House Hacking Strategy for Beginners: Build Wealth Without Quitting Your Job

Chris Arslan (00:00)
Look, at the end the day, the with real estate, you’re gonna have to take on leverage. You know, as much as I would love to say, you know, do the Dave Ramsey approach, which is you never borrow, that’s not realistic unless you know you come from money or have the world’s greatest job or business. So you’re gonna have to take on leverage. I would just say, at least for what my wife and I did, is we leveraged ourselves pretty aggressively. I’m not gonna lie. I was very leveraged at the beginning of my real estate journey.

But I had a I had very little to lose at the beginning, right? so at the beginning, I was aggressively leveraging myself. you know, doing the the good old BRRRR strategy. I was cash-out refinancing, HELOCs, 0% interest rate credit cards. I was doing it all.

Scott Bursey (02:18)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast Powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re diving deep into the art of sidepreneur. Our guest is Chris Arslan of Chris Arslan Productions. Chris is bringing pure high-octane fuel to the table. He and his wife have built a thriving portfolio of long-term rentals while crushing it in their full-time careers. We’re talking master-level discipline and efficiency. Chris,

welcome to the show.

Chris Arslan (02:46)
I appreciate Scott. Nice to nice to be here. I appreciate the introduction. That was great.

Scott Bursey (02:52)
It’s just awesome having you here, man. And to get our listeners up to speed, please give us the front row seat, if you will, on how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Chris Arslan (03:04)
Yeah, so I guess from the beginning, I just I graduated college with student loan debt, didn’t really know what I wanted to do. my dad said I’d be good at sales, so I decided to just blindly trust them, not knowing anything about what a career in sales meant or would look like. And so got a job right out of school.

Maybe the worst pick I could have made of my first job out of school. I was living in Northern Virginia. I was making a base salary of $25,000 a year and was working off of commission. needless to say, my first year out of college, I made basically no money and and I was renting and I always had an ambition of owning real estate.

And at least I don’t know how familiar audience is with the Northern Virginia market, but you know, very similar to like the New York and LA market, it’s quite expensive. And so I was like, how am I ever gonna live in my own house making no money? And so after a year of that job, I I thankfully ended up applying to a new role at a Fortune 500 company where they had phenomenal sales training and was able to

sell enough to where I could actually have some money in the bank and you know, fast forward. And if you want me to get into like my first deal, I’m happy to. But that that’s really what led me to owning real estate was finally having a job that made me enough money to have money in the bank to go go buy some real estate. but yeah that’s kind of the the backstory of how I you know kind of got into it.

Scott Bursey (04:48)
That’s so cool, Chris. thank you for sharing that. And you know what really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to build a significant rental portfolio with your wife while maintaining your full-time careers. You know, it’s the ultimate blueprint for scaling without the burnout, and it’s helped you and your wife to build a a life with greater financial freedom and flexibility, showcasing that hard work with a solid game plan pays off.

Chris Arslan (05:16)
Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I envy people that are able to, you know, graduate high school or college, don’t get a job, and they, you know, partner with different investors and and you know leverage themselves and and are able to make it. I guess I just never personally had the guts to to you know leverage my entire financial future. So for us it made the most sense to have

our W-2 income. And that’s really what funded these real estate steal deals. Now, obviously, you know, we got started in 2020 when rates were at a historic low. So we got to borrow essentially free capital to start up our real estate journey. but yeah, definitely having the the W-2 jobs helps you be able to be a bad investor. So, like I always tell my friends that are trying to get into real estate.

they’re like, what should do first? Like, should I should I quit my job and should I should I go and borrow all this money and find a hard money lender? And I’m like, no, because you’re going against people like me and people that are even bigger and better than me at real estate investing. Like, you need you need to have some sort of stable finances behind you. you know, I once again I’m envy people at Grant Cardone who are like, you know, buy a bajillion dollar multi-unit complex. That’s not the advice I give. I I go the house hacking, like the safest.

most boring easy way to get into it, which is just buy a house and rent out rooms in it, so they can cover your mortgage and then a year later rinse and repeat. So yeah, but having a W-2 job allowed us to be worse at investing because every single you know biweekly we had more money coming into the bank account to pay for all the dumb mistakes we made.

