Real estate taxes are like piranhas constantly chomping away at the meat and bones of cash flow. There’s no way around them, and failure to pay can result in city liens and possible foreclosure. No one said real estate investing was easy.

That’s why finding a low real estate tax state that is still affordable and has decent rents and lower insurance rates is the Holy Grail of investing. However, they’re not a dime a dozen. 

After spending hours number crunching, you might feel you’ve got a better chance of stumbling across a unicorn foal. Don’t worry, they do exist, and once you’ve locked them down, they could end up paying you in cash flow for years to come.

The National Property Tax Picture In 2026

Effective property tax rates in the U.S. range from under 0.3% in the lowest-tax states to more than 2% in the highest. New Jersey leads the list with a rate of around 2.23%, while Hawaii ranks last at around 0.27%.

Property taxes are levied annually by your local government, based on your home’s assessed value. They are collected by cities, counties, and school districts to fund services that keep communities running. Thus, the common analogy is that the higher the taxes, the better the neighborhood, because homeowners are paying for higher-quality services (better-funded schools, roads, parks, etc.).

Generally, these high-tax areas are dominated by single-family homes and have few rentals. Property taxes fund about 27% of all state and local revenue as of 2022 numbers. It’s worth noting that property tax values are worked out by multiplying the rate by the value of the home. So, high-value markets can still generate high tax bills even though they might have low tax rates on paper.

The average U.S. household pays about $3,119 a year in property taxes, with effective rates of 1.5% common in the Northeast and Midwest, including New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Where Low Property Taxes Help Rentals Cash Flow

For real estate investors, the most attractive states are often characterized by low tax rates, reasonably priced housing, and high rental demand. Low property tax states, according to a SmartAsset 2025-2026 ranking, included Hawaii, Alabama, and Colorado, with rates well below the U.S. average of roughly 0.89% on this metric.

For example, Alabama’s effective property tax rate is about 0.38%, with a median home value of around $232,106 and a median annual tax bill of $1,249, making it one of the least expensive states in terms of its ongoing tax burden.

According to SmartAsset, the 2026 property tax ranking specific to homeowners and investors ranked the following states as having the lowest average effective property tax rates: 

• Hawaii
• Alabama
• Colorado
• Nevada
• South Carolina
• West Virginia
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Idaho
• Utah 

The Most Landlord-Friendly States When Property Taxes Are Considered Along With Local Landlord-Tenant Rules

DoorLoop compiled a list of the most landlord-friendly states by combining property taxes with other essential factors such as eviction laws, rent control regulations, security deposit regulations, tenant rights and protections, and state and local legislation, and found the 15 most landlord-friendly states in 2025 were:

1. Texas
2. Indiana
3. Florida
4. Georgia
5. Arizona
6. North Carolina
7. Ohio
8. Alabama
9. Illinois
10. Colorado
11. Kentucky
12. Louisiana
13. Michigan
14. Pennsylvania
15. West Virginia

The Other Cash Flow Killer: Insurance

However, being landlord-friendly and cash flowing are often two entirely different metrics. A home in a state with low property taxes but high-priced real estate and moderate rents, regardless of the landlord-tenant rules, might not cash flow, whereas a state with substantially higher rents might, even if the other metrics are higher, too.

There’s always insurance to consider, too. As extreme weather events have become more prevalent, insurance has started to take a larger bite out of investors’ cash flow. The best cash-flowing states in 2026 tend to be those with low property taxes and insurance and solid rents. 

If it all seems a bit like threading a needle in a hurricane, fear not—there’s a method to the madness and a way to discern where you are likely to eke out some decent cash flow, despite the swirling data storm.

Let’s start by crossing Florida and California off the list of places you are likely to cash flow, given current insurance rates there. In California, despite high rents, acquisition costs are likely to hammer another nail into the cash-flow coffin.

Crunching all the data (rents, taxes, and insurance), the top 10 cash-flowing states for small landlords are:

1. West Virginia
2. Alabama
3. Arkansas
4. South Carolina
5. Tennessee
6. Arizona
7. Nevada
8. Idaho
9. Utah 
10. Colorado

These states offer a mix of relatively affordable home prices, average or better rents, and comparatively modest recurring costs, leaving the largest gap between gross rents and the monthly “nut” that landlords must cover.

The Top 10 Cash Flow States Factoring in Property Taxes, Median Price, Typical Rents, and Insurance Costs

“Overall cash flow score” is a qualitative roll-up of:

• Taxes (SmartAsset, reAlpha, Realtor.com low-tax rankings)
• Median home prices (WorldPopulationReview/Bankrate 2026 median price data)
• Statewide average rent levels (WorldPopulationReview/RentCafe/Apartments.com 2026 data)
• Homeowners insurance (2026 state-by-state averages)

Final Thoughts

Some of the most cash-flowing states on paper, such as West Virginia and Alabama (low tax bills, median annual insurance, and rent costs that can exceed $1,100-$1,300 a month in many markets), are hardly the most glamorous. Appreciation and the tenant pool here might be limited, so investing is never an exact science where cash flow always wins the day.

The cash flow analysis doesn’t count for much if there is a poor job market and tenants can’t pay the rent, or if a high crime rate means the tenant pool is likely to give you sleepless nights. War zones always look cash-flow positive on paper because they are cheap—but they’re terrible investments. 

Still, a basic cash flow analysis based on the data used here is a good starting point, from which the other, more fluid factors must be accounted for.

Real estate taxes are like piranhas constantly chomping away at the meat and bones of cash flow. There’s no way around them, and failure to pay can result in city liens and possible foreclosure. No one said real estate investing was easy.

