Real Estate Investors Are Surprisingly Confident

Dave:
How are investors feeling about today’s housing market? Because we all know what the media is saying. We all know what our crazy uncle or our friend thinks about the housing market, but what about those of us who are actually on the ground buying and selling real estate, managing properties and preparing for the future? Are those types of people buying or are they selling everything and trying to get out for good? And what does broad investor sentiment tell us about our own investments in the first place today and on the market? We are digging into two recent surveys that are going to give us a couple of the answers to these super important questions, and we’ll also be talking about the most recent inflation report to give you all of the information you need to be an informed and an effective real estate investor.
Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Welcome to On the Market. Today we’re going to be diving deep into three different topics. Two of them sort of coincidentally just happened to be surveys that I found super interesting and I think are going to shed some important light on how Americans are feeling about housing and housing affordability, how investors are thinking about growing or maybe shrinking their portfolio in the coming years. And of course we will talk about the recent inflation report and what that means for Fed decisions over the rest of this year. So we’ve got a great show for you. Let’s jump in. The first story is actually a summary of a recent survey that was done by two sort of big reputable names in the real estate investing community. It’s ssa, which is an asset management and accounting software for real estate investors that is owned by Roofstock and Resi Club, which is a great residential real estate analytics firm.
And basically they paired up to do an investor sentiment survey to try and understand how investors are feeling about the housing market right now at least I was excited to see this survey and this data because we often hear about how agents, how lenders, how first time home buyers are feeling about the housing market, all of which is important, but it is much harder to find information and relevant data about what real estate investors are actually thinking about this market. So what sess and Resit Club did was they went out and they surveyed 239 single family investors and landlords. So this was people who own at least one single family investment property. So this is not primary residence, they have to actually be a landlord. So there’s a ton of really good information here and I’m going to break it all down for you because I think it really helps understand and sort of just set a baseline for what we expect to happen this year.
And I always just think it’s helpful to understand how other investors are thinking about the market because outside of this show, for example, where I get to talk to Henry and Kathy and James about what they’re doing, getting that sort of insight into what investors are doing in aggregate is kind of hard. So what are they doing let’s into this thing. So the main headline here is that 45% of real estate investors say they plan to grow their portfolio in the near term. Now at first because I think this is the first time they’ve done this data, they don’t have a time series. We can’t go back and see how this compares to how people were feeling in 2015 or 2020 or whatever because the survey just didn’t exist then. So we sort of have to take this as a snapshot. So I was kind of just trying to think about is that high, is that low?
And I actually think it’s relatively high because I think realistically even in the best market conditions, some people might just not have enough money. A lot of investors need to save money between acquisitions or they have a buy and hold strategy. Maybe they’re just in a different phase of their investing career. So having nearly half of investors surveyed say that they plan to grow their portfolio is a little bit higher than I was expecting. I was sort of guessing it might’ve been about a third, but it was actually 45%. But one of the most fascinating elements of this is that they actually break down investor intention by region. And I think this is super interesting and important for investors who operate in some of these regions. So where people are planning to buy and expand and where people are planning to exit and maintain is actually pretty different.
We talk about real estate being local and that is definitely showing up in the data here, but I will admit it is more different than I thought. For example, the Midwest, which you all know I’m long on, I’ve been touting the benefits of the Midwest for several years now. In the Midwest, 58% of investors say that they plan to grow their portfolio, which is really high and only 4.2% of people say that they plan to exit. So that is by far the most active market. On the total opposite end of the spectrum, we’re talking about the west coast of the United States, you get less than half of that 27%, and I’m rounding here, but 27% compared to 58%. So only about one quarter of people in the west plan to grow in the Midwest. It is more than half with everyone else in between. So the other regions that we see here are the northeast is 37%, the southwest at 51% and the southeast also at 51%.
So they’re pretty spread out with the west being by far the least intention to grow their portfolio. Now I think it’s important to understand that these are probably trends that have existed for a while. The west is very expensive and if you’re surveying landlords, that is just not a super popular place to be a landlord, whether it’s because of the price point, the rent to price ratio, the landlord laws, whatever it is not as popular as being a landlord in the Midwest or in the southeast where we’re seeing a higher percentage of who are intending to buy. The other thing that stood out to me is what’s going on in the southeast because it is actually pretty high relatively in terms of how many people intend to buy. It’s higher than the US average, which again US average is 45%. In the Southeast it’s 51%, but at the same time in the southeast that is where the most people plan to exit and just get out, right?
