What were you doing when you were 19? You were probably studying in a college or partying somewhere. Buying a house was probably the last thing on your mind back then. Well, today’s guest just bought a house at 19. This dude did it and all it took was a little guidance. Join in as David Sidoni talks to first-time homebuyer, Courtland Burchfield about his buying experience. Discover how he was able to find a realtor, get pre-approval, inspect the property, and more. Also, learn what he plans to do with the house from house hacking to building his own bar. Find out how Courtland did it so you can too! Start looking for your first property now, age doesn’t really matter.
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Dude Is 19 Years Old And Bought A House, And Only Had A Job For 5 Months!
Incredible First Time Buyer Home Story Of A Nineteen Year Old Who Bought A Home
This dude bought his first home at nineteen years old. He only had a job for five months and never was going to pay rent a single day of his entire life. Why did he do that? It is because he had a little bit of guidance and followed a plan also because he knew that he would have the dopiest party house on the block in the city.
How did he do it? That is, I am sure what you want to know and what we are about to find out. This episode has got a lot of laughs. We do goof off quite a bit but there are some great details in there, so read well. If you are older than this dude, which is what probably all of you are, I do not care if you are 5, 10, or 20 years older than him. There is a lot to learn from this guy’s story. Let’s do it.
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Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. This is Courtland. How are you?
I turned twenty on March 6, 2022.
I found him on TikTok because he had a video that had over 14.3 million views. What is your handle? Let’s get all my readers out to you.
It is @CourtlandsHome on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, all that.
I love social media. I instantly messaged him and was like, “Who are you?” He is like, “This is me. Who are you?” I am like, “I have a show. Come on.” He is like, “Cool.” Tell everyone the story. What is your deal? You bought a home when you were nineteen. How did you get this idea?
The biggest idea came from my parents because they did not want me to stay at home forever. It is this weird thing where they are like, “If you are not going to school and not a student, then you can’t live at home forever.” I was like, “That is fine.” I was in school and then got a good job. I was like, “I do not see the purpose in school.” I moved back home and had a full-time job. They are like, “You can’t stay here forever.” I was like, “I either get an apartment or a house. I have been pruning for a house since I turned eighteen, so I will do it.”
This is where I am curious. A lot of eighteen-year-olds, if they go to college, they are undeclared and have no idea what they are doing with the rest of their life. What do you think it was that before you were eighteen, even you were like, “I want a house?”
It was not necessarily that I knew that I wanted a house. It was more so like, “I know that I am going to want one someday.” That someday future, I will be very happy with myself if I get everything ready now.
Are you saying that at sixteen years old, you got your driver’s license all freaked out and you already understood the financial value of owning a home or you were like, “Apartments are shabby?”
No. It was driven in my head that a home is the best asset from day one. That is a classic, which I have some devil’s advocate things to say about that later down in the road but that’s just from my experience.
We want to know it all. Do you live in the same neighborhood as your parents?
I live fifteen minutes from my parents.
When we are done with this interview, drive over and high-five them for me because if you had this drive in your head, that means you had some good raising. Had they already explained to you that financially because you have a full-time job, you figured it out? What were your next steps in figuring out the financial part?
The biggest thing is at least getting yourself ready for buying a house. A lot of people come to the conclusion of, “I want a home,” long before they start thinking about, “What do I need to do,” leading up to that to be able to get home. When I was 15 to 16, I started watching classic YouTube videos and stuff. It started off as a get-rich-quick scheme. I was researching.
You slowly come to realize those are not real, get into finances more and realize, “I am going to need credit when I want to go to buy a house.” I am researching how to build credit and stuff. The day I turned eighteen, I went out and got two credit cards. I was like, “I am set. I am doing it.” All my friends thought I was crazy. They are like, “Credit is the way to go into debt.” I am like, “No. Just do not be dumb.”