That’s why finding a low real estate tax state that is still affordable and has decent rents and lower insurance rates is the Holy Grail of investing. However, they’re not a dime a dozen. 

After spending hours number crunching, you might feel you’ve got a better chance of stumbling across a unicorn foal. Don’t worry, they do exist, and once you’ve locked them down, they could end up paying you in cash flow for years to come.

The National Property Tax Picture In 2026

Effective property tax rates in the U.S. range from under 0.3% in the lowest-tax states to more than 2% in the highest. New Jersey leads the list with a rate of around 2.23%, while Hawaii ranks last at around 0.27%.

Property taxes are levied annually by your local government, based on your home’s assessed value. They are collected by cities, counties, and school districts to fund services that keep communities running. Thus, the common analogy is that the higher the taxes, the better the neighborhood, because homeowners are paying for higher-quality services (better-funded schools, roads, parks, etc.).

Generally, these high-tax areas are dominated by single-family homes and have few rentals. Property taxes fund about 27% of all state and local revenue as of 2022 numbers. It’s worth noting that property tax values are worked out by multiplying the rate by the value of the home. So, high-value markets can still generate high tax bills even though they might have low tax rates on paper.

The average U.S. household pays about $3,119 a year in property taxes, with effective rates of 1.5% common in the Northeast and Midwest, including New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Where Low Property Taxes Help Rentals Cash Flow

For real estate investors, the most attractive states are often characterized by low tax rates, reasonably priced housing, and high rental demand. Low property tax states, according to a SmartAsset 2025-2026 ranking, included Hawaii, Alabama, and Colorado, with rates well below the U.S. average of roughly 0.89% on this metric.

For example, Alabama’s effective property tax rate is about 0.38%, with a median home value of around $232,106 and a median annual tax bill of $1,249, making it one of the least expensive states in terms of its ongoing tax burden.

According to SmartAsset, the 2026 property tax ranking specific to homeowners and investors ranked the following states as having the lowest average effective property tax rates: 

• Hawaii
• Alabama
• Colorado
• Nevada
• South Carolina
• West Virginia
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Idaho
• Utah 

The Most Landlord-Friendly States When Property Taxes Are Considered Along With Local Landlord-Tenant Rules

DoorLoop compiled a list of the most landlord-friendly states by combining property taxes with other essential factors such as eviction laws, rent control regulations, security deposit regulations, tenant rights and protections, and state and local legislation, and found the 15 most landlord-friendly states in 2025 were:

1. Texas
2. Indiana
3. Florida
4. Georgia
5. Arizona
6. North Carolina
7. Ohio
8. Alabama
9. Illinois
10. Colorado
11. Kentucky
12. Louisiana
13. Michigan
14. Pennsylvania
15. West Virginia

The Other Cash Flow Killer: Insurance

However, being landlord-friendly and cash flowing are often two entirely different metrics. A home in a state with low property taxes but high-priced real estate and moderate rents, regardless of the landlord-tenant rules, might not cash flow, whereas a state with substantially higher rents might, even if the other metrics are higher, too.

There’s always insurance to consider, too. As extreme weather events have become more prevalent, insurance has started to take a larger bite out of investors’ cash flow. The best cash-flowing states in 2026 tend to be those with low property taxes and insurance and solid rents. 

If it all seems a bit like threading a needle in a hurricane, fear not—there’s a method to the madness and a way to discern where you are likely to eke out some decent cash flow, despite the swirling data storm.

Let’s start by crossing Florida and California off the list of places you are likely to cash flow, given current insurance rates there. In California, despite high rents, acquisition costs are likely to hammer another nail into the cash-flow coffin.

Crunching all the data (rents, taxes, and insurance), the top 10 cash-flowing states for small landlords are:

1. West Virginia
2. Alabama
3. Arkansas
4. South Carolina
5. Tennessee
6. Arizona
7. Nevada
8. Idaho
9. Utah 
10. Colorado

These states offer a mix of relatively affordable home prices, average or better rents, and comparatively modest recurring costs, leaving the largest gap between gross rents and the monthly “nut” that landlords must cover.

The Top 10 Cash Flow States Factoring in Property Taxes, Median Price, Typical Rents, and Insurance Costs

“Overall cash flow score” is a qualitative roll-up of:

• Taxes (SmartAsset, reAlpha, Realtor.com low-tax rankings)
• Median home prices (WorldPopulationReview/Bankrate 2026 median price data)
• Statewide average rent levels (WorldPopulationReview/RentCafe/Apartments.com 2026 data)
• Homeowners insurance (2026 state-by-state averages)

Final Thoughts

Some of the most cash-flowing states on paper, such as West Virginia and Alabama (low tax bills, median annual insurance, and rent costs that can exceed $1,100-$1,300 a month in many markets), are hardly the most glamorous. Appreciation and the tenant pool here might be limited, so investing is never an exact science where cash flow always wins the day.

The cash flow analysis doesn’t count for much if there is a poor job market and tenants can’t pay the rent, or if a high crime rate means the tenant pool is likely to give you sleepless nights. War zones always look cash-flow positive on paper because they are cheap—but they’re terrible investments. 

Still, a basic cash flow analysis based on the data used here is a good starting point, from which the other, more fluid factors must be accounted for.

Ashley Kehr:
You got a message from someone you’ve never met asking if you’d sell your house. Before it even hit the MLS, do you know how to evaluate that? Do you even know what your property is worth off market and what question should you be asking before you even sign anything?

Tony Robinson:
Today we’re answering three questions straight from the BiggerPockets forums covering what to do when you inherit a tenant mid purchase, how to evaluate whether short-term rental is worth it in a saturated market, and how to know when you’re actually ready to scale from one door to …

Ashley Kehr:
This is The Real Estate Roofing Podcast. I’m Ashley Kerr.

