This Real Estate Strategy Pays Me $15,000 per Month
Most investors buy for cash flow first—and that’s exactly why they get stuck. I used a different approach: one active deal, a 1031 exchange, and a smart pivot into passive income. In this video, I break down the exact strategy I used to turn a 1.58-acre land entitlement deal into a self storage facility that pays me $15,000 a month—for life.
You’ll learn:
- Why starting with cash flow can slow your growth
- How to use active deals to force appreciation and create real equity
- The power of the 1031 exchange to keep your gains working for you
- How I doubled my money without swinging a hammer
- The step-by-step process you can use to scale faster and smarter
This isn’t theory—it’s a repeatable system I’ve used in my own portfolio and teach to my Mastermind students. Whether you’re flipping houses, managing rentals, or grinding through small deals, this framework can help you leap into serious, scalable wealth.
Get commercial real estate coaching, courses, and community to jumpstart your investment journey over at CRE Central: www.crecentral.com
Key Takeaways:
Passive Income Strategy:
Start with an active, high-value deal that forces appreciation
Use a 1031 exchange to roll gains into a passive, cash-flowing investment
Avoid getting stuck in low-return properties
Specific Example (Buena Vista Deal):
Bought land for $618,000
Rezoned from 11 to 63 units
Sold for $1.575 million
Used 1031 exchange to invest in a self-storage facility
Investment Approach:
Step 1: Take on an active deal
Step 2: Force appreciation and exit
Step 3: 1031 exchange into a passive investment
Step 4: Repeat the process
Key Principles:
Build wealth through strategic deal sequencing
Focus on creating serious equity
Move from working for money to having money work for you
Aim for scalable, long-term investments
Outcome:
Transformed a land deal into a self-storage facility
Generating $15,000 monthly passive income per partner
Avoided immediate tax liability through 1031 exchange
About Your Host:
Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.
Episode Transcript:
Tyler Cauble 0:00
I make $15,000 a month in passive income, and it all started with a $100,000 investment and a piece of dirt, but I didn't get there by buying cash flow first. In fact, that's exactly the mistake that most investors make. Contrary to what you're told, everyone tells you to start with turnkey rentals or stabilize properties to build passive income. But here's the truth, buying for cash flow first is often what keeps you stuck. You lock up your money in slow returns and it takes forever to scale. There's a smarter way to build wealth, and in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how I did it, one active deal, a 1031, exchange, and now my money works for me. So
most investors want passive income. They don't realize that how much you build that income matters just as how much you make. The strategy I use is simple, but it's pretty powerful. I start with an active deal, something that takes up a lot of my time, a lot of attention, a lot of energy a project where I can actually force appreciation and create real equity and drive the value way up. Once that's done, I don't just cash out and pay taxes. I roll the profit into a more passive deal using a 1031, exchange so I can keep all of the gains working for me month after month. That's exactly how I went from one land entitlement deal to owning a self storage facility that will pay me $15,000 a month in my pocket every single month for the rest of my life. And this isn't just something that I've figured out recently. It's a system that I've used again and again, and it's also what I teach to investors in my mastermind who want to move out of residential flips or small Multis into serious, scalable wealth. Let me show you exactly how it worked on a real deal. We call this one Buena Vista. It started out with a 1.58 acre parcel of land zoned for just 11 residential units. My partner and I bought it for $618,000 now this wasn't just a speculative play. I had done the research. I saw the opportunity to rezone the land, and I knew the city was open to higher density development in that area. Over the next several months, I led the entire project. I handled the due diligence, the rezoning process, and the conversations with the neighborhood and the city officials. Now it wasn't easy, but that's exactly where the value was created. We got the zoning change from 11 units to 63, units, and once that was locked in, the land became way more valuable. We then ended up selling the property for $1.575 million that's more than double our purchase price and more than quadruple our initial cash investment, and that's without ever swinging a hammer. Now we could have moved forward with a full development. In fact, for a while, we had planned to, but that would have meant taking on 10 to $11 million in construction debt, tying up years of our time and dealing with all the risk that comes with that. Instead, we made a different move, one that set us up for long term wealth with a lot less stress. Walking away from the development wasn't easy, of course, on paper, the upside looked massive. If we had built all 63 units ourselves, we definitely would have made more money. But here's the thing to do that we would have needed to take on over $10 million in debt. We would have had to have signed personal