• To invest in real estate without having to fork over a big down payment, some investors are using the BRRRR method.
• It involves buying a property with potential, renovating it, and renting it out.
• Then, investors can use a cash-out refinance to help fund their next purchase.

Real estate investing can be an effective way to build wealth, but it's not as simple as selecting an index fund, contributing money, and letting it grow.

Successful real estate investing requires time, strategy, and money — often a significant amount, especially for investors looking to build multi-property portfolios.

To scale without having to save for a new down payment and closing costs for each deal, some investors use a strategy known as "buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat," or BRRRR.

The approach involves buying a property with potential, renovating it, and renting it out. Once rented, the next step is to refinance, allowing investors to pull out their original investment, plus any equity they've built, to help fund their next purchase. Banks typically lend up to 70% to 75% of a property's value in a cash-out refinance.

Scaling quickly by recycling capital

When buying an investment property, "you're really looking at at least 20% down," Pieter Louw told Business Insider. He and his childhood friend, Connor Swofford, used the BRRRR strategy to scale from zero to 24 units in 12 months. "Even with a $300,000 or $400,000 property, with closing costs, you have to come up with 60 to 80 grand, which is not very scalable."

Their first deal was a duplex with a carriage house in Buffalo. Two of the three units were ready to rent, while the third required renovations. They said they bought it for $295,000, put about $40,000 into it, and by the time they refinanced, it appraised for $430,000.

"That really kick-started us," said Louw.

They've financed their deals with hard money loans (short-term loans secured by a "hard" asset, such as real estate), sometimes layering in private money for the down payment or renovations. Working with hard money lenders allows them to move faster than traditional banks, though it does come with risk, Swofford said: "It's a big balloon payment, you have to personally guarantee the loan, and there's a bit more paperwork and harder compliance hurdles to clear."

Thanks to Louw's construction background, they can confidently predict their rehab costs and timeline, which is critical for a successful BRRRR.

"The two biggest things are making sure that your construction budget is reasonably accurate," said Louw, "and knowing your purchase price and what the value would be afterward: the ARV."

Carolyn Yu has used the BRRRR method to scale to five properties in two years.

Her strategy centers on buying below market value, improving the property, allowing it to appreciate, and then tapping into the built-up equity to help finance another purchase.

"My strategy is basically to use every property to fund the next one," said the 27-year-old investor seeking early retirement.

A slower, more flexible version of BRRRR

There's more than one way to execute a BRRRR. Financially independent investor Dion McNeeley has experimented with a "live-in BRRRR," and Mike Newton, a Washington State trooper who owns more than 20 rental units, uses what he calls a "slow BRRRR" strategy to reduce risk.

"One of the main concerns with the BRRRR strategy is, what if I don't get the appraisal I want? What if I don't get it remodeled as quickly as I thought I would?" said Newton. "All of a sudden, as I take longer, it now costs me way more money."

His "slow BRRRR" strategy works like so: First, he secures private money from individual investors in his local real estate community. There's nothing unique about that step; the key is how he structures the loans. He sets up a five-year interest-only loan term. For example, on a 2025 triplex purchase, he borrowed $60,000 at 10% interest, meaning he owed the lender $6,000 per year, or about $500 a month, with no principal payments.

He'll eventually pay the loan back in a lump sum after he rehabs and refinances the property, but he has plenty of time to do so. He includes a clause that allows him to extend the loan for up to three additional years if the appraisal doesn't meet a specified threshold. He also includes a no prepayment penalty clause.

"If we had some crazy recession or the value didn't come back, I can wait longer and continue to cash flow," he said. "Even though 10% is not a great interest rate, if you're not paying any principal, the actual payment I'm making of $500 a month is less than what a principal and interest payment would be."

When the timing is right, he refinances, pays back the private lender, and moves on to the next deal.

Why some investors are shifting to BRRRR now

For Louisville-based investors Mike Gorius and Kevin Hart, BRRRR is becoming more attractive as market conditions change.

The business partners have primarily focused on house flipping since they started buying real estate together in 2019, but they're leaning more heavily into BRRRR projects in 2026.

