For JD Sustar, the road to financial freedom is lined with fixer-uppers.

The 31-year-old father of four from Anderson, S.C., went from nearly $100,000 in debt to millionaire status, thanks in large part to a rental real-estate portfolio worth just under $2 million.

His full-time job in medical device sales helped him launch his rental portfolio, which consists of 12 properties, including one short-term rental. Some are co-owned with a business partner, and Sustar collects more than $11,000 a month in gross rent. His portion of the portfolio is worth about $1.7 million.

In February, he and his partner Gaston Albergotti sold a mobile home park they shared for $435,000. But instead of bolstering his cash reserves after the sale, Sustar invested in the stock market and identified another single-family home in Anderson to buy. That home is now under contract.

To learn more about his experience and see some of his properties, watch his FIREStarters video.

The son of a pastor, Sustar said he was “raised in a home that had good Christian values,” but not much discussion of money or investing. 

“The thought of owning real estate definitely came much later in my journey,” he said. 

JD Sustar at the mobile home park he and a partner sold in February.

In his younger days, his main focus was baseball. Sustar played Division I baseball with a partial scholarship at Charleston Southern University, which is where he met his wife, Mary Beth, who ran track. The pair have been married for eight years, and have three boys, aged 2, 4 and 6, and a baby girl.

When he didn’t see a future in baseball, Sustar shifted his focus to business. He got a job at Cintas, the uniform provider, which he saw as great for learning sales. The job wasn’t a traditional sales role, but a delivery job on a truck that started before the sun rose, at 4 a.m. 

Sustar moved from there into a higher paying job in pharmaceutical sales, and from there, medical-device sales, which brought him to a six-figure income. With his earnings, he paid off his debt, which included about $60,000 in student loans, plus car and credit card debt. He also financed Mary Beth’s engagement ring. 

Once their finances stabilized, Sustar began to listen seriously to Albergotti, a friend who was already investing in real estate and urged him to buy property. At the time, the Sustars’ oldest son was close to 2 years old and Mary Beth was pregnant with their second.

Sustar recalled wanting to back out of his first deal, a $68,000 home in rough shape in Greenville, S.C. The property manager he hired told him it was a lemon. 

“I think this thing probably caught on fire at some point,” he said. “And here I am, this new investor.”

But he stayed the course, and it paid off. 

“We put some $10,000 to $15,000 into it, got it fixed up, and we got a tenant in pretty much right away,” he said. “The same tenant stayed for four years.” 

To top it off, he got an offer on the house last year and sold it for double what he paid. 

Scaling the portfolio hasn’t been without challenges. Boards covered the entrance to a home in Anderson he bought for $90,000 in 2018 that was treated roughly by tenants Sustar ultimately evicted. The house had a laundry list of problems, including a damaged deck and fence, holes in the drywall and missing cabinets. 

He had mixed experiences with contractors and property managers before assembling his current team. On a recent day, his trusted contractor, Jimmy, was installing plank flooring on a house Sustar bought for $90,000 in 2022. He said he spent $32,000 renovating it and afterward, it appraised for $170,000 and was already attracting renters. 

He uses the BRRR method, which stands for Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, starting with private lenders within his network and refinancing with a bank once work is complete.

As Sustar works toward financial independence without a specific goal number in mind, he has no qualms about parking most of his wealth in real estate, citing the tax benefits and greater control it provides. 

He used some of his wealth to buy a larger home for his family, on 11 acres, with a chicken coop and a tractor the boys love to ride. It’s a setting worthy of a “Finance Cowboy,” the social media brand Sustar has turned into another stream of income.

“I love waking up every day, having a purpose, having a drive,” he said. “But to have that financial stability in place, to know that you can walk away from what you’re doing at any time and do something else because that foundation is there, that’s going to be a great place to be.”

April is National Financial Literacy Month. To mark the occasion, MarketWatch will publish a series of “Financial Fitness” articles to help readers improve their fiscal health, and offer advice on how to save, invest and spend their money wisely. Read more here.


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