytime soon no matter what the Federal Reserve does. I don’t know if you guys have noticed but the Federal Reserve is dropping interest rates but the 10-year mortgage or the 10-year treasuries are not keeping up with that because people are realizing like hey the Federal Reserve is just inflating the debt away and so they’re not going to be buying these 10-year treasuries at 3 % interest rates because they’re actually going to lose money on there.

    And then also in the 1980s, even the 90s, it was very common to have 18, 19 % interest rates for these 30 year fixed products. Even 12 % was crazy. think my parents bought their house in 88 and they were very happy to have a single digit mortgage interest rate. this is, you’re still historically at a low average. And then going back into the Federal Reserve and the things that they’re doing is,

    You know, we spent years, ⁓ you know, with the wars and terror, ⁓ all these other things we’ve been doing. So we’re kind of at this like 1970s stagflation moment where anything that you buy now is going.

    It’s not going to get any cheaper. So labor is not going to get cheaper. know, ⁓ tile is not going to get any cheaper. All the materials aren’t going to get any cheaper. So if you can buy something, you know, $1970, then you know, you’re, killing it now. So, ⁓ I like it to say it’s like, you could buy a brand new Corvette in 1972 for $4,000. You know, the cheapest Corvette now is like $80,000. So just understand the purchasing power today. ⁓ for a hard asset that can cashflow towards you, you’re always going to win.

    That

    being said, don’t go into, you know, Ohio mill towns. ⁓ St. Louis, I got a lot of friends that invested there or trying to get out of it. The numbers look amazing, but the crime is crazy. And it’s a pain in butt to some of those places. I do love St. Louis. I’ll visit there often, but I’m not investing there. Same thing with Idaho, Indiana, or excuse me, Indiana, Ohio. I don’t do those. And also when it comes to…

    you know, getting your foot in the door. Just buying a cheap rental in an okay area that you drive by on a regular basis is a great way to get started. That way you can, you know, you can check on the property. If you have a property manager, you can still check up on what they’re doing. You can see if the tenants are, you know, ⁓ keeping up with the maintenance. So it doesn’t have to be crazy hard. You don’t have to have a hundred houses. You don’t have to do all these things. But if you have, you know, three houses, ⁓

    you you buy for $120,000, you rent that out for $1,500. You know, in 10 years, you’re gonna have 50K of equity in each one of those. And it’s just a simple, easy, you know, thing to do. It’s less speculative than some of the crypto stuff. It’s less risky than the stock market. Yeah.

    Kristen (21:04)
    Yeah, I think you just dropped a lot of great information there, really practical stuff. mean, having perspective on the market and zooming out from where we’re at and not getting so caught up on the numbers and how they maybe relate to a very unique time in our history. I think really taking a look at where you’re investing and getting very zoomed in on where you’re investing and being knowledgeable about that is very important. ⁓

    I think you’ve given a lot of great advice. So to kind of wrap this up, because we’re at the end of our time, what would be a piece of advice that maybe you wish you learned earlier in your career that you could share with us?

    Curtis Bellenot (21:43)
    Oh, there’s lots of things. You know, I really think you should write down your goals and figure out what you want to do. I created, I wanted to create a lifestyle business and I did, but I did with networking and other people keeping up the Joneses ego. You know, I did a hell of a lot. And I think if I could have done it differently, I would have just gotten 10 paid off houses, called it a day, had a good long-term property manager and kind of just chilled.

    Kristen (21:45)
    Yeah.

    you

    Curtis Bellenot (22:09)
    But ⁓ yeah, regrets are for children. So don’t have regrets. Just learn from them and move forward.

    Kristen (22:17)
    Absolutely, I think that’s a great way to end this. Tell everybody where to find you and how to work with you.

    Curtis Bellenot (22:23)
    I would probably just say, know, shoot me a text, 912-655-6633. I’ve actually got a lot of friends that hit me up through podcasts and I get my phone number out, which is wild, but whatever. You can email me, CurtisB1968 at gmail.com. I’m on Instagram, CurtisB2. Facebook as well. I don’t really go on there as much. But yeah, I do have a website, Bell Homes LLC.

    Kristen (22:33)
    Thanks.

    Curtis Bellenot (22:46)
    It’s it. I killed my construction company, so it’s not as active as it once was. So but you can see some stuff that we’ve done. Yeah. And if you’re in the Savannah area, give me a shout.

    Kristen (22:59)
    Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Curtis. I really appreciate you being here.

    Curtis Bellenot (23:03)
    Thank you so much for the opportunity, I appreciate it.

    Kristen (23:04)
    Yes, and thank you everybody for listening. Hope you learned a lot and got some inspiration for your own business and we’ll see you back next time.

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