Scott Bursey (07:55)
Love it and I appreciate the transparency. Let’s dive into some of your philosophies. You know, balancing a full-time job and a rental portfolio is elite level time management. What was your biggest strength in those first few years?

Chris Arslan (08:13)
biggest strength would be, I mean, so I will say I am I would say naturally a very good sales rep. So it is just something that’s come very natural to me over the years. And so I I’ve always had a knack for being able to close somebody. And so being efficient in my in my W-2 job.

Allowed me to be maybe less efficient at the beginning in my real estate career. also, my dad and I used to do house projects all the time together. we actually started a little long, actually, it’s it’s the the the longboard hanging behind me on the wall is one that my dad and I started when I was in high school. So I was always good with like woodworking and crafting. So with the real estate investing, I did.

The vast majority, even to this day, of any sort of house projects and renovations myself. So between being good at my my job, so I could do that quickly and efficiently, and the nice part about sales is that at least in the position that I’ve held post my first one out of school, as long as you sell, nobody talks to you, nobody bothers you, as long as you’re hitting your quota, you can do what you want. So I hit my quota and then I spend all my my free time instead of having fun and going out to the bars.

It would be, you know, up to my eyes in in sawdust trying to do house projects. but over the years we’ve gotten better at scaling out our production and and time management. So I use a lot of different things. So obviously building a good network of of handymen and reliable contractors and mortgage officers and and insurance providers to be able to, you know, get as as affordable and quick labor.

as possible and lending options as possible and insurance as possible. And then also trying to streamline how we manage because we self-manage everything. So we use, you know, no free ads. I don’t want to be given ads on your thing so you can edit this out, but we use TurboTenant to manage all of our our listings. And that’s been a great way to collect rent. They’re the bad guys. They charge late fees. And it just makes the whole process really seamless and eliminates a lot of the tenant requests and headaches that we used to have.

Scott Bursey (10:36)
It sounds like, you know, besides building that powerful network, the discipline was a huge part of your success.

Chris Arslan (10:45)
Yeah. Yeah. No, discipline was definitely one that you know, I we’re I’m my wife is pregnant. We’re about to have our first child, but I always tell people ’cause I you know, I would be lying if I said I was a super responsible person pre owning real estate. I I would fill my free time and going out to the bars and being an idiot. And then I got my first property, really got my first tenants and was like, well, if I’m, you know

out day drinking on a Saturday and they call me because their toilet’s leaking. I have to be in the right head state space to be able to take care of the situation. And honestly, like overnight owning real estate matured me because I I had to literally be essentially I mean you are literally responsible for someone’s livelihood and well-being. you know, I’ve lived in places where I had, you know, a great landlord and not great landlords. and it literally affects your entire

life if you’re not in an environment that’s comfortable. So that’s something that my wife and I try to do is have our tenants be comfortable. And in in in order to do that, you have to be responsible. So if anybody’s out there is struggling being a little irresponsible, house hack, house hack, and you will instantly overnight either be a terrible landlord or or hopefully be a responsible landlord and and maybe mature a little bit in the process.

Scott Bursey (12:10)
I l I love that framing, Chris. Now let’s shift gears. Every investor has a blind spot starting out. What was the one weakness you had to patch up quickly?

Chris Arslan (12:55)
That is a good one. And I would say, and I have a really embarrassing story I can give about this, but I’ve always been the type, and my wife is the same way, she’s probably worse than me at this. Is I I always think, you know, if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself. And and don’t get me wrong, there is there is a lot of truth in that. However, at some point you have to kind of let go of the reins and trust people that have spent their whole life.

doing certain things. So the example that I always give is when I bought my first place, we spent so basically it was two houses on one property, and I wanted to have a driveway leading to the second house because the way the old owners had it set up is the the tenant would literally drive through their backyard, through their backyard to get to their house. And I was like, well that’s not going to happen. We’re not I’m not having a tenant drive through my backyard and run over my cat.

So I was like, we gotta put a driveway in. We gotta make this a little bit more professional. So my poor wife, girlfriend at the time, and I, and a few friends and family members, spent the entire summer from like six AM to like eight p.m. at night digging, I I kid you not, around a hundred tons, tons of dirt by hand and then laying.