A cooling market has made quick resale profits harder to rely on.

They know the strategy isn't risk-free. You still have to make sure your numbers work, and you can hit the value you're expecting, Hart said.

"From the get-go, you still have the risk of rehab and the risk of running correct costs to make sure that you can actually get a good appraisal."

However, compared to flipping, BRRRR offers a more predictable exit.

"You're taking out the risk of the market," explained Hart. Instead of worrying about a flip sitting for months while you're paying interest, "you know that at the end of the rehab you can get a tenant in there and you can immediately refinance with the bank."

It may not yield quick cash like a successful flip, but they're playing the long game.

• Clémence de Lutz owns Petitgrain Boulangerie, one of LA's most popular bakeries.
• On opening day in 2024, she sold out of croissants in about an hour. Today, there's often a line out the door.
• She credits her small business's success to social capital, intentional hiring, and radical hospitality.

When Clémence de Lutz answered my phone call at 1 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in late February, she'd already been awake — and working — for 12 hours.

De Lutz owns Petitgrain Boulangerie, a tiny bakery tucked between a delicatessen and a nail salon on Los Angeles' iconic Wilshire Boulevard. Five days a week, her alarm goes off at 12:48 a.m., giving her just enough time to get out of bed, walk the 10 blocks to the shop, and start shaping croissants by 1 a.m. She relieves her 23-year-old daughter, who works the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. night shift.

Those early hours aren't for show. They're key to good business.

The most foot traffic happens between 8 a.m., when her bakery opens, and 10:30 a.m., she explained: "If we don't have enough things to sell because we shaped too late or they went into the proofer too late, then we lose money."

From 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., she works alone in the kitchen.

"It's my favorite time of day," said the mother of three, "because I just listen to true-crime podcasts."

At 3 a.m., a second baker arrives, followed by three more, staggered at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and 6 a.m. Front of house clocks in at 7 a.m., and the doors open an hour later. Regulars often line up well before then to secure their favorite pastries, including the most popular item: the plain croissant.

On Fridays, she typically works a half-day and focuses on business development. The Friday we chat is different.

"This week, I'm short-staffed," she told me, stepping out of the kitchen to take the call. "I have a nice, healthy 45 minutes ahead of me. I'm just waiting for things to rise in the proofer."

De Lutz was born in Paris and moved with her family to Washington, D.C., when she was eight. Summers were spent selling ice cream and washing dishes at the inn and restaurant her grandparents owned in the south of France. "My parents would just drop us off for the summer and be like, 'Work for tips,'" she recalled.

She studied film and anthropology at Syracuse University, then moved to Los Angeles with plans to make documentaries. She tried the corporate route first, taking an executive assistant job at Fox, but it didn't last. "I just couldn't find my footing until I went back into food in my early 20s and was like, 'Oh, this is what feels normal,'" she said. "Chaos feels normal."

Turning a cubicle cookie side hustle into a career

While a desk job wasn't a great fit for de Lutz, it led to a side hustle that would change the course of her career. She'd collect cookie orders from coworkers throughout the week and deliver her handmade creations on Fridays. Her cubicle cookie business eventually landed a spot on KCRW's "Good Food," an appearance she says "changed my life." She quit her job, rented a commercial kitchen, and began working as a ghost pastry chef for restaurants. Baking evolved into teaching and consulting. For years, she helped other bakeries build menus and streamline systems, work that also served as real-time education on what it takes to succeed in the industry.

When the opportunity to run her own bakery fell into her lap — a friend she'd consulted for called her up and said, "Hey, I'm retiring, do you want my space?" — she jumped.

Taking over an existing kitchen space in LA typically comes with expensive delays and red tape. In Los Angeles County, she explained, commercial kitchens that sit empty for 90 days or more can trigger a permit reset. So, "when you find an owner who is willing to work with you and close the day before you want to open and just kind of negotiate key money for buying out the equipment, you can never pass that up."

She has lived lean, she said, with no credit card debt or loans, so the risk of opening felt manageable.

