• Erwin Jacob Miciano left the Navy in 2021 to focus on his real estate business full-time.
• Miciano and his wife used VA loans to buy a triplex and start their business, Semi Homes.
• Semi Homes helps homeowners avoid foreclosure and launched Miciano’s real estate career.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erwin Jacob Miciano, a 27-year-old real-estate investor and the owner of Semi Homes in South El Monte, California. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m a dedicated dad, a committed husband, a real-estate investor, and the co-owner of Semi Homes, a real-estate company specializing in direct-to-seller transactions and marketing strategies. I co-own the company with my wife, Theressa.

I don’t have a college degree. I graduated from high school in 2015 and first worked at Wetzel’s Pretzels. I decided to join the Navy to support my family abroad in the Philippines and my mom and brother in the US.

In March 2016, after three months of boot camp, I completed the basic training to become a photojournalist. Until September 2021, I served as a mass communication specialist, with most of my overseas years based in Japan, stationed on the USS Ronald Reagan.

I separated from the military in 2021 to pursue real estate full-time

My Navy job included writing press releases, aerial photography, videography, and printing. In later years, I was stationed at the Naval Hospital Balboa in San Diego, where we covered COVID-19, and I was deployed with USNS Mercy to San Pedro in Los Angeles during the pandemic.

I was presented with an “early out” program because of overmanning in my job, and it allowed me to complete my contract a couple of years early. I had already started my business, but leaving the military allowed me to pursue it full-time.

I also wanted to spend more time with my young family. My eldest was born in January 2020.

My wife and I met on the day I arrived on the USS Ronald Reagan in 2016

We became friends through the first-response/firefighting team, where she worked as an electrician. We also noticed each other at church services, and she invited me to her baptism ceremony, where she was baptized inside an open jet fuel tank.

Early in our relationship, we lived together in a small Japanese apartment. Then, we spent about a year doing long-distance, with me still deploying on the carrier and her based in San Diego.

After a year of dating, we got married, and soon after some vacation in the US, we discovered we were expecting our first child. During most of her pregnancy, Theressa lived alone until I got stationed in San Diego around her seventh month.

That same year, I became deeply interested in personal finance and real-estate investing, inspired by stories of blue-collar workers achieving financial freedom through real estate. I learned the most from the BiggerPockets podcasts.

We were motivated to become first-time homebuyers

We were eager to apply what we had learned and planned to use the VA loan entitlement from our military service. VA entitlement is how much lenders can lend to a veteran or active duty member without providing a down payment.

We aimed to buy a multifamily property — ideally a duplex, triplex, or fourplex — so we could live in one unit and rent the others to offset our mortgage. Today, this strategy is known as house hacking.

Being stationed in San Diego gave us a few key advantages

The housing allowance we received as military members was higher than in most US locations, boosting our household income to about $10,000-$12,000 monthly. This allowance was discontinued once we both left the military. Theressa left the Navy almost a year before I did at the end of 2020.

Second, the VA loan allowed us to buy a multifamily property with zero down payment.

Third, we included 75% of the gross rental income from the property in our loan application, increasing our approved loan amount. On paper, our monthly gross increased to $15,000-$17,000.

Finally, new legislation removed local VA loan limits for first-time users, giving us more purchasing power.

After months of searching, we found a triplex listed for $1.2 million

We offered $1 million and settled at $1.1 million. By March 2020, we had moved into a three-bedroom unit while renting out the other two for about $4,000 a month, reducing our housing costs to less than what one-bedroom rentals were going for at the time. This was the start of Semi Homes.

After living in the triplex for two years, we moved in with my mom and brother in September 2021 in the San Gabriel Valley. The triplex is now fully a rental property generating $1,500 to $2,000 monthly profit.

My day-to-day work involves meeting with homeowners who are looking for support in selling their properties

We now buy properties and resell them for a profit. We also help sellers in deep foreclosure and save them from it. My role is to get my team in front of our target audience and guide clients through the entire process, all the way to the closing table.

There are also late-night administrative hours and business-building, which I work on three to four nights a week. The biggest change from my Navy days is that I’m no longer away from my family for long periods — a small freedom I cherish.

I feel both fulfilled and successful

While Semi Homes started as a way to build wealth and achieve financial freedom for my family, it’s grown into something more.

We stay in this tough business because we truly believe in the value we provide to the individuals we work with. I’m focused on building our online presence and spreading the word that foreclosing is not the only option.

I see myself in real estate for the rest of my life.

Want to share your story about getting on the property ladder? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@businessinsider.com.

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday afternoon gave police the greenlight to move smart streetlight technology and license plate readers without approval.

