ONE DOOR AT A TIME: The STACK Method for Scaling From Your First Rental to Multifamily Deal

A landlord with two rentals came within one honest question of a serious mistake. His plan to fund a $220,000 down payment on an eight-unit building entirely from cash and savings would have worked perfectly - right up until the first genuinely bad month. A first-time buyer used a fourplex to cut his own housing cost to almost nothing. A third investor's twelve-unit purchase was already losing money every ordinary month before a single unplanned expense arrived - and the fix cost her a permanent share of the building. Scaling from a first rental to a real portfolio is the single biggest leverage decision most real estate investors ever make - and most of them size it on hope, momentum, and a lender's approval instead of their own honest numbers. One Door at a Time introduces the STACK Method - Size the deal honestly, Target the right leverage mix, Assemble your capital stack, Cover your risk before you close, and Keep scaling with discipline - a five-step framework for the landlord or investor standing at the exact edge of a first multifamily purchase, where the numbers get bigger, the financing gets more complex, and one undersized assumption can undo years of careful saving. Through the honest, numbers-first stories of three real-feeling investors - a near-miss down payment restructured just in time, a first-time buyer's disciplined house-hack, and an overleveraged twelve-unit purchase that shows exactly what happens when a deal is sized around hope instead of arithmetic - you'll learn exactly how to size a deal using real net operating income, choose a leverage mix that survives a bad month, assemble a capital stack without overexposing any single source, cover the risks that could undo the purchase, and keep scaling at a pace your own numbers actually support. This is Book Seven of The Infinite Banking Playbooks - the companion series to Beginner's Guide to Infinite Banking, applying the same honest, evidence-based approach to one real decision at a time.