A former firefighter went from earning $1,600 a month to owning over 30 properties. He explains how he used creative financing to land his first $3 million deal with $30,000 in savings.

• Jeremy Barker started a hidden door company, Murphy Door, to supplement his firefighter income.
• The company grew rapidly, prompting him to look into large commercial spaces.
• He bought a $3 million building with just $30,000 of his own money and expanded his portfolio from there.

Jeremy Barker spent much of his career bouncing between construction, working as a paramedic and as a fireman, as well as experimenting with start-ups.

"I kind of played ping pong for the first 35 years, trying to decide what it is that I loved, which was fire," he told Business Insider. "Unfortunately, it doesn't pay. I didn't want to live on $1,600 take-home a month."

Unwilling to give up his firefighter career completely, he decided to supplement the modest salary with a side hustle. He started making hinges for hidden doors — an idea inspired by a DIY home theater project for his kids — and called the company Murphy Door.

"That escalated quickly from 2013 into 2016," he said. "We signed Home Depot. It just grew really fast."

While Murphy Door created an additional revenue stream, he put most of the profit back into the business. It wasn't until he stumbled into real estate that his wealth started to snowball.

Financing a $3 million space with $30,000 in savings

Besides his primary home in Utah, Barker had no experience buying real estate. But as Murphy Door took off and outgrew its original space, he and his real estate agent started looking at larger buildings.

His agent found a deal on a 90,000-square-foot building that he told Barker was too good to pass up, and pitched it as a space the company could grow into. It was listed for $3 million.

"I looked at him and I'm like, 'Are you freaking crazy? $3 million? I work at a fire department. I have no idea how to get a loan. My mortgage was difficult enough,'" said Barker. "He goes, 'You sign this LOI. I'll help you figure out the money.'"

That night, Barker turned to YouTube to learn about financing commercial real estate. He learned a couple of things: One, he'd need to raise capital. His $30,000 in savings was a start, but not enough for a down payment. Two, he could lease a large portion of the space, about 70,000 square feet, that he didn't need for Murphy Door.

Once he understood how letters of intent (LOIs) and purchase and sale agreements (PSAs) worked, he realized he could take advantage of the time between signing one and the closing date to get a head start on leasing.

After some back-and-forth with the seller regarding terms, he got the green light to list the building for lease before closing: "I had to sell them a little bit. I said, 'Look, I only use a small space, but if I could put it up for lease, you're not committed to anything. I'll let everybody know early that it's not bought yet, but there's a 90% chance it closes.'"

He signed the PSA, put a 'for lease' sign outside the building, and, "within 24 hours, I had my first tenant that was like 22,000 square feet," he said. "Within the next couple of days, I got another big tenant, and before I closed, I had a full package of lease rent roll equivalent to about $140,000 at that time annually in that space."

The lease agreements helped him secure the rest of the capital he needed — a couple of hundred thousand dollars — for the down payment, as he was able to show investors the expected NOI. It also helped secure a loan.

"I went back to Bank of Utah, and I said, 'Here are my rent rolls.' They did the first mortgage," he said. "Within 12 months, I retabled it over to Golden West Credit Union and pulled $2 million out — and I'd only put in $30,000."

He said he paid his investors back within 24 months, and the building's value has more than quadrupled over the last decade.

Recognizing the tremendous wealth-building opportunity in real estate, from there, "I just rinsed and repeated," said Barker. He's fine-tuned his strategy, but it's not dissimilar to his first deal: Find an overlooked or undervalued property — ideally a building that has been on the market for years in order to gain negotiation leverage — and build a long enough closing period into the terms with the seller in order to have time to set up lease agreements with future tenants.

As of June 2025, Barker owns more than 30 commercial and residential properties. BI confirmed his ownership by reviewing his 2024 property tax notices and his lease agreements.

How to get started in real estate with little to no savings

Barker, who said he faced bankruptcy twice early in his career, didn't have much savings to work with when he started buying real estate.

"I knew that I had to think outside the box," he said. What he didn't have in capital, he made up for in research. His edge, at least in the beginning, would be understanding his market better than anyone else, and using that knowledge to pitch investors.

"Spend a whole bunch of time understanding the marketplace," he said. "I've learned about buildings. I learned what rent goes for around here. And you don't have to get complicated. I'm looking at: What is the average rent rate? OK, it's going for $12 to $15 a square foot. If I buy this property, my hard costs are going to be $4 a square foot."

Once you find a deal that you're confident will work, start pitching to any potential investors within your networks. He'd frame it as: "I don't have any money to bring to the table, but you have all my time. I'm willing to give away X% of the equity to just pull off my first deal."

Pitch with confidence, not arrogance, he added: "I would understand the market really well and talk at a super basic level, not to sound like you're smarter than you are. Just be confident. You don't have to talk outside your scope."

Barker says he reached financial independence years ago, thanks to his real estate portfolio, which brings in about $2.5 million in annual revenue. It's freed him up to spend his time exactly how he wants: in the fire department, where he still works part-time, and at Murphy Door.

When it comes to real estate investment, "we get stuck on the reasons not to do it rather than figuring out how and why to do it," he said. "Quit saying, 'I can't because I don't have money.' Or, 'I can't because I've never done it.'"

Instead, "I think we have to just do the homework and spend a little time to reverse engineer stuff, think about pricing, and think about 'what is the opportunity?' When other people see a lack of opportunity, a different lens could probably see some opportunity there."