Make a t-shirt that says, “Credit is the way. Just do not be dumb.” I am going to bottle that whole last 45 seconds of what you said, not just the credit part but the fact that you had the get-rich-quick stuff. That is why I started this show and it blew up because most realtors do not want to help first-time home buyers. They are so old. They do not understand. Everyone starts on the internet and no one is giving them anything. You got to be a bright guy, though, to figure out the get-rich-quick. You researched the credit and got it together. Did your parents give you a referral to talk to someone to get your pre-approval or did you find that online also?
They had been working with this guy. They used to refinance and stuff in the past. It is called Diamond Residential. I do not know if they are local or anything. They recommended me to him. I hit him up and said, “I am their son. I want to buy a house.” He was like, “I remember them.” He told me to send him over info and stuff like that. I had this man my bank statements and all that faster than he is ever gotten them before. I was ready. I downloaded it all within two hours and got it all sooner.
There you go, tip number one from Courtland. I am going to take this, turn it into a PDF, and say, “This is what Courtland did. Follow this man.” Number one, get your bank statements. Every single page, too. They want every single page of the bank statement. In the old day’s gang, we used to get them in the mail. You have to go and do your thing. Download it, put it in a PDF and slam them all together. You need two years’ tax returns. You were nineteen, so you did not even have that. Next question. How long did you have a full-time job before you got approval for a loan? That is why most eighteen-year-olds do not even call me.
This is the craziest part that no one believes. I did something that not a lot of people do but to start, I was there for five months when I started looking for a house. By the time I had gotten the house, it was 6 or 7 because I had been looking for a while. The other crazy part is that I was only making $35,000 a year. Not that much and almost half of that was a commission. They were skeptical about counting that as pay.
Was your base half of that?
My base was $20,000.
Did you have an offer letter, a contract, or something that you showed the bank? How did the lender say you were approved? The usual is you need two years.
[bctt tweet=”Ask for a PDF of everything from your home inspector before you buy a house.” username=””]
I did not have a contract or anything. I went to my manager and said, “Can you write me a letter that says, ‘We like Courtland and his employment here is favored continually?’” He wrote the letter, no problem because he likes me. I gave it to the underwriter. This is the crazy part. They pre-approved me for $120,000 something. I do not remember. My house was $157,000, so I went to them and said, “This isn’t enough. I want more. Let me talk to my boss.”
I talked to my boss and he had the GM write a letter that the commission that I got was not necessarily subject to that much change because I was working in parts. The commission was pretty much always, on average, the same for the last five years for the same people in my position. That is exactly what he put in the letter. He wrote that the people in his position in the last five years had gotten this on average. The underwriter said that they could count it as beneficial standing or something like that. They brought me up to $140,000. I was like, “No, I need more than this.” I was bartering with the underwriter like, “I need pre-approved for more.”
For everyone out there reading, winning that battle is not normal.
They said, “Is this okay?” I was like, “It is not okay.” I was formal about it like, “Realistically, I need to be around this number.” In his head, he is probably going, “What the heck with this kid?”
At the same time, though, your GM, manager, and boss were like, “If you are in a commission sales job and hustling in this, we got to keep this guy around.” That is the problem. I saw many people that will hit a stupid app on their phone, go to Rocket Mortgage or something and it will tell them, “This is what you are approved for.” It is $50,000 less than the neighborhood they want. They sign another lease, call me twelve months later and say, “I saved up enough.” Everything has changed in twelve months. If you do not dig deep with a real lender, you never figure it out. You went back and then they gave it to you. How long was the shopping process?
I only looked at one other house because I knew what I wanted. I can pretty much know if I have seen it. My mom has been interior designing for twenty years and my dad has been an electrician for twenty-something years. They have already remodeled three houses by themselves. I will admit I had that under me and not everybody has that thing. I put all my offers in as is because I was like, “We can make it work.”
Everybody has something. You had $157,000. Let’s say some 21-year-old maybe got three years of job and got a couple of bumps in salary but know that their parents can’t fix their place for them or help them out. They can get a higher approval or maybe someone’s got a $10,000 savings bond from grandma somewhere. Everybody has got something because you have to compromise when you buy.
