When Dave Allred was growing up, being a millionaire was never in the cards.
Allred was born into a “dysfunctional” and “very low-income, blue-collar” family in Utah, where his parents never taught him about financial literacy or investing. He ran away from home when he was 17, moving into a small house with cockroaches and a caved-in roof, where he subsisted solely on fast food and ramen noodles.
But at the end of the day, Allred is grateful for his childhood experiences.
“It motivated me to really try to reset the whole standard and level up everything for my own family and for our legacy,” he told Insider in a recent interview. “With what we’ve achieved now, it makes it that much more rewarding and exciting because of that contrast of where I came from.”
Today, at age 42, Allred oversees an impressive real estate portfolio that includes ownership in over 1,250 units across 30 different properties in 15 states, according to documentation verified by Insider. Altogether, he estimated to Insider that his portfolio equity has now swelled to over $30 million in total value.
Buying his first property at age 23
Allred has never been afraid of dreaming big. In fact, he attributes much of his success today as a real estate investor to setting “audacious” goals for himself — and achieving them by whatever means necessary.
In college, Allred found his first taste of success during a summer gig in Chicago selling Vivint home security systems door-to-door — a job he was initially reluctant to take.
“I knew it was going to be hard and definitely not something I wanted to do. Door-to-door sales — there’s nothing sexy about that career,” Allred said. “But my whole life, I’ve always kind of been drawn to doing hard things.”
The job turned out to be by far the hardest challenge Allred had ever faced in his life. He recalled “failing miserably” during the first month, and about 80% of his team quit before the summer was over.
Allred was tempted to follow — until he heard from one of the owners that anybody who could sell at least 100 security accounts would be eligible to become a sales manager the next year.
“Something really clicked for me where I was like, you know what? I can become a manager, I can make more money, I can become a leader and build something with some real meaning here,” he said. “And so I decided to double down.”
Allred sold over 100 accounts that summer, netting himself $31,000 — the most important money he’s ever made, he told Insider. That was his first taste of success — and he quickly became addicted.
Eventually, Allred was offered a full-time position as a regional sales manager with the company, which would require him to drop out of college. He decided to take the plunge and leave school — just nine credits shy of a degree in business — to take on a full-time position with the home security company.
It was also around this time when Allred first became interested in real estate, after hearing from his accountant that all his wealthy clients invested in properties.
Around 23 years old, Allred made his first real estate purchase — a townhome for $125,000 in an all-cash deal. The next year, he bought four more townhomes for around $100,000 each, which he also bought in all cash from a foreclosure sale, he told Insider.
After they doubled in value four years later, Allred sold all of the townhomes to buy four fourplexes, which were each valued at $550,000 and each required about a $200,000 down payment. Allred used a 1031 exchange to swap his sale proceeds entirely into his new properties, which meant he didn’t have to use any more of his own money in the deal.
Outside of real estate, Allred’s gamble to drop out of school had also paid off big time — by the time he turned 26, he had become a millionaire solely from his sales commissions. That’s when he set his next goal: to make three million dollars by the time he turned 30.
Another four years later, Allred’s four fourplexes had appreciated in value to around $800,000 each, so he sold them and used 1031 exchanges once again to double his properties.
“So I sell one fourplex — and I have at that point $500,000 of equity in it — and then go buy two more fourplexes with that equity, with no cash out of pocket. So literally I went from four doors to 16 doors, and then those 16 doors to 32 doors with no extra cash out of pocket just by using that equity appreciation as a down payment,” he explained.
Committing to hitting 40 doors by age 40
When he hit his three-million-dollar goal at 30 years old thanks to a combination of real estate income and sales commissions, Allred made a decision that would forever change his financial situation.
“That’s when I really hunkered down and said, okay, I want to get the passive income coming in every year to have this financial freedom,” he said.
To Allred, achieving true financial freedom meant having enough recurring passive income to entirely cover his family’s cost of living.
“I was 30 years old on a Sunday; I remember very clearly. I sat down for four hours and I was like, okay, I’m going to reverse engineer this whole process and get a clear blueprint on how to achieve financial freedom,” he continued. “So I started off by figuring out my family’s cost of living.”
Allred concluded that he would need to own 40 rental properties to create enough recurring passive income to completely cover his family’s cost of living. His new goal was born: to own 40 doors by age 40, which would give him 10 years to build out his portfolio.
