How Preston built his real estate portfolio by age 32

0:00 in today's video we're talking with one of the ogs in the real estate space himself King Kong we talk about how I got into real estate and a lot about my journey that I've never shared anywhere else we discussed my entire real estate portfolio what I would do myself if I were to start all over and want to quit my job as soon as possible and even content creation this was a super fun conversation I hope you enjoy this episode YouTube family what is up today I'm bringing you guys a badass real estate investor this guy does fixing flip wholesale Airbnb King all right now listen to me this guy have m milons of followers across I don't know man Instagram Tik Tok Facebook dude if you don't know who he is man you must be sleeping on the Rock but in case you don't know who he is I'm gonna bring him on and I'm gonna have him share with you guys man shed some lights dropped some bomb and helped you become the next millionaire because dude Preston how old are you bro um I think I just turned 32 31 bro you look like you're 26 27 I think it's just the Asian genetics man you know how hey you're looking good over there man yeah dude absolutely dude you guys I've been trying to so hard to get Preston to come on man because dude this guy dropped so much bomb if you haven't followed him on all his social media definitely do so I promise you it's not

1:17 going to be a waste of time he's not gonna be like another guy that you follow on in Instagram or Tik Tok or Facebook so Preston man for those that don't know know your stories like how do you grw up man and then what did you do prior what was your jail to be and then how did you got into real estate yeah so uh my parents immigrated from South Korea you know 30 plus years ago uh you know they came to the states they started their you know restaurant businesses not because they wanted to but just add a necessity right they just had to grind work 12 to 14 hour days to you know support my family I mean my brothers now we weren't necessarily poor you know we were always you know lowered to middle class growing up um so we had you know most of what we had but but you know they were never really present when I was younger with for me and my brothers right so you know I would see them you know struggle grind you know throughout the years um and so like my goal ultimately was to go to college get a job and that was like in my mind that was the American dream right uh so you know did that went through college graduated and then you know got a W2 job and I remember like the very first day of that job I was like dude there's no way I'm going to be doing this for the next 40 to 50 years and then that's how you know I eventually got into real estate and you know started off house

2:34 hacking and then slowly started to pick up uh properties from there on bro we're gonna talk about your first house hacking uh story man but I want to ask you Preston so when you go to college dude uh what feel was it in and how much did it cost you yeah so it was business business management now I I didn't know what I wanted to do I I tried to do all these different uh Majors you know I try to go through the um Physical Therapy route I could not do that I try to you know dabbl a little bit in the doctor route you know like all Asian parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer and I just realized like I wasn't smart enough to do any of those things and nor did I have the passion um so I just you know kind of land landed on a very generic business management degree um and then from there yeah you know got a sales job just because that's was paying the most at the time and that's you know that's kind of how it came to be gotcha man hey president I want to talk about the whole passion bro so when you were starting out because I I think a lot of people get confused on the whole thing when you were starting out right and obviously you trying to support your own lifestyle man were you seeking for passion or you were seeking for whatever you can do ethically right just to make that moany man yeah I think that's what it was right because you know that first day WT

3:51 job I was like you know even though was you know eventually like you know year two years into that job I was making pretty good money but I knew that it was I was going to use that income to go and find a vehicle to get out of that rat race and so for me that was real estate um my cousin was investing in real estate at the time he was trying to you know get me into it but I just never really understood and fully grasped the concept of going to thousands of dollars in debt and being brainwashed my entire life you know us you know being told that debt is bad avoided like the plague and so he you know he kept being persistent you know told me all the benefits one night I remember he just sat down wrote it all on a notepad and was like dude this is the reason why real estate so powerful and then it slowly started to make sense to me and that's when I got really obsessed about you know wanting to use real estate to be that ultimate vehicle to get me to Financial Freedom gotcha dude now preson were were you obsessed with becoming financially free not working for somebody else or were you passionate and about real estate and hey hold on a second and and the reason I asked that question Preston because throughout my life dude it wasn't about follow my passion it was dude the reason we got to real estate dude it could have been Amazon Drop Shipping yeah for for what I care right but for us it's like you know we like hey real estate created the most millionaire so we're like hey maybe that's the path we should go in and

