The First Door Kit · $37
A yes or no on your first rental. One evening.
Five worksheets, and eight short videos of a New York City public school teacher running them on a house he bought in January 2023. Then you run them on yours. $37.
Watch the turn-away first. It tells three kinds of people to close the tab.
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I teach sixth, seventh and eighth graders about money for a living.
I bought my first out of state rentals in 2021, and I still teach.
You have done the reading. BiggerPockets, the podcasts, the sub. And you are still asking the question this whole market asks in its own words.
“When do you know you are good enough to pull the trigger?”
Nobody tells you. You do not get a letter.
Ready is not a feeling. It is twenty answers, and every one of them is yes or no.
By the end of one evening you will have all twenty. If it is a yes, you will know which numbers have to be true for the house in front of you. If it is a no, you will know which two or three things to fix, and those are weeks of work, not years.
Read this before you buy
Three things have to be true tonight.
If any of those is a no, do not buy this. Stage one and stage two on this site are free, and that is where you should be. This will still be here.
I will not let one of my students skip a step, and I am not going to let you skip one either. A rental on top of a shaky base is not an income stream. It is a second bill with a tenant attached.
Who it is for
- You earn well, and none of it comes from property yet.
- You want a rental and you have not bought one.
- You have looked at listings for a year or more and every one of them ended in a tab you closed.
If all three at the top are a yes, keep reading.
What you get
Five tools. Each one answers something this market says out loud, and I have kept its own words next to each. Each one comes with a video of me using it on a house I own in Philadelphia, bought in January 2023.
- 1
The Hours Model
“I have no time and no bandwidth.”
The Census asks landlords how many hours a month they spend on a rental. The median answer is five. Eighty three percent say ten or less. That question is only asked of owners with no property manager, so five hours is the do it all yourself version.
The worksheet turns that into your week. Your job hours, your distance from the house, whether you hire a property manager.
What one house cost in time. My actual hours on the Philadelphia house. The two rehab months, and what it took once a tenant was in. Both.
- 2
The Deal Screen
“How to run analysis to know the number is good to buy the property.”
Five inputs. Asking price, rent, tax, insurance, HOA. About three minutes. It kills the listing or it sends it to the full sheet.
The full sheet gives you the two numbers the promise rests on. The rent below which this house loses money, and how many empty months it survives in a year.
Four listings in eight minutes. Four live Philadelphia listings on my screen, filmed 20 August 2026, and which one dies on the spot.
The Philadelphia numbers. My own numbers in the full sheet. Purchase $108,000. Rehab $80,000. Appraised at $288,000 after the work. Rented at $2,100.
- 3
The Property Manager Test
“Rental property is def not passive... unless you hire a pm but that'll eat your profit big time.”
Same Census survey. Houses with a property manager collect the same rent and show no more vacancy than houses without one. The typical fee is under eight percent of rent. A property manager costs you the fee. Not your rent.
Ten questions to ask one, in order. The tenth is the one that decides it.
The property manager. The owner statement my property manager sends me every month, on screen. I pay seven percent.
- 4
The Green Light
“When do you know you are good enough to pull the trigger?”
Twenty checks, four in each of five groups. Money, financing, market, team, the deal. Yes or no. Nothing is a slider.
All twenty yes is green. Two or three open is normal, and it is usually reserves or financing. Six or more open, and it is not the house that has a problem.
The twenty checks. Me running all twenty on myself as I was in 2021, out loud. I was not twenty out of twenty. Nobody is.
- 5
The Tax Reality Page
“My CPA told me that I can't claim interest payment deduction or property tax deduction for the rental property as my income is > 150k.”
Your accountant is not wrong. The $25,000 rental loss allowance starts closing at $100,000 of income and is gone above $150,000. The page says that first. Then it names three things that do not ask what you earn, and gives you five questions to email your accountant.
Taxes and the accountant. The conversation I had with mine.
And two more
The turn-away tells three kinds of people to close the tab.
The last video, forty thousand dollars and one house, is what I would do with $40,000 and one house in front of me. My opinion, not advice.
Eight videos. No lesson in any of them. Every one shows a decision being made on a house with an address.
The Philadelphia house
This is a record of one deal. It is not a forecast, and it is not what you should expect.
The difference is $100,000 of value on paper, as the appraiser valued it, before costs the sheet does not show. It is not $100,000 in my account.
It rented at $2,100 a month, and I hired a property manager at seven percent. I bought it without seeing it. The first time I saw it was at demolition.
That was three years ago. Rates have moved and so have Philadelphia prices, so the same house today is a different deal. The sheet in this kit is how you find out how different.
