After His Father Lost Everything in 2008, He Chose Steady Rents to Build Wealth to Give Away

Until she was 91, Justin Brennan's grandmother was, as Brennan put it, "driving around in her little S10 Chevy truck, collecting rent from all her tenants in San Diego." Brennan, chief executive of a company that buys and manages apartment buildings, grew up watching that truck make its rounds.

He decided he wanted the same kind of staying power: owning apartments that pay steady monthly rent, then using that money to pay off mortgages for grieving families, help former Navy SEALs, and help disadvantaged children.

His father showed him the other side of real estate. Brennan calls his father that transitional character, a phrase from author Ed Mylett's book One More for the person who takes a family from "zero to hero." His father lost his own father at age three, was beaten by a stepfather, served in Vietnam, and then taught himself construction and development.

He built homes, condominiums, townhomes, and apartment projects up and down the West Coast. He rode out three housing downturns, then was wiped out in a fourth when the financial crisis of 2008 hit and his father went bankrupt, which Brennan watched happen.

Brennan got his own schooling in work on his father's job sites. His father would bring the kids out and, in Brennan's words, "make us dig ditches simply for the purpose of digging the ditch," then pay them a little for it. The point, Brennan said, was to learn how to grind and what a dollar required.

His father built houses to sell them, in Brennan's words, "build and sell, build and sell, build and sell," riding what Brennan called the roller coaster of market cycles. That is why Brennan chose apartment rentals over building and selling: rents arrive every month and people need a place to live even when no one is buying a new house, so apartments offered more consistency.

Wealth, for Brennan, is a way to fund three dreams. The first is the charity Tunnels to Towers, which pays off the home loans of spouses and children left behind when a first responder or soldier dies in the line of duty, giving the family a house owned free and clear. Brennan said, "I want to pay off 10,000 mortgages."

The second is the SEAL Future Foundation, which guides Navy SEALs making the move from military life to civilian life, with support for their mental, financial, and physical health. Brennan said many people do not understand how hard that change is, or how high the suicide rate is among SEALs.

The third is disadvantaged children. Brennan said he was blessed to grow up with a mother and a father, first in a middle class home and later in an upper class one. Many children do not start with that stability, and he wants to give them role models and a belief system that can carry them on what he calls a zero to hero journey. He said his podcast, Abundance to Give, is positioned to help those three main causes.

The boy who watched an old truck collect rents now collects rents of his own, hoping a steady stream of small payments can one day leave 10,000 families with no mortgage and a safe roof.