Calvin Chin
Calvin Chin has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Using Real Estate To Leave A Legacy with Calvin Chin
Calvin Chin explains how he went from a $46,000 base tech sales job at Oracle in San Francisco to owning roughly 231 units outright across several states, plus a coaching business, brokerage, property management company and a wellness retreat in Hawaii. He walks through house hacking a one-bedroom by renting the laundry den for $1,200 a month, losing $100,000 on a handshake private lending deal, picking Dallas as his first out-of-state market, and the identity crisis that kept him at his W2 for two to three years after his passive income already covered his base salary.
Key takeaways
- Calvin house hacked a San Francisco one-bedroom by renting the 150-square-foot den to a coding bootcamp student for $1,200 a month against a $2,000 mortgage, keeping total monthly expenses near $2,400 and funneling commission checks into rentals.
- His first big loss was a $100,000 handshake private money loan to a San Francisco flipper who moved the money into a Reno development project; eight years later he has never seen it back. His lesson: get systems and a mentor so you learn from other people's mistakes instead of your own.
- He chose Dallas by looking at how median home prices held up in 2008-2009 (roughly flat versus -40% in Detroit and -15 to -20% in California), whether it still cash flowed, industry diversity, and whether he had a personal competitive advantage there (family in the area).
- Virtual investing works through checks and balances: trust but verify every rent or value number with a second source like the property manager plus your own data, rather than relying on one agent.