Around a hundred tons of gravel by hand. And when it was all said and done, the the the way that the yard, the the grade of the yard worked is that it all pulled up at the corner of the driveway and it made it into a muddy mess. So I was finally at so I spent the entire summer, like mainly it was just me and my wife, digging up and doing this stupid gravel driveway for it not to work. Literally did not work. And then so I called a handyman that I’d used a few times.

I was like, hey, do you know anybody that might be able to help me out with this? He’s like, yeah, but you know, my buddy Tony, he’s got a Bobcat. For a thousand dollars, the man did it in one afternoon for a work that took me three months and almost almost had me lose my future wife. This guy did with his Bobcat in an afternoon and a thousand bucks. And I was like, my god, I’m such an idiot. So, anyways, I think it is it is a good thing to do as much of it yourself, but also.

Trust in professionals and you know, take some referrals from people that you know like and trust.

Scott Bursey (15:26)
Man, we’ve all been there. You know, that’s just the cost of admission.

Chris Arslan (15:31)
Yeah. It was an expensive maybe not an expensive cost, but it was a br a back-breaking cost of digging up gravel and dirt by hand. The amount of wheelbarrows I went through and shovels I went through was insane.

Scott Bursey (15:46)
Chris, interested to know, where are you seeing the biggest opportunity for the nine-to-five crowd to pick up long-term rentals right now?

Chris Arslan (15:56)
are you looking for like a like a specific market or are you looking for like a type of a type of investment?

Scott Bursey (16:03)
What type of strategy would you be employing personally?

Chris Arslan (16:07)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say and and and really the w the philosophy in which my wife and I got into real estate investing in the first place was we weren’t trying to be rich, you know, we’re trying to be the richest people in the room. I’ll I’ll be rich. I’m happy to be rich, but but our goal was never to be, you know, walking into a room and be like, I’m the richest guy here. You know, I never had aspirations necessarily. I reserve the right to to do this one day, but I never had aspirations of building skyscrapers or anything like that.

I just wanted financial freedom because I wanted control of my time. And I think that’s something a lot of real estate investors get into it in the first place for is that financial freedom because they want control of their life. And so the the strategy that I would highly encourage anyone to do, and this is what my wife and I do first figure out a way to make money fully remote, whether that be a W-2 job, that’s what my wife and I have. We have fully remote W-2 jobs. it can be done.

it’s it’s it’s honestly easier than investing in real estate. So that would be step one, get a fully remote job. Or, you know, if you’re lucky enough to be able to start a business that makes you enough capital to be able to invest in real estate. But I think the the very first thing you got to do is figure out a way to remotely make money because that opens opens up the door to endless markets.

and so that’s something that I was able to do because I once again going back to the beginning of the story, I was living in Northern Virginia. You a condo, a one-bed, one-bath condo in Northern Virginia goes for $600,000. That is like, and this was like six years ago. So I don’t even know what to go for today. I was able to invest in North Carolina. I bought a property with two houses, two separate houses on it for $274.

So that would have just never been an opportunity I would have ever been able to even go after if it wasn’t for being able to be a fully remote employee. So I would recommend get a remote job, then pick the market that you can afford and want to live in, and then house hack it, which is just you acquire a piece of real estate, live in a section of it, rent out the remainder of it. If you do those three steps, I like actually don’t know how you couldn’t be.

At least remotely successful in real estate. Not saying you’re gonna get rich quick, but you know, it’s it’s a pretty tried-and-true formula.

Scott Bursey (18:34)
That’s a huge distinction right there. And any challenges you’re watching closely. This could be market risk, competition, access to deals and capital, you know, that sort of thing, Chris.

Chris Arslan (19:26)
Yeah, so something that I’m nervous about is something that everybody’s talking about nowadays online and in in the media is AI. So something that I’ve been monitoring closely and and getting concerned with. Because as a landlord, obviously our goal is to provide quality real estate to quality tenants, right? That’s really the name of the game. and

The problem though is that with AI is it’s gonna make it harder to determine which tenants are legitimate and quality. Cause if everybody, I mean, this is gonna sound bad, but if somebody starts texting me or messaging me on Zillow or wherever my listing is and the whole thing is grammatically incorrect, that’s normally a red flag that they might not be necessarily, not always, but not necessarily be.