Allred recalls internalizing this goal, including changing all his passwords and the background screen of his iPhone to reflect his “40 by 40 mantra.” Every Sunday, he’d make sure to take time to measure his progress.
“I love the phrase ‘reverse engineer’ — it’s just breaking down the big goal into small, digestible goals. An example of that is I say, how do you eat an elephant? And the answer is one bite at a time,” Allred explained.
That also meant that he was fully prepared to take on the financial cost of meeting his goal. To guide him through the process, Allred hired one of the top real estate coaches in the country at the staggering rate of around $29 per minute. “I learned a long time ago that when you go into a new business venture, the best way to do that is to go and find the top, 1% of people in that field and get proximity to those people,” he explained.
As for his portfolio, Allred used 1031 exchanges again to acquire 12 new fourplexes, bringing his holdings to 16 fourplexes in total. “I literally went from my first four doors up to about 60 doors with no cash out of pocket, simply by 1031 exchanging the equity,” he explained.
Allred’s next move was to sell two of his fourplexes and move that money into a building with 20 units in Salt Lake City. He sold three more and invested his proceeds into a 227-unit apartment complex in Kansas City.
When he turned 36 in 2017, Allred hit his goal to own 40 units — four years ahead of schedule. At that time, he decided to officially retire from door-to-door sales and go into real estate full-time.
“I think the key there was really the clarity and the intentionality behind having a very clear goal, but also remembering why that was so important to me,” he explained. “And the ‘why’ was I wanted to have time freedom for my family and my kids. I wanted to be able to have the quality of life to travel the world.”
Allred’s next goal — an especially audacious one — was to have ownership in 1,000 doors by the time he turned 40.
By following the same process of making the blueprint, internalizing it, and working on it full time, he was able to accomplish the feat the month before he turned 41.
Allred believes that when it comes to meeting a goal, mapping out a blueprint is one of the most important things an investor can do. “I talk about lifestyle investing a lot. What that means to me is reverse engineering the exact lifestyle that you want and making sure your investments are aligned with that outcome,” he explained.
He continued: “And I feel like real estate’s the best way to create not just financial freedom, but the time freedom to be able to have true lifestyle freedom.”
It’s also crucial for investors to not get demotivated when they don’t see instant progress. Part of Allred’s success has come from embracing delayed gratification, he explained. He also found it especially beneficial to block out at least 30 minutes every Sunday to revisit his “40 by 40” goal, because that way he was able to measure the incremental progress that he otherwise might not have noticed.
Continuing to grow his real estate fund
Around 2015, Allred also began getting involved in real estate syndications. Of the over 1,250 doors he has ownership in today, these only include the deals where he’s been involved as a general partner in a leadership capacity. According to Allred, he has ownership in around 4,000 units in total when including the deals he’s only served as a limited partner in.
Through the syndications he was involved in, Allred discovered his love for working with real estate funds because of their structure and diversification benefits, which can help investors mitigate downside risk. “You can go fast by yourself; you can go far with a team,” he said. “That’s really what drew me to the fund model.”
In 2020, Allred decided to launch Axia Partners, an investment firm focused on recession-resilient real estate to create maximum value for more investors and help get them through especially frothy markets. The firm already has two funds, and is currently in the process of raising capital for its third.
“Our whole approach is mitigating any risk of downside loss while still creating strong upside yield for our partners,” Allred explained, citing statistics showing that in the US, real estate funds have 2.7 times less risk than investing in one single real estate deal. “One of my mottos in life has always been to do bigger deals than yesterday.”
Within his funds, the four main types of assets he acquires are multi-family complexes, or his “bread and butter”; self-storage units, which have historically been the most recession-resilient real estate assets; RV parks because “they’re huge cash cows”; and industrial warehouses, since the ongoing shift towards e-commerce has positioned the sector as the top-performing in real estate over the next five years, Allred explained.
Axia Partners also generates returns through value-adds on its properties, and Allred makes sure to only invest in markets with strong positive net migration.
As for the future, Allred wants to focus on turning Axia Partners into a multi-billion dollar firm. He’s also already set two new personal goals for himself, which he feels he can achieve through his work with the firm: to create direct value for 10 million people, and help at least 1,000 people achieve financial freedom through real estate investing during his lifetime.
