Tiffanie Vendryes was a tech person who branched out into the real estate sector and found success. According to the young entrepreneur, real estate bumped her net worth up to over $500,000 in nearly five years.
She first started in tech with a sales job at a software company and then transitioned into education after moving from New York to Florida. According to Fortune.com, she was laid off from her tech sales job when the 2008 financial crisis hit. Her salary was reduced when she entered into education but she was unfazed as her standard of living was not affected. However, her savings were affected because she previously lived off her base salary and saved her commission.
“The only difference was I was saving less, which is what got me into real estate because I wanted to be able to save as much as I was saving before when I was in technology sales. So then, I got into real estate and I started making the real estate commission and I was able to save those commission checks,” Vendryes explained to AfroTech.
She narrated to Fortune.com that she first bought three units in Florida that housed up to seven tenants in 2015. However, she was blinded by how much income she could earn and didn’t realize all of that would go into maintaining the property.
“I failed, and I lost money,” she said. Still, Vendryes never quit her day job in teaching and that full-time job helped her to stay afloat when her real estate business was not doing so well. After unloading the properties, Vendryes returned to the rental property business in 2019 before opening up her own real estate brokerage while still teaching.
Indeed, the flexibility in the real estate sector allowed her to balance her time as a teacher and a broker. According to her, it had a massive impact on her net worth, which increased by $165,000 in four years. Today, her net worth is in the region of half a million dollars thanks to real estate, her full-time job, and rental property.
Now, she wants to help others to also succeed.
“One of the best ways to build wealth is to purchase a home for primary residents,” she said. “So, you don’t have to be an investor or a landlord. The easiest way for the average person to build wealth is to utilize the fact that houses appreciate over time. And when you take out a mortgage, you’re paying down the debt, and you have fixed costs over time, as opposed to renting where your cost goes up.”
“And if you have a two-bedroom condo or a two-bedroom townhouse, you can rent that other room out to assist you with the mortgage payments,” she added.
Vendryes has developed a wealth-building course for all ages where she guides people about “mastering proper budgeting, how to effectively divide your paychecks, and tips for avoiding income pitfalls.”