5:08 because I know I have to work ethic and I can commit and just grind and that's the path that we choose it wasn't a passion yeah I think yeah for sure like I didn't care what what the vehicle was I just knew that real estate was you know proven it's been around for decades and decades or you know hundreds of years right and so I just knew that if I could figure out how to make it work within real estate that I could eventually to find final freedom I I mean I don't I don't care about any of my properties right like they're just a vehicle to get me to Financial Freedom um it doesn't matter what that vehicle was I just wanted something that I knew was proven and something that I could you know grasp my head around dude I love that because the reason I want to point that out bro is because for me it's doing whatever it's required when you're starting out broke dude is it's whatever you can make to get that Mooney coming in and then eventually later on once you got the Mooney there you go do you use that to fun whatever it is that you want to do that what you call passion I think pressing too many people use the excuse of oh it's not my passion so they're lazy yeah yeah 100% yeah because a lot of people you know they reach out to me and they're like hey man like you know you know we get thousands of DMS once you get to a certain you know amount of followers and like yeah like you know people are like yeah dude I really want to pursue my you know music degree and it's like okay I mean you can do that on the side like you

6:25 don't have to get rid of your passions but I believe in having seasons in life where if you have a goal that you want to get whether that you know Financial Freedom let's say like you have to make sacrifices to put that on the back burner and just suck it up for you know five to seven years and then and then go and do your passions for you know whatever you want right but there can't be a balance in my opinion um especially at the beginning when you're going through that grind season um and I think every entrepreneur has gone through that one way or another dude I love it man now president let's talk about your first house hack man how do you found it so tell us the entire story yeah so um you know once I started my W2 job that's you know a couple months later talking to my cousin and he was like you know this is kind of the route that he took and I'm a firm believer in not Reinventing the wheel trying to start the next Facebook big app like I wanted to follow what was what's been proven so you know talked to my cousin he house hacked his Force fourplex um so that's what I was doing I'm like okay I'm just going to put an alert I went on realtor.com put all the parameters that I had in place you know multif family you know purchase price less than $400,000 and so anytime a listing with that criteria popped up I would you know get a notification so I remember sitting on my phone one night notification pops up it's a fourplex it was for sale for like $390,000 um and then I called my agent

7:44 right away I wanted to be like hey uh I want to walk through this so next day like literally during my lunch break at work went drove over to the property walked through it put an offer in and then we got accepted um and the greatest thing and for those that don't know what house hacking is it's essentially where you just live one of the units and then you rent out the other prop uh other units and then you can you know live for free if you do it correctly um I remember I think I put $25,000 down uh monthly payment was $2,300 a month and then the income from the other three units came out to roughly $2,400 a month so basically I was living for free which you know is a game changer when your biggest expense for most people is eliminated so me and my wife lived in that unit and we were able to save up a ton of money because we didn't have a housing payment for an entire year bro okay dude okay I first I want to know is how much Preston how much were you making from your W2 so the first year I was probably around 80 to 990,000 uh my first year and then uh my second year then you know at the peak I was making about $250,000 per year so like I mean great yeah great job right like but that's kind of where the golden handcuffs come into play but I I knew that even though I was making good money from that job I didn't want to continue staying there so every dollar that I was

9:02 making I was just reinvest reinvesting back into real estate gotcha man so and that's how you're able to save 25k yep exactly Gotcha Man uh president so where you based out of dude so I'm currently in the Salt Lake City area Utah it's been been here my whole life man wow okay so now my next question to you is let's just say someone it's just in the same position as you are right they're stuck at the jail to be and they want to escape which I think majority of you do president how long how long did you work there and then where did you and then where were you financially until you be like you know what I'm done I'm gonna put in my twoe notice yeah so I was there for probably close to three years um and I mean there's like a lot of pressure that was building up because like me and my boss I didn't really get along with him just because you know there's just like constant pressure uh you know the office politics I don't know if you've ever had a W2 job but there's all these like weird you know political things that go on I just didn't like that I just I'm the type of person just wants to get in do my best and then just get out and close my laptop at 5:00 p.m. whatever it is right um and so like I was slowly starting to pick up rentals on the side I was using the bird method like I said I was flipping wholesaling deals here and there um and then I really needed to figure out how to accelerate my cash flow Because by the point uh this is

