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Mortgage application activity picked up in June, supported by a slight decline in interest rates. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Market Composite Index, which tracks mortgage application volume, rose 5.4% from May on a seasonally adjusted basis. Compared to June 2024, total applications were up 21.1%.

The average contract rate for 30-year fixed mortgages edged down by 4 basis points to 6.86%. In response, purchase applications increased 3.7% month-over-month, while refinance activity climbed 6.5%. On a year-over-year basis, the 30-year rate was 12 basis points lower, with purchase and refinance applications up 15.2% and 30.3%, respectively.

Loan sizes continued to trend lower. The average loan amount across all loan types declined 2% to $383,000. Purchase loans edged down 0.9% to $439,800, and refinance loans decreased 1.8% to $290,500. Adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loan sizes dropped 3.1% to $1.03 million. 

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Vandervort ArchitectsSave Photo
The house has the appearance of two small cabins. “We knew early on that these two forms would be connected by a spine down the middle,” Butrim says. The west wing, on the left, contains the family room, dining room and kitchen in one large open space. The east wing contains three bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms. The large window between the two wings marks the structure’s spine, a long corridor between them.

Creating the two asymmetrical forms broke up the scale of the house and gave it a San Juan Islands cabin feel. Butrim also looked to agricultural and maritime buildings, as well as Native American longhouses, for architectural inspiration. The materials, which include weathered cedar at random widths, tinted concrete and dark metal roofing, accomplish two goals. They nod to the history of cabins built on this island, and they help the building blend into the wooded site.

“Originally, the front entry led directly into the corridor,” Butrim says. “However, our clients thought that would feel too formal and they wanted this to be a more casual house. It also felt like an entrance you’d have if you’d driven from the road and down the driveway, which doesn’t happen here. Instead, we thought about them entering the house from the approach from the dock.” The front entry is located on the left side of the house. (The door is open in this photo.)



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Remote work may no longer dominate the U.S. labor force as it did during the height of the pandemic in 2020, but it still represents a substantial share of employment today. According to the latest data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), approximately 34.3 million employed people teleworked or worked at home for pay in April 2025. The telework rate, which represents the number of people who teleworked as a percentage of people who were working, was 21.6% in April, and it has consistently ranged between 17.9% and 23.8% between October 2022 and April 2025.

Of those who teleworked in April, more than half teleworked for all their working hours, while the remaining teleworked for some, but not all, of their work hours.

The distribution of telework across the U.S. workforce continues to reflect deeper patterns shaped by gender, age, education, occupation, and industry. The following insights are based on an analysis of monthly CPS data.

Gender: Women Lead in Telework

Women continue to outpace men in remote work participation.

Nearly 25% of employed women worked from home in April 2025.

In contrast, about 19% of employed men teleworked.

This gender gap reflects employment trends. Many women are employed in professional, administrative, or office-based roles. These fields transitioned smoothly to remote work during the pandemic and have largely maintained hybrid or fully remote options. Additionally, the growing rate of college completion among women1 has pushed more women into positions that are structurally suited to telework. Flexibility remains a priority, especially for women balancing work and caregiving responsibilities, further reinforcing the demand for work-from-home arrangements.

Age: Older Workers Are More Likely to Telework

Age also plays a major role in who works remotely. Workers aged 25 and older are more likely to telework than their younger counterparts.

Ages 16–24: Only 6.2% worked from home.

Ages 25–54: About 24% reported teleworking.

Ages 55+: Around 23% worked remotely.

Younger workers tend to fill entry-level roles in retail, hospitality, and service sectors that require in-person attendance. Meanwhile, older workers are more likely to have progressed in their careers into managerial or specialized roles where remote work is feasible or even expected.

Education: Higher Degrees, Higher Telework Rates

Education remains one of the strongest indicators of telework status. Higher educational attainment is positively associated with a higher telework rate.

No high school diploma: Just 3.1% worked remotely.

High school graduates, no college: 8.4% teleworked.

Some college or associate degree: 17.3% reported working from home.

Bachelor’s degree or higher: 38.3% worked remotely.

Higher educational attainment often leads to employment in knowledge-based sectors such as finance, information technology, consulting, and research. These roles often depend on digital communication tools and independent project-based tasks, making them well-suited for remote settings.

Occupation: Business and Financial Operations, and Professionals Dominate Remote Work

Not surprisingly, occupation heavily influences access to teleworking. Jobs that require physical presence, such as those in food service, transportation, manufacturing, and construction, naturally offer limited remote opportunities. In contrast, people employed in professional and technical fields report the highest telework rate, especially those working in computer and mathematical roles.

Industry trends mirror these occupational divisions. Certain sectors have fully embraced telework, particularly finance, information services, and professional and business services. These industries often prioritize flexibility and are structured in ways that make remote work not only possible but efficient. On the other hand, industries like construction, leisure and hospitality remain firmly grounded in physical spaces and in-person involvement. In these fields, work is inherently tied to locations and equipment that cannot be replicated remotely. The construction industry had a telework rate of just 9.8% in April, and leisure and hospitality reported an even lower rate of 8.1%.

Looking Ahead:

Remote work is not disappearing; it is evolving. The opportunity to work from home is increasingly concentrated among individuals with higher education levels, white-collar job titles, and positions in tech-driven or office-based industries. Meanwhile, those who are younger, have less educational attainments, or work in manual or service-based roles remain largely tied to traditional, in-person work.

For the future, we don’t know if telework will expand to become more inclusive or continue reinforcing existing divides in education and job roles. For now, the data suggests that remote work is here to stay, but only for some.

Note:

“U.S. women are outpacing men in college completion, including in every major racial and ethnic group”, Pew Research Center.

Connor Borkowski and Rifat Kaynas, “Telework trends,” Beyond the Numbers: Employment & Unemployment, vol. 14, no. 2 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 2025),

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This year, real estate investors and homeowners alike are closely watching high mortgage rates, yet many may not fully understand the mortgage spread—the difference between the 30-year fixed mortgage rate and the 10-year Treasury rate. This spread plays a significant role in determining borrowing costs and can impact investment strategies, making it essential for real estate investors to understand its implications.

What is the Mortgage Spread?

The mortgage spread is the difference between the 30-year fixed mortgage rate and the 10-year Treasury bond yield. This spread exists because mortgage lenders assume additional risk compared to the U.S. government, which issues Treasury bonds considered risk-free. The spread reflects factors such as:

  • Credit risk – The possibility that borrowers may default on their loans
  • Inflation expectations – Higher inflation can erode the purchasing power of long-term payments, prompting lenders to demand higher rates
  • Federal Reserve policy – Interest rate decisions and monetary policy influence both Treasury yields and mortgage rates
  • Market liquidity – When financial markets face uncertainty or disruptions, mortgage rates may rise relative to Treasuries, widening the spread

Historical Trends in the Mortgage Spread

Using data from Freddie Mac (30-year mortgage rate) and the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) (10-year Treasury rate), we can see that the mortgage spread fluctuates over time:

  • 1980s: The spread remained relatively stable, averaging around 1.5% to 2%, despite high interest rates
  • 2008 Financial Crisis: The spread jumped to over 3% due to extreme market uncertainty and tighter lending standards
  • 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic: Initially, the spread spiked above 2.5% but later declined as the Federal Reserve intervened
  • 2023-2025: The spread has remained historically elevated, fluctuating between 2.5% and 3%, as inflation and Federal Reserve policies continue to influence investor sentiment

How It Impacts Real Estate Investors

For real estate investors, a widening mortgage spread means higher borrowing costs, making financing properties more expensive. However, it also signals potential opportunities for cash buyers and investors leveraging 1031 exchanges to acquire properties without being as affected by rising interest rates.

Key takeaways for investors

  1. Higher spreads mean higher borrowing costs, which can influence investment strategies, especially for those leveraging financing.
  2. Markets with growing inventory and price reductions (such as Florida and Texas) may offer more favorable buying conditions for investors.
  3. Cash buyers and 1031 exchange investors can benefit by avoiding high mortgage rates and reallocating capital efficiently.

Leveraging a 1031 exchange to Navigate Today’s Market

For investors looking to diversify their real estate portfolio tax-deferred, a 1031 exchange could be an effective strategy. Equity 1031 Exchange provides Qualified Intermediary services for investors seeking to reinvest proceeds from the sale of one investment property into another while deferring capital gains taxes.

Understanding the mortgage spread is crucial for real estate investors navigating today’s interest rate environment. By staying informed on key financial indicators, market conditions, and investment strategies like 1031 exchanges, investors can make more confident and strategic decisions.

To learn more about using a 1031 exchange to defer taxes on your next real estate investment, visit getequity1031.com.

Equity Trust Company is a directed custodian and does not provide tax, legal, or investment advice. Any information communicated by Equity Trust is for educational purposes only, and should not be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice. Whenever making an investment decision, please consult with your tax attorney or financial professional.

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Buying a regular rental property can provide steady, predictable income, but if you’re looking for something more lucrative, we’ve got the perfect strategy for you. Today’s guest used it to build a real estate business that brings in $800,000 in annual revenue. The best part? It requires less money than you might think. Tune in to hear how he did it—and how YOU can, too!

Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Ahead of the release of his new book, The Glamping Investor, Garrett Brown joins the show to share how you can get started with unique stays in 2025. Garrett used to buy condos in Houston, Texas, but when the market shifted, so did his investing strategy. Pivoting unlocked massive profits, and today, he owns some of his market’s top-rated glamping destinations—with nightly rates comparable to five-star hotels!

In this episode, he’ll cover everything from finding “hackable” land and picking a short-term rental market to funding your projects and avoiding permitting nightmares. You won’t want to miss gems like his 60/30/10 rule for choosing a location and the secret to putting very little money down on a piece of land with endless potential!

Ashley Kehr:
Do you think glamping is just a trendy buzzword? Today’s guest turned tents, domes, and off-grid cabins into a business doing nearly 800 K per year with minimal upfront capital, and he’s going to help rookie investors see how raw land can unlock real estate wealth.

Tony Robinson:
Today we’re talking with Garrett Brown, a short-term rental investor who pivoted from condos in Houston to building one of the top rated glamping destinations in the entire state of Texas. So if you want creative cashflow with lower costs, this episode is your blueprint.

Ashley Kehr:
This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Care,

Tony Robinson:
And I am Tony j Robinson. And let’s give a big warm welcome to Garrett. Garrett, thank you for jumping on with us today, man. Super excited to get into it.

Garrett Brown:
Thank y’all for having me on. I’m always love talking glamping and always love talking with you all, so it’s a perfect combination.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah, Garrett, usually you’re a co-host, but I think this is the first time you’ve actually been a guest on the show.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, it’s been a while before. I worked at BiggerPockets probably a couple years ago. I was a long time ago, but it’s been a while to be a guest on there and I’m excited to tell my story and hopefully incentivize some rookies out there to take action in the glamping space.

Ashley Kehr:
Wait, were you on rookie before?