In a commanding 7-2 vote, city councilmembers granted police the freedom to relocate streetlight cameras and plate readers within two blocks of approved sites. Supporters say it just cuts through red tape, but critics worry this undermines the council’s oversight of public surveillance.

“Everything has been transparent,” one person said during public comment. “It’s a waste of your time, as you know, and the police time if they have to come back over and over.”

“We can’t have this ambiguity of where this surveillance technology being placed and then having them being shifted, and we learn afterward,” another said during public comment. “We need to know ahead of time.”

When the city relaunched this surveillance tech last year, San Diego police proposed 500 locations. But the department says dozens of those sites don’t work, leaving about 60 surveillance cameras and readers sitting in storage. Site hang-ups include power and voltage issues, blocked camera views and mistaking Caltrans light poles for city poles.

And in some cases, streetlights don’t exist. Under the city’s ordinance, police needed to go through council approval to relocate those some-odd 60 sites — a process the department said took seven months.

For that reason, police asked the council for the right to relocate any of its surveillance cameras and plate readers within a two-block zone of a previously approved site.

SDPD said those two-block zones will be chosen based on violent crime statistics and will uphold the current standards of avoiding sites near reproductive health centers, worship centers or immigration centers.

But Councilmembers Vivian Moreno and Sean Elo-Rivera expressed reservations.

“I need to be able to look at my constituents in the eye and tell them that I know how the information that the city is collecting will be used,” Elo-Rivera said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “I still cannot do that, and for that reason, I am voting no.”

“That’s a lot of bureaucracy to go through,” Councilmember Marni Von Wilpert said. “Six to nine months just to move the location of previously approved technology that we already said you can use.”

Police said after a camera is relocated, they will update the interactive map of streetlight locations. You can sheck out that map on the city’s website.

Since the city relaunched the program a year ago, police say plate readers and streetlight cameras have helped police recover 210 stolen cars, 10 firearms and make 206 arrests. The cameras do not record audio or use facial recognition.

One of my favorite things to do online is watch YouTubers who travel the world. It looks so luxurious. And the ones I watch sometimes find drop in at a credit card or airline member airport lounge to hang around in before their flights. I was at a Delta lounge once 25 years ago, because a friend gave me a guest pass. I remember being wowed at the espresso machine in the half hour I got to spend in there.

I still don’t own any credit cards – or have any airline status – granting me access these types of lounges. However, I was able to visit the brand new Chase Sapphire Lounge by The Club SAN at the San Diego International Airport this week before a trip to Hawaii. The club just opened earlier this month. It was described as offering a unique aesthetic for an airport lounge experience. With surfboards designed by local muralist Hanna Daly and a digital wall that displays drone footage of the picturesque local coastline, it’s indeed a Southern California-inspired space.

Located in Terminal 2, the 10,000+ square-foot space offers a wellness area with bookable private rest pods, on-demand digital meditations from Devi Brown and facial treatments from Face Haus. In addition to having full access to an array of food and the full bar available, cardmembers can order a la carte from a curated menu by Oscars Mexican Seafood – a local destination for fresh, flavorful San Diego dishes – and coffee selections from California’s Groundwork Coffee. The San Diego lounge also features curated wines from Parcelle.

I visited early in the morning, so I was more into the breakfast and coffee offerings. It was pretty spectacular – and every bit as glamorous as the YouTubers make it look. The coffee machines particularly stuck out to me – I was able to choose from about 20 different drinks on a screen. And roughly half of them were decaf, which is a great thing. The coffee came out hot and quickly, and perfect. I should know: I think I tried three or four different drinks. The food was great, too. And I even custom-ordered an omelet from the QR code on my table. It brought up a food menu on my phone, asked for any special additions or subtractions, and a waitress delivered it within a couple of minutes. Very cool.

In fact, I loved how teched out this lounge is. There are USB chargers and wall plugs everywhere to charge up your phone, right down into the private little lounge areas. I could be wrong, but they seemed to be next to every seat or table.
There was also a private phone room.

I did book a sleep pod room for a half-hour. It was fine. I had pre-pictured one of those Japan-style chambers with a bed, but this was instead a small curtained-off area with a very comfortable chair and ottoman overlooking the taxiing airplanes outside. But there are plenty of private little spaces and nooks everywhere, and even a nursery room.

I thought afterwards that if this is the way airport lounges are, maybe I will upgrade my credit card soon because I think it’s a great way to spend time if you show up early for your flight. Not sure about you, but I like getting to the airport early anyway. I find it way more stressful to be late in traffic, hoping I have enough time to get through TSA and to the gate. This can help remove the stress, and you can grab a meal and relax.

The Chase lounge is already so popular that on my way back into the airport after my trip, I noticed a lineup of 15 people just to get in.