That is what your video blew up because it was like, “I am nineteen. I bought a house. Here is how I did it.” It has been constant. With your TikTok, my HGTV loving readers are going to be all over your feed. With the stuff that you are doing, you took something and turned it into your little masterpiece. That is pretty amazing. You knew you had the team behind you. Everyone else is freaking out about the market. When did you close on the home?
I closed on November 17th, 2021, when I put the offer in. Here is a crazy thing with this market. The house was on the market at 7:00 AM. I went and looked at it at 9:00 AM and put my offer in an hour after. I knew by 9:00 PM that night whether or not I had it. They had more than seven offers or something on the first day. I had offered $8,000 over asking. It was listed at $149,000. I put in my offer at $157,500. My realtor told me there was an offer that was higher than mine but it was not as is so the seller went with my offer.
We found each other and you did not have to read my show to do this but I have been dropping by twice a week. This is what is going on in 2022. $25,000, $50,000, or $40,000 offers on this house. There is something to be said about the speed factor too. The fact that you have got in there quick as is, there is a whole bunch of reading between the lines.
The other realtor looked at that and went, “This guy knows what he is doing. He was here in the first hour and wrote it as.” That tells me this offer and the realtor understands this market because what will happen for me is I will get something on the market on Friday and have open houses Saturday and Sunday. If an offer comes in Sunday night at 10:00 and they are asking the moon like the seller has to pay for everything, this realtor is a joke because they do not understand what is even going on in the market. Was the realtor a referral for mom and dad, too or did you Google it?
He was my neighbor who happened to be a realtor. I am a third of the way done getting my license because that is what I want to do. I like the idea of no boss or anything like that.
It is pretty fun. Let me tell you. There is good training. Follow the show and we will help you figure out how to work with first-time home buyers. You get your butt some decent training. There is a bunch of other people on TikTok that are selling being a realtor and are spending more time producing their stupid videos than they are learning how to work the contract. You can separate yourself pretty quickly. If you want to be awesome in 2 or 3 years, I will be sending you my readers and you can help them buy their first house.
That would be epic. My realtor told me the first month he was a realtor, he handed out business cards to everybody at drive-through windows or Walmart. That is what I am going to do too.
Tell us more. We got all the good and the positive. The reason why people like my show and they are still here reading is because I tell them the truth. You can buy a house at 22 but suck it up, it is going to suck. What were your things about the home buying process that surprised and concerned you or you would like to warn other people about? I got the gist you were thinking not everything was awesome.
I did not put only an offer on this house. I was outbid on two other houses when I put offers on. I flat out what it was. People could put $10,000 and more and it was all cash. It is crazy. I am like, “How do people have $200,000 in cash?”
I have people out here in Southern California where I am that got a $500,000 gift from grandma. We were going out buying $900,000 houses because around here, $400,000-ish if you got a regular job is what you can afford, which is crazy. We were getting outbid by $150,000. People at $950,000 were coming in and going, “We will go one-on-one cash.” It is insane. What else? Tell everyone about the whole home buying process, like the negotiations, inspections, and all that stuff. What did you learn?
The realtor is pretty great about laying everything out. They are pretty specific. They will tell you what they want from you and stuff if they are good. I can’t speak to the validity of all realtors but I have found one.
I tell everyone that most of them suck. The whole thing on my show is, “Come find a unicorn realtor.” I have got good people around the country but it is not as many. The first-time buyers get the raw end and stick. You were following your lead, had trusted people, and felt good about that.
I trusted him. I feel like he was looking out for me. He was my dad’s friend for a little while. You can find good people out there.
He also understands working with someone like you like, “This is a smart dude who’s got his game together.” If you have friends, guess what you are going to do? That is why my unicorns work so hard for me because I tell them, “Here is a great client.” They researched it, found my show, and ran with it. You were cool on closing costs, ready for all that, and your lender got you prepared.
Not at all. They had originally pre-approved me at a 3% interest rate. I think that they might do this to a lot of people but when I was at closing, sitting down, the paper said 3.25%. They went above what they said. They do that because they know people are not going to not sign it. They are sitting down and there are 500 pages in front of them. I was like, “You got to reprint all these?” I feel like they were pulling a quick one on me but I did what everyone else would probably do and signed anyway.