Garrett Brown:
Probably a few years ago. That’s actually how I,

Ashley Kehr:
God, I feel so bad that I don’t remember that

Garrett Brown:
Y’all do so many and talk to so many different people. I do not take offense to that at all because

Ashley Kehr:
I mean, obviously I’m going to cut this part out, but I used to have one of our old producers, Daniel, whenever we would go to meetups or be at conferences, I would always have him when he would introduce me to someone say, do you remember so-and-so on the podcast? Because so many times I would go like, oh, it’s so nice to meet you. And they would say, oh, I actually was a guest

Garrett Brown:
When I was even on, when Eric and Dan, I think Eric and Daniel worked together. I can’t remember, but I remember Eric was the main guy I talked to. But yeah, no, so it is been quite a while.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay, so Garrett, what actually got you into glamping and why did you pivot from traditional short-term rentals?

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, I got into short-term rentals probably like a lot. Well, a lot of people got into ’em during the pandemic boom and things there, but I got into it about 2018. I was a real estate agent for years before I was doing fix and flips, buy and holds, and I was doing okay. Some were wins, some were bigger losses. And so I heard about the Airbnb thing going on and I was like, all right, let me try my hand with this. And I got a really good deal on a few small condos in downtown Houston. This was when back when you could put up an air mattress and do well on Airbnb at that point. And so it was going okay, and then the pandemic hit and all the big institutional money started coming into the space. And at that point for just a one bedroom downtown Conroe, I mean downtown condo in Houston, you’re not going to be able to compete there.
All you can do is drop your price pretty much with some of these big hedge funds and things coming in. So I saw the writing on the wall, I was going on YouTube University and kind of seeing what was out there and I love creative things. I have a music passion. I had a music studio before I did real estate and I was like, how could I tie my passion for real estate with my creative passion? And this thing glamping came up to me and I’m like, okay, what exactly is that? Is it glamorous camping? Whatever you want to call it? I was interested. I love nature as well, and started going down that path. I saw the almost just crazy cashflow that was coming in on some of these places with the minimal investment that was needed to get it started. So I started making my way and figured out how could I do this?
And raw land is tough to get a loan on. It’s tough to usually a lot of people buy it cash. I had some cash saved up about $50,000, but not enough to get a piece of land that I really was interested in. So I learned about this thing called land hacking, which is a form of glamping. They’re all kind of mutually tied together of sorts. And land hacking is essentially when you find a house similar to house hacking, which of most of the BiggerPockets audience might know about that, where you take a house and you rent out each room. Land hacking is essentially the same, but you get a house on a piece of land, get a mortgage for it, it’s a lot easier to get a mortgage on a house already there. The utilities are already there. And I decided like, okay, I’m going to build little bitty cabins on these different parts of the land and that will help me pay my mortgage down, help me add equity value to the property. And it just kind of exploded from there to a myriad of different ways that I learned a lot of lessons and had a lot of wins just from that endeavor that I took on from there.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, I have to imagine that if worst case scenario you have a property that has a rental unit on it, I’m assuming you rented out that house. So even if the glamping didn’t work out, you at least have some source of revenue on this property or the ability to sell a single family home.

Garrett Brown:
The cool thing about land hacking, you can go the glamping route where you’re putting cabins and tents and prefab tiny homes or whatever you want to do on this land, but you always have that house on the property. And one thing I forgot to mention a little bit ago is I found a house that needed a little bit of work, nothing crazy, but I didn’t find a pristine house that was ready to go and I couldn’t force some appreciation into it. So I found a house, we bought it for about $550,000. I’ll break down some of the numbers to it, and it had 11 acres on it, and the worst I thought was I can make it a long-term rental if I wanted to. It probably wouldn’t cashflow as well at that price point, you probably need to find something a little less, but I knew I could renovate the bathroom sum.
We took out the carpet and put LVP flooring throughout it. All these were already adding to the equity value, but I knew I had the land and I could have turned it into RV pads, I could build a self-storage there. I could build more long-term rentals. You don’t even have to go the short-term rental route if you don’t want to. I’ve seen people build tiny owned communities that are for long-term rentals only. And so I knew I had a big exit strategy. And then at the same time, I’m acquiring land that is not far. It is about 45 minutes from Houston, Texas that is going to be in one of the faster appreciating areas around basically because I knew people are gradually starting to expand their bubble to get outside of the downtown areas. And as it started going along, not everybody will take the same route that I did.
Sometimes if you’re going the investment route on it, you’re going to have to put 20 or 25% down. But I used an owner occupied loan. I sold those condos that I mentioned and sold my townhouse. Actually, I took a big swing with this, but I knew it was going to pay off. I took some of that money. It was about $50,000 by the time I got it done, I got into that house for 5% down. It was an owner occupied loan. So technically I had to live in there for a year, which I did because I was building out the cabins. But doing that with just 5% down, I only had to put 22,000 down to acquire this house and all of this land that would’ve probably cost me. I would’ve only if I was just getting raw land, I would’ve had to put 200 or $250,000 down and then I wouldn’t have had the funds to get some utilities to the property, build out some of these cabins and really start to bring up the cashflow and bring out the equity appreciation that was there. So that is just how I kind of saw where the writing was on the wall for it.

Tony Robinson:
So here, your recommendation to Ricky’s who are looking to maybe do glamping building it out is reducing their costs by finding a piece of land that already has a house on it to get more favorable financing. And I think that’s a great strategy because I think when a lot of folks think about building, the only thing that comes to mind for them is raw land, but there’s not only is the financing then more expensive, but then there’s also the additional cost of getting that land ready to be built on. Maybe you have to grade, maybe you have to get utilities, maybe you have to get wells run or septic tanks or whatever it may be. But if there was a home on that piece of land already, hopefully a lot of that infrastructure costs is taken care of. So I want to learn more about the challenges around the utilities and building it out. But first, just to clarify for all the Ricky’s who maybe aren’t familiar with the phrase glamping, what exactly does that mean and how is it different from traditional short-term rental investing?

Garrett Brown:
So again, it’s one of those things that you can call it what you want. I think glamping came from glamorous camping, but it’s essentially luxury camping to where you’re providing most likely a utility such as a bathroom nearby that has a flushable toilet. You have electricity on the property, you have running water, usually hot water is a big thing of glamping. And now even now you probably have wifi for the guests. There’s probably a memory foam bed inside the units. Little things like that that are go above and beyond the luxury side of just slapping up a tent in a campground that people are traditionally thinking of. And you have maybe one public bathroom that’s 500 yards away that everybody shares, and then you have no electricity capabilities and things there. So we really wanted to emphasize the luxury side of glamping when we were building these out.
And because those utilities were at the house, I’ve heard people get quotes for bringing electricity to a property like raw land of a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, just insane amounts that you couldn’t even comprehend unless you have a big budget or hedge fund behind you. And with my property having electricity already there, it costs me $5,000 extra to bring electricity to my first cabin as opposed to the 20, 30, $40,000 quotes I would’ve gotten from just trying to find a piece of land and then develop it and worry about the roadwork. That’s another thing people underestimate is how expensive roadwork is. I already had a road going to the property, and so I just added on some more gravel roads to that, and it was so much cheaper than spending a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000 and having the county have to tell me where I can put the road, how big it has to be because it’s already been set there for me. So it was definitely a very smart move on my part to figure out that nuance of when you’re looking into the land purchase portion of it.

Ashley Kehr:
So for the glamping part of it, once you’ve purchased your property, you’ve got your financing on it. Are there any ways to actually finance the tents or the domes or whatever you’re putting onto the property?

Garrett Brown:
There actually is now. It’s kind of amazing how fast this space has grown in the past four years, five years since I’ve been in it. When I first got into it, there wasn’t as many options. It was just starting to become a little more popular. My first cabin, I call it a cabin, but I got a geodome for my first property from a company called Pacific Domes that’s in Oregon. There’s a lot of dome companies. You could buy one from Alibaba for a thousand dollars, $2,000, it’s probably going to fall apart the next week that you put it together. But I went with Pacific Domes. I had a great reputation. It was about $10,000 for this dome when I bought it. They didn’t have options at the time, but now I know that there are tons of financing options out there for the domes. I think even Pacific domes offers their own.
But the other really cool thing that I’ve even been exploring as I’ve been expanding and adding more sites is I even today this morning, put on a deposit on a new tiny house. It’s called a park model, which means it comes on a trailer with wheels and you can get those financed just like a car or an RV loan, and it’s very simple to do because they’re also very easy to repossess if they want to take it off your property. So it’s actually surprising how easy that is. So yeah, the financing options have exploded in the past few years. So we can touch into that and I’m always happy to give recommendations, but you’ll be surprised at how many tiny home builds unique builds, geo domes, yurts, everything out there now offer financing because they see that this is the way the business model is growing for them as well too. So it shouldn’t be something intimidating, but if you can buy it cash, that’s awesome, but if you can leverage some of that financing and reserve some of your cash to either enhance the site or just have as cash reserves, that’s a great method to go down as well.

Tony Robinson:
Garrett, I’m super excited to keep diving into the world of glamping. It is part of the short-term rental space that I’ve never personally explored. So I want to break down exactly how to find the right land, what kind of structures work best, which you’ve touched on a little bit already, and really how to run the numbers on these glamping structures, especially if you’ve never done this type of deal before.

Ashley Kehr:
Hey guys, it’s Ashley. I wanted to pop in here real quick to tell you that managing rentals shouldn’t be stressful. That’s why landlords love rent. Ready. Get to your rent in your account, just two days faster cashflow, less waiting, need to message a tenant chat instantly in app. No more lost emails or text plus schedule maintenance repairs with just a few taps. No more phone tag. Ready to simplify your rentals. Get six months of rent ready for just $1 using promo code BP 2025. Sign up at the link in the bio because new landlords are loving rent. Ready?