10% of investors, which is a lot, I think 10% of investors in any given year planning to sell their portfolio is a lot. And that is inevitably going to happen when you get in sort of this correction territory that we’re in the southeast, well not all over the southeast, but places like Florida, right? We’re in a correction. So if you’re a landlord and you’ve been around for a while, maybe now is the time to sell. You see a correction coming, there’s a lot of expense increases. It might say, Hey, I’ve had a good run, it’s time to get out. So I’m not super surprised by that, but it is significantly higher than anywhere else in the US nationally it’s 6.5%. So in the southeast it’s about 50% higher than the average. So that is a lot more people looking to get out, whereas the majority of these places, if you look at the west for example, I said that’s the lowest looking to grow.
Only 27% looking to grow. But pretty much everyone who owns property there is planning to hang onto it. 66% of people are just saying they’re going to maintain with only 7% of people saying that they’re going to exit. So you see this that there are very, very different sentiments about the market, whereas the more expensive markets in the northeast and west people really want to maintain but they are not planning to grow. Whereas the more affordable markets like in the southeast and the Midwest, more people are looking to grow. So that was the main headline that we saw there, but I think that there’s some other really interesting data here. I’m going to talk you through what cap rates investors are willing to accept, what mortgage rates they’re willing to accept and the challenges that other investors are seeing in their market. And I’m curious if you see the same thing or you feel the same way as the sentiment that I’m about to share with you.
So next up, let’s talk about mortgage rates because obviously we all know if you listen to this show about the lock-in effect, which has basically controlled inventory and suppressed inventory I should say over the last couple of years because people are locked into these super low mortgage rates and for a while there’s been other survey data by Zillow and John Burns real estate consulting, which I have looked at this question and asked people what mortgage rates they are willing to accept because knowing this actually tells us a lot about what might happen in the housing market. If people were willing to accept a six and a half percent mortgage rate, like say 80% of people would take a six and a half, then the market is not that far from really starting to recover. But if what most people want from a mortgage rates or what they’re willing to accept from a mortgage rate is five or five and a half percent, in my opinion, you could be waiting a long time.
So this data is super interesting and although Zillow has shown five, five and a half percent of what they think people are waiting out for, that’s their single family homes. And so that’s why this data is so valuable because investors act a little bit differently. What we see from investors is yes, a hundred percent of people would take a mortgage rate under 4%. That’s not surprising. Everyone would be crazy not to take that. For under four and a half percent it’s 96% and under 5% it’s 91%. So for all intents and purposes, if we got to a place where mortgage rates were below 5%, investors would probably really start looking to acquire pretty rapidly, but it falls off pretty steadily from there, from five to 5.5%, it drops from 91 down to 82% and just going up to 6% or up to 72%, so it drops off 20%.
So one out of five people are dropping off between five and 6%, and if you go all the way up to 7%, which is where we’re at today, we get to just 50% of people. So that explains a lot of what’s going on in the housing market, right, because we are seeing now 7% mortgages and we have also seen not coincidentally that transaction volume in the housing market has dropped 50% since 2022. So if you’re wondering why have transaction volumes come down, well this data is telling us exactly why 50% of people say they will not accept a mortgage rate above 7%, which we are sort of starting to see. And so that is the reason why transaction volume is not where we want it to be. Now looking forward if we want the housing market to take back off, and when I say take back off, of course people who hold property do want to see prices go up, but even without prices going up, I think it’s beneficial for the economy as a whole and for the industry as a whole just to see transaction volume go up.
We need to see more people buying and selling real estate right now and the data shows us that for every incremental drop in mortgage rates, we will probably see some improvement in transaction volume. So just as an example, if we went from 7% mortgages around where we are today to six and a half percent, about 10% of investors would jump back in. That would make a dent. It’s not huge because investors only make up about 20% of the total market. So that’s 2% overall uptick in transaction volume, but that would matter if we went down to 6%, another 12% would jump in. So now we’re starting to talk that’s about four and a half percent of the overall market. That would make a difference if we could really start to see four and a half, 5% more transactions in the market. That would make a difference for all of the agents out there, for the loan officers out there and the overall economy, which is highly on real estate transactions, it makes up about 16% of GDP, all sorts of real estate, not just transactions constructions included in that too, but that is sort of where we’re at.