"The values I grew up with have very little to do with money. In France, it's not customary to value money or wealth. It's really valuing being a tradesperson, being an expert in your field," she said. "Taking risks was always easy because I had nothing to lose."

Opening day: Selling 300 croissants in 1 hour

Petitgrain opened in May 2024. From the start, demand outpaced production.

Opening day, she made about 300 croissants. They didn't last more than an hour. On day two, she about doubled the number and sold out again.

Since opening, the bakery has drawn steady crowds from Wednesday through Sunday, the days it's open. Today, the operation is close to its ceiling.

"We're pretty maxed out," she said. Her 870-square-foot kitchen, equipped with one double-stack oven and one small proofer, produces 32 "books" of croissants a day. A book yields roughly 24 to 30 croissants, putting the daily volume at 700 to 900. Though the croissant is the top seller, she offers a variety of other pastries, including cinnamon, cardamom, and sausage rolls, as well as cookies, quiche, and scones.

The business worked from the get-go because she understood her baseline costs and built for sustainability. It helped that her landlord was committed to renting to small businesses at below-market rent, she added: "Rent is $4,100 a month, and we knew how much we needed to make to make rent."

Early on, she kept a second job teaching baking classes, but within a couple of months of opening, she sold her share of the cooking school to focus fully on Petitgrain.

De Lutz said Petitgrain's average monthly sales have climbed about 131% from 2024, when she first opened, as the team slowly increased production. Small upgrades, such as undercounter freezers, have helped drive another 20% in growth over the last few months, she added.

Her secret sauce: Social capital and 'radical hospitality'

Having ripped open one of her flaky masterpieces myself, it's hard to agree with de Lutz when she claims her croissants are "overhyped."

"I'm not kidding," she said when I chuckled. "I wake up every morning at 12:48 a.m., and my first thought is: 'How can I live up to this hype?' It's a lot of expectations, but it's sort of what drives you to be excellent."

A big part of her immediate success, she believes, was timing. When Petitgrain opened, interest in croissants surged across Los Angeles.

"Everybody all of a sudden wanted to write about croissants," she said. "It was just really lucky timing."

Less visible, and perhaps more impactful than trends, however, were the relationships she'd built from being in the food and hospitality community for so long. Social capital, she said, is "the most important part of my story." While it's hard to quantify, "I think that has the biggest return."

Her hiring model and teambuilding strategies are unique. At Petitgrain, she practices what she calls "both-of-house" training: everyone in back of house learns front of house, and everyone in front of house works at least one back-of-house shift weekly.

That way, "everyone understands the product better and has respect for their team members," she said. She also rejects a traditional hierarchy and instead aims for shared accountability, anchored in wages.

"My business model is based on generous hospitality," she said. "Everybody needs to earn a living wage, not like $20 an hour. Everyone here, with tips, is making at minimum $30 an hour. I don't want anyone to have to work a second job."

To make that work, she runs a tip pool, and she protects it. She refuses to hire ahead of revenue.

"Because the tip pool is such an important part of everybody's paycheck, I'm really cautious," she said. "I cannot bring in a new team member until we grow sales between 6 and 8% at a time because, if I add an extra person before revenue grows, everybody's tip pool gets diluted."

As of early 2026, she has a team of 13 bakers and baristas. When she does hire, credentials aren't her priority. She's looking for kindness, hustle, and curiosity.

"I don't care if you went to culinary school. I don't care if you worked at a Michelin-star restaurant," she said. "Honestly, it's not hard to make a croissant. It really isn't. But if you are curious, if you are humble, if you work hard, you'll figure it out. And 99% of the time, that yields a really great team."

Underneath all of it is what she calls her core belief system: radical generosity, expressed through radical hospitality.

"There's never a time when I have been radically generous and regretted it," she said.

• Million Dollar Sellers, MDS, is a community for top Amazon sellers with $1M+ in annual revenue.
• MDS hosts a variety of events throughout the year, some of which are open to the public.
• I attended MDS Inspire to observe, ask questions, and try to figure out what these elite sellers obsess over.

