How a Young Engineer Is Using House Hacking & Mid-Term Rentals to Escape the 9-to-5 | Daniel Cordoves

Daniel Cordoves (00:00)
That’s the biggest reason I got into real estate in the first place is because I really don’t see myself working a nine to five for the next, forty, fifty years. I work with a lot of people right now who are in their sixties and complain about having to come into work every day. And it’s kind of terrifying.

It’s really either you decide now that you want to make a change or you continue going to work every day and your fate’s already decided. I know it sounds a little bit dooming, but really, unless you win the lottery, you gotta try something.

Issa Hanna (02:01)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today we have Daniel Cordoves with us. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel Cordoves (02:08)
Thank you for having me.

Issa Hanna (02:09)
Super excited to have you. We were talking earlier, man, you’re just starting out on this long, sometimes bumpy road in real estate. So I wanna dive into your journey. But for our viewers at home, give a rundown of like a day to day in your world and then what you’re focused on investing knowledge.

Daniel Cordoves (02:26)
Yeah, so day to day, I actually invest in real estate kind of passively. I’m actually a mechanical engineer. So I work a nine to five job. I have a second job I do on the side and then real estate. I got into it recently. I have two properties that I manage myself that I purchased just a couple of months ago. And that’s kind of where I’m at for my day to day.

Issa Hanna (02:45)
Love that, man. And then you’re doing the right thing. You look like a young guy. You look like you were in college a few years ago. But I always advise the younger guys that just get out of college, keep your eye out on some real estate. You finally got that job. You’re making that money. You’ve got that income rolling in. So if you invest in your 20s into real estate, by the time you’re 40, you’re going to accumulate so much wealth by having people pay your mortgage for you.

It’s unbelievable. And that’s kind of what I wanted to lean into with you because when we were talking earlier, you bought a duplex. So you bought a home, you converted it into a legal duplex. I’m gonna let you tell the story of how easy it was to do it. But then you’re renting one side, you’re living in the other side. So you’re having somebody basically pay your mortgage and build you wealth while you do your day job. Unbelievable. But can you give us more about how you got that thing converted into a duplex?

Daniel Cordoves (03:34)
Yeah. So I was looking at specifically five bed houses. I really wanted to get the maximum value possible. I was just planning on living in one of the rooms and renting out the four others. That way I could at least have my mortgage covered. But then I’m actually in this house right now that I ended up buying and it was just perfectly laid out to where if I just put a lock on one door, it would turn from a five bed three bath to a four bed, two bath and one bed, one bath duplex. So that’s what I ended up doing. I had to add a kitchen into the smaller unit once we actually added that lock onto that door. But that’s really as simple as it was, just literally adding that lock. And now I live in the bigger unit. I rent out the other three rooms and I have those long term roommates, and in the one bed, one bath I rent that on Airbnb midterm. So right now there’s somebody staying in there, they’re a travel nurse. So, they need a place to stay for a couple of months and it’s close to the hospital. So that’s pretty much how it went. It was a fairly simple process once I got it going.

Issa Hanna (04:31)
I love that, man. You’re like maxing the property out. So you’re house hacking, you’re renting it by the room, which is amazing. The midterm rentals is something a lot of people overlook. A lot of veterans in the game overlook, my wife being a travel respiratory therapist, I know every three months they get a new contract. A lot of times they have to go to a new city. They don’t want to stay at a hotel.

A lot of times the midterm is a lot cheaper or around the same and they want to have a place of their own. Amazing business philosophy for somebody just starting out. And then most recently, man, you got another one going too. So tell us more about that.

Daniel Cordoves (05:51)
Yeah. I told myself after I bought the first one I was gonna wait like a year just to see how the real estate thing went. But it just went so well the first couple months, I was like, I need to do this again. So I was just all in and I found this other property. This was a duplex by nature. It was two units top and bottom. And the midterm Airbnb was just doing so well in my first property that I wanted to duplicate that in this next one.

That’s exactly what I did. I bought it. I furnished the entire thing, got it on Furnished Finder and Airbnb within a month of closing. And right now it’s being rented out until December by interns at NASA. So it all worked out.