And of course if we went back to 5%, we’d basically get all the investors off the sidelines and back into the market. So this sort of helps us if we want to understand where the market is going and if we’re going to see transaction volume pick up. My answer is probably not by that much right now because we’re near 7% and although there is a chance we get closer to 6.5%, I don’t think we’re getting much lower than that and I don’t even know if we’re getting a 6.5%. I have been saying for at least six months, maybe even a year now that I don’t think rates are going down as quickly or as low as people think. And I still believe that, and we’ll talk about this in a couple of minutes with the inflation report, but I still believe that rates are going to stay a bit higher for as long as we have this level of economic uncertainty that we’re in right now.
And so this data is helpful in telling us that maybe transaction volumes aren’t going to recover that quickly, but it does give us hope that when rates do fall, if they do fall, that we will get some of that transaction volume back. It’s just kind of a matter of time. It’s not people saying, I don’t ever want to buy real estate. What they’re saying is it’s too expensive to buy real estate right now. And so with rates where they’re at and prices where they are, some certain segment of the population are not going to transact and we’re learning that directly from the survey in addition to the stuff we’re all just seeing on the ground. Okay, so that’s the second thing we learned from this survey. The third one probably will be really of interest to people who invest in multifamily. If you’re unfamiliar with this term called cap rates, which we’re about to talk about, it helps you sort of evaluate how much value you’re getting for every dollar of net operating income that you’re generating a property with.
So generally speaking, the higher the cap rate, the better it is for the acquirer for the buyer on the side of that transaction. Sellers generally want cap rates to be low because that means they’re earning more for every dollar of net operating income the property produces. So as part of this survey, they asked investors what would be the lowest cap rate they are willing to accept because again, generally acquirers buyers want higher cap rates and what they said is that 65% would accept a cap rate above 6%, which I’m looking at it right now according to CoStar, that’s about where we are. So we’re seeing actually more investors signal a willingness to participate in market conditions in the multifamily market than they were in the single family market. If we’re just comparing how many people would buy with today’s mortgage rates versus how many people would buy with today’s cap rates, people are more interested in today’s cap rates.
Now I should mention that those are not apples to apples comparison because mortgage rates is a financing option. Cap rates is a way of valuing properties, but I think they’re asking these questions because they’re trying to understand how people feel about the residential market with mortgage rates and how investors are feeling about the multifamily market with cap rates. And what we’re seeing is a little bit more willingness to participate in a 6% cap rate. Now, just for some historical context, cap rates bottomed out at about 4.9% in 2021 and 2022. So they have come up quite a lot and that means real savings for buyers because just from cap rates, if all you’re basing the acquisition price of a property on is cap rates, which you shouldn’t, there’s other stuff that matters there, but if you were just trying to do a back of the envelope valuation that shows us that multifamily prices have dropped 25%, right?
Because if you’re just evaluating based on NOI and NOI stays the same. If you were to buy something at a 4.9 cap rate with the same N NOIs, you bought a 6.1 cap rate a couple years later, you would be saving 25% on that asset price below what you would’ve paid in late or early 2022. And so this is why I think more people are interested in a 6% cap rate because they’re already getting a really good discount above where prices were a few years ago. Unsurprisingly, if those cap rates went up to 7%, 100% of the investors surveyed said that they would be interested in that. I don’t blame them. I sure would be interested at a 7% cap rate. That is a very good risk adjusted return even with all of the considerations around debt and insurance and things going on in commercial, if you could buy at a 7% cap rate, to me that is quite a good deal.