10:20 like mid to end of 2021 I was making about $6,000 per month in cash flow for my rental portfolio uh you know I I had some Partners but but that that wasn't enough for me to just go all in and quit my job because like I said I was making you know $250,000 per year at that job and so that's when I discover the short- ter mental game where um you know I was chasing an opportunity because I wanted to stay within real estate but I wanted something with higher cash flow potential so that's why I found out you know about shter rentals and then uh you know 2021 I launched my first one and I did the art you know rental Arbitrage route where you don't have to buy the property just lease it out from someone and then very first month we launched that made $9,000 in profit and so like once I once we did that and I probably should have given it some more time before I quit my job but ended up quitting my job December 2021 and then how much how much were you making the S hustle right when you quit so by that point um you know we were at you know that that December we had made $115,000 in cash flow from the rental portfolio um plus that one short-term rental and then we start and then we started to scale that short rental side So within 7 months we are at $118,000 a month in cash flow from just the shortterm the three short-term rentals and then plus the other uh traditional

11:38 rentals were about $24,000 per month oh damn bro so president are you doing all this by yourself and the wife you or do you have Partners yeah so for the traditional rentals um you know me and my partner or me and my cousin we partnered up on you know most of the portfolio that we built up there and the shortterm rentals that's all self-funded through just me and my wife got it dude okay so now let's talk about short-term rentals dude if someone is watching this prestent if you have to give them the blueprint to getting their first one please walk me through step by step if you can yeah I think you know for most people like you know I always you know I have you know a community of people that you know we you know Mastermind and all that so I always recommend like 90 to 95% of people start off with Arbitrage because number one it's way less risky right because you know it's much harder to you know go and sell a property um number two it's way less Capital intensive right just because you mainly just have to take care of the furniture like one of the biggest expenses comes from you know the down payment and also the rehab uh to get the property ready so I always recommend going that route so that route essentially is just you reach out to landlords that have properties listed for rent um and obviously we're catering towards a uh you know traveler right so we're looking for people that are looking for

12:54 experience so you know think more vacation type destinations you want to make sure you create an experience for those people and so you know you just you can't just put some crappy Craigslist furniture in in a property call it good and to start to expect to make money right you have to you know have a cohesive design you have to have the amenities you have to have the right locations and then once you have those things you can launch it on Airbnb um you know for the Arbitrage route your income so whatever your guest pay you minus the rent plus other expenses is going to be your cash flow um and so that's that's how that's that was the route that I took for my very first property and was you know very successful at that um but eventually you know we ended up going to purchasing properties just because um you know at that point you know my income was higher I wanted more of the cash flow uh I wanted more of the tax benefits plus the equity plus the cash flow so I you know ended up purchasing properties after that first one Gotcha Man Okay so the so basically the Avage is you reach out to a homeowner and they'll be like hey you know what you know um someone okay now prestent where do where do you find these uh landlord yeah so these these landlords you know wherever there's rentals available so zillow.com for rent Facebook Marketplace anywhere

14:12 you can find uh where landlords are renting out their properties now like obviously like people you know completely mess up the script where they you'll pick up the phone hey I want to air beam be your property and then of course they're going to hang up and you know tell you to f off right it's it like anything else in life you have to frame it in the right way so why would a landlord choose you over a traditional rental or renter right so a couple things you can say number one you're going to give them free property management you're going to have professional cleaners come in multiple times per week they're going to check in on the property make sure everything's good to go they're going to professionally clean it obviously um after each guest and so you're just trying to make because landlords are lazy right they want passive income and so if you can take care of their property you can give them their money every single month then you know why would they say no to that so it's just all about how you frame it and once you do that then it's becomes a much easier conversation and we have you know hundreds of people uh you know doing that locking up deals like that dude love it now Preston you did your first how house hack at what age first house hack let's see that was back in 2018 so that was about six years ago so 26 20 okay and how and what does your rental portfolio look like now yeah so today we have four traditional long-term

15:30 rentals um yeah 40 damn okay and then we have seven short-term rentals nice when you say shortterm you actually own them not Avatar nope yeah so we we own our entire Port portfolio now nice man okay so that's and how old are you now I am 32 dude okay so prent my my next question to you is the first house hacking that you did are you guys do live there what do you do with it yeah so after about a year and a half we built up $150,000 in equity in that property and so that's why I always you know Arbitrage is a great way to you know kind of build that initial cash flow but we ultimately we want to end up owning these real estate or owning the real estate just because of all the benefits that come along with that and so like that very first fourplex we're like okay we have $150,000 in equity and then we ended up 1031 exchanging that me and my partner into a larger 24 unit complex so basically just took that Equity traded up to a bigger um asset and and we did we sold that you know year probably three years ago now the 24 units yep and how much you guys uh pick it up for so that the 24 unit property uh so it it appraised for like 2.4 million uh