Tony Robinson:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, we’re going to jump into our first question today, which comes from the BiggerPockets Forums. Now, this question says, “I just closed on a single family rental.” Congratulations, by the way, and found out that the current tenant’s lease isn’t up for another seven months. The previous owner never mentioned this. This tenant has been there for three years, pays on time, but the rent is $300 per month below market value. I want to raise the rent when the lease expires, but I’m also scared of losing a reliable long-term tenant. How do I approach this situation as a brand new landlord inheriting someone else’s setup? All right. I love this question because I get to use my favorite phrase, which is an estoppel agreement. So if you’ve been around for a while, I’ve learned how to both, what that word is and how to spell it on the podcast.
But Ash, for our listeners that maybe aren’t familiar with that, break down what an estoppel is and why it might be beneficial in situations like this.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. So this is too late for this person asking this question, but before you actually close on the property, you should ask the seller if you can give an estoppel agreement to the tenants. And this is basically a forum that the tenants are filling out with how much rent they’re paying, when their lease expires, when did they move in? Do they have any pets? What appliances belong to them, what utilities they pay, which ones the landlord pays. And basically you’re taking the information they are telling you and you’re verifying it with the lease agreement or with what the landlord says. And that way, if there are any discrepancies, you can figure it out before you actually close on the property. So if a tenant fills out and says, “Hey, I pay $300 a month, but I own all the appliances.” But the landlord is saying, “No, I own the appliances.
You’re buying them with the property.” You can figure out that situation and how to handle it before you actually close on the property. Because if that tenant moves out and all of a sudden you have to buy all new appliances,
That could be a big chunk of money out of your cashflow that you need to cover to be able to rent it back out. So try and do that always when you purchase a property that is not vacant and has tenants in place. What you can do now is it really depends on your state laws. You could always offer a lease. If they agree to the renegotiation of the lease and they sign the new lease without thinking they’re getting kicked out and things like that where they’re signing it under false presences and they agree to the increase, but most likely you cannot raise the rent until their lease has expired. And in some states, there’s even regulation as to how much you can actually raise the rent on them. So even if they’re $300 below market, it may be several years before you could actually even bring it up to market because of those regulations and those caps on raising rent.
So the thing I would do is give them the most notice you can. So I would give them a lease renewal now that starts in the seven months. So that way, if they decide that they’re not going to accept that lease agreement, you’re also going to want them to sign a form saying that they’re going to terminate their lease when it expires. And you can also give them the option to terminate it early if you wanted. I usually don’t. I usually let it go, the period, but if you wanted them out so you could get somebody else in there, you could do that too. But you give them those two options and it’s their option if they decide to renew at the new price or if they are going to vacate the premises and are not going to accept the new lease agreement.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah, Ash, all great points. I think the only thing I want to add to that is just to also do the math. You said yourself, this is a reliable tenant. They’ve been there for a long time. I guess we won’t know just yet if they’re the kind of tenant that causes a lot of headaches, but assume that they’re just an all around solid tenant. There’s also, I think, some peace of mind math that we can incorporate as well. At $300 per month below market value, I mean, that is a significant amount that’s $3,600 per year in potential risk or missed rental income. But you also have to compare that against, okay, if I do let this tenant go, how long do I think I’ll be vacant for this listing? And let’s say that your rent is maybe 2,000 bucks per month and you’re vacant for two months.
Well, you’ve just eaten up for that entire year, all of that potential extra profit you’ll gain by getting to market value. But hey, if every rental unit is gone before it’s even fully vacant, well, then maybe we’ve got a really good case there to relist this at the new price. But as you have that conversation, Dion McNeely, who we’ve had on the podcast a few times, you’ve spoken toBecon. I love his approach, what’s called the binder method. We won’t go into it in detail here, but if you just search the Real Estate Ricky YouTube channel for binder method, you should find our episode with Dion McNeely and he walks through how he actually gets the tenants to agree to a rent increase and he’s just presenting them with options. So it’s a really, I think, unique way to be able to raise the rent while still keeping a really good relationship with your clients or with your tenants.

Ashley Kehr:
Coming up, short-term rentals are everywhere right now, but is it actually the right to move in a market that’s already flooded with Airbnbs? We’re going to tackle that question next right after a word from our show sponsors. Okay. Welcome back. So now that you know how to handle a tenant you didn’t choose and how to increase their rent, let’s talk about a strategy a lot of rookies have questions with in our wrestling right now. Okay. So this question comes from the BiggerPockets forums and it says, “I’m analyzing a property in a beach town that I think could do well on Airbnb.” But when I search the area, there are already hundreds of short-term rental listings. The long-term rental numbers don’t work as well, but at least they’re predictable. How do I decide if short-term rental is still worth pursuing in a saturated market and what data should I be looking at beyond just the number of listings?
Well, good thing. We have our in- house analysis, non-paralysis, Tony J. Robinson here to break down analyzing a short-term rental. And first of all, Tony, saturated markets, yay or nay. This is rapid fire here. Yay or nay.

Tony Robinson:
Yay.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay. And then we’re going with software. Off the top of your head, what’s the first tool, the first piece of software that you need to actually start analyzing this deal and get the numbers and the data?

Tony Robinson:
Air DNA. Easy.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay. Okay. Now tell us more.