Perfect tenants. But now with AI, they’re all gonna sound great, they’re all gonna be great, they’re also all gonna have the best attorney in their pocket if anything goes wrong in the process. And at the end of the day, as as you know, my wife and I were essentially what I would call like a mom-and-pop landlord. AI is gonna make it a lot easier for mom-and-pop landlords to be efficient and you know, maybe find deals and find capital, but it’s also gonna make it a lot harder to get good tenants and not get

I don’t want to say screwed over by by bad tenants, but I’ve had my fair share of scares over the years with tenants that have taken advantage of landlords and whatnot. And also, given that the the way that just the narrative is gone recently, the country is moving in a direction where they’re very anti-landlord. And so when there’s a lot of law changes happening that are anti-landlord,

And now every landlord’s gonna have the world’s gr best attorney in their pocket, with AI. That’s what I’m a little nervous about, and that’s why my wife and I are currently kind of shifting gears, getting rid of a handful of our properties, and are looking to start deploying capital into land. There’s there ain’t no tenant requests when land is is what you’re holding. So that’s something that we’re really looking at now.

Scott Bursey (21:49)
Chris, I love that transparency and you hit home on the importance of having the right systems in place. If you could give us the play-by-play and what is the one system that allowed you to start scaling while still working your full-time career?

Chris Arslan (22:05)
Yeah, so I mean a a handful of systems. So I can just give you my very quick tech stack from from start to finish. however, most of it’s gonna boil down to one thing, which is TurboTenant. once again, no free ads here, but that is what I personally use. I know some people use Zillow to do a lot of the same stuff, but at least with me, TurboTenant’s been great. It’s been a place where I’ve been able to list my my properties. Now I also list them on Zillow. TurboTenant doesn’t do that.

but I list everything on on Zillow, TurboTenant, Facebook Marketplace, just casting as wide of a net as possible to get as many applicants as possible. and then from there, anybody that applies, I run them through a background and credit check with TurboTenant. and then I do all the showings myself. So, or at least my wife and I, normally I’m the one that does it.

Just in case they’re a crazy person. I’m the one that dies, not my wife. but yeah, so I go in, and once once we find a quality tenant, we put them on the TurboTenant platform that allows them to pay rent right through there. if there’s if they’re late, it charges them a late fee. I don’t have to be the bad guy that does that. and then it also reminds them about renewals and reminds me about renewals. So it it’s really a

Very useful tool that I found for that piece of it. And then obviously there’s the the tenant request piece, which is where it goes back to the network that you’re talking about. That’s where it’s just getting yourself, you know, embraced in the community that you’re investing in and making sure you have quality contacts that you can call that will do a good job quickly that you trust.

Scott Bursey (23:42)
Thank you for that, Chris. And I know our listeners are gonna want to hear this from you. If you had to rebuild your entire portfolio from zero tomorrow, what’s the one specific move you’d make in your first ninety days to gain momentum?

Chris Arslan (24:02)
So for me, I mean, the if I was starting from zero, laid off everything, I mean, it would go back to the simple playbook of I I wouldn’t necessarily start with the real estate. I would start with the income. Like I I I once again, I wish I could I could skip steps. I personally I could not. So it would be first figuring out a way to make money. For me, that would be sales. I think for most people, sales is a very good industry to get into where your income isn’t capped.

and you you get to eat what you kill. So it’d be finding a fully remote sales opportunity. That would be step one. Then from there, once it’s going into the real estate piece, that for me is the fun part. That would be just reaching out to as as many realtors as possible. Obviously, if you have a a strong contact, that’d be a good place to start. But for me, I’ve used different realtors in every market because I I I know some realtors say they can work and I I should also say I am a licensed

realtor and I did purchase the real estate myself. I didn’t disclose that. I think you’re supposed to. I’m on referral status. So hopefully I don’t get in trouble. but I would go and find the best realtors in specific markets. And and I bought all of my deals off of the MLS. Obviously, I am on wholesale lists, I’m, you know, joined networking groups before. That’s not where I found my deals. I found my deals the old-fashioned way on Zillow.