[bctt tweet=”People these days buy homes just for the cosmetics. They’d buy a house with a pool without knowing about the roof problem.” username=””]
The interesting thing about that is they have changed the laws a little bit so you are supposed to get a closing disclosure and have three days to review it before they send you the full documents to sign. The problem with that is that it’s three days before you close on the house. For the last 27 days, your email has been flooded with all this gigantic paperwork. You have been signing and reading. By the time you get that, some people miss that.
That is exactly what happened to me. I was like, “What is this? I do not know that I can even do anything about it and how it works.” My down payment was supposed to be $6,000 and the closing cost was $12,000 after everything. I was not expecting it. I had to pull money out of savings and stuff for it.
It is something that I am glad you brought up. We are trying to help people understand and prepare. It shouldn’t be that much more. You were doing $6,000 on $150,000?
I had to put $2,500 over because I was only approved for $155,000. I offered more from my cash savings.
The problem with the closing cost is half of its fees and then a bunch of other stuff is prepayment. You are prepaying taxes, insurance, and mortgage. If you close on the 5th, you have to prepay 25 days of that month. That is almost an entire mortgage payment, and suddenly, it gets huge on you.
I paid more than a mortgage payment before I even got the first day.
That is the thing. You get some pieces. The underwriters worked it for you. The lender said, “Sure.” You had a job for five months and then they went, “We got to get some money on the backend on this kid.” Any other experiences about buying a house that you want to share with the world before I get into all the other cool stuff that you are doing in the house? You did the inspection as is. Where are you going in there thinking, “I am looking to see if there is some giant problem?”
Yes. The inspector was thorough. He would tell you if the microwave was not working. They look at everything. I got a PDF and he would be like, “The paint is dripping in this spot.” I am like, “That is crazy. I could never do that job. My attention to detail is terrible.”
You seem like a global thinker, so I am with you on that. I’m jumping all the time before the inspection comes, I am like, “Remember, this is their job. They are supposed to find stuff wrong.” The number two person sued in real estate transactions is the home inspector. The number one is all the realtors. The home inspector is going to list anything even a little bit off so you can’t come back and go, “You said this house was fine.”
That PDF was scary. That is good and a big warning for everybody because for the next year or two, they are going to have to probably buy as is also. Let me ask you this. If you did not have a dad who was an electrician, would you still feel cool enough about this house to think, “I can hire a handyman or a contractor to fix this stuff. Nothing is major?”
With this house, it did not have anything major that needed to be done. We had the water heater get looked at for $200 and the guy fixed a little part in it. That was the only crazy thing. Everything else was chill. The inspector did not say much about electricity but when my dad got up there in the attic, he was like, “If this was not your house, I would not work on it. I could get shocked by standing on the wood. Everything is grounded to everything.”
They had extension cords running on the wall for lights in the closet and stuff. They weren’t wired in the wall. They were those little extension cords that you can’t put in houses anymore because they are prone to catch fire, those little two prompt ones. There were tons of them. I could cut them down and I am like, “What is this?”
I can guarantee you, every home inspection I go in if California has attics, I am like, “Know that the inspector is going to tell you that the wire in the attic is wrong.” If it is hidden, they won’t cover junction boxes and will have spliced wires that are sticking out, which always makes me laugh because it is an exposed wire right next to foam insulation. Your TikTok is amazing. You have been documenting your whole journey with your phone.
I have been the one videoing all the time. My mom has done it a few times and I went back, looked, and she was not recording. I would have my sister record me doing the work. There would be tons of people that would comment and think that the person posting the TikTok was the person behind the camera. They were like, “Your brother is so helpful.” I am like, “The account is me.”
Understanding that you are a global thinker, was the whole house fixed up because you are like, “If I am going to be a total baller and have a house that my friends have been jealous of me, I want it to be a sweet place,” or are you thinking to sell down the line?