Tony Robinson:
I think the word saturated is a bit of a nuanced phrase. I think a lot of people throw that word around without understanding the different layers or things that go into saying whether or not a market is actually saturated. Just because there are a lot of listings doesn’t mean that a market is saturated. There could be just a lot of demand in that market as well. So I’ll break it down. The things that I look at to actually gauge whether or not a market is quote unquote saturated or if there’s maybe an imbalance between supply and demand. I do look at the number of listings, but not just the raw number of listings. I look at how those listings have changed over time. What is the percentage increase in a market over the last, call it three years of the number of listings in that market and what rate is it increasing at?
It’s not bad to see listing growth in a market because it means that more people are coming in because maybe there’s more opportunity. But then I compare that number to the actual demand in that market. And when you use a tool like AirDNA, you can actually see across an entire market how many nights were actually booked for that market. And if I go back again over the last three years and I see that supply has been growing at 4%, but demand has grown 10% over that same timeframe, well, that’s actually a really good balance, right? Demand is actually outpacing supply. In other markets, maybe supply is flat, but if demand is decreasing 3% year over year, that’s a bigger issue, right? So I’m not just looking at listings in isolation or demand in isolation. We need to look at them together, understand the trends between both, and then understand what that balance actually looks like between the two of them.
So supply, demand, and the other things I look at is across the entire market, how is occupancy changing, how is the average daily rate changing? So if I can see a market where there’s steady growth in supply, there’s steady growth and demand that’s hopefully at or above supply, and I’m seeing healthy growth and occupancy and average daily rates, to me, that is a market, even if there are hundreds or thousands of listings in that market, that there’s a good balance between supply and demand and therefore not “saturated.” All right guys, we’re going to take a quick break before our last question, but while we’re gone, be sure to subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel. You can find us @realestaterookie, and we’ll be back with more right after this. All right, let’s jump back in. Our final question is for anyone steering at their first deal, wondering if they’re actually ready or maybe already trying to figure out when the second one should happen.
So the question says, “I bought my first rental property eight months ago and everything is going well. Tenant is solid, cashflow is positive, and I’ve got some reserves built up. I keep hearing that I should scale, but I don’t know what that actually looks like or how to know when I’m ready. How many doors should I have before I try to grow? And what does scaling actually require that most rookies don’t plan for? ” This is actually a good question. No one really talks about how do I know if I’m ready to scale. But first, let me say, the fact that you’ve got a solid, we’ll call it like you’re on base, maybe not a home run of a first deal, but you made the first base with your first deal. That is a great starting point. You said you’ve got reserves built up, cashflow positive, so you’ve learned a lot.
I think when we talk about scaling, what it really comes down to me is more so what are your goals as it relates to real estate investing? Is this something that you’re doing maybe in the background to help supplement your retirement? Is this something you’re doing to maybe build cashflow aggressively? Are you doing this because you want tax benefits? And depending on which one of those things is really motivating you to invest in real estate at all, I think will help you decide what type of scaling makes the most sense for you. Because I know some people who invest in real estate and they’re high income earning W2 folks who enjoy what they do. They have no desire to leave and they plan to do this for the rest of their lives. For those people, scaling maybe looks like buying one property every one to two to three years and just letting it build cashflow or build appreciation and letting that cash flow stack.
For other people, they want to move more quickly, right? They want to get into this full time. They want to make this an active business. Their approach is different. So for me, I think scaling the first question you have to answer is, what do I actually want out of this?

Ashley Kehr:
I think the problem is in this question is that you’re coming at as people are telling you, “This is what you should do. You should scale.” And that’s the problem that I had, as in I thought I should be doing this because people were telling me to do this or people were doing this and I saw them doing this on social media and I thought, “I need to get to that point.That’s the next step.” And just like Tony said, you really have to evaluate what your own progression and what your why is and what you want out of real estate. So you’ve already got one duplex. I think a really great next step would be just to buy another duplex. I think it is really important to build a solid foundation of what you know, what’s working for you and what you can be successful at.
So you’ve already got one deal that is working for you, replicate that. And yes, it’s the boring way. It’s not flashy, it’s not shiny, it’s not the hottest new strategy of 2026, but that is going to help you down the road. If you do decide to take on a different strategy to pivot or the market changes, you have to pivot, but if you have that strong foundation, it’s really going to help you. And the biggest thing is don’t forget about your lifestyle. Don’t forget about the things you want. If you start growing and scaling too fast, that’s going to eat up more of your time, more of your energy and focus now on building systems. So as you’re buying this second property, literally document every single thing that you are doing so that when you go through it for a third time, you have your whole process to follow that you’re not forgetting things, you’re not getting overwhelmed with stuff and you have it all together.
One thing that I didn’t do for a really long time, and it’s the number one thing that I do now is a utility sheet. So probably my first 10 properties, I didn’t do this, but I am, as soon as I’m setting up utilities, pretty close to closing, I have a sheet that, what’s the name of the company, what’s the account number, how do I pay it? Is there a login? What’s their website? What’s their phone number? Where is the meter located on the property? What is the meter number? So it sounds like something so simple, but all of these little simple processes and tasks that you can put together and document will make your life so much easier down the road. So I think that’s something you should focus on now is like building out those systems just for that first property. What are some things that you can do now and then slowly take your time into buying that second one?

Tony Robinson:
I think the last thing I’ll add, Ash, is just from a timing perspective, you’ll also know if you’re ready if you have enough cash to actually just buy that next deal. And it sounds like you’ve got cash flow coming from this property that maybe you don’t need because you’ve got a job that you’re working. Let that cash flow continue to grow and then save whatever else you can continue to save from your day job. And if you look up in another 18 to 24 months and you’ve got another nice pile of cash, well, then there’s your sign that I’m ready to buy that next deal. So I think a lot of times we try and overcomplicate the idea of scaling, but sometimes it’s just as simple as save money, save your cashflow, buy a property. Now you’ve got more cash flow, save some more, buy another property.
And it really starts to snowball because when you bought your first deal, you got zero properties helping you save for that first one. When you buy your first deal, now you’ve got one property helping you. When you buy your second deal, now there are two properties helping. So each property helps fund the next one if you save all of that cash flow. So don’t overcomplicate it, right? Just save, buy, repeat.