guarantees. We would have had to have managed a construction team. We would have had to deal with interest rate exposure, delays, all the things that come with a ground up build. So we had to ask ourselves, is that really worth it? And at some point, I realized that's become core to my investing philosophy. Just because you can go bigger doesn't mean you always should. There's real power in just taking a win, taking some chips off the table, keeping your risk low, and using that momentum to create something even better. So that's what we did. We used a 1031, exchange to take the gains from Buena Vista and roll them directly into a long term, cash flowing investment, one that doesn't really require that much oversight once it's up and running, one that doesn't require daily management from us and it pays us every single month. It felt like a reward for doing all of the hard and active work on the front end. And honestly, that's how I look at these passive deals. Now they're the payoff for going through the trenches on these active ones. We took the proceeds from Buena Vista and did a 1031 exchange right into a self storage facility. Now this wasn't just any passive investment. This was a strategic move. The storage facility is a ground up development. But here's the key difference this time, we're not trying to force a quick flip or micro manage every detail. This is a long term hold, and once it's stabilized, it's projected to earn my partner and I $30,000 a month in net income. That's $15,000 a month each passive, predictable and scalable, and we were able to do it without paying taxes on the gains from the first deal because of that 1031, exchange. So instead of walking away with a check and a tax bill, we rolled everything into an asset that's going to continue paying us for the rest of our lives. That's the beauty of this strategy. You start with an intense, hands on deal where you build. That equity, then you roll those gains into something that pays you every month without taking your time, your energy or your freedom. It's the transition from working for your money to having your money work for you. And here's the best part, this strategy is not limited to having to rezone a piece of land and then go right into a self storage facility. It can work with all kinds of commercial real estate investments. You could buy a small, multi family property, renovate it, stabilize it, and sell it. You could even take on a small retail development or flip an industrial building by solving a zoning or tenant problem. As long as you're creating real value by improving repositioning or even entitling an asset, you're building equity that can be rolled forward into a long term, cash flowing deal. The details might change, sure, but the framework stays the same. Step one, take on an active deal. Step two, force appreciation and exit. Step 310, 31 into something passive and step four, repeat. This is the same approach that I teach my students in the mastermind. Some of them start small. Others are doing multi million dollar projects. But the principle is always the same, use one deal to leap to the next level, and when you do it right, each deal buys back more of your time, more of your freedom, more cash flow that shows up whether you're working or not, if you're flipping houses, managing small rentals, or just grinding through the deals that barely move the needle, this strategy changes the game. Most investors stay stuck because they're chasing small wins, a few 100 bucks a month in cash flow, a small equity bump here and there. But the truth is, those kinds of deals won't get you to financial freedom anytime soon. What changed everything for me was realizing that the real wealth is built through sequencing, not just stacking properties. By front loading your effort into an active deal that creates serious equity. You unlock the ability to move into higher quality cash flowing assets without needing more capital. You're recycling your own money, but in a much smarter way. So this approach doesn't just build income, it builds momentum. And once you've done it, once you'll never look at real estate the same way again. Now look, this isn't just theory. It's a strategy that I have used in my own portfolio. It's the same one I've guided hundreds of other investors through. We've helped people go from being stuck in single family deals to leading commercial projects, executing 1031, exchanges and building passive income streams that they never thought were possible. So if this clicked with you, if you're ready to stop grinding and start building something that lasts, just know you don't have to figure it all out alone. I teach this exact process inside my mastermind. You want to learn more about how to do deals like this. Check out the link in the description below, and check out this video next, we stopped buying apartment deals because of deals like this.
Unknown Speaker 7:48
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Everyone knows what the wealthy drive and wear — but few know what they buy to build true wealth: Triple Net (and absolute net) properties.
These “boring” commercial real estate deals quietly deliver predictable, passive cash flow month after month, with tenants like CVS, Dollar General, and 7-Eleven paying not just rent but also taxes, insurance, and maintenance.
No clogged toilets. No late-night calls. Just checks in the mail.