Everything that I did modernize the house in terms of price but I did way more than I needed to. I changed every surface that you could see in the house because I am a cosmetic person. Every door and trim was painted. Every socket was changed. Every handle and all the walls were painted, the ceilings and new floors. Anything you could see when you walked into the house is a different surface. I did a fresh everything. We did it all ourselves. I was painting walls for hours.
I got to tell you something. This is an interesting thing about housing. The real estate market is dumb, behind, and not up. People and buyers see that the real estate market is going to be ten years behind whatever trend is happening. Flipping houses is the big thing. Guess what every buyer is saying if they go into a house that is modernized right next to yours but it is a flip? They know. I have had people say, “I saw some girl on TikTok. I do not want to flip.” I could tell this was the seller’s house and they loved it.
When I go into your house and I see all that love, I am not going to be freaking out that my inspector has to go check the attic. At some point, I know you have checked out the electrical. You are going to increase your home more in value than just a flip company because, in five years, buyers are going to be so savvy and have watched so much HGTV. They are going to know, “This is not a flip. This dude lived here and knew his stuff.” Here is the big one. Your mom is an interior designer. Did you even let her talk to you about design or you are like, “My house, my thing?”
I was like, “You can advise me mom, but at the end of the day, it is my pick. I chose every color and okayed everything.” I did some things she did not agree with but it is my house. I did not include it in the video but it has an in-ground pool in the backyard. I do not know why I forgot to include a picture of it but when we were getting it, that was huge for me because I was like, “Pool parties.” It has got a diving board and everything, which is broken off. It needs a new pump and everything, so that still has work to be done. I will probably make a whole TikTok on the outside of my house.
That would be cool on TikTok on how to get your pool ready.
I am going to do market lights out there and all that. It will be epic. When I was remodeling it, I was thinking to myself, “If I was flipping this, I would list it over what the realtor recommended.” I know some young couple would come along and be like, “It is perfect. Offer as much as we can.” It would check some of their boxes. They would be into the pool and modern walls. It is the stupid stuff that people love. There could be a $10,000 roof problem. I feel like some people will see painted walls and be like, “Yes.”
Wherever you are reading this, pay attention. Do not look at the cosmetics. It is not as hard as you think. It is the intangibles, location, lot size, and layout. Even the layout, it is just drywall. It does not have an open field. Cool, sledgehammer that wall, and you are all set. I might have said this on the show before. For a while, there was a trend. If you painted the front door red, it is instantly sold in California. It had something to do with the Midwest people thinking it had a barn door feel and a country cozy because where we are, everything is a truck home. They built a bunch of homes and went ABC repeat.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody goes from single-family homes to just multi-units at some point.” username=””]
It is funny that you say that because I painted my red door black. I am a little bit sensitive to certain colors. I hate red. I can’t stand it. There is nothing red in my house, I swear. I could pay on the phone around and you would not see anything red or shades of orange. When I had the red shutters and the red door, I was like, “They are going black.” My mom kept yelling at me. She was like, “We can do that later. You can do that in the spring.” I was like, “I ain’t walking up to a house with a red door.”
I would ask this question but the answer is going to come later on when, first of all, it warms up. You are going to be so extra inviting your friends over. They are going to go, “You want to come over and game?” You are like, “In your little one-bedroom apartment? No, come over here.” What has been the best part of being a homeowner?
Being able to pick everything and clean anything that I want because I am a clean freak. When you walk into this house, you would not think that a teenage boy ever owned it. My mom picked things up. I will mop every day. I like it because there is no one else to be able to mess the house up. I do live with my best friend, but I can clean up after him pretty easily.
What flooring did you go with?
I went against a lot of my advisors and went with peeling sticks. That was the only because the difference between a laminate snapping and a peeling stick was an extra couple of thousand. I was not only on a budget. I was dumping my entire paychecks into the house. I had no money. I was like, “We will get it done next paycheck. I will be ready.” It is crazy. When you want something, you find a way to find money.
