Rentals Replaced My Income in 11 Years (Even After Making Every Mistake)

**Henry Washington** (0:00)
We always say this, anyone can replace their income with real estate in 8 to 12 years. Today's guest, Aaron Murphy, is proof that that is possible. Aaron was stuck at a work meeting one day. His boss looked over at him and said, we don't want to do this work, but we have to do it, or we're not getting paid.
And nothing made Aaron want to find an exit route quicker than that. Investing in stocks was too slow and took too much money, but buying in a real estate market just outside of his pricey city could work, and he only needed about $12,000 to start. So he bought a rental, made a ton of mistakes, learned how to fix them, and then repeated it. Then the real growth came when he found the Burr strategy. This foolproof system allowed him to replace his and his wife's income in just 11 years. He's now off traveling the world, like literally right now. He's taking this call live from Portugal, thanks to simple, repeatable rentals he kept by. Your exit route is available too. Are you going to take it?
What's going on, everybody? I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today, I have an investor story with Mr. Aaron Murphy from Baltimore, Maryland. Let's bring him on.
Mr. Aaron Murphy, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

**Aaron Murphy** (1:16)
Thanks for having me here. It's a really dream come true. I used to listen to this show riding around in my car with no air conditioning out in rural Maryland. It was in the summer time. I'd be listening to BiggerPockets playing. I listen to almost every episode back in those days. It all comes full circle now.

**Henry Washington** (1:32)
Awesome. Well, we're glad to have you. Why don't you start with your background? What were you doing before you got into real estate and what gave you the bug to get you to start doing it?

**Aaron Murphy** (1:40)
Sure. My story is a little bit unique. I actually got exposed to real estate when I was a kid.
My family was into real estate, trying to do flips and that sort of thing. We did a lot of work on flips and different projects, but it never really turned into successful deals. I don't know if it was bad market timing or what the situation was, but there was a lot of carrying shingles and trying to learn to paint and being used as sort of like free labor, but not a lot of having that convert into anything successful, that we could feel like we really won at the end.

**Henry Washington** (2:12)
I like how you were their kid and you called it being used as free labor.

**Aaron Murphy** (2:16)
I learned that later. Sometimes if I'm talking to my parents, I call it character building. So it all depends on who I'm talking to.

**Henry Washington** (2:23)
That's right, that's right.

**Aaron Murphy** (2:24)
So I concluded in that time that real estate was basically a scam. I was like, look, it's pretty likely that you're not going to make money in real estate, and I didn't want anything to do with it. So flash forward, I get out of school and I end up having a sales job. So when I get the sales job, I was selling software to commercial real estate brokers and banks and groups like that.
Two things started happening when I had the job. One is that I started getting exposed to a different type of real estate. So rather than doing a whole project and then wondering if some lady was going to like the color of the kitchen, this was more focused on income, income coming in, expenses going out, and really running an operational business. Then the second thing that I started learning was more accidental, which was that the W-2 life wasn't for me.
So basically what I started having was these moments where I would be in meetings. And I felt like whatever that moment is in movies when they turn to you and they speak to the audience directly and say the thing they're not supposed to say. I started feeling like I was having those experiences sitting in work meetings. So one time, like a VP turns to us and says, I know we don't want to be doing this right now, but we have to do it or they won't pay us. We won't be able to take care of our families unless we do this. And he saw it as very motivational and he was supposed to be inspiring everybody. But to me, it felt like, okay, so that's a problem, right? We need to find a different, some kind of different avenue other than being trapped in this. And I started thinking from there, what do I do to get out of this situation? So it was basically math from there. I looked at what are my avenues to make enough money. I thought I needed about $70,000 a year. I looked at first dividend stocks because that sounded really simple.