Tony Robinson:
Alright, so we’re back with Garrett. So Garrett, I want to talk about the actual build out, but before we do, I guess I just have one question and I’m sure a lot of the Ricky audience is thinking this as well. Who the heck is paying money to come stay in a tent? What is your typical demographic of traveler? So

Garrett Brown:
Every one of the main things you have to decide when you’re getting into this space is what your vision is long-term for the property and who your guest avatar or your target guest even is. Because there’s some glamping sites that are catered to families and they built it out like that. And there’s some glamping sites that are catered to couples or romantic getaways, and there are some that are more just maybe a little more traditional leaning towards the camping side with a little bit of luxury that kind of target more of a mass audience. And so I knew that I went and traveled, one of my biggest pieces of advice is go stay in some of these structures nearby. Go find glamping sites near you or campgrounds and things and go try out some of these unique structures. I went and stayed in a geodome in Arizona near the Grand Canyon when I was looking, I went and stayed in some tiny homes.
I went and stayed in different places to see what they were doing that I liked, what they were doing that I didn’t personally enjoy as a guest. And so I decided that I really wanted to tap into the higher end luxury market of the couples romantic getaways. And the biggest part of it that I didn’t mention before that is you just need to build an experience that caters to that guest you’re trying to attract. So I went to some facilities and they would have 20 or 30 domes stacked up right beside each other, and there’s a lot of those out there. I went to some that was way more spaced out and you had one cabin on a couple acres and then another cabin that was much further away. And both of those could be successful business models. Again, it goes back to your goals and envision, but I decided that I wanted less.
I wanted less structures on my property, but I was going to command a higher rate. Each one was going to have their own private amenities, and so I knew that I was going to be able to target and in the glamping field, I will just go ahead and say that I had to be taught this. I didn’t realize it at first. Women dominate this market for the booking side of it. If you look at our social media feed there, it’s about 80 to 85% women that are on our feed. And the main reason, and I’ve talked to tons of people, glamping experts all over the world, and they all say the same thing, that guys, we plan a trip about a week ahead in advance. Women are planning the trip a year or two in advance, and so that’s how you get those long lead times, long bookings.
And so we started to cater to our audience, which we knew was going to be somebody that loved nature, somebody that liked to explore, and that was also near a major city. That’s one thing that I try to talk about a lot, and I mentioned it in the guide that I wrote for BiggerPockets coming out soon called the Glamping Investor that it’s called the 60 30 10 rule that I have. And so I knew that I needed to be around 60 minutes from a major city, and when I say major city, 500,000 plus people, the more cities nearby the better 30 minutes from some type of national, regional or state attraction. So that way that at least people from that city are going to come out to that area routinely and have something to do. We obviously want to build the experience for them on site that they never want to leave.
But all the other places around you will draw in even more people and make sure you have a pretty decent flow of guests coming through. And then the 10 of it is just 10 minutes from some type of civilization, dollar General, a gas station. There’s land out there that people will see and it’s three or four hours from everywhere and people are like, oh, it’s so cheap. I can buy that and it’s going to be great. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a reason that you can buy 20 acres for $10,000 in this town because nobody is ever going to travel there. So we just looked in the analytics of it. I found the place I found ended up being 45 minutes from Houston, Texas, and it’s two hours from Dallas and Austin and all the other bigger sites. It’s near the second largest lake in Texas and it’s also near a national forest.
And I have the reason it is near a Dollar General as well, because the reason that’s so valuable is because if you’re not near any of these, how are you going to get cleaners to come out there? How are you going to get supplies? How are you going to get handy people? The further they have to travel, the more expensive it becomes and the harder it becomes to actually keep them. So I thought about that while I was building out the entire business and I thought about my guest avatar to decide on exactly how I wanted to build it, what amenities I wanted to add, and that helped us to get an idea of the nightly rate that we could attract. So then once we kind of set that foundation, we have crushed it and definitely gotten, we make as much per night as a five star hotel basically does because we built out that experience and we also didn’t put each structure on top of each other. But again, they’re both good business structures just wasn’t for me personally.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, you literally described the reason my A-Frame is successful because it meets that 60, 30, 10 literally almost to the minute it meets that because we did not think it was going to be successful. Well, as successful as it is, we obviously thought it was going to be an investment, but it has done better than we expected. And it is a perfect example of that rule that you have come up with because it proves it. It proves that that actually works if you follow that rule. And the Dollar General thing I laugh at because that is the closest store to there. There’s no Walmart or Target or anything in the town, but there is a Dollar General and part of Dollar General’s model is that they find towns where you don’t have a Walmart and a Target and they go in and drop their buildings into there and you can still get your essentials. And in our A-frame it’s very limited cooking. We don’t have an oven, we have a stove top that you can cook on, but I’m assuming that there’s other glamping tents or different glamping things that don’t have huge kitchens for people to cook on. So being 10 minutes within civilization so you can go out to eat things like that is also important.

Garrett Brown:
It’s good for the guests too. We find that tons of people on our social media all the time are like, oh, I’m scared to go out there. It’s in the middle of nowhere and things like that. And then when we kind of relay what exactly is around it and all these things, they start to get a little more at ease. Nobody wants to just be in the middle of nowhere, what nothing around, and then you’re out of paper towels and then they got to drive 45 minutes to figure out the paper towels. And so that sounds like a nightmare to me is something I didn’t personally want to find out how that would happen if it did happen to me. So

Ashley Kehr:
You know what, that just made me think I should find out if Instacart will deliver to that property because that would be a really good thing to add into the listing is this does have Instacart so that you could order stuff.

Garrett Brown:
My second glance site that we just opened up near Austin is a little bit bigger of a town, a little closer to Austin and my first glance site, we can get Uber Eats and things like that out there. It’s much harder. It takes a lot longer, but the new site near Austin, it is the biggest revelation ever that if I need something I can just Instacart it or Uber eats it to the guests. A guest had ants inside and we have pest control and all that and sometimes just things happen in nature and I instantly, I UberEATS him some ants spray and we turned a bad situation into a five star stay with just that. So that was amazing. Don’t have that luxury everywhere, but if you do, oh, that is definitely a top tier a minute you’d be able to have for your own self.

Ashley Kehr:
I can completely relate on a personal level because I have never lived in a house that can get DoorDash or Uber Eats. Never in my whole life until I bought my lake house and at the lake house, I am spoiled to death and it started to get out of control that for the first time in my life I could DoorDash stuff and I really had to cut back, but it was funny. Yeah,

Tony Robinson:
That’s hilarious. I can order something on Amazon at 8:00 AM and it’ll be at my house for 2:00 PM It’s insane. The infrastructure that we have out here,

Ashley Kehr:
It’ll be recording a podcast until we be like, okay, we got five minutes. I’m going to run a Starbucks. I’m like, okay, if you give me 45 minutes, I can do this.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, I’ll run to the gas station around the corner and get my coffee over here.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah, I’m spoiled down here in SoCal. But Garrett, I want to talk a little bit about evaluating the deal because we get the rule right, 60 30, 10, which is super important just from a practical standpoint for the guest, but how do you as the investor evaluate the potential of AGL site? I think when we think about traditional long-term rentals, it’s a much more straightforward process to predict what the income will be because you just look for other properties of the similar size and functionality of yours and see what they’re renting for. But if I want to go outside of Austin and build a Glamp site filled with Yurts and domes, I may not have as many other yurts and domes to compare to. So what is the process for effectively analyzing glamp sites?

Garrett Brown:
So when I first analyzed my first site, that was something I kind of ran into because I’m near Houston, Texas is where I built it, but there wasn’t many unique structures in the area when I started looking around, I think I saw one yurt that happened to be maybe 20 minutes away from where I was, which we will get into the permitting issues, which I didn’t run into much because I planned ahead, but I was starting to see like, okay, there’s not many unique builds and that could be a sign of, maybe it’s not the right area to go into, but I took a chance with that. I knew it was so close and I could follow the 60 30 10 rule. Nowadays though, I’d say there’s a lot more commonplace for different glamping structures and my friend Ben Wolf who created Stay On Narrow, which is one of the coolest destination, he’s not really glamping.
He’s even more high end than that than I would say like tree houses and things. But one of his phrases that he uses a lot every time we talk is he looks for Signal and not saturation. And so how he even found one of his popular sites that he knew was going to be profitable for him was he was looking in the area. You can use something like Price Labs has market dashboards that you can go into and see what’s performing in the area and see what comps you have, but you could even just go onto Airbnb, simple as that, or even go to Google and type glamping or campgrounds, tiny homes, things like that in this area. And as you’re looking at ’em, use something like the market dashboards from Price Labs and see what these structures are kind of making, see what the reviews are saying.
Do they have high-end amenities? Do they have great photos and all these things like that. If you’re looking in an area and you see a few tiny homes or smaller cottages or cabins that are performing pretty well based on the market research from Price Labs in your own, just diving into Airbnb, that’s probably a pretty good sign that there at least is the desire for people to rent this type of accommodation. Then if I go into it and break it down even further, even to this day sometimes it’s going to be hard to know it exactly what you would make on a structure if there’s not other similar ones there. If you have a couple glamping sites that are already established, you can get a pretty good feel for where you’re going to fall in line with revenue wise. But with my first geodome, I was going to be the only unique stay in the area.
Everybody’s average daily rate was around one 50 or 200 for just smaller cottages, and I decided that I was going to add the amenities to beat them out, and I started lower with my price points. We were about under, I think we were around two 50 nightly rate, and we kind of just kept gradually raising that up and adding more cabins to keep increasing that lever. The main thing that really helped me decide though was I was using spreadsheets and typing in different numbers and researching other people’s head calculators. I’m pretty sure I even used Tony’s calculator at some point to decide on different, what are these short-term rentals making? How is this going to compare? And so I took a lot of that data and made my own spreadsheet, and I actually will put it out to the public soon with my glamping investor guide of you can analyze these different glamping structures by simply seeing what else is available in the area, looking at their nightly rate, learning in their occupancy on something like Price Labs, and then entering all your information that you see, and it will help you automatically calculate what your cash on cash return will be if you want to sell it in five years, what that profit could be.
If you don’t have a ton of data out there, there’s no real way to know, not a ton of data. If you don’t have a ton of structures like yours in an area you’re going to, it will be a little harder to estimate what you’ll make. But if you’re able to fall into that 60, 30 10 rule and understand that if you build the experience with the right marketing behind it, which I personally think is one of my strong suits and why we’ve been able to really make it go forward, then you’re going to be able to beat those traditional short-term rental cottages and cabins because you’re building an experience and people thrive and will pay much higher than you even expect for these experiences that you could provide. People crave this type of stay now, and I build it for virality. I build it for Instagram, and that’s what people love. They love the social currency of staying somewhere cool and being able to get away from these city nights, and you’ll be a little surprised that you can almost double the rates of some of these just basic cabins that are out there if you provide the right couple of amenities and the right experience for the guests that are thinking about it.

Tony Robinson:
Greg, I want to give you some kudos because I think it takes guts to go into a market where the dataset is limited and you’ve got to not take a leap of faith. I think that’s underselling the work that goes into it, but it is a little bit of like, Hey, we’re going to make some assumptions around what we think is possible here and being able to kind of take that swing. But I think it goes back to the point you made at the beginning of the podcast where it’s like, even if I just were to turn this single family home into a long-term rental, we’ll probably still be okay. And I think having that as your fallback and having a backup plan is what gives you some confidence to move forward. I know so far we’ve talked about all the parts of glamping and all the good things that come along with it, but I know that it’s not always sunshine and rainbow. So permits, septic inspections, guest expectations, and just all of those rookie mistakes that can kill your dream site before it’s even built. So I want to get to that right after A quick word from today’s show sponsors.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay, welcome back from our short break, Garrett. What are some of the mistakes or maybe items that glamping investors totally underestimate getting started?

