36 units by age 21, making 6-figure profits: Here's how Josiah Pott went from living in his grandma's trailer to a real-estate-investing phenom - and nabbed $372,000 from a single deal

J PAT CARTER/AFP/Getty Images

• Josiah Pott received an early education in the art of real-estate investing and compound interest from his father.
• Pott wholesales vacant land to developers and then reinvests the profits in cash-flowing rental properties.
• Today, he owns an array of duplexes, a few single family homes, an eight-unit property, and a 16-unit.
• Did we mention Pott is just 21 years old?
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Josiah Pott's affinity for real-estate investing was passed down to him from his father.

"I have a dad who was really into real estate," he said on the "BiggerPockets" podcast. "He was never really the biggest mover or shaker, but he was huge on compound interest."

He continued: "I became really obsessed with compound interest - and he had used real estate as a tool to realize interest."

After a series of sporadic real-estate investments with his father including flips, lease-to-own deals, tax liens, and foreclosures, Pott was hooked.

Shortly thereafter, after graduating high school, Pott married and moved into his grandmother's trailer. He'd received about $10,000 in gifts from the wedding, and knew if he was going to pursue real-estate investing full-time, that this was his moment. They had cash in the coffers.

"That's how we set ourselves up to have the freedom to either massively succeed or massively fail," he said. "So we dedicated all of our time to pursuing real estate and development."

Today, Pott has 34 units, averages six-figure profits from his investments, and is 21 years old.

His strategy

After nabbing a $20,000 profit by connecting a local homebuilder with a few acres of vacant land, Pott knew he had found his niche. He realized he could turn big profits by wholesaling land to developers. All he had to do was sniff out the deals and make the connection.

For the uninitiated, wholesaling real estate involves contracting a property and then assigning it to an end buyer before the contract with the seller closes.

"I started working with a lot of builders who could tell me what they were looking for and how much they would pay per-acre," he said. "And then I started looking for land and trying to find things that worked for them."

To find deals and contact land owners, Pott leans on a variety of resources including: GIS systems, his state's Secretary of State website, a local register of deeds, white pages, and google searches.

Pott notes that meticulous vetting is paramount when it comes to wholesaling land for development. Things like septic, sewer accessibility and capacity, water lines, utility accessibility, and zoning can quickly become headaches without a hired and experienced engineer to assess the property and give you the all-clear.

But Pott's investment journey doesn't end after he wholesales a property. He takes his profit and pumps it into cash-flowing rentals.

"I make a lot of fees from finding property and setting it up to be developed," he said. "But I usually don't stay in the deals, so that's kind of how I've made my money - and then I use it to invest."

His portfolio today consists of an array of duplexes, a few single family homes, an eight-unit, and a 16-unit property.

$372,000 from a single deal

Pott's located a 62-unit multi-family wholesale deal from a property he found through the GIS system.

"I think I called her - the first time - back in the summer of 2018," he said. "The deal didn't close until the beginning of June [2019]."

After a slew of negotiations, Pott got the deal under contract for $28,000 a unit, totaling $1,736,000.

"I knew that people were buying these things for $50,000 or $60,000," he said.

Pott consulted a real-estate broker for a conservative estimate of the units. He was told they could sell anywhere from $38,000 to $48,000 a unit.

When all was said and done, Pott's wholesaled the deal and walked away with $372,000. All it took was a little searching and negotiating.

"What really got me from making $20,000, $30,000 in these little deals to now making six figures on pretty much every deal that I make - or that I do - was just doing something extremely uncomfortable," he concluded.

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