She Bought a Car Wash for $0 Down — Now It Pays Her $5,450 a Month for 20 Minutes of Work a Day

Hannah Ingram started working at a real estate office at 17, got her real estate license at 18, and dropped out of college along the way. While struggling to make ends meet, she began looking for a business that could generate passive income, and found a self-service car wash for sale in her Tennessee hometown. At the time she had only about $2,000 in savings and little credit history.

To buy it, she used seller financing: rather than taking out a bank loan, she paid an attorney $400 to draw up a contract in which she agreed to cover the existing mortgage payments, income taxes, property taxes, and utility bills on the car wash, keeping all remaining profit for herself — if she stopped paying, the sellers could take the property back. She closed on the deal in May 2021 and didn't have to start making payments until June. Because she acted as her own real estate agent on the sale, the sellers covered the roughly $4,000 in closing costs instead of paying her a commission, letting her start with $0 down.

Day to day, she spends about 20 minutes managing the wash — emptying the trash, refilling the coin machines, and cleaning the wash bays — plus monthly preventative maintenance like oiling the machinery. She grew the business's earnings by investing a few thousand dollars over her first year in new hoses, brush heads, vacuum attachments, and updated signage, which she says roughly doubled what the car wash was making when she bought it. She also listed the business on Google Maps and spent about $150 on targeted Facebook ads to build a loyal customer base.

By last fall she had built up enough credit and savings to take out a traditional bank loan and buy the wash outright from the sellers. At 24, she was earning an average of $5,450 a month in passive income after $1,500 to $2,000 in monthly expenses. She now runs free trainings teaching others how to buy their own car washes, advising would-be buyers to search sites like LoopNet or Crexi for listings, use tools like BatchLeads to track down owners of run-down or abandoned washes, and vet a location on traffic, equipment condition, and whether it's already profitable before buying.