Garrett Brown:
So there’s a myriad of things that you need to pay attention to. I think I talked to glamping beginners and people that already have sites all over the country and the world all the time, and I think the biggest holdup for a lot of people is the permitting side. I was lucky enough, well, I don’t know if luck’s the right word, I did my due diligence, but I’m in an area that I didn’t have a ton of very high pressure permitting processes to go through, but it’s because I did my research upfront with this. So I says I’m looking into the sites, I’m looking in trying to figure out, I’m trying to bring this geodome structure to rural Texas where most of these people, they probably have one person in the permitting department and you call ’em up and Hey, I want to build a geodome, and they’re like a geo what they think you’re trying to build something just like a spaceship or something.
And so one real big piece of advice I will give is if you are going to go the geodome route or the yurt route or anything like that, I highly recommend that you try to find a company that will be able to give you architectural stamped plans. Pacific Domes is one of the ones that it’s included with the cost or I think it might’ve been a little more like another 1500 bucks or $2,000, but those plans made it much easier with my county to get it permitted. And as I was looking into different counties, there’s three or four counties that were in the general area of that lake I was looking in. I would call each permit department and I would say, Hey, and you always want to be honest. You don’t want to lie and tell ’em you’re doing something else. I would call ’em and say, or email, Hey, this is what I want to do.
I want to build a geodome or a glamping site. Is that something we could do? What are your thoughts? Three out of the four we’re just like, no, I don’t know about that. No, I don’t think we could ever do that. One of them goes, we’ve never done that, but we’d be open to hearing it. So I was like, okay, that’s a good sign. And then also the biggest key piece was I was talking to contractors at the time in all of these areas and I would just ask them, most of them work in multiple counties. I would go, Hey, which county has the easiest permitting process? And every single one of ’em was like, Hey, go to county A, county B, good luck. You’re never going to have that happen. County A is one to go to because they’re not going to care as much. They just want hope. They’re not watching this.
They just want their permitting money. And so that’s how I ended up in the place that I was. And the other big piece of it is when you’re newer rely on well, contractors with a great reputation, I was on Facebook groups, all of them have local Facebook groups in these areas and I was asking like, Hey, anybody know good contractors? Anybody know good contractors? And I was getting some recommendations, but the names that kept popping up multiple times, those are the ones that I would call to because then I ended up finding out that small town areas, this is how it is pretty much all over the board. One of the contractors had, I think his aunt worked in the permitting department there, and it was like he was like, oh yeah, that’s no problem to get that permit done over there. We can do that for sure.
And it’s kind of what you find out in these small towns is that usually you just need to pick up the phone and call around and tell people what you’re thinking about doing. The better contractors you use, the better electrical electricians and all that. They most likely have reputations with the county to where if they find out you’re working with this contractor, they’re not going to care as much. They’re going to be like, okay, he’s obviously working with somebody we know that builds all the time out here. So they were very relaxed for a lack of better words with my structures. But the other thing is septic is going to be huge too. Don’t underestimate your septic. That is by far the biggest pushback you’ll get in your permitting. The process is how you’re doing your septic design. And so finding a reputable septic company upfront and working with them, they should have something that’s called a septic designer or a septic system drawer artist, I don’t know, whatever they want to coin it sometimes this person is going to be vital in you getting your permitting for your systems there.
If you want to do the off-grid toilets and things, that’s a whole nother, I don’t recommend it for good luck to your cleaners for dealing with that. And you’re also not, you’re not going to get those prices that you’re thinking you’re going to definitely have to dramatically cut your estimated revenue if you’re using that type of system. But go with a septic designer that knows the area and think about your vision too upfront. One mistake I made was I knew I wanted six or seven cabins in the end. Well, I don’t know if it’s a mistake, I want to correct myself because sometimes just the sheer amount of money you have could stop this. But I wish I would’ve designed one massive septic system to feed every single cabin. It would’ve been much cheaper in the long run, but I did a septic system for just my first two cabins, which saved me money instead of doing one septic system per, that’s way more expensive.
I don’t recommend that, but me doing the two cabins, I paid about $10,000 for my septic system. If I would’ve been able to have the money upfront, which I didn’t at the time, full transparency, if I could have gotten all seven cabins and one big septic system for about 25 to 30,000, I would’ve saved a lot of headache and money going forward with my county because that was the one thing they were a little worried about. They were like, Hey, we don’t want you to have a ton of small septic systems all around your property and things like that.

Ashley Kehr:
And more to maintain, more to pump, yeah,

Garrett Brown:
More contract maintenance contracts I have to have. But again, I didn’t have the funds to do that, build all this and spend 30,000 on a commercial septic system. But that is the one thing that I would get ahead of is your septic design, because almost every single county that’s going to be one of their biggest worries. Well, actually less than the structure, it’s actually the septic involved.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, what about the water source? There was a time where I had a dream of owning a campground and I learned a lot about water. Daryl even went and got his water certification in case we did buy a campground. And so now he’s certified to test water, I guess. I don’t know. But one of the properties we looked at was had a wellhouse and it had to be tested because there was so many units on the property as far as campground hookups and things like that on it. So what about that for glamping, the water source? I mean, what is the best option to use there?

Garrett Brown:
Very similar to with that. So with our water, well, and I want to throw this out there too, people are hearing these big numbers for electricity and septic, but I will say those add a ton of value to your land, and if you want to exit later on and sell everything, that kind of infrastructure is how you’re going to make a lot of your money back. So if you’re going to spend money on utilities, don’t be upset about it because that is actually putting in real value to the land that you’re building. So with the water well system, one great thing about having a house on the property, and again, every county’s going to be different, so work with somebody in your area that and talk to your county. I was able to tap in for my first cabin into the water well system that I had for the house because it was only a one bedroom.
After that though, when we wanted to, we knew we were planning on expanding and adding more. I had to add another water well system to the back of the land that could feed more cabins. And so now I’m able to, even with the new cabins that we’re working on right now, I’m able to tap into the water well system there for each, and I’ve certified it with the company that did the water well. Don’t get Joe hanging out at the Dollar General to come and try to put in a water well for you with one of the hand cranks or something. Use a reputable company because it’s a big deal too. You’re going to need your water tested and maintained. And so you want a reputable company that has been there for a while, get a few different quotes from different companies. And then that Water Well Source though is going to be able to supply quite a few cabins.
It’s kind of amazing how, and every area of the country is different too. Again, I’m in east or east Texas of sorts, so maybe a little different for me than somebody in Montana or something. But making sure that you have a well-built water well system that can supply. And again, this is why you need to know what your vision is going forward. You just want to make sure that you’re going to be able to have the capacity for all the other units. I spent about $12,000 on my water Well and about a thousand dollars to build a wellhouse around it, but that water well system added a ton of value to my land. Now I have water on both sides of my 11 acres, and I also have been able to feed almost every single other cabin that I have with this water well system. But it was all by design and knowing what my vision was for the future. So it’s something I wouldn’t take lightly in your planning

Ashley Kehr:
And talking about a well and a septic, you don’t have to pay fees on it. You do public utility, so that is one of benefit. You have a huge upfront cost, but over time, I have a friend who’s buying a house right now and the septic is 37 years old, so she hasn’t gotten the test herself back yet, but I’m like, I’m pretty sure there’s a chance that’s going to have to be replaced. But the fact that some of these systems can last a really, really long time, obviously it was still working. The house didn’t back up with

Garrett Brown:
A lot of those are built. They do a different type of septic system now it’s called an aerobic system. It’s a little newer and works a little better, but even though some of those older septic systems, if they were built well and they were permitted, they probably were made of concrete or something like that, and they hold up for quite a while. But that’s why you get any place you’re buying and it has a septic, you need a septic inspection.

Ashley Kehr:
And in New York, the county requires that you have to can’t transfer title without doing it. And the banks require for you to get, especially if you’re getting a mortgage, the bank will require you to do

Garrett Brown:
It. My water bill and sewer bill each month is $0 now. Well, besides the maintenance and things like that, but even a long-term rental I bought not long ago near Houston, Texas, the water and sewer bill is almost $150 a month now and has been fluctuating. And it’s just small things like that that just gradually eat up into your profit. And so it’s great having a $0 water bill each month.

Ashley Kehr:
Feel free, take those long shower.

Garrett Brown:
Oh, they do. Trust me, the guests do. I see our electricity bill. That’s the one thing that

Ashley Kehr:
Actually you have to get solar panels.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah. Yeah, that might be the next step because electricity, I definitely electricity and wifi, you’re not getting away from paying those. For sure.

Tony Robinson:
Garrett, how many units that are on that property now?

Garrett Brown:
We have five units currently, and we are in the process. We just got our permit for our next two, and after that we’re probably going to shut off how many more we build. My goal was always six to seven, and so we’re very close to that.

Tony Robinson:
So if we go back to that first, the first one you built out, I just want to kind of compile all of the costs aside from the costs that you spend to acquire the single family home, but the septic, the other utilities, the actual build costs, just like ballpark, what did you actually have to spend out of pocket to get that first unit up and running?

Garrett Brown:
So this is definitely a learning lesson for me, and I tell people going forward that I love my geodome. I’d probably never build another one. I learned so much about it, and I don’t, I hope Pacific Domes doesn’t hate me for this, but I wouldn’t recommend people building this because I spent about $125,000 between all the utilities, all the roadwork, the structure. I mean, we spent like $10,000 on the bathroom inside. It’s not just a cookie cutter place. We have a hot tub, we have a deck, it’s overlooking a pond. All of that. We spent about $125,000. I love my geodome at cash flows like crazy. I think we made the two and a half years we’ve been running it, we’ve made 90 5K gross each year with it. And I wish I would’ve spent that money on a more traditional A-frame maybe or something.
My recommendation for anybody thinking about this, especially if you’re going to spend that kind of cash and you’re not going like the Safari tent route for a little cheaper, which you can do and everybody has their place, I would try to build something a little more stick built, but very unique. The best you can work with an architect or something, but then really spend the money on the outside that you’re building as well. Some of my people, I have a friend in London who has a very popular site called Secret Garden Glamping, and he spends about 40 or $50,000 per unit, but they spend about that same amount on the outside, and they are booked out for two years in advance because they make the outside so cool. And he said the same thing. People love the inside. You need a place with ac, you need a place with running hot water, nice bathrooms, but most people that come out there are actually trying to hang out outside.
They’re only sleeping or maybe cooking some meals here and there inside. So any advice I would have for people going forward, you’re going to have to spend the money on the utilities. And with our second cabin, it was a lot cheaper because I had the septic in place already. I had the water well in place already. I had roadwork done. It became much easier. But that first cabin is usually the one with the biggest lift. So I would look into something maybe with a little more equity value, but I do love my geodome and it has performed well, and it is held up very well too. So it’s just something to think about for people that might be considering these types of stays.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Garrett, thank you so much for joining us today, and congratulations on your new book. Where can People find The Glamping Investor?