One more thing about that house. It needed a contractor bid, money to carry it through months when it earned nothing, an appraisal I was betting on before I owned the finished thing, and a lender who agreed up front to refinance on that value. None of that is on the Green Light. The Green Light was built for a house you can rent on day one, and this kit does not teach the other kind.
Dave
Call him Dave.
Same kind of job as you, more or less. Same paycheck. He started reading in 2022. The books, the podcasts, the sub, a spreadsheet with forty listings in it.
He was waiting for rates to come down. Then for the crash. When a coworker bought a duplex out of state in 2023, Dave said it was a bad time to buy, and he had the charts to show it.
Dave is not lazy. He is careful, and he has read more than I have.
Every Sunday he opens the same tabs.
Last week he posted a listing to a forum and asked if the numbers were any good. Scroll back through his posts. He asked the same thing in 2022.
What Tuesday looks like
Kids down at eight. One tab open.
Asking price. The rent on three places like it nearby. The tax bill off the county site. An insurance quote.
Kill it. Next one.
The third one clears the screen, so it goes to the full sheet. Now you are working a house instead of reading about houses.
An hour later the checklist has twenty answers next to it. Some of them are no. Now you know which ones.
Who I am
Raymond Tran.
I teach financial literacy at a New York City public school in Brooklyn, and I have since 2012. Before that I was at Ernst & Young, 2007 to 2010, and I left corporate for the classroom.
I started buying rentals in 2021 and bought four out of state that first year. Today I am an investor in 982 doors. Six of those I own on my own, two with my sister, 150 as a passive partner in Texas, and 824 as a co general partner on three Tennessee deals. I coach at Zen Coast University and I run RT Invests.
I still teach.
The things you are already thinking
“Everything you need to learn can be summarized in 5 mins and be found online.”
The Census hours number is public. So is IRS Publication 925. Nobody is hiding them.
What is not on YouTube is a teacher's own underwriting sheet, his own owner statement, and his own twenty answers, on a house with an address. And a course is exactly what this is not. None of the eight videos explains an idea. Each one shows a decision.
Someone in that same thread put it better than I can. "It's not that it can't be found online, it's that ease of access to the knowledge is low."
“Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.”
The Philadelphia numbers video is the doing. The turn-away is the teaching. I do both, and I am not going to apologize for either one.
“Is this a scam?”
Here is the whole ladder on this site, out loud.
Stage one and stage two are free. This kit is $37. After it there is coaching, two sessions for $399, and a call. That is all of it. No event, no hotel room, no second night.
Every real estate seminar the FTC has shut down started with a free event and ended in five figures. This starts at $37 and the last video in it tells you not to book the call unless you are past your first door.
And I still teach. Course money is not what I live on.
“I have no time and no bandwidth.”
The Census median for a landlord with no property manager is five hours a month. With a property manager it is less, and I will not pretend to know how much less, because the survey does not ask.
On the Philadelphia house, once a tenant was in, my job became an email when a repair needs approval.
The kit itself is one evening. The videos are the short part of it.
“I have a good amount of cash to work with I'm just scared to mess up.”
If the three things at the top are true for you, you have enough to find out.
The Deal Screen answers a smaller question than "enough." It answers what this one house needs. You have 25 percent down in your head because everyone says it. The full sheet takes your actual down payment and your actual rate and tells you what has to be true.
If the answer is that you need another year of saving, the kit will say so. It will still be here.
One more thing. The Philadelphia house cost $108,000, which is less than most New Yorkers expect. Then $80,000 went into the walls, and I paid cash for both. That is the deal I do not teach here.
“When do you know you are good enough to pull the trigger?”
Nobody tells you. You do not get a letter.
This list is the closest I can give you. Twenty answers, all of them yes or no.
I ran it on myself as I was in 2021, and four came back no. The one I would not skip again is where the jobs in that town come from. I was blinded by the low price, and it cost me.
If you come out green, you do not need another course. Go and walk the house.
What $37 buys
Someone in this market did the math on price better than I can. “If someone was charging $100 then at worst you can make a $100 mistake.”
At $37 the worst case is a $37 mistake and one evening. The down payment stays where it is.
Get the kit
If you get a green light tonight, you do not need me. Go and buy a house.
The people I coach are past that point. They want the second door and the third, the financing behind them, their partners. The Philadelphia house is that kind of work, and this kit does not teach it.
If that is where you are, the call is on this site. If it is not, do not book one yet. Come back when it is.
Watch the turn-away first. It tells three kinds of people to close the tab.