That is great. I am not telling everyone out there to buy a home so that you have no savings left and get a paycheck. The point is, what can you live with? Red door? No. Everything else is fine. I can save here a couple of months when I feel like it or, in your case, week to week. That is the point. You are at a stage where you are like, “I do not have a bunch of responsibilities. I can start my 401(k) in 2023 and still make a bazillion dollars because they run all the charts.” If you started this by 25, you are like, “I just turned 20.” You are fine. The reason I asked about the floor was, number one, I wanted everyone to know that and understand. Do you have a Roomba or are you a mop dude?
The reason I mop is that I also went against what my mom said. I put glossy marble-looking kitchen flooring in. I was like, “Mom, I could do flat tile but who do you know where you walk into their house and it is instantly glossy flooring? That is bad-ass.” I then have to mop it every day because you can see water and it glistens. I knew I would have to do it too.
You bring up such a great point. It has been historical doing the show over the years. I have been following the research on people’s reasons for wanting to buy a house. This whole DIY HGTV thing, the number 2 reason is, there was space we have like pregnant and then there was financial security. When they did this interview, they kept saying that people were waiting longer to buy a house.
The stats do not back that up but I get it. You are Gen Z but the dudes right above you want to be able to travel and do stuff. The number three thing which blew my mind was, “I want to do what I want to my house.” If you were an apartment living at this new job, you could get your paycheck and want to change it but you can’t rip floors up. That is cool. The most exciting part for you is to be able to do what you want. Have you done anything crazy? Mom thinks the marble flooring is crazy but it sounds dope.
The island countertop is a closet door and it is in the video. It is wrapped in a sticker that looks like marble. We put IKEA countertops on the rest because they were $200 for the entire counter. They are laminate and look like marble. Granted, I do not like how they feel at all. I wish I had dense, cold marble but it is a difference of $200 and $7,000 for actual granite countertops. I was like, “It is a deal-breaker, I see.” They did not have that size in stock at IKEA and we are still waiting on it. It is a closet door I ripped off and put stickers on. You can’t even tell from far away.
Are your friends jealous or did they not have a clue? Are you the king of the house?
I try to be humble. I do not like to boast about it but they appreciate that we have a party space now. Instead of being like, “You do not have a house,” I am like, “We can use this space.” Everyone is cheering.
I have so much data and nerd knowledge that I put on my show. This is the stuff that I want to say but I do not say as often as I should. Houses are sexy. People think it is cool, you can have a place to party and there are no worries about a landlord. If I said just that, you would think I was doing a get-rich-quick scheme but this is a big part of why I love helping first-time home buyers.
I also do it because people call me and say, “We have one baby. We are having another one. We live in a one-bedroom apartment.” I love to be able to help them get a nursery. Let’s get a two-bedroom condo at least. If everyone’s getting married later, would not it be way better to have a house to have all those fun parties at in your twenties?
You best believe that prenup is coming.
You have got to protect your wealth.
Ain’t no way a girl is taking this from me. I did this with my family.
That is a whole other episode on how to take and keep a title. Every state is going to have different rules if somebody moves in and pays rent for a certain amount of years but you are probably good. It is seven years in California. I do not know what it is there but you can have plenty of time. That is awesome. What is the next project in the house? What will you be looking for on TikTok since you have done all the building that everyone is going to be excited to follow?
Here is a little sneak peek. The next thing is that the cabinet doors are almost done being cut for the kitchen. They are going to be flashy mounted self-closing doors. I will show that off a little bit. If they get the actual island on, which will be waterfall edges, that will be cool. I am hoping to be able to build a bar in my living room. It is such a bachelor pad thing to do but I am going to do whatever.
I had one when I lived in Hollywood. We were driving down and someone put it out on the street to throw away. My roommate and I went back and found our friend with a truck. One of us stood there so no one would take it. For someone like you who’s gone through the process, I always tell people, “Think of the fun things too.”
If you put it in and if you ever want to sell the place, if you know how it went in, you know how to take it out and turn it back into a regular living room. You can turn your living room into a jungle safari if you want to. When you sell it, you got to take it down and go neutral. That is awesome. I realized we talked about you building a bar and you just turned twenty. Did you build a bar for your friend or roommates at 21?