I set up key searches. so anytime, literally anytime a house comes for sale on you know the the literal street that my wife and I are looking to invest on, I’ll get a push notification to my phone. I’ll be the first to see it. and that’s how that’s how once you get the income, once you got the the remote job, once you know the market, it would be driving. This is what this is just what my wife and I did. We literally drove every single street in the market that we’re looking to invest in. We circle the literal roads

that we would be willing to buy on, set up Zillow searches on get push notifications anytime a house that peaks our interest comes on the market, we’re the first person to tour it. And then ideally put on a low offer so that you can get get the deal.

Scott Bursey (26:14)
Driving for dollars. You know, that’s an excellent blueprint right there, that our listeners can implement right away. Thank you for that. And you provided so much great knowledge already today, Chris. But is there any last thoughts or advice that you could leave with our pros?

Chris Arslan (26:32)
Yeah, so once again, this isn’t going to be for everybody. There there are, and I’ve met a lot of them that are trying to build the biggest, baddest portfolio so that they can go to a networking event and be the top dog. So for any of those people, you can just skip over what I’m about to say. But for everybody else that got into real estate for the same reason as me, which was I was just trying to be financially free so that I could do what I wanted when I wanted, I would highly recommend.

Look, at the end the day, the with real estate, you’re gonna have to take on leverage. You know, as much as I would love to say, you know, do the Dave Ramsey approach, which is you never borrow, that’s not realistic unless you know you come from money or have the world’s greatest job or business. So you’re gonna have to take on leverage. I would just say, at least for what my wife and I did, is we leveraged ourselves pretty aggressively. I’m not gonna lie. I was very leveraged at the beginning of my real estate journey.

But I had a I had very little to lose at the beginning, right? so at the beginning, I was aggressively leveraging myself. you know, doing the the good old BRRRR strategy. I was cash-out refinancing, HELOCs, 0% interest rate credit cards. I was doing it all. however, the whole goal of all of that was to be able to have enough rental income to completely cover our dream home.

We did that. It lit, it only took us five years. I say only, it was a grind of a five years, but we got to that five-year mark, and I’ve seen so many people in my network that hit that goal of look, I now own my dream home, my rental properties pay for it. F it, I know how to do it. Let’s double down and get a bigger home. And that’s great. Just know you’re either gonna boom or you’re gonna bust. And so for me and my wife, what we did is we went aggressive.

We leveraged, we did it all. We got to the finish line that we wanted. And instead of moving the goalpost, now we are we paid off our primary residence. We own it free and clear. we’ve sold a one of our properties that had multiple units. Now we’re offloading a few others. We’re kind of downshifting to be able to take now a lot safer of an approach because we kind of built that financial moat around us to where now we can take big swings without literally losing our home.

So that would be my advice is if if you’re set your finish line, achieve it, set that financial moat around you, and then you can attack the next goal. Don’t unless you wanna, I would not recommend just double, triply, quadrupling down because it only takes one lawsuit, interest rates going through the roof, the market crashing to completely screw up everything you built.

Scott Bursey (29:19)
That’s some powerful advice. And Chris, you really brought the fuel today. If our listeners want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Chris Arslan (29:31)
Yeah, so I I am doing stuff on social media under Chris Arslan Productions. It’s across everything. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. probably the easiest way to get in touch with me would just be DM me on Instagram. happy to collab. Really, my whole goal now is just to document me being able to achieve financial freedom. So most of my content is me snowboarding, doing house projects. Right now I’m

Trying to advocate to have our town let us have access to our local tracks. so right now I’m just documenting, you know, it I I kind of what I’m my thesis of my YouTube channel and my social media accounts are basically snowboarding and other like outdoor activities are what bring people in, but underneath is like a hidden layer of financial and real estate advice.

So obviously we’d love to collab with anybody. And obviously, Scott, I really appreciate you bringing me on here and it was it was a blast talking real estate.

Scott Bursey (30:33)
Absolutely, Chris. It certainly was. And we appreciate you. This has been just fantastic. Thank you for joining us here today at the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Chris Arslan (30:44)
Appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (30:47)
And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a elite guest just like Chris Arslan, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.