Obviously not if it has tons of work and tons of risk, but if the average cap rate went up near 7%, man, it would definitely be buying time for me and clearly a lot of other investors think the same way. So those were the main three highlights from this survey from Resi Club and essa. But there are a couple other things I’ll just go over quickly. They also asked how real estate investors manage their own portfolio. I was kind of shocked by this 58%. I kind of thought that it would be a little bit less than that, but I guess when you only have a couple properties in your investing in state, it makes a lot of sense to self-manage. It’s a better financial decision. And so 58% of people self-manage, 22% use a property management company. 17% do sort of a hybrid approach, which is what I do, or 3% actually has a property manager but not a professional one.
So a business partner or a family member who actually does that. So that was kind of interesting. The majority, a lot, nearly 60% of people self-manage and only 22% less than a quarter use professional property management companies. That was pretty interesting. And then the other thing I just wanted to share with people, because I think sometimes misery loves company and they ask people what the most frustrating part of the buying process is according to investors, and I bet you can guess, what do you guys think the most frustrating part is? Well number one in the United States by two thirds, two thirds of investors said the most frustrating part is finding deals that cashflow that is not surprising to me. The second thing was competing with other buyers or investors. The third was running the numbers or analyzing deals. The fourth was getting financing and then the last was understanding neighborhoods or comps.
These actually break down differently by region investors in the west. 78% of them are saying they can’t find cashflow, whereas in the other end, Midwest, 54% of people are saying that they can find cashflow. So that is definitely encouraging, but if you have been struggling to find cashflow, particularly in the west or the southwest, you are not alone. It sounds like half to two thirds of investors feel the same way, and that is the most frustrating part of being a real estate investor right now. So those are some of the highlights from the Resi Club and STAA survey. I will make sure to put a link to this article that summarizes the data in the show notes if you want to check out the rest of it. We do actually have two more stories to share with you. First we’ll talk about the inflation report and then another study by Redfin about housing affordability. Stay with us. We have a quick break, but we’ll be right back with those two stories.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer here, sharing with you three new stories that I’ve been paying attention to this week and giving you my reaction. Before the break, we talked a lot about a recent survey from Resi Club and ESSA talking about how investors plan to handle the next year. But honestly, I think the way investors might handle the next year is going to be highly dependent on interest rates and mortgage rates. I’ve been saying for quite a while now that I think the whole housing market is depending on affordability, right? That is what ultimately everything comes down to these days is how affordable are homes for the average price investor for the average price American. And the answer right now is not very affordable. We’re near 40 year lows, 35 year lows for housing affordability. And so when we look at this survey, it’s really based, I think largely on people thinking rates are high right now and are going to stay high.
The reason I wanted to share this inflation report today is because a lot of what’s going to happen with affordability comes down to mortgage rates, which comes down to what the Fed does in some ways and comes down to inflation. Inflation really dictates mortgage rates in two ways. First, as I just mentioned, it influences what the Fed does and the Fed influences mortgage rates. So that’s one sort of less direct way that inflation influences mortgage rates, but there’s actually an even more influential meaning of the inflation report, and that is what it does to bond yields because bond yields are almost directly correlated with mortgage rates. And so when inflation fears go up, bond yields go and that takes mortgage rates up with them. So we want to be paying attention to what’s going on with the CPI, what’s going on with different measurements of inflation.
And just last week as of June 11th, we got data about consumer price index and what it shows was that inflation went up in May, but really only modestly inflation as measured by the CPI, which is a consumer price index went up to 2.4% year over year. So what that means is on average with the methodology that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses, which is complicated and a little bit confusing, but using the method that they use from this point last year to this point, prices on average have went up 2.4%. Now within that basket, that is a big average. And so within that average you see certain things that have had way more inflation over the last year and also certain things that have way less inflation. So just as an example, housing costs and shelter have had more inflation than 2.4%. Auto insurance I think led the way it was like 7.5% in terms of inflation over the last year.
Meanwhile, certain things like gasoline and airline tickets have actually fallen modestly. So take that all with a grain of salt because when you compare what’s going on with inflation on these reports to your life, you might not see it reflected. You probably have something that’s bothering you that’s gone up a lot. This happens to all of us, but that might not actually be the main thing that’s driving inflation. Or you may see something you care about that has gone up 7% when this thing is only showing 2.4%. But remember, this is what we call a weighted average. So it’s basically taking all of the things that are transacted on in the economy and averaging them out. So the fact that it went up is not great. You don’t want inflation to go up, but given the context of everything that’s going on right now, I was encouraged by this because tariffs sort of officially started going on a little bit in February and March, but really they started to go on in April.
