A real-estate investor who achieved financial independence buying rentals shares the early mistake she made — and 2 criteria for picking an investment property

• Whitney Elkins-Hutten has been buying real estate since 2002.
• She says an early mistake she made was violating the rule of "location, location, location."
• After years of closing deals, she has criteria before buying investment-specific properties.

Whitney Elkins-Hutten hit a home run on her first real estate deal: She bought and renovated a fixer-upper in Fort Collins in 2002, listed it about a year later, and pocketed $52,000 on the sale, she said.

"The first one was good. The second one — not as good," the seasoned real estate investor told Business Insider.

Her second deal was a mountain cabin in a retirement community that she assumed would "appreciate like mad," she said. "Well, it also had 19 steps from the driveway to the front porch."

When it came time to sell, the property sat on the market for about a year. The typical buyer in the community, a retiree, was turned off by the stairs.

"Ninety percent of what got me in trouble on that deal was before I ever purchased the property," said Elkins-Hutten. "I violated the rule of 'location, location, location.' I didn't truly know the market. I didn't buy in the right part of town. I didn't buy the right house for the market."

She wasn't deterred and continued flipping until she had the capital to start buying long-term rentals. Primarily using the BRRRR (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, and repeat) model, she scaled to 36 single-family homes that cash flowed enough for her to quit her day job .

Elkins-Hutten has since sold her single-family homes and primarily does partnerships on bigger deals. She's also a financial educator and the author of " Money for Tomorrow ." As of 2024, she said, she is a partner in $800 million of real estate, including over 6,500 residential units and 2,200 self-storage units across 11 states. She walked BI through a substantial part of her passive portfolio via screenshare.

After decades of closing deals — some that yielded 75% and one that brought in zero, according to the real estate veteran — here's what Elkins-Hutten has learned about selecting investment-specific properties.

1. She prefers a single-level property

Particularly after her second deal revealed how tricky steps can be for retirees, "when I'm doing active investments and buying my own property, I like single-level properties," she said. "I don't rule out multi-level properties, but I prefer single-level, ranch properties. You just have more people who can buy those."

Additionally, with a single-level property, you avoid potential structural headaches. For example, "I don't like dealing with stairs because now you've got plumbing upstairs and it can come downstairs very easily," she explained.

2. She buys where people are actually renting, and thinks about the type of person moving in

When figuring out where to invest, an important factor to consider is: Do people rent in the area? After all, if you're setting up a long-term rental, you need renters. They're the ones keeping your business up and running.

"I want to be in a good metropolitan service area. I personally like towns with a population of at least 100,000, so that way I have choices of renters," said Elkins-Hutten.

Look at job opportunities in the area. Are there multiple big employers, or just one? If there's just one and that company goes under, that could create a problem down the line.

What got Elkins-Hutten in trouble with her second deal, which she calls her "vanity purchase," was buying something she personally liked — a cabin in a mountain town — rather than thinking through what her potential tenants would want.

"If it's going to be an investment property, I need to think about who's buying it next from me. Who's going to pay the highest value for it? What do they want?" she said. "So I'm always thinking through, who's the person that's actually going to use this property?"