"I Regret Buying My Rental": Biaheza's $374K Out-of-State Lesson in Hidden Costs
In their own words
Biaheza — a creator with over 1.5 million subscribers — bought a single-family rental 2,000 miles from where he lives, held it five years, and sold it at a regret. He opened his actual tax filings on camera to show why. The loan payment never moved, but rising property taxes and insurance quietly added ~$400 a month, and the reality of being a long-distance landlord — emergencies, repairs, liability — was nothing like the “buy rentals, retire worry-free” promise. This is the single most common way a “cash-flowing” rental turns into a nightmare.
The deal
Biaheza lives in California but bought his rental almost 2,000 miles away in Plano, Texas. He purchased in April 2021, at the peak of a red-hot market — he had to offer $25,000 over asking to win it, landing at a final price of about $374,000. The upside: he locked a 3.1% mortgage, a rate worth keeping. So why sell?
What he didn’t know (yet)
That “owning means your costs are fixed” is a myth. His mental model was: get a mortgage, no one can raise your rent, collect the spread. As he puts it — “wow, was I wrong.” The loan’s principal-and-interest portion did stay flat. But a mortgage payment is not just P&I — it’s PITI, and the T (taxes) and I (insurance) are anything but fixed.
What went wrong
1. The payment quietly ballooned. His monthly payment went from $1,744 in 2021 to about $2,158 (it peaked over $2,200) — a swing of roughly $400 a month, about $5,000 a year vanishing from his expected cash flow. The county kept raising the property tax as the home appreciated, and the insurer kept asking for more. On already-thin margins, that erased the profit.
| At purchase (2021) | Five years later | |
|---|---|---|
| Loan principal + interest | (fixed) | (unchanged) |
| Property tax + insurance | baseline | rising every year |
| Total monthly payment | $1,744 | ~$2,158 (peaked >$2,200) |
| Extra cost vs. year one | — | ~$400/mo ≈ $5,000/yr |
2. Remote landlording is a second job. Cleaning and utilities between tenants, a broken fridge handle, a door, a fan — small things that still eat your time, and worse when you’re 2,000 miles away. Then the real scares: he got winter calls about trees falling on the roof (possibly hiding $20,000 of structural damage) and a call during a 100°+ heatwave when the AC died — an emergency you cannot make a tenant wait on. He describes his stress spiking at news of a storm in the South, a continent away.
3. Liability. A tenant who stops paying means a legal fight that costs time and money; someone injured on the property is a real risk. Past a certain point, he decided, “the risk of something even potentially happening on this property is just not at all worth the reward.”
The lesson
Biaheza’s wake-up call — “prices only go up, right?” — is the exact assumption that sinks first-time landlords. Underwrite the parts that actually move: escalating property taxes (they climb as the home appreciates) and insurance, plus a real reserve for management, vacancy, and CapEx. And price in the things a spreadsheet ignores entirely — the hassle, the emergencies, and the liability of being a landlord, magnified when the property is out of state. A rental with margins so thin that a routine tax hike erases the profit was never really cash-flowing; it was a bet on appreciation wearing a cash-flow costume.
Before you buy a rental — especially out of state — model your payment as full PITI with taxes and insurance rising every year, not a fixed number. If the deal only works assuming today’s tax bill and zero surprises, it doesn’t work. And ask Biaheza’s real question: even at decent margins, is the stress and liability worth it to you?
This guide is educational and is not financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. Programs, lender policies, and tax rules change. Consult a licensed attorney, CPA, and lender before acting.