Then there was a pause, there was all sorts of stuff going on. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting to see a huge uptick in tariff caused inflation just yet, but I’m glad we haven’t seen any basically because I do think we’ll see a little bit of uptick inflation over the next couple months. How much I kind of go back and forth on, I sort of debate this with myself. I do think there will be some upward pressure on prices, but I’m just not sure the American consumer can weather higher prices. Like yes, manufacturers, producers, businesses may want to pass along the increased input costs to their businesses in the form of tariffs onto the American consumer, but they might not be able to do that because people just might stop buying. And so I think there will be some offsetting effect of sort of the negative state I see the American consumer in helping to offset inflation a little bit.
So we’re definitely not out of the woods yet, but the fact that it didn’t go up just in the last month, I think that’s encouraging. And it’s also one of the main reasons that we did not see the Fed raise interest rates this week when they met because the Fed, as we’ve talked about, they have this sort of dual mandate of balancing inflation and the labor market. And although the labor market is starting to crack a little bit, the fact that inflation went up a little bit, probably the reason why they held steady for this month, most of the forecasts that I’ve seen expect that the Fed probably won’t raise rates until September, but things are so uncertain I wouldn’t count it out at this point. I would just say I’m going to look right before the Fed meeting every time they meet and look at inflation and look at the labor market.
If inflation stays muted and the labor market still shows some signs of cracking, I think we could see fed rate cuts this summer. But I agree, if you were just trying to assign probabilities to this, the most likely scenario is that fed rate cuts won’t come until at least the fall. Now of course for real estate investors, you’re probably going to have mixed reactions to this, right? Because a lot of people want the fed to cut rates, so mortgage rates will go down. But remember, the Fed doesn’t control rates. We saw the Fed cut rates last September and last October and rates only went up from there. And so I wouldn’t be holding your breath for the Fed and what they’re going to do. I would be more concerned about inflation and their impact on bond yields. And although those things are all kind of interconnected, the lower inflation is the better the outlook for mortgage rates, that to me is pretty clear.
If there is fear of inflation, it is going to prop up mortgage rates for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how long that will be, how high they will go, but that is just a relationship that we know about higher inflation fears, higher mortgage rates. If inflation fears start to cool, if we have another month where inflation is flat or declines, that will be a really good sign for mortgage rates. But again, I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet. I have said repeatedly and I still believe that rates are going to be pretty stable for the next couple of months in the high sixes and low sevens that’s probably going to stick around for a while unless inflation really starts to fall. And again, I’m not super concerned about inflation going up 0.1% last month, but it didn’t fall, it went up. And so that signals to the Fed and to bond investors like, Hey, you might want to wait and see what’s going on in inflation before you start pouring money into bonds or lowering interest rates.
And so this is not a concern all by itself, but it does probably mean we’re going to be stuck in the mortgage rate climate that we’re in right now for the foreseeable future. Alright, that’s what I got for you guys on mortgage rates. We’ll obviously be talking about this every week as we always do on this show, but that’s my latest take based on the most recent data we have after the break that’s coming up. I do want to share with you some other information about housing affordability because as I said, I think the whole housing market comes down to affordability and I have some data to share with you about how the average Americans are feeling about housing affordability. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer going through three big stories that I’ve been thinking about this week and I wanted to share with every one of you. We’ve talked about a survey that we got from Sessa and Resi Club. Then we talked about the most recent inflation report that came in from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our last story today is no less important. It is a study that was done by Redfin. I love their data. They put out a survey that says Americans on torn on how immigration tariffs impact housing affordability. And I thought this data was super interesting because it seems people are very divided on how current administration policies are going to impact housing affordability. And honestly, I want to just open up a conversation about this. So if you’re watching on YouTube, definitely drop a comment or you can drop a comment on Spotify or just hit me up on Instagram.
