Day: October 21, 2025

• Part-time real estate investors Connor Swofford and Pieter Louw own 24 rental units.
• They used the “BRRRR method” and hard money loans to scale quickly without much savings.
• Their strategy involves buying multi-family properties in Buffalo.

Connor Swofford and Pieter Louw closed their first property together in October 2024. Nearly a year later, they own 24 rental units across nine properties.

The childhood friends, who met in seventh grade, invest in Buffalo, where Louw lives and works as a real estate agent. He has a construction background, while Swofford, a startup consultant based in Charleston, contributes business experience.

“Early on, as we started things together, I kept questioning why he wanted to do this with me, when all I thought I brought to the table was my ability to split a down payment 50/50,” Swofford told Business Insider. “Pieter’s repeated response was, ‘There’s not much better than having fun, making money, and doing it all with your best friend.'”

Swofford and Louw, who both turn 32 in March, share the strategies they used to buy nine investment properties in 12 months without using much of their own savings.

From 0 to 9 properties: Scaling with the BRRRR method and financing with hard money

Their first deal was a three-unit property — a duplex with a carriage house — that needed a minor rehab.

“The front two units were pretty much ready to go, and one was already rented. The carriage house needed some work, but nothing crazy,” said Louw. “So, it was a good intro to doing a construction project that wasn’t a complete gut job, and where we could still cash flow from the beginning.”

It was also an intro to the BRRRR — short for buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat — method, which would allow them to scale quickly by recycling their initial capital, rather than coming up with new capital for each deal.

When buying an investment property, “you’re really looking at at least 20% down,” explained Louw. “Even with a $300,000 or $400,000 property, with closing costs, you have to come up with 60 to 80 grand, which is not very scalable.”

He and Swofford put about $40,000 worth of work into their first property and built about $90,000 in equity by the time they refinanced.

“We were pretty much able to pull out all the money that we invested into it and take that money for the next one,” said Louw. “That really kick-started us.”

As for financing, they’ve done each of their deals with hard money. They can secure money faster this way than going through a traditional lender, and, now that they have a solid track record to show their lenders, they said they’re also able to lock in better rates.

However, going through a hard money lender can be risky, Swofford noted: “It’s a big balloon payment, you have to personal guarantee the loan, and there’s a bit more paperwork and harder compliance hurdles to clear.”

Thanks to Louw’s construction background, they can confidently predict their rehab costs and timeline, which is critical.

“The two biggest things are making sure that your construction budget is reasonably accurate, because that would be one thing that could get you in trouble, and knowing your purchase price and what the value would be afterward — the ARV,” said Louw.

“Because if you buy a place for $200,000, put $100,000 into it, and then it’s only worth $300,000, once you refinance, you can only pull 75% of that out, so you’d still have a lot of money in it. At that point, you might as well have just bought a $300,000 place with the normal investment loan — 25% down — rather than go through those headaches.”

If you don’t build equity with the rehab, “you’re really just slowing yourself down for the future,” he said.

Another key to their success has been buying multi-families — they prefer three- to 10-unit properties — that don’t need a full rehab and have at least one livable unit.

“Almost every property of ours has had a tenant still living in it, and that tenant is basically able to pay the interest expense as we are rehabbing the property,” explained Swofford. “So, we basically get to semi-rehab it for free in a way.”

It also helps that their rental portfolio remains a side hustle. Any money they earn from it goes toward vacations, their nest egg, or their kids’ future educations, but they’re not relying on it to make ends meet.

“We’re at a point where we don’t need to make any emotional investments. We don’t need a property at any specific point,” said Louw. “And if it doesn’t work out, if we lose to another investor or anything, it’s like, ‘Okay, well, the numbers didn’t make sense for us. Let’s move on to the next one.'”

• General Catalyst’s CEO said insurance should cover personal health and longevity investments.
• Current insurance covers limited preventative care, excluding aging therapies and supplements.
• Longevity has become an obsession for the Silicon Valley’s tech elite.

The CEO of General Catalyst thinks that health insurance needs to cover more.

Hemant Taneja, CEO and managing director of the global venture capitalist firm, told the “TPBN” podcast on Friday that he thinks investments in personal health and longevity should be reimbursable and covered by insurance.

“There’s a ton more that needs to be done so that the system moves toward incentives that keep us healthy and out of the hospital, versus a high-performance but really expensive, unaffordable care if we go into the hospital,” Taneja told show host John Coogan and Jordi Hays.

“There’s no model that’ll show what’s the ROI on this where insurance companies pay for it,” Taneja added of longevity care. “The insurers don’t know if they make an investment in longevity, they’re going to be able to capture the value on the other side.”

General Catalyst has made many moves in the healthcare space. In 2017, the VC cofounded healthcare startup Commure and has raised over $1 billion since then. The startup has cycled through four different CEOs as of 2024. In October, General Catalyst, through its Health Assurance Transformation business, closed a deal to acquire the Summa Health system for $485 million, which will convert the Ohio-based nonprofit hospital system into a for-profit entity.

At the moment, only some preventative care measures are covered by health insurance, mostly limited to the screening of diseases like cancer and HIV. Supplement medications or therapies that target aging cells are not included in health insurance plans.

Longevity has become one of Silicon Valley’s most alluring obsessions. America’s tech elite are already treating death as a problem that could be solved with enough money, data, and willpower.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman founded Retro Biosciences, which aims to extend human life by a decade, while Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have funneled billions into Calico Labs and Verily Life Sciences, which seek pharmaceutical and genetic solutions to aging and diseases. Other like Bryan Johnson are subjecting themselves to biohacking experiments with extreme regimens of supplements, fitness training, and data tracking.