Tiny House Investing Mistakes: How One Investor Learned From His First Tiny Home Purchase. A financially independent real estate investor and Army veteran shares his experience buying his first tiny home, the challenges he faced, and how he overcame them to build a successful Airbnb rental business. Learn from his mistakes and discover the secrets to profitable tiny home investing
Financially independent real estate investor Manny Reyna reveals his surprising journey to success, starting with a $12,000 down payment and a leap of faith into his first tiny home investment. Learn how this Army veteran leveraged VA loans, Airbnb rentals, and creative financing to build a thriving real estate portfolio, despite admitting, "I didn't know what I was doing
Army veteran Reyna used a 0% down VA loan to purchase his first San Antonio home in 2021 with minimal savings. Within a year, he leveraged another VA loan for a second property, renting the first for passive income while his family moved into the second. This savvy real estate strategy showcases how veterans can build wealth with smart financial planning and rental income
Smart real estate investor Manny Reyna added a fully furnished 384 sq ft tiny home to his portfolio using seller financing. He secured the $50,000 property and a land lease, avoiding the costs and hassle of land acquisition, and immediately listed it on Airbnb for lucrative rental income
Instantly successful, my Airbnb tiny home generated significant rental income
Increased Airbnb bookings led to higher foot traffic, prompting the landowner to request more privacy. Reyna received a six-month notice to relocate his 384-square-foot tiny home. This spurred the search for a new 1.6-acre property, ideally within a 30-minute radius of his primary residence and in an established, high-traffic area
Finding the perfect location for his Airbnb tiny home was Reyna's first hurdle. His ideal land needed two key features: proximity—within a 30-minute radius of his San Antonio home—and existing tourist traffic to maximize rental potential
Finding a suitable location was crucial. I needed land within a 30-minute radius of home, in an area with existing tourism, avoiding the challenges of remote land acquisition and marketing a secluded tiny home rental
Finding the perfect location for his Airbnb tiny home, investor Manny Reyna used AirDNA to identify top short-term rental markets. He prioritized land near Medina Lake with no HOA fees or deed restrictions, avoiding permit hassles and red tape. This strategic land acquisition, costing $65,000 for 1.6 acres, ensured a smooth transition for his thriving Airbnb business
His real estate agent facilitated a deal on a suitable land plot, connecting him with the tiny home builder and ensuring the property met his crucial location criteria: a 30-minute radius from his home and in a high-traffic area
Texas land prices soared near $80,000 per acre, but savvy investor Manny Reyna secured 1.6 acres for just $65,000. A motivated seller, inheriting the land and wanting a quick sale, accepted his offer, proving that finding the right opportunity is key to real estate success
Texas Veteran Buys Land with Low Down Payment VLB Loan: Smart Real Estate Investing Strategy
First-time land buyer? Reyna shares his experience, revealing the four-month closing process and the crucial role of a land surveyor—an engineer who maps the property, providing a crucial land survey certificate. This detailed property assessment is essential before purchasing land for your tiny home or other real estate investment
Preparing his tiny home for Airbnb rentals, Reyna's journey began with a land surveyor, the first of many professionals crucial for proper site preparation
To relocate his Airbnb tiny home, Reyna hired professional land clearing and moving services, ensuring a smooth transition to his newly acquired 1.6-acre property
The movers “dropped it on some cement blocks,” he said. “It’s not on wheels or anything — it sits on cement blocks — and I’m not going to lie, it didn’t look very nice aesthetically at first. So, I had to go build a deck.”
To enhance privacy and security, he invested $4,800 in an 8-foot privacy fence surrounding the property
His land came with a water meter, which saved him from drilling a well, but that was about it. His largest expense was installing a septic system, a complex process that cost him about $15,000: “It required a permit because it’s considered a plumbing system, so I had to talk to specialists. They charged me to design it and install it.”
Installing electricity cost him another $3,400 — about $1,900 for the pole setup, plus another $1,500 for trenching and wiring — and required independent research.
“The electrician asked, ‘What volts do you want?’ And I was like, ‘I have no idea,'” Reyna said. “There’s so much that goes into this.”
He funded the tiny-home relocation and build-out project with rental income from his single-family home and savings from his full-time project management job. He also used two credit cards with $20,000 limits and long 0% interest periods: 15 and 21 months. He split his expenses between the two cards to maximize the promo periods.
As he racked up a roughly $20,000 balance between the two cards, “I questioned my life choices a lot of the time and wondered, ‘What am I doing? Is this going to be completely botched?'” he admitted. “But I think that’s part of it, right? Maybe if you don’t question yourself or if you don’t feel that way, maybe you’re not doing things the right way or pushing the envelope enough.”
After three long and expensive months developing the land, he reopened his first tiny home for business in July 2023. He threw all of his profit, plus savings from his W-2, toward his credit card debt in order to pay it off before incurring interest.
“Now, the only costs I really have are the cost of the land and the utilities,” he said. The carrying cost of the land is about $400, and his monthly “mortgage” is a $290 payment that goes directly to the seller.
Reyna initially listed the tiny home as a short-term rental just on Airbnb, but he now uses a variety of platforms, including VRBO, Hipcamp, Facebook Marketplace, and Furnished Finder, and offers it as a midterm rental.
“I try to do a shotgun approach to see who’s going to bite first, rather than just solely relying on Airbnb,” he said, though he prefers midterm stays (more than 30 days but less than a year). He’s found this strategy to be more lucrative than renting to long-term tenants and much easier to manage than short-term stays.
Once the first tiny home started profiting consistently — on average, he said, it does between $1,200 and $1,500 a month in revenue — Reyna added a second tiny home to his land.
“The cool thing with the tiny homes is that they’re so cheap to set up that the cash-on-cash return is pretty good once you can establish them at scale,” said Reyna, who plans to add more properties to his lot. “If you can get more than one going, it’s just pure profit, and it’s not too much maintenance, either.”
He’s experimenting with other ways to “hack” his land, he said: “We’ve added two RV plug and play connections to the land, which we expect to bring in $900 to $1,000 a month, and we’ve listed a plot of the land to rent through Sniffspot, which we estimate revenue to be $200 to $300 a month.”
Between his current rentals, he’s on track to earn about $85,000 in 2025, he said. BI verified his property ownership by looking at deeds and confirmed that he’s bringing in rental income by viewing screenshots of his Airbnb dashboard and reviewing one of his midterm rental lease contracts.
“The tiny houses are the ones that are making the most profit for me,” said Reyna, who quit his job in early 2025 and moved to Tokyo with his family. He has a team in Texas that helps him manage the properties.
He classifies the tiny home project as a success, but if he could go back in time, he’d do things differently.
“I was trying to build the plane before flying it,” he said. His top advice for prospective tiny home investors is to “look at everything from an all-encompassing view. Consider the cost of everything so that you’re not figuring it out as you go, like I did. Also, try to find land with infrastructure already built — at the very least, a water meter, because it’s so expensive to get a well. If you can help it, electricity, too.”
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