When I spoke to the co-founder of the exclusive Million Dollar Sellers club, Eugene Khayman, last year, he likened their member-only events to a family reunion, "where you're actually excited to see everybody there."

Khayman is the chief operating officer of MDS, a community of elite Amazon sellers and e-commerce founders who generate at least $1 million in annual revenue.

The in-person gatherings — where members connect, trade ideas, and swap strategies — are just one piece of the community, but they're a big one. There are multiple MDS chapters in major cities around the world that meet regularly, one member-only summit per year held in exotic locations like Milan (2025) and Singapore (2026), and various events open to the public, like the one I'm attending: MDS Inspire.

I'm going up as a reporter, certainly not an MDS member, though a girl can dream.

On Monday, March 9, I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to spend two days inside the Wynn, surrounded by Amazon sellers doing seven, eight, and even nine figures. My objective was to observe, ask questions, and try to figure out what these elite sellers obsess over, what they're worried about, and what "winning" looks like in e-commerce right now.

Day 1: A 4:15 a.m. alarm, 280 miles of highway, and the Wynn maze

My alarm goes off at 4:15 a.m. By 4:30, I've pulled a double espresso shot, and by 5, I'm on the road to Vegas, about 280 miles northeast of LA.

Sin City is popular for conferences because it has the space and hotels built to host crowds. The one other professional event I attended — a real estate conference — was also in Las Vegas.

A 5 a.m. departure should get me to the Wynn, a massive luxury resort hosting the conference, with enough time to park and check in before the first scheduled event: a 10:30 a.m. opening statement and remarks.

Traffic behaves, and I pull into the self-parking lot just after 9, with plenty of time to collect myself and begin the long, winding journey through ornate hallways, past the casino, and down an escalator. I refer to the event app for directions and, a couple thousand steps later, I reach the conference check-in.

While waiting to collect my credentials, I meet Jake, who's in from Dallas. He runs a beauty brand and tells me he's here to learn about sales channels outside Amazon. For subscription-heavy businesses like his, Amazon can be complicated.

The conference area consists of a main room for keynotes and smaller rooms for breakout sessions. Partners providing services in logistics, advertising, and growth have booths set up inside and outside. There's also a barista serving up made-to-order espresso drinks.

There are plenty of hydration options, too.

The space spills out onto a patio with more beverages and booths, as well as a "wellness area" offering massages and stretch therapy.

"Amazon is still king"

At 10:30, Khayman kicks off the conference with a schedule run-through and his "state of commerce" presentation. He said he started doing this a couple of years ago by pulling census data and stitching it together himself. It used to take weeks, but has become dramatically easier with AI.

This year, it took him closer to 15 minutes, "because Claude Cowork did a way better job of analyzing data," he says. AI remains a hot topic throughout the conference, and everyone seems to prefer Claude.

According to Khayman's breakdown, there are 139 brands in the room. The majority are $1 million to $5 million brands, though a healthy percentage do $10 million or more in annual revenue. Around 78% are MDS members.

One main takeaway from the report: "Amazon is still king," he said.

For most sellers, most of their revenue still flows through Amazon, but one in three had built "a meaningful secondary channel," he said, and are driving more than 15% of revenue from somewhere else, like retail, TikTok Shop, or direct-to-consumer.

The 'signature MDS' event: speed networking

At 11, the "signature MDS" event begins: "Meet N' Speed."

We're each handed a card with five table numbers. Those are the tables we'll travel to for each 12-minute networking round. The groups are small — six or seven people — and lively. Everyone naturally falls into a pattern: go around the table, answer the designated prompt for the round, and build off each other's answers.

It's a smart way to break the ice and allows introverts like me to network more easily than having to walk up to a stranger and start a conversation from scratch.

I meet sellers from all corners of the country: Charleston, Seattle, Boston. The prompts range from "If you had an extra $500,000, where would you deploy it?" to "What's your biggest challenge right now?"

