House Hacking Small Multifamily Rentals: How Becky Nova Built Financial Freedom

Becky Nova (00:00)
We’ve already replaced your salary with real estate in the first two years. So we were okay not needing his salary. My response to him was we should go buy more real estate. And he was like, What are you talking about? Like I lost my job. And I was like, Exactly, this is why we need to be able to really create our own income. Cool to have a job on top of that, but we kind of need our own plan B and we really need to bet on ourselves that we can make something happen rather than just rely on somebody else to take care of us.

Michelle Kesil (02:00)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Becky Nova, who is a full-time real estate investor focusing on small multifamily units. So really excited to have you here today, Becky.

Becky Nova (02:22)
Thanks for having me, Michelle. I appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (02:24)
Sure, let’s dive in. So first off, for those new to your world, can you share what your main focus is?

Becky Nova (02:32)
Sure. I focus on small multifamilies meaning two to four units and I invest mostly between New York and the Dominican Republic.

Michelle Kesil (02:42)
Awesome. And how did you get started in investing?

Becky Nova (02:47)
I got started investing back in twenty eighteen. I actually had no interest. I didn’t even think about investing as a thing. I got started as my husband. he actually wanted to buy a an actual just house. We were living in a six floor walk up in New York City in the Bronx and it was ⁓ my husband’s goal to really buy a home. He immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was eighteen.

And really that American dream was something incredibly important to him. So he was the one that mentioned, hey, we should buy our own home. I was really not in a very good financial place. I had just moved back from Europe where I’d lost a business. I was in really bad credit. I had no savings whatsoever. ⁓ but when we finally decided this was kind of the next step in our relationship to be able to buy a house, I went through really a f period of financial literacy learning how to

get my credit score back up, how to get my savings back up and how to then move forward with real estate. It was once we bought that first property that then we said, Hey, this is a really great opportunity to continue to scale and that’s actually where investing kinda came into place for us.

Michelle Kesil (04:00)
Yeah, amazing. And so did you learn about investing through this journey or just trial and error and you guys went for it?

Becky Nova (04:09)
a little more trial and error. ⁓ I am probably the bigger of the risk taker between the two of us. The first property I felt was probably not very risky. We did house hacking where we bought one property that was a duplex. We lived in one side, rented out the other. And with that that it was much more affordable that way. Really the other unit was helping us with that mortgage. So it was a great opportunity to learn about being a landlord.

And honestly I fell in love with it that even on day one of closing on a property we were able to start bringing in money. So that I found very appealing and I just really went down a rabbit hole on podcasts like this and other resources about what we could do to be able to scale to then get ourselves to the second property and to continue continue growing from there.

Michelle Kesil (04:59)
And what do you feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow and run successfully?

Becky Nova (05:54)
I feel as we’ve created more income, I feel like we’ve continued to keep our living expenses down. After that very first house hack, we actually eliminated our cost of living, which in New York City is kind of a big deal. I used to pay like th two thousand dollars for like a studio apartment ⁓ back in like twenty seventeen. I can’t imagine what prices would be now. But it was really important for us to continue to say

We’re gonna keep the cars that we have, we’re gonna continue to live in our house act for a few years until we were able to really scale that portfolio. We also stayed at our full time jobs for the first few years. So in that way we were able to get loans based on our W-2s and we had the extra income from that space before we made the full jump to an investor. So I feel like a lot of people kinda have that lifestyle creep as they start making more money, they start spending more money. That was something that we really wanted to be

make sure that we stayed with our costs very low as we were scaling our portfolio.

Michelle Kesil (06:54)
And what did the process look like to be able to scale?

Becky Nova (07:00)
I think figuring out financing was probably the most important thing. I feel like when we bought that first property, we really took all the savings that we had and put it into it. We weren’t thinking about growing from that period of time. So for us to be honest, the first property wasn’t that difficult because it was really what we were looking at as homeowners. Where were we gonna live? This was gonna be our home, our investment, the down payment made sense. It made sense to spend those funds on it. It was after that though, when I

said at the closing table on that first property, I love this. We’ve got to buy another rental property. Everybody kind of in the room, the attorneys, the ⁓ lenders, realtors, everybody was kind of like, no, you can’t do that. You now don’t have any funds. You know, you spent everything in this property. Now you’re gonna have to go. It’s gonna take you years to be able to save up, especially investing in New York where properties are so expensive or any other high cost of living area. The idea then was, well

No, you just need to go back, you need to save for years. And I’m sitting there being like, save for a hundred thousand dollars. Like that’s not exactly like something that, you know, people just have leftover money sitting around that they could just add up easily to a hundred thousand dollars. So I feel like at that point it was really starting to understand different types of loans that are available to us and also what we could do to have savings that would consistently be increasing so we can have kind of a combination

of throwing in some different types of financing, reusing possible owner occupied, how to move to those conventional loans or other loans that take different down payments and then still be able to not not need to overlevage ourselves and still be able to use some of our savings. I feel like that was the tricky part for scaling.