16:50 we ended up getting a really good deal on it so I think we ended up buying it for in the ballpark of 1.6 or 7 can't remember exactly what that number was um so we ended up you know basically just taking the equity from the fourplexes that we own and then just trading it up to the 24 unit and then you end up selling the 24 units um and then we still have the 24 units today okay oh I see got it okay got it but you you sold traded up do on the 24 and you're seeing right now that 24 units is worth about 2.4 yeah the current or it's probably worth like 2.2 now we bought it for 1.6 1.7 somewhere in that range damn and then do you guys have to spend anything rehab um yeah so we we slowly started to you know like using the cash flow from that property and then we just slowly started making updates um honestly like the the seller the seller was pretty in a distress situation and so that's why he just needed to get it off you know pretty quickly that's why we got it on you know pretty good deal but I mean there wasn't a ton of work that needed to be done but we slowly did make upgrades through it um over the years how do you found that deal um so that deal was where all good Goods all good deals go to die which is Loop net um you know it's it's very hard to find good deals on on that but yeah we were just kind of scouring all over you know building relationships with uh different Brokers but we ended up finding that

18:08 deal on loopnet got it so um with what what currently you doing right now Preston do you guys do do you guys do a lot of direct to sell like where where's majority of your leads or deal or coming from I guess that's that's the question yeah so I mostly they were coming from wholesalers I've kind of pulled back a little bit on picking up the rentals just because or like the traditional rentals just because we've kind of pivoted to the short-term so the short-term rentals you know that's mainly kind of going through uh you developing relationships with real estate agents because I'm not only because for the long-term rentals I was only focused in Utah uh for the short-term rentals I you know we have them all over the country so we have some in Florida we have some in Virginia Tennessee Arizona so we kind of have them all over and so we've been able to develop a lot of good relationships with different agents around and so if there's a deal that's coming up um a lot of these l or agents will come and present them to us before they listed on the market um so that's how we pick up we picked up a majority of our properties uh the past V ones but primarily we were just looking just on regular Zillow we we don't have like a team of people like cold calling or anything like that I see so you guys don't do a lot of like direct to seller yeah we I I don't I personally haven't done direct to seller in a few years just because you know we've been able to find some decent deals on Zillow over

19:26 the past you know couple years sure so Preston if someone were to start if if someone were to start right and don't know anything about real estates what would your advice to them like kind of where do they start so that way they can escape the rat race the quickest man like basically basically giving them kind of the blueprint of what you would do yes so I mean number one is like most of the times people that are want to get out of the Rat Race they they don't have that that Foundation that foundational education piece um and I think too many people will use that as an excuse to just study for years and years and years and not do anything about it but for me I got obsessed with listening to you know Bigger Pockets and listening to people like even you Kong uh you know Ryan P like you know all these guys that are you know actually actively in the the game and listening to what they're doing and then you know if I wanted to even accelerate that further I would you know find one of these people that you want to be like and just pay for their coaching or you know their their programs or whatever just because there's no better way to accelerate your growth than it is to pay for someone's you know 10 plus years of experience and condensing that into a few hours like it's it's like the biggest Life Hack and you know people think it's a scam right and and so that's what I would do first

20:43 get that you know foundation and then just start making deals just start you know cold calling start making relationships with lenders agents um and then just start getting out there and actually actively being in it because you're not you're not going to learn like there's only so many things you can learn in a book or podcast but but it's a whole different ball game once you're actually out there you know slinging you know in the actual grind of it you'll learn way more if you go that route love it man so would you recommend someone to start out hous tacking like you or wholesaling Fix and Flip short-term rentals sorry so what's your take yeah so what I would do you know for most people like if I had to go back I I wouldn't really change the house hacking part because eliminating that housing expense is was huge like I there were so much peace of mind I'm like well I'm my tenants are essentially just you know paying my mortgage for me so I don't have to worry about that then it gives you this this freedom to make a little bit more risks and so going back I wouldn't Pi I I think I started picking up rentals too soon because that's kind of what I was you know getting kind of brainwashed into like listening to Bigger Pockets um and obviously I don't regret it now like you know those properties are worth millions of dollars in equity but like I would go out there and you know I would go the Wholesale route I would go the rental Arbitrage route increase the cash flow so that way if you you know

