How Much One “Ordinary” Rental Property Has Made Me in the Last 6 Years
July 29, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 2019, Henry Washington bought an eight-unit apartment building across the street from the University of Arkansas for $500,000. The units rented for between $300 and $500 a month, the property was run down, and he budgeted $100,000 for renovations. By the time the dust settled, he had spent $250,000 on the rehab, the building sat completely vacant for months during the pandemic, and he was carrying the note with no income coming in. Today, that same property appraises for $1.4 million, grosses over $10,000 a month in rent, and Henry plans to keep it forever. This episode is built around two real-world deals—Henry's eight-unit and Dave Meyer's single-family home in Denver—to show what actually happens when you buy a property, hold it through the hard years, and let time do its work.
The Real Cost of Holding Through the Hard Years
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Advertisements** - Hosts Dave Meyer and Henry Washington set up the episode's premise: revealing the total net-worth impact of a single rental property over time, rather than just cash flow or appreciation.
- 2 (05:59) **Henry’s “Ordinary” Deal: The Eight-Unit College Property** - Henry introduces his example: an 8-unit property near the University of Arkansas, bought in January 2020 for $500,000.
- 3 (06:59) **The Renovation Nightmare: Budget Blown & Vacancy** - Henry details how his initial $100,000 renovation budget ballooned to $250,000 due to pandemic-era material and labor costs.
- 4 (09:40) **The Turnaround: Value-Add & Rent Growth** - After renovation, rents jumped from $300–$500 per unit to $1,000–$1,200 per unit for 800 sq ft, 2-bedroom units.
- 5 (11:10) **The Key to Survival: Other Income Streams** - Henry explains that cash flow from his flips and other rentals, plus his day job, carried him through the property's worst period.
- 6 (13:34) **The Long-Term Plan for Henry’s Deal** - Henry plans to keep this property forever, citing its irreplaceable location near a growing university.
- 7 (15:01) **The Simple Formula & Financing Lesson** - Henry emphasizes that this wasn't a complex strategy—just buying a good asset at a good price, renovating, and increasing rents.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Real estate investors often talk about cash flow, or the profits from flipping a house, but rarely the total impact that buying a rental property and holding it for multiple years can have on your net worth. If you’ve never done the math, it’s significant. In many cases, a single property can create several hundred thousand dollars in wealth.
And to prove it, Dave and Henry have each handpicked a real estate deal from their own portfolios. They’ll walk you through how they found these properties, how they funded them, and some of the biggest challenges they ran into along the way. But then, they’ll reveal exactly what happened once the dust settled and compounding started to do its thing.
These weren’t home-run deals or rare investing opportunities. They were very “normal” rental properties in the hands of patient investors. If you do exactly what they did—buy a quality asset in a good neighborhood and play the long game—you, too, could create life-changing wealth through real estate investing.
In This Episode We Cover
The true, net worth-building power of buy-and-hold investing
How much Henry has made on his eight-unit property in the last six years
How much Dave’s Denver property has made him over the last decade
The total impact of cash flow, appreciation, tax benefits, and loan paydown on your net worth
The complete life cycle of an investment property (acquisition to exit)
And So Much More!
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