Issa Hanna (06:27)
Amazing, dude. And then yeah, the midterm rentals are these professionals looking for a place to stay. They gotta pay that money up front a lot of times. And they’re good for the money. These are quality people, professional people, who are gonna pay every time. So you don’t get a lot of the traditional tenant problems with it. It’s truly amazing somebody so young, you’ve developed this strategy, this buying strategy that sometimes people take 10, 15 years to discover. It looks so bright, man. I’m getting excited just talking to you. And I wanted to lean in now on one of your strengths, right? I asked you, give me a strength that you had earlier when we were talking. You told me that you’re good at adapting, you’re good at learning on the go. So give me an example of maybe you had a real estate nightmare or something happened, you had to learn something on the go and you had to adapt.

Daniel Cordoves (07:14)
Yeah, honestly, I could probably use every single example I’ve ever gone through with real estate as an example for this question. I literally had no idea what I was doing before I bought either of these houses. But that’s the thing is that I realized after five years of waiting that there’s never gonna be the right time. You’re never gonna feel ready. So I just decided one day that I had enough capital. I wanted to go into it. So I just pulled the trigger and I decided I was gonna learn as I went. And if it worked out, great. If it didn’t, I’ll figure it out. And that mentality is kind of the reason it went so well because as every single problem came up, I was able to just use whatever resources I had set to the side to be able to tackle them. But an example to your question is there is one day where I decided in the midterm rental, I was gonna install a table, and this table it was like a work desk. And instead of getting a regular four leg desk, I got a desk that pretty much you anchor into the wall and it’s supported by just those anchors and the anchors alone. Over time, because I didn’t use the proper anchors into the wall, it actually ended up like completely breaking, holes in the wall everywhere, dust everywhere. I had no idea what to do and there was a guest literally checking in the next day. So I learned how to patch a wall.

And all this crazy stuff that I seen on TV. Patching a wall, actually not that hard. Learned that day. But I went to Walmart, got all the materials, patched it myself and got a new temporary table. But stuff like that, you don’t expect it to happen and then it does and all of a sudden you know how to build a wall or something like that.

Issa Hanna (08:49)
No, one hundred percent, man. Over the years, as a landlord who owns a substantial rental portfolio, man, and I built it from the ground up. We’re a business of variables, right? So every day something different might hit you, a different problem, and you have to overcome it. You are the property owner. It’s your responsibility to overcome it. But man, amazing poise that you have for an investor with such limited time in the game because the fact that you figured that out already and you figure it out with property number one is unbelievable. You could talk to somebody who’s been in the game for 50 years, hundreds of properties, and that’s one of the things he’s gonna tell you is, hey man, you got to get through that fire one way or another. And then once you make it through that fire, you’ve got some knowledge. So you know how to build a wall now. You know how to patch a wall. You know how to do so much different things. Unbelievable, man. You don’t talk to a lot of guys this early in the game and know so much. Probably because you’re an engineer. You guys think very mechanically, analytically, you guys think in systems, which it translates so well to the real estate game. I wanna flash forward, I wanna look into the future now. You’re building equity on two properties. I look you up in five years. Where am I gonna see you at then?

Daniel Cordoves (09:56)
My goal is to have right now I have two properties. I think in five years I could have twenty properties. If I continue the single family route, the system that I’m using right now with the residential, multifamily with the midterm strategy, it’s working. And the cool thing about it is if you do a BRRRR or if you just do some value add, you can use the same money that you’re putting into the first house or the second house, whatever house you’re buying, for the down payment for the future house. So you’re just recycling this capital. At the same time, you’re building long term wealth and passive cash flow. And you’re using the same cash, just rinse and repeat, to continue doing that and build your portfolio up. So as long as I’m able to keep on finding these houses, which the market I’m in, I think I’ll be able to. My goal is really just to have as many properties as I can and I don’t wanna have my LinkedIn anymore that I’m an engineer. I wanted to say that I’m a full time real estate investor.