22:00 absolutely hate your job want to get out of it then you have that cash flow that matches or exceeds your W2 income and then now you can you know slowly start to pick up rentals start building your long-term wealth that way so that if I had to start over I would house hack and then I would pick a vehicle that is you're you're increasing your active income with that's whether that's flipping wholesaling rental Arbitrage Etc I love it man prence dude I wish I would have had more time with you man because I got so much question for you and and um so what is what is your kind of daily schedule looking like today bro yeah I mean my my schedule is a lot more LAX than what it was you know doing W job and grinding um so usually wake up you know play with my two sons I you know two sons under three so you know before I do any work you know we'll typically play with them until you know 9: or 10 a.m. um 10: a.m. check in with my team uh from you know couple hours um I also like to create content um so always you know block out some time either to script either to film uh for a couple hours checking with my team again in the afternoon and then try to sign off you know anywhere between 3 and 5: p.m most days so these days I don't like to work too much and it that you know that's a nice thing about you know getting to Financial Freedom is you can create your own schedule and and so yeah man like

23:18 it's honestly this is like the life I've always dreamed of um I'm not this person that's over here trying to create you know a billion dollar net worth like I feel like I'm obiously always hungry to you know continue making more but I'm not uh someone that has to grind for 80 to 100 hours uh every single week and I'm grateful for that for sure love it man Preston so what is your so NE so what is your goal in the next let's just say when you turn 40 so what's your goal man goal when I'm 40 um so I I honestly like to work um I like I every time me and my wife go on vacation like I'm always kind of like twilling my thumbs and she's like why can't you just relax and I'm like I I gotta like be working on something so I think there's always going to be a part of me that wants to build something and growing um yeah I mean I don't have like any specific goals in mind but you know I want to continue to you know be there for all my kids stuff um you know make enough money we're currently in the process of building our dream housee so you know congrats bro I saw that congrats appreciate it man and I think you're you're I saw you bought a piece of land like a few months ago no for years dude yeah but laan um but law changed your mind bro so where where we're at uh winter time it gets nasty here over here in Seattle Washington well I tell people I always say I live in Seattle but I

24:36 don't live in satad because if I say Bellingham nobody know gonna nobody know what where Bellingham is right and so we live in a small dude a small town in Bellingham bro and the winter time it gets really nasty so Lon said hey Kong like she loves the current house that we that we live in we bought it back in 2007 man and we still live there and loves it and Lon said like she wants to escape the winter time so that's why now she's thinking about buying another house in Florida so that way you know we'll spend six month here six month in Florida um so that's so that's the game plan of not building a dream home but being able to buy houses in multiple places so when we do go we get you know our own place to stay and when we don't we can airb andb it out smart man learning from you man Preston dude I one more thing dude is I'm so impressed with how this guy D you built your social media Empire dude you're a beast bro so much respect for you on that here's a funny story uh I don't know if you remember this but when I first started creating content this was back in 2021 I stitched one of your videos on Tik Tok and you you uh you know at that point you had millions of followers I had like a thousand maybe and you actually commented on one of my videos and I was like had this like Star Struck moment I was like oh my gosh like King

25:53 Kong he comment so it's kind of a funny you know full circle uh moment here you're coming on the Pod and talking to you well I gotta say dude now you're having way more followers than I am dude and you have accomplished Preston so much more compared to when I was at your age stud so I want to say congrats for the hustle dude I appreciate you jumping on here taking a time and dropping bombs for Preston for those that want to learn more about what you do dude where can they go and follow you bro yeah just at the Legacy investing show on all platforms Instagram Facebook YouTube you name it I'm telling you guys dude press dude this dude he gave so much free game and just from watching his video you can't even do a deal dude gotta be lazy bro because nothing work of you know especially when someone has already given you so much information on how to get started Preston I appreciate you taking time jumping on here dude congrats to everything dude and then once again dude thank you for your time bro appreciate it man take care dude see you