He Started with $5,000. Now He Owns 14 Rental Properties (And Quit His Job!)

**Henry Washington** (0:00)
This investor went from a $5,000 down payment to financial freedom in just six years. In 2015, Niyi Adewole asked the finance guys at his office to explain how a 401k works, and he left that conversation even more confused. But Niyi soon found an investment that made way more sense. It was a triplex that he could live in, in Louisville, Kentucky. That property cost about $190,000, but Niyi only needed about $5,000 to buy it. And that was convenient because, well, it was almost every dollar he had. He moved into one unit, rented the other two units, and went from paying $12,000 a month in rent to living for free.
From buying that first property, it only took Niyi six years to replace his W-2 paycheck and move into real estate full time. He didn't start with any family money or any other advantages. In fact, Niyi watched his mom lose their family home in the 2008 crash. But that's why he was so determined to build wealth that he could control. Today, Niyi is sharing the entire journey. How he scaled from one house hack into a portfolio of small multifamily properties. How he kept investing through several cross country moves and how he built the multiple income streams in real estate that helped him buy back his time. By the end of this episode, you'll see, there's no magic to investing in real estate. It's just a formula that started with one $5,000 investment.
What's going on everybody, I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the Bigger Pockets Podcast. And today, I've got an investor story with Mr. Niyi Adewole out of Atlanta. So let's bring him in. Niyi Adewole, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Podcast, my friend.

**Niyi Adewole** (1:45)
Come on now, thank you for having me here. This has been integral in my investing career, and so it's an honor to be here.

**Henry Washington** (1:51)
Well, we are glad you're here, and let's start off by just having you give us a little bit of background about how you got into this whole real estate space.

**Niyi Adewole** (2:00)
So we're going to take it back a little over a decade to 2015
I was just getting into my first career outside of college, which was medical device sales, and I wanted to be smart with the money I was starting to make. I wanted to know, like, hey, where can I put this where it can grow and start to earn some income? And so I went to my finance guys that I sat next to and played fantasy football with, and asked them, like, hey, how does this whole stock market thing work? Right? I've never had a 401k before. I've never done any of this before. Can you just coach me through it?
And they tried to simplify it. But at the end of the day, I left slightly more confused than I came in. I was like, okay, let me just put this into like a target fund or whatever. Right? But when I started doing my own research, I came across certain books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Things That Nature. And it got me excited about real estate. And then I found the Bigger Pockets Podcast. And in 2015, I listened to, I don't know how many episodes, but there was one in particular that caught my mind. And I remember this specifically. I remember the exact episode.
It was episode 60 with Serge Shukrat, where he was talking about buying small multifamily homes. I listened to that once and just could not get it out of my mind. Listened to it two or three times over that weekend and set in my mind that I was going to get started in real estate investing.

**Henry Washington** (3:17)
So you listen to some podcasts, you got excited about real estate, but what actually turned it into action?

**Niyi Adewole** (3:24)
Man, so started to hear about that house hack strategy. Then I got promoted in my job. So when I first started working in 2015 as an intern, I was making like 55K annually and living in Chicago, which is semi-expensive and so that money was getting set.

**Henry Washington** (3:39)
Yeah, absolutely.

**Niyi Adewole** (3:40)
So what I did is I got promoted and actually moved to Louisville, Kentucky and at the time, I could not pick Louisville out on a map. I actually thought it was where Louisiana is. I'm looking around for like where the heck is Louisville? When I saw Kentucky, I was a little bit disappointed, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Louisville is a lot less expensive.
There's a bit less to do or less distractions out there. So I was able to actually go get my first house hack when I moved there in 2016, where I bought a Triplex for 190K, lived in one unit, rented the other two out, and essentially lived for free.