Ashley Kehr:
Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

Ashley Kehr:
He took out a mountain of law school debt, about a 440 square foot apartment he could barely rent out, and then his government shipped him overseas before he could do anything with it. Today’s guest turned that accidental start into a multi-property US portfolio, managed remotely from the US embassies around the world, including right now in Vienna, Austria.

Tony Robinson:
And what’s wild is that the skills he uses to analyze foreign governments, well, he’s used them to build his buy box. And we’ll get into all of that, the diplomacy, the debt, the 12-year kind of hiatus, and the tactical playbook for investing when you can never visit your market.

Ashley Kehr:
This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kerr.

Tony Robinson:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let’s give a big, warm welcome to Dave. Dave, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.

David Epstein:
Super happy to be here. Really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.

Ashley Kehr:
Now, before we get into any details and further into your portfolio, just give us a scorecard. How many doors, how many years since you started really getting serious about investing in real estate? And you’re calling in from Austria today. How did you get there?

David Epstein:
So right now, we’re sitting actually only on three doors. We previously had four. We recently sold one back in 2024, and we’re now in the process of reacquiring a fourth property as we try to rebuild the portfolio towards our end state goals. So how we got here and how we got serious really started back in 2017 after I had had, as you mentioned, a 12-year hiatus. I was an accidental landlord at first, which is what probably led me to bigger pockets, led me to thinking about real estate, but life, career, things like that got in the way. And then from 2017 to 2019, I got my second property. 2023, I did a cash out refi, and then I bought the fourth property. And then as I mentioned, in 2024, we sold that fourth and we’re looking to pivot to use that money into a new fourth property as we go back into growth stage.

Tony Robinson:
Talk about long distance investing, and we’ll get into that here as we go through your story. But Dave, I mean, I guess take us back to 2005. You’re fresh out of law school. As we know, law school is a very expensive place to go, and you decide to buy a 444 square foot co-op in New York. So first, what is a co-op for those that don’t know? And then what was the logic and what did you think you were going to get when you stepped into that first deal?

David Epstein:
So for most people who don’t know what a co-op is, I know Ashley invests in New York, so there might be co-ops near your market, but the short answer for most real estate investors is a co-op is a mistake. But the fact of the matter is, you basically are buying shares in the corporation that owns the property that then gives you the right to live in a unit. There’s a board of directors, there’s an interview to buy. When you eventually get the right to rent out, which you usually can’t do before, say, five years of owner occupancy and so forth, the potential tenants go before a board. Also, it’s really quite cumbersome. But because I bought it thinking I would live there, start my career as a lawyer, and there would be no problem, I saw no problem. It turned out to be quite a problem because within about two years, I was joining the foreign service as a US diplomat, getting sent to my first overseas assignment, and I had to choose between selling it or figuring out a solution.
And as you mentioned, I had a lot of debt. So any decision had a potential significant financial consequence.

Tony Robinson:
Dave, just one follow-up because I’ve never heard of a co-op before. I’m in California. I don’t know if we have those here, but I guess what is the benefit to a co-op versus just simply renting a space out or trying to buy like your own 440 four square foot apartment? Yeah, like a condo.

David Epstein:
I think for a lot of people, there is a lower price point because of the sort of onerous restrictions that exist on it. So because you don’t own the property, you’re limited in what you can do with it. For some people though, that also means because there’s a higher vetting process, there’s more hands-on management from this board that have to be comprised of people who live in the building. There’s usually a really good maintenance schedule that takes place, whether it’s just taking care of the facilities, the grounds or things like that. I mean, things tend to work. And so what for me was a very low price point in 2005, about $125,000 might have been closer to 200, 250 for a nearly identical property that was a condo. So there are advantages for people who want to make that, again, their primary residence, but if you’re going the investment route, it’s really not the way to go.

Tony Robinson:
Was it easier, Dave, to get approved for this? I mean, because I’m assuming you’re coming out of law school, you probably have a lot of student debt behind you. Just like ballpark, how much debt did you have coming out of law school?

David Epstein:
Probably about $125,000 in debt coming out of law school, three years of law school. And part of that is they’ll just let you sign anything and give you any amount of money to attend law school. And when you’re in your early 20s, you say, “Sounds great. What could be the problem? I’m going to become a lawyer. I’m going to become a multimillionaire and everything will be great. So sign on the dotted line.” But buying this property, it wasn’t that difficult. First of all, it was 2005. They were basically checking for heart rates to give out mortgages at the time. And the good thing for me was I had a very, very low risk tolerance, partly because of all this debt and partly just my own personality. So I didn’t go for an arm, which probably would’ve killed me as the bubble burst in 2008, people were losing their shirts and such.
So I had a fixed rate mortgage and I put 20% down. Because I had my degree and I had a job as an attorney, they were willing to sign over. But again, it wasn’t a big chunk of cash and it wasn’t a big purchase price. And so it worked out until, as again, it didn’t really work out so well.

Ashley Kehr:
So you got that call and you’re going to, what was that, Central America and you now realize that you have a problem. So what specifically did you do to get around this rule that you have to occupy this property as your primary residence?