It is something like that. It is for my friends that come over at that age.
[bctt tweet=”Find a realtor that looks out for you and that you trust.” username=””]
You could still stock it with soda. Look for plumbing if you can. That is always a fun thing. When we buy houses that have bars in them, if you can plumb it, get a sink back there or a kegerator, and then tap it. Talking to you, I feel twenty again. I did not own. I rented house to house and had to go pick my bars up from the trash area.
The wages here can do a lot more than in SoCal.
That is smart because the progress on what you are going to be able to do, your doors are open. Start your savings account and retirement funds. If you want to ball out and retire at 35, you can do what you did for 2021 in other parts of your life and financial stuff. Do you know what else you can do? You can sit back and chill.
If the market goes up and goes down, great. When you are 30, this house will be worth more than it is now, no matter what. I do not care if there is a big correction because it is going to change. You were nineteen years old, ten years into a run. It is like, “I can hang out and wait for it to crash and go down but then I rent for eight years and blow all my money.”
I am not going to sell during a housing market crash. I am not an idiot. It is funny what you said about the 35 thing. I do not know if you are ready to get into my plans and everything. I am house hacking. My best friend pays $400 a month. I have got someone else I am planning to move in where they are going to pay another $400 probably. That will be almost most of the mortgage. I will have utilities left.
Around that time or maybe a few months after that, since I did the remodel, I am very close, if not over 20% equity, depending on how much they would reappraise for. I am going to refinance and use the money as a down payment for a second house in about a year or so. I rent that house out and, after renting it out for a little bit, refinance that one and keep going down the line until I have whatever how many houses. I am hoping that I can get that done.
Here is my tip for anybody out there who wants to build an empire like Courtland. Keep that relationship with your realtor. The hardest thing about the plan that you have, which is right, is the best time to have done that would have been 2012, one a year. What is going to be the most difficult thing for you and there is this entrepreneur I listened to named Gary Vaynerchuk and he talks about patience is you can do that for the next couple of years but you got to have a great relationship with your realtor and work so that they can tell you, “Remember when you bought your house and we couldn’t get a house and kept getting outbid? My buyers are going out to buy houses and we are the only offer after three weeks.”
That is when you are going to realize that the value is going to go down, so that is when you get your maximum refinance, pull it out, stay in that house, and then watch the market go down. Your refinances are never going to get any bigger than that moment. If you have good communication with someone or if you are doing this and you and I are doing virtual training and you are working for the How To Buy A home and helping all my buyers in your area buy houses, then someone is going to be on top of you going, “This feels like the top.”
The data that tells you that it is at the top is six months behind, but a realtor goes, “There were 25 offers last week. There were only ten offers this week.” A month from there, they are like, “There are no offers after two weeks.” That is when you pull all the money out and then chill. You work with other financial angles and savings and then watch the prices. That is when you come back and go, “It is time to start going.”
Your plan will stop because as the market goes down, you can’t buy a house and refinance in a couple of years. You might lose 2%, 3%, or 5% of your equity. When the market is going down, that is when you got to chill. One of the things you can do at that point is to remodel some of the other old ones or call me. You will do it in your area but I will explain to you a 1031 exchange, which is where you take multiple properties, put them into an apartment, and you do not pay taxes on them. It is long-term stuff. The investors say, “Get as many doors as you can.” If you can take your first 2 properties and combine them into a fourplex or a small 8-unit apartment, over 20 years, that thing is going to make you way more money and the turnover is a lot easier than turning over a single-family home.
Everybody goes from single-family homes to multiunit. All the big ones I have seen, like Chris Kronner and Grant Cardone, all ended up getting into 50-unit apartment buildings.
It is because the single-family home has a big property management aspect to it. Eventually, you get there and the margins are higher.
There is a limit to scaling single-family homes. You can scale them a lot but you do hit a limit. It is a couple of million but it is a lot.