Michelle Kesil (08:42)
Absolutely. And what have been some of the biggest challenges or hurdles that you’ve overcome and then learned from?

Becky Nova (08:53)
I mean, right in the middle of all those years of investing was the pandemic. ⁓ we started investing in twenty eighteen. Twenty twenty for everyone was a completely different kind of way of life. When it comes to what was happening within real estate for us, we did at that point I think have about ten units and it was a very different world to have to communicate with our tenants to see who had lost their jobs, who were the people many people across the United States were on hold with unemployment.

for hours and hours a day and didn’t get any funds for months. If and that was even the people that just even lost their jobs. Other people still had to go to work but still weren’t being paid. So it was a place where we really had to discuss with our tenants what that looked like. We had to think about things financially. At during that time my husband lost his job. So we had to then navigate how to keep management going, but we also scaled during that time. That was a time when once again nobody had any idea what was going on in the world.

And it was kind of our decision, especially after my husband lost his job, for us to actually say, Hey, let’s continue buying real estate, this kind of shows us we can’t really count on corporate America. Right? They sent my husband home in the middle of the day and we’re like, Good luck, you know, you don’t have a job. I’ll never forget my husband came home that day and was like, What are we gonna do? We’re down an income stream and I was really proud because I was able to actually say to him, No offense, but we don’t actually need your job.

We’ve already replaced your salary with real estate in the first two years. So we were okay not needing his salary. My response to him was we should go buy more real estate. And he was like, What are you talking about? Like I lost my job. And I was like, Exactly, this is why we need to be able to really create our own income. Cool to have a job on top of that, but we kind of need our own plan B and we really need to bet on ourselves that we can make something happen rather than just rely on somebody else to take care of us.

Michelle Kesil (11:23)
Yeah, that’s important. And you mentioned you invest in the Dominican Republic. What does the international investment like differ from local?

Becky Nova (11:34)
Very, very different. the biggest very different. The the biggest thing with that is really just understanding financing and how to do that as a citizen versus a foreigner. And that goes really with like any country that you’d be investing in. Here in the States we have, you know, typically thirty year loans. that’s not the same way in every other country. Also what an inv what a local person can do that has citizenship versus what a foreigner can do from the outside, completely different worlds as well.

Michelle Kesil (11:35)
Sure, I can imagine.

Becky Nova (12:04)
My husband being from the Dominican Republic was very helpful because we did have access to different types of loans, ⁓ because of his citizenship and I’m I’m working on mine. We spend the winters down there. ⁓ so that was something that we did have like an extra benefit to. But if I did not have him, once again between a language barrier, a process barrier, a financing barrier, very, very different world. ⁓ I enjoy it. And then the other the other part that’s interesting about the Dominican Republic is

Island in the Caribbean, right? Anytime I tell people I own property in the Dominican Republic, they’re always like, my god, must be like beachfront property, you must do Airbnb. And like, yes, I do with one of my properties, the one that I live in, I short term rental it when I’m not there. But the other property is actually in the Capitol. It’s in a city and it’s a long term rental for people that actually live in the Dominican Republic. It wouldn’t be something that that a foreigner would go on vacation to.

So it is interesting to still see like we still need rentals in other countries to still support the people that are living there as well, rather than just buying up all beachfront property and just Airbnb those. And really having that sometimes out of touch for the people that actually live in that country.

Michelle Kesil (13:19)
Yeah, that’s important. What are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Becky Nova (13:29)
Right now scaling is actually not my main goal. I’ve spent the past eight years aggressively growing my portfolio. One of the reasons for that was first, hated my day job. I worked in cancer research for many years. Conceptually, I love it. I feel like I got to really make an impact and help our patients. But there’s a lot of red tape in pharmaceuticals and to be honest, the companies always win. It really is a place where

everything you’re doing makes money really for the pharmaceutical company and sometimes that overshadows really the care of patients and that was something that never really fit for kind of how I like to live my life. Second, my husband and I wanted to be able to start a family and for me I really did not want to accept the idea of the average maternity leave in America being like six weeks. That was something that I just I could not imagine doing that. I wanted to be able to be present

So right now I had my baby a few months ago. She’s currently seven months old. I wanna be home and stay with her. So we’ve really been living my husband and I are very fortunate to be able to live off of our portfolio. Right now we are working on some of the larger Cap X projects and maintaining what we have, but right now scaling is not not the most important factor for me. And I think that’s what’s so cool about real estate is you could look at that throughout what’s changing in your life and say, I have

I have all the time in the world right now because I hate my nine to five and I want a quiet quit and I could take my lunch break or use my PTO days and go do showings and go find another property. Or you can say, you know what, I want to enjoy my summer. I’m not gonna buy anything right now. And right now the season that I’m in is I can l really live off of what I’ve already built and I don’t need to scale. And that’s something that I did once again, it’s not that overnight success, it’s something that took me eight years to be able to build. But at this current moment

I really get to enjoy the benefits of what I’ve built.