David Epstein:
Yeah, I was lucky because maybe this was a sort of foreshadowing to the skills I would learn as a diplomat, but I developed a very good relationship with the building management company. And we looked at the documentation, it benefited also that I was a lawyer and we looked at the documentation. And as long as a family member moved in, there wasn’t going to be a violation of me trying to rent out as a non-owner occupier. So I convinced my sister to move in. I said, “Listen, you need a place to stay. I can give you probably the best possible rent you could get for an apartment of this size. You’re two blocks away from the train station right into downtown Midtown Manhattan and you’re working in the area that we grew up in, so it’s perfect. You have everything you need.” So she agreed and it was perfect for her for a couple of years.
And just right around the five-year mark, she moved in with her now husband and that’s kind of how I really became a landlord because I then had to figure out, do I sell or do I rent?

Ashley Kehr:
So during that timeframe, it was a family member that was staying there. So it was kind of like an exception to get around the rule. Yeah. So now that you’ve hit this five-year mark, you have these options available to rent it and to sell. What kind of information or data did you look at to help you make that decision and what did you choose?

David Epstein:
Well, so part of it was now that we’re five years past the purchase, we’re in the midst of the housing bubble burst, right? It’s now 2010. Selling it was probably not a good idea. I was going to take a massive, massive hit. But what I did know was the location was great. I mean, one of the reasons my sister was willing to live there was a few blocks away from a highway, a couple of shops nearby, as I mentioned, two blocks away from a train station right into Manhattan. And so I thought, listen, I think I can rent this out. I think someone will at least cover my mortgage and be happy to live there. Even though it’s a studio, I’ll probably have turnover, but I did the numbers on the back of the envelope. I didn’t have the benefit of BiggerPockets or anyone really to talk to, but the numbers seemed to work.
And we got someone in there and they covered it and they went through the board process and they approved them. And so I said, “Listen, I’ll do this for a year and see what happens,” because I was in an assignment overseas. It would’ve just been too difficult to do anything else.

Tony Robinson:
So can you just discuss for the listeners, Dave, what was it like to maybe own this property that you couldn’t actively manage?

David Epstein:
So as I said, I owned it in an area that I was from. I grew up in this same town. And so I did have a little bit of hands-on help. I mean, my father could answer a phone call here or there, but again, it was about relationship building. I spoke to the super of the building, the members of the board, the doorman of the building, all the people that were really the lifeblood of how the building operated, and they were willing to keep in touch with me and help me out. If I reached out to them and said, “Listen, the tenant had this question or this issue arose between you and the tenant. I can help assuage these problems.” And again, it was all relationship building. And so it wasn’t formal property management and it wasn’t self-managed because like I said, my dad could show up and make a quick Home Depot run and get them a new smoke detector or something like that, but they weren’t doing anything.
So it was again about building these relationships and they were willing to help me out. And I’m still grateful to them to this day, even though I’ve sold the property and I don’t maintain that relationship in any formal way, but it really was about relationships.

Ashley Kehr:
Now that accidental hold taught you something powerful and eventually helped set you up and put you down a rabbit hole that just completely changed how you thought about building wealth. So when we come back, we’ll talk about the 12-year gap between that first property and your second, and that’s the exact moment that bigger pockets flip the switch. We’ll be right back. Okay. So David, you bought that first property in 2005. Your next one wasn’t until 2017. That’s 12 years. For a lot of our listeners, people sitting on the sidelines right now feeling like life just keeps getting in the way. I really want to understand what that stretch actually felt like for you.

David Epstein:
Yeah. So I will say the first year or so of that stretch didn’t really feel like that much of a distraction or a deferred action because as I said, I was an accidental landlord and I barely kind of scraped through becoming a formal landlord by design at that five-year mark. So the first couple of years, I was really focused on my career. I mean, I left El Salvador. I was then going to Jerusalem. I was in Israel, and that’s where I met my wife. And what happened was that’s when I discovered BiggerPockets or sometime in that timeframe, 2011, 12, I don’t know when you guys kicked off, but somehow I discovered BiggerPockets. And I don’t know why I discovered it. I don’t know what I was searching for that day. There wasn’t as much of a in- your-face algorithmic ad push that existed. So I found you, I’m grateful for it.
And it started getting me thinking, I have this property, it’s working out. I’m now married and I’ve managed to now turn over two tenants, two generations of tenants, and it’s still working out. It’s still paying for itself.
And so I started doing as much research as I could. And the first thing you always hear on BiggerPockets is analysis paralysis. And I have, as I said, a very, very low risk tolerance. And so I just started trying to come up with formulas and ideas that I could be comfortable with. But again, buying a property from far away, in my case, not even traveling to the market to take a look, walk the streets, and then buy it from far away. It was literally, that was not an option. So I just started putting together what I considered to be made up metrics, and I tried to come up with some idea of what made the most sense to me. And I came up with a couple of markets based on some conversations I heard on the board, some ideas I heard on the boards, whether it was millennium population or Fortune 1000 company headquarters, all these different metrics, just to get something that made sense to me.
And I came up with a couple of markets and then a lot of turnkey operators started coming online as well that were a lot easier to use remotely instead of just in your own market. And so my wife and I, at that time then, we had two kids and we said, “Listen, we have money put aside. We’ve kind of been talking about this for a few years. Let’s take the plunge.” And one of the markets that we decided on literally was about cost of entry between two markets we were really leaning towards. One of them was Jacksonville, Florida, and it had a lower entry point at the time, about 110, 120,000 was your average three bed, two bath property. And we went for a turnkey and it was an absolutely fantastic opportunity for us balancing the distance and the demands on my time with a family and my job to look for this option.
Now, it’s not going to cash flow as much as some rundown place that I add value to, but it was a wonderful option for a person in my circumstances. And it’s, again, thanks to BiggerPockets giving me these ideas and how to get confident with making a decision.