I’m at the data de and let me know what you’re thinking about this. Basically what the survey shows is that over half of us homeowners and renters, strongly or somewhat agree with the following statement, less immigration will result in fewer construction workers and thereby fewer new homes, making homes more expensive. So half of the country is concerned that with deportations we’re going to get fewer construction workers. I don’t think it’s a secret that a lot of undocumented immigrants in the United States are in the construction field, and if they are not showing up to job sites or they’re actually being deported, that could impact the workforce, which could increase cost for builders. That could therefore mean they build a little bit less. And that would mean there’s this shortage that we’re in, the housing market shortage that we’re in and have been in for quite a long time might continue if that happens.
If there’s a shortage that drives up prices, right? This is supply and demand. And so about half of the country agrees with that line of thinking, but on the almost exact opposite side of this, not as many people, 38.5%. So instead of 50% we’re close to 40%, about 40% of people, and I’m rounding here of homeowners and renters, strongly or somewhat agree with the statement, less immigration will reduce demand for housing and make it more affordable. So the sort of counterpoint to the first thing that I said was that if there are less people coming into the country or there are actually deportations of people currently living in the country, there will be less demand for the existing housing units that we have and probably the existing rental units that we have making housing and rents more affordable. So I’m curious what you all think because obviously I think a lot of this probably falls along political lines, and I do not want this show to be political, but I want to open this conversation.
I trust that our audience here and on the market is able to look at objective information and think through this, not just on partisan lines, but actually just think about this from a logical perspective. And I’ve sort of been going back and forth on this, and I wonder if these two sort of contradictory ideas may actually balance themselves out because both ideas, at least in mine, have merit. If there are fewer immigrants coming into the country and if there are actually deportations in any significant way that will lower demand for housing, that makes sense. But at the same time, building could get more expensive. If the labor force shrinks, then we might have lower building supply. Those builders also might see less demand because there are less immigrants coming into the country and they might build less, which could prop up housing prices. And so I wonder if all of this will actually have any impact really at all on the housing market.
I’ve sort of been going back and forth since reading this article in my head, but I’m curious what you all think. So please make sure to leave a comment in the comment section wherever you’re listening or watching here. So that’s take on immigration. But there is another thing on tariffs, and this there is sort of more consensus about, so they asked the respondents to the survey to say they agree, strongly agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement, tariffs will cause price inflation and keep interest rates high. So 68% of people said yes to that. That is way higher than the immigration issue. That is nearly 70% of people agree with that. Only about 20% of people are neutral, and then only 13% are saying that they strongly or somewhat disagree. What I was saying earlier about inflation being tied to mortgage rates, 70% of people either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that tariffs will cause price inflation.
So building goods will go up or inflation will just happen across the economy, and that will keep interest rates high. A lot of people believe that. Another tariff related question that was interesting too is they asked on tariffs will help boost the US economy so more people can afford homes. Only 35% of people agreed with that. So only about one third of people agree with tariffs. And again, I don’t know exactly the methodology behind this, but I do think these things are kind of interesting that most people, and it sort of jives with a lot of the other surveys I’ve seen, people are afraid of tariffs because it is a tax on American consumers. So they do feel that there’s inflation. But it is worth mentioning that 35% of people think that actually tariffs are going to help of home affordability because the US economy will grow that will put more money in people’s pockets and they’ll be able to afford homes more easily.
44% of people though disagree with that. So that one is split kind of evenly. So I just thought this was interesting and kind of wanted to open a conversation on the market community. So let me know in the comments because yes, I understand that some of this is polarizing and somewhat political, but I really think that as real estate investors and people who look at objective data and trends and economics and really want to understand this thing from all sides, I am looking forward to hearing your informed and logical opinions about what is going on here and what you think will happen due to lower immigration and due to tariffs in the housing market. Please let me know. I’m very curious to hear what you all think. Alright, that is what I got for you today on this episode of On the Market. Again, we see that a lot of investors are planning to grow their portfolios here in 2025.
We are seeing that inflation ticked up just a little bit. Nothing super concerning, but that’s probably going to leave us stuck in limbo in terms of market rates. And we are getting a very divided look at what investors and what homeowners expect will happen in the housing market due to lower immigration and increases in tariffs. I gave you all my opinion. Now it’s time for you to share yours in the comment section. So let me know what you’re thinking about these stories. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On The Market. I’m Dave Meyer. I’ll see you next time.