He Bought 58 Rental Units in Just 4 Years by Solving Other Landlords’ Problems

**Dave Meyer** (0:00)
When the Great Recession hit, Andy Gil's business went under. The future he thought he'd created disappeared overnight, and the fear of being in that position ever again became his new obsession. So he grinded, he hustled, he faced major setbacks along the way, and in 2022, he got serious about real estate investing. While most people around him upgraded their lifestyles, Andy took extreme measures. He downsized his house, he drove old used cars, and he pinched pennies so he could funnel every extra dollar he had toward buying rental properties. Most investors aren't making these types of sacrifices. But for Andy, it was a temporary trade-off for a more secure financial future. And it is already paying off. In just four years, he's scaled to 58 rental units and counting, and he's done it all in today's high-interest-rate environment without a super high-paying job. In many ways, Andy is just the average investor, but he also knows his superpower. He uses his creativity to cut through the noise, to spot opportunities that fly under most buyers' radar, and he solves problems for hesitant sellers. Today, he's even gonna pull back the curtain on a genius strategy you've probably never heard of, but it's one that helped him take down a 30-unit property with very little of his own money.
What's up, friends? I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at Bigger Pockets. Today in the show, we have Andy Gil, an investor in Connecticut who was previously on episode 803 back in August of 2023
And he's also been one of our most popular speakers at BPCon the last few years, so excited he's going to be back on the show and hear what he's been up to. Let's bring him on.
Andy, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets Podcast. So good to have you here, man.

**Andy Gil** (2:00)
Thank you. I'm always flattered to be asked and always pinch myself a little bit that I get these opportunities.

**Dave Meyer** (2:06)
Well, it's always great to have you here, Andy. This should be a lot of fun. You have been on the show before, but for people who haven't heard your previous episodes or didn't attend your wildly popular session at BPCon last year, tell us just a little bit about yourself, where you are in the country, and what you do in real estate.

**Andy Gil** (2:25)
So my name is Andy Gil. I am on the East Coast in Connecticut, directly between Boston and New York, and we own and operate a portfolio of about 58 apartments currently, all within about 30 minutes of our house. I'm also a contractor and we're building new homes and new renovations. I've been doing that for basically my whole adult career, so 25 years, but I didn't start buying real estate. I didn't understand that owning the asset was the goal until about five years ago. So we've been in about four years. Oh, wow.

**Dave Meyer** (2:58)
Okay. So you were just doing contractor work for other people, homeowners, real estate investors, I assume, for 20 years.
What clicked? What happened that made you realize now is the time for me to start trying to hold on to these assets?

**Andy Gil** (3:14)
I had a really bad business experience that I learned a ton from, that taught me that I didn't understand finance, and I didn't understand a P&L, I didn't understand any of that, and so I had to get smart.
Then I had another opportunity, another mentor and learned how to manage. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So being able to project costs and walk it in, and after I developed those skills and people skills, I realized that owning the asset, not just improving it, was the path. So we started looking for flips, and that didn't work out, and our first purchase was 12 condos in here in Connecticut.

**Dave Meyer** (3:53)
So you just went for it?

**Andy Gil** (3:55)
Went for it. I got a partner to go 50-50, and my contracting career, being able to do rinse repeat work, 12 identical condos spoke to me. So I could understand, and once I understood one, I understood them all. So regarding the tenants, understanding how rent would move, what the improvements would be, how all that would stop. I was comfortable with that, so we jumped in the deep end.

**Dave Meyer** (4:16)
What does your portfolio look like now?

**Andy Gil** (4:18)
So we have 58 apartments in various different structures. Amazing. Some we own ourselves, some we own in single partners, and we got into a 12 family with two other partners, and they're all spread.
They go as high as Putnam area in Connecticut, and low as about Norwich in New London County. So we manage all of those but 12