I bought my first investment property while still in college. Now I'm 24 and own 30 homes as a full-time landlord.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lawrence Guerguis, a 24-year-old based in Orange County, California, who started investing in real estate in the Midwest while still in college.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I always thought I’d go into investment banking and work on Wall Street.

During my sophomore year of college at the University of San Diego, I homed in on finance as my major.

One weekend during my junior year, I went out to the bars.

We went out to this pizza spot that my friends and I usually go to, and I ran into this guy who was sitting there acting a little odd.

I was like, “Hey, is everything all right?” He turned to me and said, “Dude, I only have two weeks of the year to have a good time.

Just leave me alone.” I asked what he did, and he said he worked in investment banking, so I sat and talked with him for like an hour.

He asked me if I loved money, and I said no.

Money’s great and all, but I don’t love it.

He was like, “Well, I love money, and this is why I do investment banking.

I don’t even have the time to spend the kind of money that I make.

I make great money and all that, but my lifestyle is pretty rough.” The next day, I went to my academic advisor and added a real estate major.

I was like, “We’re not doing investment banking.” That’s not what I want to live for.

I want to live for freedom and have a purpose.

I’ve always had a passion for real estate.

I love houses — I used to go to open houses for fun in college just to check them out.

So even if I went down the investment banking or finance route, I knew I could get into real estate.

But after that conversation with that guy, I completely shut down finance.

I thought, “I’m going to go all-in on figuring out what we’re going to do with real estate.” My junior year, I had a hand-me-down car, and I was like, “I’m at this university, and I really don’t need it.” So I sold it.

I got $16,000 from that sale, and my dad was like, “We can get another car.” He didn’t know what I wanted to do at the time.

I started looking for a property to buy.

Obviously, I couldn’t get anything in San Diego or Orange County for $16,000.

So I was like, “All right, we’re going to have to start looking elsewhere.” I looked at different Midwestern states, and I ended up coming to a pretty interesting town in Illinois.

There, $15,000 covered the down payment on a property, and the extra $1,000 covered a couple of months of the mortgage.

I was like, “Let’s do it.” I knew it was a risk, but I was 21 at the time, so worst case scenario, I’m in some debt, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

I pulled the trigger on that house.

I didn’t have a W-2 income — I never have — so I couldn’t do a conventional loan.

I did a typical Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) loan.

A DSCR is a debt service coverage ratio, which pretty much sees if either the property’s current rent or expected rent will cover the mortgage payment — and the ratio needs to be 1.25.

For this house, just because it was so cheap, my payment was around $400, and the HUD rent for that ZIP code was about $1,300 — well over 2.0.

I thought, “I’m going to need a tenant that doesn’t miss rent,” which is a pretty crazy ask.

I then stumbled across Section 8, and, thankfully, my first tenant worked out.

My screening was awful — I don’t even think I did a screening that first time — I kind of just went with the flow, and thankfully that one worked.

Once I got that first house junior year, and cash was flowing, I was like, “I think this is what I want to do in real estate.” Before that, I thought I just wanted to work in real estate and own houses.

But once I owned the house and got that first Section 8 tenant, I was like, “OK, this is my niche.” That first house was a pretty ballsy decision, but I knew that if I wanted to get into real estate at some point, I needed to either make a move soon or make a mistake soon.

When I graduated from college in May 2024, I packed all my clothes into a checked bag, my PC and cables — not even the keyboard and mouse — into a carry-on, and moved across the country to Ohio not knowing anyone there.

There, I started buying more properties and managing them.

I was in Cleveland for two years, and the first year and a half, I was doing everything on my own.

I was painting these houses, I was doing flooring and ripping out carpet.

I was figuring it out: I had YouTube open on my phone, looking up how to take off a toilet and put it back on.

I didn’t have too much experience in construction; I couldn’t tell you the difference between PEX and PVC plumbing.

That first year and a half, I was an investor and a landlord.

I was doing all the screenings, the tenant showings, all the communication, everything.

At the year and a half mark, I started my own property management group.

I’m still a landlord, I still go over screenings, but I have people who do repairs for me, who do the showings for me.

I don’t necessarily need to be there.

It’s become passive, and I’ve been back in California since June.

I’ve done phone calls and sent a couple of emails, but it’s not like a traditional job.

Honestly, I kind of like how hectic it is being a landlord.

I know some people say landlording is rough — and that really just depends on your screening criteria — but I knew that it was something that came with owning property and becoming an investor.

For me, taking on that responsibility of becoming a landlord was worth more than sitting at a desk.

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