Garrett Brown:
Yep. So it is coming out July 15th. Depending on when you’re listening to this, it may already be out or it may be pre-order available. You can go to biggerpockets.com/glamp guide and you’ll be able to order it there. It’s every bit of knowledge that I’ve gained in these past five or six years put into one amazing resource. And for the cost of a Netflix subscription, basically, you don’t need to spend $6,000 at a Mastermind to learn what I’ve learned over this. I put every single thing into this book, and I’m sure it’s going to be a valuable resource for anybody that is curious about this type of investing.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Garrett, I can’t wait to read it. I recently did a YouTube video on Bigger Stays YouTube with Garrett, and I had to stop during the middle of it because I felt like I was at a conference. I just paid a thousand dollars, and someone just said that one thing that was like, yes, that made that worth it. So definitely check out the book, the Glamping and Foster, thank you so much for joining us today. This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

 

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Can’t make the numbers work in your local market? No worries—long-distance real estate investing is the natural next step. We’ve done it before, many times, and made the beginner mistakes, so you don’t have to. Now, we’re gearing up to do it again. Dave and Henry are heading out on the Cash Flow Road Show,” touring top Midwest markets, and maybe even making offers along the way.

These trips are crucial for finding deals and getting to know an area. We’re sharing the exact blueprint to follow before you make a long-distance investment. Who should you meet? How do you know a neighborhood is safe? What are the exact questions you should ask an agent?

We’re providing you with the complete list so your next long-distance or out-of-state investment is a success. Seriously, we’re giving you an actual list of things expert investors do before buying in any area. Don’t just show up and start touring houses—make your trip out to a new market worth the effort. Follow these exact steps before long-distance investing!

Dave Meyer:
We tell you every week on this show that cashflow is possible in 2025, and now we’re going to prove it. I’m here with Henry Washington and we’re going to give you our blueprint for long distance investing in affordable cashflowing markets so you can copy exactly what the experts do before buying away from home. So if you’re even considering buying outside of your area, this is what to do before you bid. Hey everyone, it’s Dave. I’m the head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets, and I’m joined today by my friend Henry Washington. Henry, thanks for being here.

Henry Washington:
Hey, what’s up bud? Glad to be here.

Dave Meyer:
I think it’s safe to say you are not officially a long distance investor yet, right?

Henry Washington:
Yet. I mean, kind of. Sort of, but not really. I have a mobile home park that I would truly call out of state. I have some properties in other states, but those I don’t consider true out-of-state investments. I can be there in 45 minutes to an hour.

Dave Meyer:
You haven’t done it yet, but we’ve been talking about it a lot, so I know you’re interested in it, right? Yeah, you’re interested in it enough to the point where everyone should know this. Henry and I are actually going to be going and driving around the Midwest looking for cash flowing deals, cash flowing markets on the first ever cashflow roadshow. I’m super excited about it. Henry, what are you looking forward to?

Henry Washington:
Well, first of all, I’m a deal junkie. I just like looking at deals, whether they’re mine or somebody else’s, it doesn’t matter. And learning about real estate in general, but it’s different when you’re analyzing deals online than when you’re actually in a market and touching and feeling the market and seeing the people who live there and seeing where they work and just kind of how people operate within that market because it helps you understand better whether a deal truly is a good deal, like looking at a deal on paper and then going and seeing that deal in person can sometimes be completely different. And so I’m just most excited about learning about these markets firsthand with my own eyes and being within the communities.

Dave Meyer:
Absolutely. So in this episode, what we’re doing here today is we are going to talk to you about first and foremost, why we chose the Midwest to go on this little road trip that we’re going on and the three markets that we’re going to be visiting. We’re going to talk about logistically, step-by-step, how we’re planning for the trip, the number one priorities that you should be thinking about. You want to make these things efficient as a possible. So we’re going to talk about that and we’re going to just share with you a couple tips about long distance investing along the way. But just before we get into that, I just want to invite everyone, if you happen to live in the Great Lakes region to our free events that we’re going to have as part of the Cashflow Roadshow Chicago, it’s on July 15th, it’s at a brewery.
We will put the link in the bio, but you can just go to biggerpockets.com/roadshow and check that out. And then the next night on July 16th, we’re having one in Indianapolis. So definitely come check that out. They are free events. We’re going to have lots of giveaways. Surprise, it’s going to be fun, but you do have to RSVP, so make sure to RSVP if you want to come. We hope to see you there. And with that, let’s get into the episode. Alright, so let’s talk about this trip. We are flying into Wisconsin. We’re starting in the Milwaukee region, then we’re going to Chicago, then we’re going to to Indianapolis. I’m like the data guy coming out with the list. You pick this, you were like, I want to go to the, what do you call it, the Milwaukee Chicago corridor?

Henry Washington:
Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Meyer:
Why?

Henry Washington:
I think it’s kind of a unique scenario because you have two major city hubs and then in between those major city hubs it’s only about a two hour drive, and then there’s smaller cities in between these two major cities and these two major cities are fairly affordable for a major city market in the first place.
And then on top of that, you have great rents because there’s great jobs in these two major cities and you’ve got these suburbs in between these two major cities where a lot of people are living and commuting to these two major cities. And the larger corporations have started to realize this and have started to come in and build offices to take advantage of some of these workers. And the cities have spent money on infrastructure to help people get in and out of these major cities. And so there’s just a lot of economics and infrastructure that make for what could potentially be a good real estate market. On top of that, you have affordability in terms of home pricing and great rents to go with it. And so in my head, it just seems like this could be a perfect storm for a real estate investor might want to spend their money.

Dave Meyer:
Are you actually interested in buying here? I know,

Henry Washington:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Look, man, I told you I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. This perfect storm of data points for real estate investors and a perfect storm in the Great Lakes area creates what? Lake effect cashflow, baby. I love it. You’re trying to give me some of

Dave Meyer:
That. Okay, so that’s one area. I think I’ve said this before. I think Chicago is this slept on investor city. I think people have this vision of what Chicago is. Are there pockets that have no cashflow? Sure. Are there pockets that might have high crime? Sure, but it’s an enormous city and there are really interesting parts of it and it’s so affordable. Median home price in Chicago is $350,000.

Henry Washington:
That’s insane.

Dave Meyer:
Find me another major city with an economy like Chicago that has price points like that.

Henry Washington:
I mean the only other major city I can think of that has an economy like Chicago is New York and it ain’t a median home price of $350,000 there. I can tell you that.

Dave Meyer:
No, it’s like triple that, right? Yeah, it’s crazy. And so yeah, I think that there’s a lot to go there. And then lastly on our trip, Indianapolis, I mean this just has some of the strongest metrics of any city right now. It’s affordable. The home prices are still like 2, 2 50, but it has huge population growth. Jobs are moving there, there’s favorable laws, there’s a lot to like there. And I generally just like the Midwest, I’m always hawking the Midwest on this show because I just think affordability is so key to the housing market right now in an era of low interest rates, it’s different, but in an era of higher interest rates, I think, and you see this in the data, the areas where there’s still a lot of activity going on are the affordable markets and if we stay on this path, the trajectory that we’re on right now, it seems like affordability is going to continue to be a key driver of performance for investors. And so that’s just why I like the Great Lakes in particular, so much on top of the

Henry Washington:
Cashflow. Yeah, no, I agree wholeheartedly.

Dave Meyer:
So Henry, talk to me a little bit about what are you looking for, what are your concerns? What are you hoping to learn?

Henry Washington:
First thing I’m looking for is a team in that area because real estate investing is a team sport. Even here in my own backyard, I have several people that either directly work on my team or indirectly work with me who frankly without them I would be in a world of hurt. And so getting on the ground and starting to meet people who could potentially work with me on my team is huge for me because that team is even going to be more valuable than my current in-market team because I’m not there and I don’t care what anybody says. It is hard to build professional relationships with people unless you’re on the ground with them, like Zoom meetings on the go so far. But when you can get on the ground and meet people and see their work, see how they work in person I think is huge. And so mostly real estate agents and property managers are going to be the two big keys. Next in line for me is contractors, but those two things are really important for me to get out there, see, meet, talk to, and see how they work. People can tell you how they can work all day and you can even call and get references, but when you go and you see how somebody operates their business, it speaks volumes.

Dave Meyer:
Absolutely. What I usually do is try and look for, I’d say at least two, probably three agents going and interviewing them. For me, that’s probably the number one thing. I think that is probably the most important thing you could do. Or do you hold property manager just as

Henry Washington:
High? Well, they’re both important, but for me, the agent comes first because the agent’s really going to start to help feed you these potential deals, whether they’re on the market or off the market. They’re your kind of first gateway and they can introduce you to those property managers who are air quotes, the good ones, because if they’re truly good real estate agents, investor friendly agents, they know exactly who the good property managers are and who are not. So I’d rather take warm intros to property managers from a seasoned real estate investor than to just start calling property managers cold.

Dave Meyer:
I think the reason the agent’s so important is yes, feed me deals, run a transaction, but their is extremely important, extremely important. You want to find an agent who is not going to just execute on your deals but can connect you to a property manager. I’m always going out and meeting new property managers to help my clients. I’m meeting with contractors because I service a lot of out-of-state investors. These are the kinds of things that really

Henry Washington:
Matter. Absolutely,

Dave Meyer:
You can absolutely find a property manager who can be your anchor in the community and you can use their network. I’ve just personally found that agents usually are better for that and take that part of their job very seriously. If you’re going to be working with investors,

Henry Washington:
Any good agent will have a database of lenders that they have relationships with. They’re going to have property managers, they’re going to have contractors, subcontractors, and I said it earlier, warm intros are so much better than reaching out cold. If you reach out to somebody via a warm intro to a trusted professional, people typically answer the phone, they typically answer their messages, they typically prioritize you, and so it really does speed up the process for you.

Dave Meyer:
Alright, well let’s get into the actual questions and things that you should be doing when you interview both an agent, property manager, anyone else you meet along the way. We do have to take a quick break though. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast here with Henry Washington talking about our blueprint for out-of-state investing and specifically today we’re really talking about how to do the final step of out-of-state investing, which is going to a market, building a team, finding the specific neighborhoods that you want to go invest in that is going to give you the confidence if you want to pursue this kind of strategy to go out and actually do it. We’re talking about specific questions to ask, so we’ve talked about an agent being the most important. So Henry, what are some things that you think our audience if they’re going to do this as well should be asking agents when they’re considering working with them in a long distance market?

Henry Washington:
So for me, communication is top of my list because if you don’t have good communication then details get missed, deals get lost, things don’t get signed at appropriate times, money can be lost and so you want to make sure first and foremost that you understand how you like to communicate and how you like to be communicated with. And then you want to make sure that your agent is willing to communicate with you in the way that you need to be communicated with because if that’s a miss on Jump Street, it doesn’t matter how good they are with everything else. If you guys aren’t going to be able to communicate in a way that’s beneficial for you both, then you shouldn’t work with that person.