This is the growth that you need. At some point, you might sell one to get all the capital, take the other two and put them into 1031 and into an 8-unit, 10-unit, or 20-unit place. You are going to need the capital from that one sale to manage it for the first couple of years and then run with it. This is stupid. I was going to say, “I can’t believe I am getting into heavy real estate stuff with a nineteen-year-old.” Other nineteen-year-olds out there are trying to figure out how dope rims they can put on their car and you are sitting in the house you own. That is pretty bitching.
I also do the Chrome rims. However, I chose to drive an $800 car for the fact that I knew that in a few years, that would be a lot more.
Everyone has to make their choices. I am not like, “Save everything.” I am anti-Dave Ramsey like you were talking about the people who say, “Do not do any credit. Only do it with 20% down if you are not stupid or dumb with credit cards.” If you are smart with your credit cards and you manage them, unfortunately, your credit score is a part of your life. You have to have it. That is killer.
This show will go up. I had someone that said, “I started reading your show and I have binged them all.” The first one was years ago. Somebody is going to read this in years and want a Courtland update, so anything else you want to say to all the people out there who are thinking about buying a home besides the fact that it is awesome because you are the party house?
The only other thing I would say to consider, which is the overall, because of what I will be doing with the refinancing, getting another, and building that momentum tree, this will have been a better option. A lot of people also do not realize that there is a lot that goes in the first year or two, especially. There is all the furnishing and all the things that you are going to want to buy, have to buy, and forget that you have to buy. I had a list of stuff that I thought I would need. It was a big list. It was 130 things like toilet paper, kitchen utensils, bowls, and cups. I swear, it is five times that amount. You run into things and you are like, “I do not have Neosporin.” I usually look at it at my mom’s.
Here is the cool thing about that. The first thing you said was understanding the real essentials of someone’s life. You immediately said, “It is my place. It is here. It is probably different than other people.” You are right. There is a balance between finances and quality of life. Most people out there are not you.
Most people are not willing to take a dip and quality of life in the name of finances. They think that they can do both at one time but what it is, is the people who are not millionaires in their twenties were driving $500 cars for five years. Some people are not willing to do that, and that is okay, but you have to understand that you may not get to that point that those other people were at.
After I started following you, my For You Page started to figure out my algorithm. There was some girl behind that came up on my FYP and was like, “I sold my Benz so I could buy my house.” There is a picture with her and it looks like an Instagram influencer with this awesome car. She was like, “I pulled up in my sweet used Toyota Corolla and got the keys to my house.” She made the sacrifice.
The cool thing is most people are not like you, which means that a lot of people do not start thinking about this until they have been renting for a little while. They lost some money but one of the things they can at least think about that they are happy about is they have Neosporin in their apartment and bowls. The extra that you had on your list because you came straight from mom’s, they have a bunch of that stuff in their apartment.
From the apartment, it is a whole different story. You have already had that experience.
This has been amazing and so inspirational. I can’t wait. You are going to get TikTok messages in months when people learn this for the first time because podcasts live forever, unlike stories on Instagram or TikTok videos. Add Courtland on TikTok and Instagram. Tell him you have known him on this show. If you see something that says, “I am a How To Buy A Homie,” that is my crew and what they all are. Thanks so much. Talk to you later.
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I do not know what to say. He did that at nineteen. Everything that needed to be said was said in the interview. Follow Courtland on all the socials @CourtlandsHome. Make sure to check out his TikTok video. That blew up with fourteen million views or whatever it is. It is insane. While you are there on TikTok, check out @HowToBuyAHome. That is me. Start some conversation. Asks some questions. I am thinking about maybe doing Lives. If you are reading this in 2026, TikTok Lives was a thing we did back in 2022. It is cool.
Do me a favor. Rate and review the show. Share this dude’s story to your younger brother, sister, or friends. Let’s start the revolution. I am excited about it. I say it every single time. If Courtland, at nineteen, can figure out a way to make his way into a home with only five months of an actual job, you can do this.
Important Links
- @CourtlandsHome – TikTok
- Pinterest – Courtland’s Home
- Diamond Residential
- Rocket Mortgage
- @HowToBuyAHome – TikTok
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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