Michelle Kesil (16:10)
Yeah, that’s amazing to be able to reach those goals.

What advice would you give to someone that’s looking to get started or is early in their investing journey?

Becky Nova (16:28)
It’s interesting because I feel like early in their investing journey could mean so many different things. And I say that because I talk to investors all the time and I have so many people that have been wanting to be an investor for years and they still call themselves early in their journey, right? That’s why that phrase really stuck out to me. And then when I asked them, like, Okay, well, how long have you been, you know, looking into real estate or how long have you been wanting to buy your first property? I’ve heard answers of like

five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. And I’m like, okay, ten years is not early, right? ⁓ so my advice really to those people is to think about what is really the threshold of what do you need to do to buy that first rental and then actually go and do it. Don’t get caught up in the well it’s just, you know, another podcast or it’s just another course or it’s just another dollar that I need to save. But really set kind of those boundaries there and say

Great, I need to have twenty thousand dollars in the bank. That’s my emergency fund and that’s my down payment fund. Okay, I need to understand how owner occupied financing starts because I’m gonna buy a house hack. And once you have those two pieces, now we can move forward. Rather than we don’t need to go, if you want to move into a duplex like I started, which is a great way to get started in real estate, if that’s your goal, you don’t need to understand how sub two contracts work. You don’t need to understand how wholesaling works.

You don’t need to understand every piece of of real estate investing because you never will. Focus specifically on what you need to do to get yourself that rental property sooner than later. The number one thing that you’ll hear from any successful real estate late real estate investor is that they always wish that they got started sooner. So just don’t get lost in that minutiae because you’re not gonna know everything.

Michelle Kesil (18:17)
Sure, that makes sense. Is there anything that you wish you knew while you were getting started that like now you have the knowledge of?

Becky Nova (18:33)
it’s might sound kind of controversial, but it’s actually much easier than people think it is. Real estate’s been around forever. We don’t need to recreate a rule we don’t need to recreate the wheel. We don’t need to create some completely new way of investing that nobody’s ever thought of. Everything’s really kind of out there. We really just have to bug into what other people have doing been doing and kind of copy what that success looks like. There are solutions for everything and

If you want to get into real estate investing, you have to become a very good problem solver. So I hear often people saying, Well, I don’t have the funds. There are so many different ways to get funds. You can partner up with people, you can borrow funds, you can use a private lender, you can use a bank, you can pull out equity from what you have, you can pull out money from a retirement. There are so many different ways to be able to do that. It really becomes how do we troubleshoot what those issues are. So if there’s something that you’re saying, hey, this is a big obstacle that I have.

I either don’t know how to do deal analysis, I don’t know how to find the right property, I don’t know how to fund my deal. Once again, find somebody that’s done what you need to do and start troubleshooting your obstacles so you can move forward. But there’s really no reason. The advice that I was given after that first property of like, you just have to wait and like save, that is so not true. There are so many different ways to grow, and you don’t have to wait, but you have to understand how to problem.

Michelle Kesil (19:59)
And are there any goals or other opportunities that you are looking to get into in real estate?

Becky Nova (20:07)
Possibly. I run a community called Lady Landlords. we bring together other women that are in real estate investing. I really felt when I started growing my portfolio that there was a lot of gatekeeping to the information within real estate. So I really just try to pull together like all the information of what like I wish I had. and I think that really once again connecting with other people that are doing what you hope to be doing, I think is kind of a key, like in that space.

So for my goals, I would probably like to do some more private lending right now. That’s something that I would kinda like to grow. Once again, I’m not looking I’m not looking to do anything that’s adding time to my schedule right now. So I do think there are a lot of opportunities within private lending right now, ⁓ to be able to grow and really invest in other people’s projects. And once again, if I can then support somebody else’s journey in growing their portfolio and I don’t have to manage tenants right now, it’s kind of a win win.

Michelle Kesil (21:08)
Absolutely, thank you for sharing all of that.

Becky Nova (21:11)
You’re welcome.

Michelle Kesil (21:14)
Before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?

Becky Nova (21:21)
Sure. Anyone that identifies as female can find me on Facebook in the Lady Landlord’s Facebook community, and for all different genders you can find me on Instagram at the Becky Nova.

Michelle Kesil (21:34)
Perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you so much for being here.

Becky Nova (21:39)
You’re welcome.

Michelle Kesil (21:42)
And for the listeners tuning in to the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Becky, who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you on the next episode.