Dave Meyer:
Dude, I’m having this problem. I have an agent I really like in a market I’m considering investing in and he just doesn’t respond to emails very quickly and I get that some people text but I’m in front of a computer all day, I need it in a couple days. It can’t be a week later. And it’s like he might be great on text or phone and that’s fine, but as a long distance investor, I can’t be on the phone all the time, so I need it to be asynchronous. So email,

Henry Washington:
That is a perfect example. If you were one of my students, I would tell you first that you need to have a heart to heart conversation with them and let them know truly that this is important to you and how you need to be communicated with and if it doesn’t work,

Dave Meyer:
That’s right.

Henry Washington:
And if it doesn’t work from that point, then you find another one. Even if they’re the best agent in that market, if you guys can’t communicate, then you are going to be upset a lot. Things are going to get missed and it’s going to end up costing you time or money.

Dave Meyer:
All right, communication. That’s a really good one. First question I always ask to every agent is like, what’s the move? I leave it very open on purpose. I don’t say my buy box is a duplex or 450,000 because I’m not testing at that point their ability to find me the deal I want. I want to see how well they understand the market. Big picture, if you were me and you had unlimited time and money, what would you invest in this market? Because different in every market, right? Some it’s duplex, some it’s single family, some it’s commercial, some it’s this price point. Show me that you know exactly the best possible investments in your city. And so I recommend people do that. It’s just keep it super vague and see if they can convince you of something and you may still eventually tell them, Hey, I have this buy box, this is what I want to buy. That’s fine, but at this point in the interview it’s got to be super high level and you’re testing them on their market knowledge.

Henry Washington:
Absolutely. When you ask somebody that question, if they’re truly going to give you a good answer, it’s going to involve them understanding who the customers are in that market, who the tenants are, why they want to rent a certain thing or why they want to buy a certain thing where they want to rent or where they want to buy it. That answer should include some information about market data, how long things are taking to sell, what areas of the town things are going fast or going slow in. It shows you that they truly understand multiple facets of their market to be able to come up with a strategy that would make sense for their market. And so you’re right, even if that strategy isn’t something you want to do, knowing that they know their market well enough to put together a strategy that might make sense gives you a ton of comfort.

Dave Meyer:
That’s exactly right. I was at a meetup the other day in Seattle and I don’t really know if and what my strategy in this market will be, but I was just talking to an agent and she was like, yeah, if you’re going to invest here, my recommendation is to buy between 900001.125 million in these five neighborhoods because what’s selling really quickly right now is in that 1.5 to 1.7 million band and after renovation costs, this is what’s going to move for you quickly. I was like, yeah,

Henry Washington:
This

Dave Meyer:
Person rocks. This person knows exactly how to make money in this market and just gave me a prescription for what would work if I were to choose to do that. And that’s the kind of level of specificity and detail that I really think you need. Okay. Any other interview questions you have for agents? I have one more, but if you have any more, go for it.

Henry Washington:
I just want to make sure that these people are actual investors or mostly work with investors because that will help me solidify if it’s somebody that I should be working with. Because if you are an investor, there’s so many conversations that we don’t have to have because you already understand where I’m coming from. I don’t want to have to educate you on investing while we’re working together. So I don’t want to have to waste a lot of time telling you why something’s not a great investment, telling you why it’s not a great deal, or telling you why I will or will not make a decision that you want me to make about a property because you don’t understand it from an investing standpoint. Trust me, you’re going to waste a lot of time with people who don’t have investing experience. I don’t want you to question me every time I need to make an offer at 50 or $70,000 less than what’s listed.

Dave Meyer:
And that actually leads me to the one I was going to say, which is show me success stories of your

Henry Washington:
Clients

Dave Meyer:
In the market and to your point, show me your portfolio. Where are you buying? What are you doing right now and why? And walk me through the numbers and literally drive me there and show me this market that to me, you learn so much. If they tell you and you’re like, Hey, this person really thought through where to buy, what to buy it for, how to negotiate this deal that is going to teach you a lot. I just find sometimes you drive around a city with these people and they’re like, oh, I sold that house or I bought this house or my client bought that house. And you’re like, great, this person knows every block. That’s the kind of person you just get it driving around. It’s different than them saying, I had 40 transactions last year. Or it’s like, oh, actually that’s my friend. He’s renovating that

Henry Washington:
House.

Dave Meyer:
This will happen if you go with a good agent. This kind of stuff will happen and it teaches you so much.

Henry Washington:
I’ve asked agents before what their LLC name is and then gone on the county records and looked up to see how many properties they owned. In most states you can literally pull up their LLC and it’ll show you every property that the LLC owns and then you can ask specific questions, especially if they own properties in neighborhoods you’re interested in.

Dave Meyer:
All right, so that’s agent. That was a lot of good advice there. What about property managers?

Henry Washington:
Property managers are huge and I’m actually willing to give everybody a little gift for listening to this show. So if you are listening and you are going to be interviewing property managers, I actually have a list of questions, 25 questions you should ask a potential property manager and that way you can just go down the list and it even has the answers you’re looking for and why on them. So super helpful for me. Happy to share that with everybody.

Dave Meyer:
What are some of the 25 that you think are better in person, like the ones that you would prioritize when you’re actually face-to-face with someone?

Henry Washington:
One of the things I think is important is finding out how frequently they actually go inside of a property and having them verify that with you. And so my property manager is inside of the units quarterly for just random checkups on maintenance items, but it allows them to get into the units four times a year and then they send me a report of what the units look like if they were good, not good and what was happening. If they don’t have a clear answer for you about how frequently they’re going into a unit, if they’re just like, oh, I mean we rent it out and then we will check on it. If something comes up here or there that’s not okay for me, you should have a dialed in process where when you’re going in units and why, that’s just something you should look for in general.
If they’re answering your questions vaguely at all, it tells me that they don’t have a process around this. It’s not something that’s important to them or that they do. And so you need to understand, you need to know if that’s something that you’re okay with. The other thing I like to ask is how do they get paid and not just on the percentage of the rents that they’re keeping as your property management fee, but a lot of property managers are collecting fees in other ways. In other words, if they’re getting paid for lease up every time and they’re not getting paid for tenants who chose to stay, then they’re incentivized for you to have turnover. And I don’t want to have additional turnover if I have a good tenant because you want to make an extra a hundred to 300 bucks because you put a new tenant in place for sure. So you want to make sure that your property managers are incentivized for things that are good for you as the landlord.

Dave Meyer:
Alright, very good advice here and I’ll put that list of 25 property manager questions up on our show notes. The other thing I just recommend while you’re in person is ask or find out where your property manager’s properties are and go visit them because you can learn so much just from the exterior. You don’t even need to be able to go inside. Go look at how nice the property is on the exterior. If the grass is overrun, if things are falling off the walls, it is a red flag for me. I think it’s super important to find a property manager who shares your philosophy about tenant relationships. I think this is a big issue sometimes there are owners who don’t want to spend money. The door hinge is squeaky, they don’t want to do it. I personally am the opposite of that. It’s like, oh, the tenant doesn’t like the door, fix the hinges.
Go do it. It’s 50 bucks, go do it. To me of the course of your investing career, one, having great tenants is part of the job. You need to find great tenants. To me, really important. And so always want to find a property manager who is proactive. I don’t want to wait until I hear about it from the tenants or something else that’s going on. Whatever the dishwasher is not working properly, I want the property manager to be going out and soliciting that information from the tenants to make sure that they’re always happy and I’ve told all of my property managers 200 bucks or less, just go fix it. I just want you to go fix it and I don’t even want to hear about it, put it on the

Henry Washington:
Bill,

Dave Meyer:
That kind of thing. Whereas I’ve talked to my property manager and he said to me, thank you for saying that because sometimes I get beat up
For spending 50 bucks. And so you need to be super clear with the property manager what you want your relationship to be like with the property manager and between the property manager and the tenants and finding someone that shares that philosophy is you is going to be super important. It’s going to really help have a better relationship. Alright, so those are some things to think about, questions to ask things to do while you’re on a trip to look for long distance investing markets, but then let’s talk about neighborhoods. I think this is the other major thing that you need to do on these trips. It’s like build the team. Then you got to figure out what areas are aligned with your strategy. We got to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. Henry and I are talking about how we’re planning our cashflow roadshow and giving advice on how if you’re thinking about investing long distance and things you absolutely have to do on these trips, we talked about building your team. Let’s talk about neighborhoods. So Henry, what are you going to look for when we get out there and what do you think people should be keeping an eye out when they do these trips?

Henry Washington:
So first and foremost, you shouldn’t be showing up to a market cold without knowing what neighborhoods you want to go visit. Obviously if you’ve done enough research, you should understand, hey, these are some neighborhoods that I think I would like to invest in based on the data and you want to make sure you highlight those.
I would also ask each agent that I’m going to meet with about each of those neighborhoods and ask them to give me some other neighborhoods that I might not have on the list that they think are good and why. And then a lot of the times too, guys, you’re going to be doing this research and especially in some of these markets like you hear about Chicago and it’s so dangerous here and all these places you may find neighborhoods where the numbers look fantastic, but you are worried about the crime or you’re worried about the perception of the neighborhood. If you think the numbers are good in a neighborhood, go there, go see it for yourself because nine times out of 10 that neighborhood’s not as bad as you think. It’s don’t get me wrong, there are bad neighborhoods in every big city in the country, but if the market dynamics seem good and you’re just hearing rumors about crime, like rumors and facts and statistics are different things, go get a feel for the neighborhood and the people and what you see happening or not happening in that neighborhood. And I’d urge you go in the evening, go see what it’s like at night

Dave Meyer:
For

Henry Washington:
Sure when it’s dark. If you feel unsafe at night in the dark, your tenants may too, and that may be different, but I think people put a lot of weight on crime in markets when it’s not as bad nearly as people think.

Dave Meyer:
I think you made a very good point. You shouldn’t go in cold, especially if you’re going to a big city like Chicago. You can’t go visit all that in five days. So it’s like how do you pick four or five neighborhoods? And I think for me, I would probably look at cashflow potential. I would look at home prices and historic home price growth and I would look at infrastructure and walkability. I think those things are hugely important, especially in city investing. Where is public transportation? How walkable, where are the grocery stores people pay to live near that stuff they do. That’s just how it works. And so finding neighborhoods that have that stuff is super important and then I just want to go check it out and see if it’s cool and if the vibe matches the

Henry Washington:
Numbers. You also want to pay attention to your strategy is your strategy to find current neighborhoods that are desirable already. People want to live there and you want to get your piece of real estate in that market and be comfortable or is your strategy to get in the path of progress so that you get some cashflow and some appreciation. If your strategy is, Hey, I want to get into the path of progress and get there early, some of the things you should research before going to see some of these neighborhoods are going on the city council’s website and seeing where new development is happening, where they’re approving plans for commercial properties. That’s all stuff you can typically find out on the city council’s website or just doing a Google search about infrastructure that’s coming. You can go and see if they’re opening Lowe’s, home Depot, Menards, any of those big box stores on the outskirts of town anywhere because if they’re opening one of those stores, it typically means that there’s building that’s happening or going to be happening and people need access to supplies in those areas. Are there sports teams coming? Can you do that kind of a research? What major plans does that city have? Where are those things going? And then go and see those neighborhoods and maybe that’s someplace you can buy before some of this stuff happens. So companies do all this research at a higher level, then you’re going to be able to do it. And so a lot of the times you can leverage the company’s research. So if you know Chick-fil-A is going to be opening a store in that neighborhood, they’re doing it for a reason,
They don’t think they’re not going to have customers. So Chick-fil-A’s Targets, home Depots, Lowe’s, another hack is go and buy one share of stock of those companies so that you can get the company stock package briefings and they’ll email you those things. And in those things they tell you, you can see wherever they’re going to open stores.

