Cindy, thanks for reading and for the question. The house I walk through in this article was by far the most expensive house I ever bought. I paid $430k for it and put down 30% to ensure positive cash flow. The house before that was $210k and is much more representative of what I typically buy for a rental house. It's still a fair amount of money (some $500k total over 10+ years), but not as much as you were thinking. Quite a bit came from previous savings in index funds. Once I decided to move to real estate, I sold my index funds and started buying houses. I also made a move from a job with more career prospects but lower salary to a job with a higher salary but fewer career prospects. We moved out of our expensive house and rented ourselves, keeping our cost of living as low as we could (but still comfortable). In other words, we organized our lives around having extra money to plow into real estate. I have not sold any houses yet or taken out equity from my houses to buy more real estate. Equity can be done in the right circumstances, but you still want to make sure you have positive cash flow. Always make sure you have positive cash flow! Too much debt will result in negative cash flow, which requires you to feed the alligator every month. Not a good spot to be in, in my opinion.