Alan Corey
Alan Corey has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch, 2 times.
Mike DeHaan on the Real Estate Maximalist Show
Mike DeHaan shares his full backstory in an interview from Alan Corey Real Estate Maximalist podcast: quitting an electrical engineering job in 2018 with no plan, cashing out his 401k to buy two turnkey rentals in Spokane, partnering up to flip REOs, losing $25,000 on a bad wholesale buy, and eventually building a direct-mail wholesaling operation across multiple markets plus a 55-unit portfolio. He also explains his seller conversation framework, his direct mail approach, and why he'd chase active income skills before passive income if starting over.
Key takeaways
- Mike liquidated his 401k (paying penalties) to buy two new-build turnkey rentals at roughly 0.75% rent-to-price, then found the numbers didn't work because he never budgeted for vacancy, management or maintenance.
- He had time but no money, so he went to meetups and found a partner who had money but no time; their first REO flip had burst pipes and no HVAC and netted him $4,000 after five months.
- A $25,000 loss came from ignoring his hard money lender's warning and switching to the wholesaler's referred lender \u2014 trust, but verify, and do your own due diligence on every wholesale deal.
- Their direct mail works because it looks like real mail: a Ballpoint Marketing envelope addressed from a person avoids the post office's junk-mail delivery day, plus a short local reference and a clear call-or-text CTA.
Investing Your Way to 7 Figure Pay Days with Alan Corey
Alan Corey shares how 22 years of real estate investing took him from a $99,000 Spanish Harlem-era condo purchase to a 350-door portfolio, including three separate million-dollar paydays that all came from properties he originally bought for modest cash flow. He explains his "House FIRE" method of assigning individual rental properties to specific monthly bills, argues against all-cash buying in favor of a leveraged "mutual fund of houses" approach, and describes how private money relationships develop after years in the business.
Key takeaways
- Corey's big wins came from buying for cash flow and holding: a Brooklyn duplex bought at $450K, HELOC-refinanced to a $1M basis, and sold ~12 years later for $2M; a 50-home seller-financed portfolio bought around $40K per house renting at ~$600 sold 2.5 years later to a 1031 buyer.
- The House FIRE method assigns each property's net cash flow to a specific recurring bill — instead of saving 25x an expense in stocks for a 4% withdrawal, buy a house with roughly half that money and let the rent cover the bill.
- Corey argues against all-cash buying: $100K in one house versus $20K down on five houses means 10% appreciation produces $150K instead of $110K, rent bumps multiply, and vacancies get absorbed by the other units.
- Stated cash flow should already be net of budgeted repairs, maintenance and vacancy — a $300 dishwasher is not "two months of cash flow" if you underwrote it correctly.