Dave Meyer:
The last thing I’ll mention about going and looking at neighborhoods that I think is really overlooked is the housing stock. I don’t know why people never talk about this, but look at the quality of the homes, not just the one that you are interested in buying, but just look at the overall housing stock. When I used to go around in Denver, there was just these areas, you’ve been to Denver, there’s these beautiful old Victorian homes that were maybe in the path of progress. They hadn’t really been renovated, but they’re these incredible humps and you’re like, this has to turn around. Whereas opposed to, is it the super ugly 70 track homes everywhere? That’s going to limit the appreciation. You need to look at not just the property you’re looking at, but is the whole area poised to start growing.
So look at just the quality of the homes. But I think the other thing is I’ve not invested in markets that I like because they just don’t have a lot of duplexes or triplexes. It’s all single family homes and then I can’t find the types of deals I want in those neighborhoods and you can’t always see that. You might look on the MLS and see, oh, there’s not duplexes for sale, but you might actually go and see there’s tons of duplexes, you just need to be patient. Or the opposite, maybe there was two duplexes for sale in this neighborhood and then when you go there, those are the only two duplexes. And so I think that’s a really important part is make sure that you’re going to find the kinds of properties that you want to buy in that

Henry Washington:
Neighborhood. That’s a great point. That’s probably one of the best tips so far because we have great market dynamics where I live, and so people say all the time, oh, I’d love to invest there. I’d love to buy multifamily there. We don’t have a ton of it. Yeah, there’s plenty, there’s some, but not compared to where we’re going in the Midwest where there is abundance of it, we don’t have a lot of it. And so when it hits the market, it gets snapped up because compared to the total inventory, it is a much smaller percentage than a lot of other

Dave Meyer:
Markets. A lot of the southeast, newer markets, they don’t build. We haven’t built in this country a lot of new multifamily, so a lot of older markets, older, more established cities tend to have more of this inventory, which one is good for acquisitions but two keeps up renter demand. And cities like Chicago, people are used to living in

Henry Washington:
Multifamilies,

Dave Meyer:
Right? Tenants don’t bat an eye at living in multifamily or in apartments. It’s just how people live. If you’ve stuck a multifamily in the middle of a suburb, you’re probably not going to get the same level of demand. And so you don’t want to be the only duplex in all single families. You want it to be in a community where living in a duplex is normal and there’s going to be a lot of demand for those rentals. So that kind of thing, I find super hard to just look on a map and figure that out. It’s something you kind of have to go drive around and see.

Henry Washington:
Yeah, great point.

Dave Meyer:
All right, well we’ve talked a lot about this trip. Now I’m ready to get out there and go, but before we do any last thoughts or tips, Henry?

Henry Washington:
Other things I would think about just in general, if you are going to be seriously thinking or investing in an area, try to plan a trip when you can go to a city council meeting where you can go to a Chamber of Commerce meeting. These types of meetings, people in the room are people who a want to improve and better their community. They’re embedded within the community and they’re in jobs that are probably going to be beneficial to you. Bank presidents, vice presidents, lenders, they’re typically members of these Chamber of commerce and you going to these meetings gives you a chance to get warm intros via just being in the meeting to people who may be able to give you favorable lending to investing in those areas. They also may be able to introduce you to great real estate agent context in those areas, and it’s also may pave the way for things to be easier for you if you’re going to be doing value add renovations and you’re going to be needing permits and things.

Dave Meyer:
Well

Henry Washington:
Now you’ve got some personal introductions to people who can help remove some of the red tape for you. These meetings typically happen monthly or semi-monthly. They’re not very long and it’s just a great way for you to be to embed yourself in the community. So try to plan a trip when you can attend some of these meetings. Try to do it when there’s going to be local real estate investor meetups happening in the area. Luckily we get to leverage

Dave Meyer:
Like the ones we’re going to.

Henry Washington:
Yes, we get to leverage BiggerPockets, so we made our own meetups while we’re there, but try to go when you can attend local investor meetups because that’s another great way to meet the real estate agents that might help you, the contractors, all the different contacts. So be as efficient as you can with your time, not by just going and building your team, but by going and being able to attend some of these social meetups that are very, very important to you. Because again, take the opportunity to build relationships in person and then you can sustain those relationships over zoom meetings. But when people see you in person, they take you a lot more seriously than if you’re just a person on a screen.

Dave Meyer:
All right, great. Last piece of advice. I have one more, you made me think of one more. It’s a hot take and we’re violating this idea on this trip, but go places not during the best season. We’re going to the Midwest in the summer. I would recommend going in the spring or in the fall when see it not in all of its glory. I have gone to the Midwest in the dead of winter, driven around in snowstorms and still like to market. That to me is a test of whether you really like it or is it just a really nice day. I got duped on this. I went to college in Rochester, New York. I went to visit in May and I was like, this place

Henry Washington:
Rocks.

Dave Meyer:
It’s so great. And then you realize it’s just freezing cold nine months out of the

Henry Washington:
Year.

Dave Meyer:
Do the same thing for your markets. Go to Arizona in the summer and see what it’s like. And I think it’ll tell you a lot more than if you just go on the best possible day.

Henry Washington:
And for us warm weather, live in people who are going to invest or thinking about investing in cold weather places. Make sure you adjust your expenses for things you’re not thinking about like snow removal and icing driveways and stairs and things. Those costs typically fall on the landlords and you need to spend that

Dave Meyer:
Money. All right, well, I’m really looking forward to this trip. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. Hopefully anyone in the Chicago or Indianapolis can meet us on the trip. It’s a free meetup. Again, go to biggerpockets.com/roadshow, RS vfe there for free. Henry, I’m excited to see you in a couple of days, man.

Henry Washington:
I’m pumped, man. Let’s do this.

Dave Meyer:
All right, and thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you learn something about planning your own trip to see an out-of-state market. If you have any questions, you can always head up me or Henry, either on biggerpockets.com or on Instagram. We’ll see you all again soon for another episode of the BiggerPockets podcast in just a couple of days.

 

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The small black-and-white en suite bathroom in this 1934 Colonial just outside Boston had vintage charm, but it fell short of the sophisticated retreat the new homeowners envisioned. The single pedestal sink offered no storage or counter space, and the aging shower-tub combo didn’t meet the couple’s needs. The nearby walk-in closet in the bedroom also lacked functional storage.

Looking to create a more spacious and practical layout, the couple hired design-build pros Jason and Megan Hoffman. Jason suggested pushing a wall shared by the bathroom and closet into the bedroom to gain valuable square footage. The reimagined bath now features a warm wood double vanity, a roomy low-curb shower with a built-in bench and a linen cabinet for added storage. A thoughtful mix of white, black and wood finishes with clean-lined midcentury touches brings modern style to this refreshed and highly functional space.

Before Photo

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo

“After” photos by Lara Kimmerer

Bathroom at a Glance
Who lives here: A young couple
Location: Newton, Massachusetts
Size: 43 square feet (4 square meters)
Designers-builders: Jason and Megan Hoffman of J.P. Hoffman Design Build

Before: The 40-square-foot bathroom had charm thanks to its pedestal sink and classic black-and-white tile, but it lacked the storage and counter space the young couple needed in their primary suite. The aging shower-tub combo added to the challenges. “They have a tub in another bathroom, so that satisfied the home’s need for a tub,” Jason says. “Having no tub here opened up the opportunity to maximize the layout.”

Two existing windows — one beside the toilet and another at the end of the shower-tub — were in good shape, so the homeowners opted to keep them.

Find a bathroom designer

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
After: Jason’s idea to shift the wall into the bedroom added just 3 square feet, but the modest gain made a meaningful difference. Relocating the new double vanity to the former shower-tub wall on the right and placing a spacious low-curb shower on the former sink wall gave the couple the larger vanity and shower they were hoping for.

A pony wall on the left adds a touch of privacy for the new two-piece white toilet. A decorative walnut shelf above the toilet offers a warm accent. “We moved the new toilet 6 inches so everything on that wall now fits,” Jason says.

Creamy white paint (White Dove by Benjamin Moore) covers the walls, ceiling and trim, creating a clean, warm backdrop. Matte black details throughout add striking contrast.

10 Aging-in-Place Features Pros Swear By

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
The natural walnut double vanity has full-overlay doors and drawers with modern matte black pulls in horizontal and vertical orientations. A coordinating matte black towel ring on the right ties in with the vanity hardware and other black accents. “The walnut vanity and linen cabinet really gave them the dark wood tone they were looking for and all the storage they wanted,” Jason says.

Bronze and brass two-light fixtures with clear glass globes add a touch of midcentury style that complements the vanity. The bathroom also has recessed LED ceiling lights and a new exhaust fan, both of which were digitally removed from these photos to better highlight the room’s key design features.

Double vanity: Serenity door style in natural walnut, Candlelight Cabinetry; towel ring: Purist in matte black, Kohler; vanity pulls: Morris, Top Knobs; vanity lights: Young House Love Clear Glass Bubble, Shades of Light

Shop for bathroom vanities on Houzz

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
The double vanity is topped with a durable white engineered quartz that mimics marble with soft gold and gray veining. Two rectangular undermount white porcelain sinks are paired with matte black widespread faucets, each with modern low-profile lever handles.

Creamy white glossy ceramic tiles, measuring 2 by 6½ inches, cover the wall above the vanity in a vertical stack pattern; the grout is frosty white. The tile’s subtle surface movement adds depth and texture. “We used that tile on the shower walls too,” Jason says. “By bringing the tile all the way across that wall, you’re creating less transitions and making the room seem bigger.”

Faucets: Jason Wu collection, matte black, Brizo; wall tiles: Wellfleet in Coconut, 2 by 6½ inches, Best Tile

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
Two recessed mirrored medicine cabinets with brass frames hang above the vanity, offering sleek storage with adjustable tempered glass shelves inside. “They wanted those recessed cabinets, so we had to get the manufacturer specs for the cabinets, the faucets and the lights and do 3D renderings to make sure everything would fit before they made the purchases,” Jason says.

10 Smart Bathroom Storage Solutions

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
The spacious low-curb shower features a custom glass enclosure and a coordinated suite of matte black fixtures, including a rain shower head, hand shower on a slide bar and a thermostatic valve, all from the same collection as the vanity faucets for a cohesive look.