Tony Robinson:
And for our listeners that aren’t familiar with the phrase turnkey, a turnkey provider is essentially someone who, in a lot of situations, they’re buying something that’s in need of a value add like needs renovation, they’re buying the property, renovating it, placing a tenant into that property, and then they’re selling the fully renovated, fully leased property to another investor. And to Dave’s point, oftentimes you are losing some of the margin on those deals. What you lose in margin you make up for in convenience, peace of mind, and the potential speed at which you can find these deals. So there’s a give and take there, but for someone who’s on a different continent, there’s probably a lot of value in having something that can do that for you. But Dave, you describe yourself as someone who analyzes foreign governments for a living, identifying patterns, making judgment calls when maybe you don’t always have all of the information.
How did you apply that professional skillset to building your kind of buy box for real estate investing?

David Epstein:
Yeah. So I mean, every single day I have to make decisions that are based on very, very incomplete information. Either I don’t have access to the information or someone doesn’t want to give me the information. I mean, we’re dealing with geopolitics. There are countries that want to do things and have motivations that they want to keep things close to the vest. And so I think one of the ways you can think about it is trying to look at the climate rather than the weather. The weather is a daily occurrence. It’s a snapshot in the now, whereas the climate is about certain trends, certain data, certain pieces of information that while you always hear past performance is not future guarantee of outcome, but you can certainly look at an environment and you can derive or at least guess some things about where it’s going. And so as I mentioned, I just started coming up with these metrics, hearing different chatter on the BiggerPockets message boards and such.
And so like I said, I was looking at things that I thought just made perfect sense to me. So one of the criteria was proximity to military presence. I said that’s a constant turnover, but it’s also a constant reliable market of people coming who are reliable tenants as well. I mean, they’re subject to the universal code of military justice, right? They can’t just trash your place and run away.
There’s the reality that with that comes secondary economic benefits, just supermarkets and school supplies and things when they bring their families and so forth. I was looking at millennial population trends. I was looking at Fortune 1000 company headquarters because I figured those don’t close every time the wind blows. So again, I was looking at it, what I think of as more climactically rather than the daily weather forecast. And then I picked a few markets. And then the other thing is I said to myself, I’m married. I have two kids. Now I have three kids, but at the time two kids, I said, three bedroom, two bath is sort of the standard fare in housing when you look at it. And I am giving some new consideration to that, but overall, that is a reliable strategy that others have used. So again, you take these different data points, you take the information that people are willing to give you like on the BiggerPockets boards and you draw a picture for yourself.
And then of course you have to take action based on whatever picture you’ve drawn for yourself.

Ashley Kehr:
David, what market did you end up deciding on for this second property?

David Epstein:
So this was Jacksonville, Florida, and we’ve been very, very happy with this property. In fact, the tenant that’s there since 2017 is still there.

Ashley Kehr:
No turnover. That’s great.

David Epstein:
Zero turnover, zero turnover. And she and her family have been wonderful. She’s been very communicative through the property management company I have, lets me know about things that she would like to have done to improve the property. They’re always reasonable and I think that helps maintain the value of my investment. And so I think it’s a really good relationship.

Ashley Kehr:
And now when you found the turnkey provider, were they someone that was specific to that area or were they kind of more all over the place and they helped you pick that market?

David Epstein:
So they, at the time, they were focused on a handful of markets. So it was the Jacksonville area, Orlando area, I want to say one or two of the markets in Tennessee, North Carolina, but they were Southeast US and they hit a couple of markets there. And so I also felt confident with that because they were clearly kind of focused in on an area of the country. They also had information about the companies that were currently managing the properties. And I was able to pick up the phone and call that management company and ask them a lot of questions, which I took from your message boards.

Ashley Kehr:
Do you have any other tips or advice for our rookie listeners on vetting a turnkey company? We talk about vetting property managers, agents, things like that. But what about a turnkey company? You said you liked that they were very specific to one area. That was a good sign. What are some other green flags that you see for a turnkey company?

David Epstein:
Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, I feel like I went in this direction out of necessity, partly. So I don’t want to say that it’s for everybody. I would certainly do it again though, especially with this company that I used. I felt comfortable with it. I think one of the things was I was also able to talk to people from the turnkey company. I mean, it wasn’t just some marketplace where you’re just clicking on things online or sending emails. I was able to get on the phone and talk to people. And again, using the BiggerPockets Message board, I had ideas of some questions to ask. I mean, I’m always trying to learn more. I’d probably go back in time and ask 20 other questions. Fortunately, it worked out for us, but just being able to connect human to human, right? I still think that even in the age of the internet and everything, we’re having this conversation from however many thousands of miles away.
Human to human relationships is still critical, I think, to being able to make judgment calls and make good decisions. And so having those relationships.

Tony Robinson:
Dave, one thing that you mentioned that I just want to circle back to is the metaphor of weather versus climate. And I’ve never quite heard it described that way, but it is such an apt way to describe how you can make certain decisions is to not get so fixated on what’s happening today, but to sometimes look at longer time horizons. And I know for a fact that where a lot of rookies get overwhelmed is in the dreaded analysis paralysis. We don’t live today in an age where we have a lack of information. If anything, there’s an overabundance of information. That’s usually what drives people to not take action. So I think the question along with that concept of weather versus climate is that within that, sometimes there are a lot of data points. How do you not get so caught up in trying to find the next data point and the next data point and the next data point and just getting to a point where you can actually make a decision?

