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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

I took a hotel shuttle from the airport recently. Got to chatting with the driver. He’s an immigrant who owns 6 industrial rental properties and a few single family rentals.

You’d never know it, given his attire and evening job. But he is focused on keeping the cash flow growing.

His net worth is probably in the millions but few know it unless they really get him to open up (something I tend to be naturally good at).

I know a few folks like this. I call them the stealthy wealthy.

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Why is he driving a hotel shuttle? Unless he’s just retired and looking for something engaging to do, that’s a horrible waste of his clear talent for building wealth

Because extracting rent does not scale with effort (and, in fact, requires none of it). It's called "passive income" for a reason.

What does scale is his skills. If he’s able to pull off what he’s already done, get investors and do it on a larger scale.

Not everyone needs to grind endlessly. The dude already has all the money he needs, and he just wants to drive a bus

I said explicitly in my comment that if he’s just doing it for his own enjoyment that’s completely fine, I agree that he does t have to grind endlessly

I don't know if the parent story is apocryphal (sure sounds like it), but having done that job (high school gig), I can testify that it's pretty great: flexible, easy, and you get paid, in cash, for every quantum of work. Plus it can just be really fun -- tons of great stories, and there were nights where I rolled away with hundreds of dollars in cash in my pocket.

Easily one of the best jobs of my life. I like to say that my career satisfaction peaked early. It would actually be a pretty good gig if you're otherwise well-off and just looking for some socialization in your life.

I'd be suspicious of those claims with that job, but hotel shuttles are a great way to network in a large city near a busy airport.

He owned and operated a convenience store. Hated it. Sold it for a premium, found some other properties, and bought some (via loans, so he has debt). Over time, he took the cash flow and rolled it into new loans and bought more properties, etc.

He loves the shuttle job and makes good money— I tipped him well, for example.

I ended up grilling him about his commercial properties and how he did it, and it checks out. I know the town where he operates pretty well, and a familiar enough with the business he’s in to see that he knew his stuff.

He hates the single family homes. Way more hassle. So, he’s looking to exit that. The commercial properties are net leases with pretty long lease periods. No hassle at all: just cash flow.

He’s got a convenience store, a restaurant, a church, a strip mall, and I forget what else.

Anyway, I know a handful of people like him who are for a fact millionaires, with lots of cash flowing businesses (such as storage units) but who still hold down jobs that might surprise you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because he is in debt to his eyeballs on those rental properties. In 30 years when they are paid off he will be rich, but right now he probably can't make ends meet without that income.

I would imagine in the current climate the properties are operating at a profit, don't you?

Hard to say, it only takes one month without a tenant to lose money. You better have the cash flow to counter that. The landlords I know (not a representative sample) all have lost a lot of money as covid meant they couldn't evict tenants that were not paying rent. There are programs to get some back, but if you evict before getting money you get nothing.

In the long run you make a lot of money, but it is a long time before profits are enough to live off of. For the first years the money goes to paying the bank, insurance, taxes, and if you are lucky there is enough left to cover basic repairs.

I have a family member who is pretty wealthy from shares in a large tech company and, later, real estate/rental properties. He moonlighted at the weekends driving trucks for a supermarket because he enjoys truck driving, and now is just doing that full time.

> that’s a horrible waste of his clear talent for building wealth

I'd love to quit my job and do what I like, gardening, music, painting, whatever. If the guy enjoys driving shuttles then he shouldn't waste his life doing something else, given the opportunity.

There is another possibility, he doesn’t actually own those properties. He invested in an LLC that owns those properties. Many passive real estate investors claim they own the property.

I have a few friends who are into passive real estate investing, they claim they own an apartment complex. What they did is they gave money to a group of guys who pooled money got a loan and then bought an apartment complex under an LLC. My friends owns 0.001 percent of the LLC with no operational control of the apartment complex. My understanding they are called real-estate syndicates. It is a scam if you ask me. I don’t think most investors will get good returns on their investment.

This makes no sense, why would he be driving a hotel shuttle at this point rather than spending time with his family or volunteering?

all it takes is one bad tenant to put you in a scarcity mindset. (or job)

He owns it? or bank owns it? I know people that have multiple rental properties, mortage on all of them, if suddenly they lose a few of the renters they can't pay mortages on these properties anymore. They also say they own all of their properties.

guaranteed his wealth is super high but he does nothing but work. his heirs will enjoy his fortune. depends on what you value i guess.

also those rentals don't cash flow until they pay off their mortgage, so might be a long game kind of thing.

We also peak bubble right now. There were similar stories 2006 and before.

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