On the bathroom floor, 4-by-12-inch matte black porcelain tiles are laid in a herringbone pattern and paired with midnight black grout, adding depth and visual interest.

Floor tile: Topography porcelain in black, 4 by 12 inches, Best Tile

See why you should hire a professional who uses Houzz Pro software

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
The shower includes a built-in tiled bench beneath the hand shower for convenience. The bench is topped with the same quartz used on the vanity.

On the shower floor, hexagonal tumbled Carrara marble mosaic tiles bring natural variation in veining and tone, set with frosty white grout for soft contrast. “The homeowners liked the way everything looked when all the details were put together,” Jason says.

Shower floor tile: Antique Carrara hexagon tumbled, 2 by 2 inches, Best Tile

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
The shower side of the pony wall next to the toilet includes a built-in niche for bathing products. A custom walnut linen cabinet with adjustable shelves on the left adds valuable storage. The cabinet has the same matte black pulls as the vanity, tying the elements together.

A hardwired black towel warmer with a programmable timer, mounted to the side of the linen cabinet, adds both function and luxury to the space. “We were able to redesign and update this bathroom without changing the location of windows,” Jason says. “The creativity and the ability to see the solution was key here.” For added privacy, the windows were fitted with a translucent film.

New to home remodeling? Learn the basics

Before: A swing door on the left once connected the bedroom and bathroom. An imposing dark armoire stood against the wall space between the door to the bathroom and the primary closet to its right. The door on the far right leads to the second-floor landing and staircase to the main level. The exposed metal ductwork visible at the back left is from a prior HVAC upgrade.

J.P. Hoffman Design BuildSave Photo
After: Pushing the wall into the bedroom allowed for a modest expansion of the bathroom. “Our clients were willing to sacrifice some bedroom square footage to achieve their goal of a more generous bathroom and closet,” Megan says. “Although the new closet is narrow, our team incorporated custom shelving to maximize storage and create an organized, functional space.”

A new pocket door now connects the bedroom and bathroom. “It was related to the size of the bathroom and the location of switches to optimize space,” Jason says. The previously exposed ductwork is also gone. “We were able to enclose the necessary ductwork behind a wall in the new bathroom and added the valuable linen cabinet,” Megan says.

More on Houzz
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The top ten builders captured a record 44.7% of all new U.S. single-family home closings in 2024, up 2.4 percentage points from 2023 (42.3%). This is the highest share ever captured by the top ten builders since NAHB began tracking BUILDER magazine data on new single-family home closings in 1989. The 2024 share constitutes 306,932 closings out of 686,000 new single-family houses sold in 2024. However, closings by the top 10 builders only represent 30.1% of new single-family home completions, a wider measure of home building that covers not-for-sale home construction. Also of note, the top 15 builders accounted for more than half of all closings (51%) for the first time ever in 2024.

The top ten builder share has increased significantly –albeit unevenly– in the last 35 years. In 1989, the top ten builders accounted for only 8.7% of single-family home closings. By 2000, the share had more than doubled to 18.7%, growing to 28.2% by 2006 and 31.5% by 2018. After slight declines in 2019 and 2020, the share exceeded 40% for the first time in 2022 (43.5%) and reached a record high in 2024 (44.7%). (Figure 1).

Meanwhile, the top ten builder share by completions, has also trended upward, with a share of just 5.6% in 1989. It reached double digits for the first time in 1999 (11.3%) and rose to a cycle high of 17.9% in 2006. The share broke the 20% mark for the first time in 2015 (21.0%) and has continued to trend upward since, reaching an all-time high of 30.1% in 2024 (Figure 1).

The top five highest producing builders did not change from 2023 to 2024, with D.R. Horton maintaining its position as America’s largest single-family home builder. D.R. Horton captured 13.6% of the market with 93,311 closings, marking a fourth consecutive year with a market share above 10%, and a 23rd consecutive year atop the list. Results also show that 2024 marked the third year in a row where the top three builders accounted for more than a quarter (29.9%) of overall closings, with Lennar and PulteGroup achieving 11.7% and 4.6%, respectively. With 3.3% and 2.3% of overall closings, NVR and Meritage Homes ranked fourth and fifth on the list, respectively.

Notably, SH Residential Holdings (U.S. subsidiary of Sekisui House, a Japanese homebuilder, who acquired M.D.C. Holdings in 2024) broke into the top ten in 2024, ranking sixth on the list with 2.2% of the market. Clayton Properties Group, ranking 8th in 2023, fell out of the top 10 for the first time since 2019. KB Home (2.1%), Taylor Morrison (1.9%), Century Communities (1.6%), and Toll Brothers (1.6%) round out the top 10 builders for 2024 (Figure 2).

Builder Magazine also released Local Leaders data on the top 10 builders in the top 50 largest new-home markets in the U.S. where ranking is determined by the number of single-family permits, which NAHB will analyze in a later post.

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Retirement planning often feels like a checkbox exercise for high-income professionals and business owners. Work hard, save diligently, invest here and there—done, right? But let me ask you this: Are your cash flow calculations ready to support the life you envision after retirement?

It’s not just about hitting a magic number in your accounts; it’s about ensuring your money can keep pace with your dreams. The gap between what you think you’ll need and what you’ll actually need is often wider than expected.

But here’s the good news: With the right strategy, you can close that gap, secure your future, and even build a legacy that lasts for generations. Let’s dive in.

What Is Cash Flow Planning for Retirement?

Cash flow planning is about one thing: ensuring your income can cover your expenses—today, tomorrow, and for decades to come. But it’s not just about covering basics like housing and groceries. True cash flow planning should also account for the lifestyle you want, whether that includes travel, hobbies, or simply enjoying peace of mind.

Here’s what you need to consider:

  • Fixed costs: Consistent expenses, like housing, insurance, and healthcare.
  • Variable costs: Lifestyle expenses, like dining out, travel, or that dream car you’ve always wanted.
  • Inflation: The silent thief of wealth that makes everything more expensive over time.

For example, if your annual expenses today are $75,000, in 20 years, you’ll need about $135,000 annually to maintain the same lifestyle with an average inflation rate of 3%. This is a reality many retirees (or FIRE investors) underestimate, but accounting for it can help you avoid financial stress later.

Why Cash Flow Calculations Matter

If you’re like many high achievers, you likely have two major retirement goals:

  1. Live the retirement you’ve always dreamed of, without financial stress.
  2. Build a financial legacy for your family.

But without accurate cash flow planning, you risk falling into one of two traps:

  • Overconfidence: Assuming your savings will be enough, only to face shortfalls.
  • Paralysis: Feeling so overwhelmed by the numbers that you delay action, reducing the time for your investments to grow.

Take Sarah, a small business owner with a thriving career. She had savings and some investments, but she struggled to see how they could replace her active income. Through a strategic approach, including passive investments in real estate and real estate debt funds, she built a portfolio that now generates over $118,000 annually in passive income—enough to sustain her ideal retirement and create a lasting legacy for her children.

How to Confidently Calculate Your Retirement Needs

Let’s break it down into three simple steps.

Step 1: Define your lifestyle costs

What does your ideal retirement look like? Maybe it includes international travel, volunteering, or simply having more time for family. Start by breaking your expenses into two categories:

  • Fixed costs: Mortgage, utilities, healthcare premiums
  • Variable costs: Vacations, hobbies, or helping your loved ones

Be honest about what you’ll need—this isn’t the time to underestimate.

Step 2: Account for inflation

Inflation can erode your purchasing power faster than you might expect. Using an inflation calculator (like SmartAsset’s Inflation Calculator) can help you understand how your expenses will grow over time.

Example:

  • Today’s expenses: $75,000/year
  • 20 years later: ~$135,000/year (at 3% inflation)

Planning for tomorrow’s reality—not today’s—ensures your cash flow can support your future.

Step 3: Subtract guaranteed income

Identify reliable income streams, like Social Security, pensions, or annuities, and subtract them from your total expenses to find your income gap.

Example: If your annual retirement expenses are $100,000 and you expect $60,000 in guaranteed income, your gap is $40,000—the amount your investments will need to cover.

Bridging the Gap with Passive Real Estate Investments

Real estate is one of the most effective ways to create reliable income and protect against inflation. Let’s explore two strategies:

1. Real estate debt funds

  • What they are: Investments in real estate loans that yield consistent returns, often around 8% annually. 
  • Why they work: They provide predictable cash flow without the headaches of property management.
  • Example: Investing $500,000 in a debt fund at 8% generates $40,000 annually, closing the income gap in our earlier example.

2. Equity deals

  • What they are: Ownership stakes in cash-flowing properties like multifamily housing or self-storage facilities. 
  • Why they work: These investments combine cash flow (from rents) with long-term appreciation.
  • Example: A $250,000 investment yielding 7% cash-on-cash returns generates $17,500 annually—perfect for funding travel or reinvestment.

Lessons from Sarah’s Journey

Sarah’s success didn’t happen overnight. It was the result of consistent planning, a clear investment strategy, and a commitment to aligning her financial decisions with her goals. Over six years, she grew her portfolio by strategically contributing to investments that matched her desired lifestyle and legacy.

Final Thoughts: Your Retirement, Your Legacy

At the end of the day, retirement planning isn’t just about covering expenses—it’s about creating freedom, security, and impact. Accurate cash flow planning ensures you’re ready to live the life you’ve envisioned and leave a legacy that endures.

Want to dive deeper into these strategies? Explore them further in my book, Money For Tomorrow: How to Build and Protect Generational Wealth, where I break down the exact steps to secure your financial future.

Your future is worth it—start planning for it today.

Protect your wealth legacy with an ironclad generational wealth plan

Taxes, insurance, interest, fees, bills…how can you acquire wealth, let alone pass it down, when there are major pitfalls at every turn? In Money for Tomorrow, Whitney will help you build an ironclad wealth plan so you can safeguard your hard-earned wealth and pass it on for generations to come.  



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5. Build a Storage Wall

If you’re planning a full kitchen renovation, take inspiration from this thoughtful kitchen design by Studio Fabbri. Designer Gemma Fabbri had a run of floor-to-ceiling cabinets designed to hide appliances, food supplies, the boiler and everyday clutter that might otherwise drift onto work surfaces.

“I wanted to get things off the [countertop] as it’s mostly on the island and I didn’t want much on there,” Fabbri says.

The wall of cabinets has two standard Ikea cabinets on the left, one of which contains the refrigerator, two wider, 32-inch ones, which were custom made. One is a double-door pantry cabinet containing a coffee machine and toaster.

Every member of the family has been considered too. When Fabbri was left with a slim space next to the boiler cupboard, she decided to make a cat tunnel. “The panel pops off so you can get in there to clean it, and there’s a piece of carpet in there so their feet dry a little,” she says.

New to home remodeling? Learn the basics



This article was originally published by a www.houzz.com . Read the Original article here. .

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