Issa Hanna (10:50)
Love that, man. And you see a lot of people, they get into the nine to five job, they go work for somewhere, they’re an engineer, they’re whatever it is. There’s always a cap to what you can make working for somebody else or having this nine to five. So, I always tell everybody leverage that great income that you’re getting because they do pay you well in a lot of jobs, into your own independent wealth to where you don’t have to do twenty five years at a job nine to five or have set hours. You use it like Daniel is to build his own wealth right now, you might do that thing for ten years and then you might say, hey, I got a—and I looked you up on LinkedIn. You have a bachelor’s at Virginia Tech in Mechanical Engineering, is that correct?

Daniel Cordoves (11:29)
It’s a funny story actually. I got a bachelor’s at Virginia Tech in Mechanical Engineering, but I started my master’s at Old Dominion University, which is a school pretty close to where I’m at. But I told myself day one of classes because I honestly lost the fire to do school. I don’t really want to continue on this journey of school. I don’t want to continue working a nine to five. I want to figure out a way to make wealth somewhere else. I actually dropped out of my master’s program day one and I told myself that if I did that I was gonna make it up to myself by taking a risk. And now I’m here and I have two properties. So it worked out I think.

Issa Hanna (12:06)
Yeah, man. Two properties and the knowledge that you got, your strategy of buying and your philosophy, your business model right now that you have, to me is worth a lot more than a master’s degree, right? Just because you’re cash flowing, you’re building equity, and you’re learning something that’s going to make you wealthy. Real estate, and I say this in almost every one of my shows, one of the only businesses you could get in and start from ground level, and ground level means zero, and build generational wealth. I could look you up in 20 years. You might have 70 properties, half of them are paid off just because you started so early. It’s very truly amazing. And I hope to our young viewers at home, you guys are taking some notes and you guys are getting inspired because like Daniel said, there is no right time. You just got to jump in feet first. You got to learn the game. But once you do, you’ll be sitting across from me on the Real Estate Pros Show and saying that was the best decision you ever made. So Daniel, I want to get your advice now for our younger generation, guys that may be just a little bit behind you, they may be on the fence, they’re in the nine to five, they’ve got the capital, and they’re plotting, but just don’t know if should start or not. Can you give them some advice on why they should start?

Daniel Cordoves (13:13)
Yeah. For me personally, I think this is gonna resonate a lot with the younger generation as well, especially if you’re working a nine to five right now and you don’t feel like it’s what’s meant for you. That’s the biggest reason I got into real estate in the first place is because I really don’t see myself working a nine to five for the next, forty, fifty years. I work with a lot of people right now who are in their sixties and complain about having to come into work every day. And it’s kind of terrifying. It’s really either you decide now that you want to make a change or you continue going to work every day and your fate’s already decided. I know it sounds a little bit dooming, but really, unless you win the lottery, you gotta try something. And I think that real estate is the best thing you can try. If it goes bad, most of the time you just break even. So, I recommend to everybody who’s younger out there, if you have a dream of earning financial independence, freedom, and you like real estate, just try it. And I promise you won’t regret it.

Issa Hanna (14:09)
Won’t regret it. You’ve got two guys who’ve been knee deep in the game already. One guy just starting his journey, a guy who’s been in it for a while, and we’re sitting here telling you won’t regret it. Daniel, I want to give you the floor now because you have some things in the future. You’re looking to scale larger, get into multifamilies and whatnot in the future. You’re looking to take on some partners. So if people are at home, they wanted to get a hold of you, maybe partner up, it’s an old seasoned investor seeing a young motivated guy and he wants to get in with you. Where could he reach you at?

Daniel Cordoves (15:21)
Yeah, so you can reach me at my Instagram. My handle is my name, my last name separated by a period. So @daniel.cordoves.

Issa Hanna (15:30)
So guys make sure to check out his Insta, @daniel.cordoves. We’re gonna put it down in the description for you guys too. So go follow him, watch his journey because it’s a truly inspiring journey. Man sitting across from me, wise beyond his years. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Daniel Cordoves (15:47)
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Issa Hanna (15:49)
Been a pleasure hosting you and to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation with Daniel and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the Real Estate Pros are out.