Most sellers agree they'd spend extra capital on inventory or talent acquisition. That leads to a conversation around how to find good employees, and I witness one member connecting another to the hiring agency he's had success with on the spot.

The vibe feels less like a traditional conference and more like friends catching up, especially among members. As we transition tables, people stop to greet each other like old classmates.

At 12, we break for lunch.

The Mediterranean-inspired spread is impressive. There's sea bass! Attendees use the lunch break to network, while I use it to jot down notes, check emails, and give my social battery a moment to recharge.

Breakout sessions begin in the afternoon. These are 20- to 30-minute presentations led by members on specific topics, such as scaling on YouTube or breaking into retail.

There are three breakout blocks, with three rooms running at once. Attendees choose the sessions that are most useful to their business. The sessions transport me back to college: you grab a seat, listen to the lecture, take notes, ask questions, and then spill back out into the main hallway.

Between sessions, "coffee chats" take place in a roped-off area. These are scheduled mini-meetings for sellers to connect one-on-one.

During one of the breaks between breakout sessions, I meet Prudence, an MDS member since 2019, who does eight figures selling a tanning product. She tells me that what she likes about the events is that you always leave with one or two insights that change how you think about your business. Plus, she adds, it's hard to beat being surrounded by people who are smarter than you.

A little before 6, the final breakout sessions end, and we're released back into the main hall for light bites, an open bar, and networking.

A waiter hands me a glass of champagne. At this point, I've been awake for 14 hours. I retreat to my corner table to take notes (and a few sips of bubbly).

After happy hour, there's a group dinner for those who signed up.

On my way out, I run into Jake again, and it leads to my favorite interaction of the day with him and his friend Stuart, who's a tennis nerd like me.

I leave a little before 7 p.m., pay $25 to exit the Wynn parking garage, and stop at Whole Foods to grab dinner before checking into my more economical hotel about 15 minutes away.

Day 2: matcha pudding, a hack contest, and the future of live shopping

On Tuesday, I'm back in the convention center by 9 a.m. and greeted with an elaborate breakfast, including matcha chia seed pudding.

I meet more sellers, including a member who has been with the group for six years and sells kids' toys with his business partner.

The "hack contest" begins at 9:30, with members taking the stage to share their top business hacks. They're allowed one slide and a few minutes to present. After each pitch, the audience decides who "wins" by applause — the last presenter goes head-to-head with whoever is holding the "streak." One member keeps the streak alive for four rounds.

The main event is a 10:30 a.m. panel featuring Khayman interviewing two sellers and the founder of Outlandish, a company that helps brands scale through TikTok Shop and live commerce.

After closing remarks and member awards, many sellers stay through the rest of the day and into Wednesday morning for more coffee chats and focus groups. Some conference-goers will merge with another e-commerce conference, Prosper, happening simultaneously in the same conference space.

By the end of my 15 or so hours in the conference hall, the takeaway that stuck with me wasn't one specific tactic or strategy (though I did note that running through most conversations was the importance of leveraging AI and TikTok Shop). It was the atmosphere: being in a room where nearly everyone is a high achiever and willing to swap strategies felt like a cheat code.

The experience also felt different as an observer than it probably does as a seller. If I were attending as a true participant, I'd do things differently: I wouldn't drive on the day of. These are long, high-output days, and I'd want to be well rested to get the most out of them. I'd also network more intentionally. I retreated to my corner table to take notes whenever my social battery dipped, which made sense for reporting, but probably isn't how you maximize a networking-heavy conference like this.

The vibe was professional and enthusiastic. There were photographers, videographers, and even a "swag" table featuring MDS merch. Everyone spoke with confidence and intention. I did feel a bit like an outsider without a $1 million brand, and some of the more strategic lectures went over my head. The room skewed male, and even though everyone was technically a competitor, there was still a sense of trust and camaraderie.

My last interaction happens in the women's bathroom. Bina, whom I'd met during speed networking on Monday, says hello. She's one of the few women in attendance. She lives between NYC and France, has been a member for about a year and a half, and sells in the beauty space.

I get her contact info, then begin to work my way back through the maze that is the Wynn.