David Epstein:
Well, first of all, a lack of time to be able to do that. I mean, I would love to be able to do some of the things that you hear on either your podcast or the more general BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing podcast and dig down into crime statistics or literally look at every property and get on Google Maps and walk the street if I can. But I just don’t have that time. And so you talk about the buy box a lot in bigger pockets, and I think part of it is not just saying, “Oh, I want a three bed, two bath, this is the maximum price. I’d like this size lot or this proximity to a school.” But just saying, “This is the amount of information that I want, whatever it is, and I need no more information.” Now, that doesn’t mean the next day you’re going to make an offer or the next day you’re going to close a deal because you might have to make 20, 30 offers and do the math on 20, 30 properties.
I’m also, I am not a good math guy, so I’m doing very rough math on mortgage insurance, taxes. I’m looking at maybe Zillow, Redfin for 10 different monthly rental listings, and I’m just looking at what makes sense. Again, I’m very risk averse, so I’m rounding down a lot on the income, I’m rounding up a lot on the cost, and I’m just making sure that that at least kind of hits that delta that I need.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. Dave, you said something insightful is that you identify what you actually need to make a decision and then nothing more than that. But I think that’s where I want to drill down. How do you decide where to draw that line? And I think so many people, the line just kind of gets pushed out every single time they get a new piece of information, they realize there’s something else that they don’t know, and that the line just kind of moves further down. So how do you, both as a real estate investor and even just like in the work that you do for the government, how do you decide where to draw that line?

David Epstein:
Well, I mean, again, you make a point here is that it does get back a little bit to my work. I mean, sometimes you just have to stop and you just have to say, “This is the information that I have and it has a real significant value.” And I can share that in the case of sharing it back with Washington DC, sharing it with my supervisors, when is it worthwhile to share this information and why would they need any more at this moment? And the same thing with real estate. To know that a property in this area or properties in this area that are three bed, two bath or whatever the situation is, go for this amount of money and this is the rent and here’s what the insurance and here’s what the mortgage rate would be. And again, building in a cushion of conservative estimations, you just say, “This is enough information.” I mean, because as you and others in the podcast say all the time, it is a question of math, right?
I mean, you shouldn’t fall in love with a property, maybe not even with a market unless you really know the market and you’re more in love with those dynamics in the market, but it should be enough when the numbers work. And if you have enough information for the numbers to work, you should be able to stop. You don’t need to know, “Oh, it has a really beautiful bush in the front yard that might be fun to decorate on Christmas.” That’s irrelevant to buying the property and knowing that the numbers will work and a family will be happy to live there and might stay, so reducing your turnover, et cetera, et cetera.

Tony Robinson:
And Dave, I appreciate you walking us through that. And I know I’m harping on this a lot, but the reason I do is because I know that this is where so many people get stuck before ever even buying their first deal. And just to compliment what you’ve shared, I think what I want all of our rookies to walk away with is that there is a distinction between comfort and confidence in a decision. And what a lot of rookies wait for is comfort when in reality, what they should be searching for is a certain degree of confidence in a decision. It is if you’re doing anything of substance, anything that’s new, anything that’s pushing you outside of your normal boundaries, by definition, it means you’re stepping outside of your comfort zone. So it is physically impossible to be doing something new, doing something of substance, doing something that’s pushing you to grow while also being comfortable.
So if we wait for that comfort to arrive, we never get to a point where we can make a decision, but if we instead accept that we have to be a little bit uncomfortable and instead look for a certain degree of confidence in our decisions, that’s how we actually move forward. And Dave, I mean, again, doing this from, I don’t even know where Vienna is at on a map, but the fact that you’re doing it from there and you’re buying real estate, I think is a testament to your ability to do that. So Dave, you’ve got your framework, you got your first intentional deal, and then life delivers another opportunity, a diplomatic assignment to Colorado Springs, which is a place I do know, which is actually one of your target markets. So when we come back, we’re going inside his full remote investor playbook, how he manages properties from embassy housing in Vienna and what any long distance investor can steal from his system.
All right, we’re back here with Dave. Now, Dave, you’re opposed to Colorado Springs, a market you’d already been analyzing, and I want you to walk us into that moment. You’re living in a city that you’ve been researching as an investor, and you have a two-year window, and I want to know what you did with it. So you actually bought in Colorado Springs while you were stationed there, and you’ve built out your portfolio from postings in multiple countries. Again, right now, today you’re managing from Vienna. What does a typical week look like as a property owner?

David Epstein:
What does a typical week look like as a property owner? I mean, thankfully due to some amazing property management, it is very, very hands off. Now, like everything, you take a hit on the backend because you’re paying for that level of service. Again, I met my property manager in Colorado Springs through the BiggerPockets message boards. I went out, I met with a few property managers in the area, sort of interviewed them, and I had come in with some ideas and some numbers that I thought I understood well, and I was sort of testing them and asking them to give me some ideas when I showed them just some properties and just some very basic details. And this one guy was able to, almost down to the dollar, was able to tell me, “This is what the mortgage will be. This is probably what the rent will be in a year from now when you leave,” and so forth and so on.
And I just felt incredibly confident with this individual. He was himself a property owner, an investor, but also running this property management company. And this was another example of luck because, as you said, Colorado Springs was one of the other markets we were looking at. It had the businesses, it had the millennials, it had the military location, beauty, I mean, just unimaginable beauty in the Colorado Springs area. So it had tourism. And I was very lucky because we found an amazing realtor. She started taking us around. I had to start my job. My wife started looking at properties. My wife called me up one day and said, “I think I found something.” I said, “To be honest with you, I’m about to run into a meeting. I don’t have time. If you believe in it, I believe in you. Go sign some paperwork and go do it.
” And we lived there for two years with our kids and we absolutely loved it. My kids still talk about how much they love that house. It was also where we spent COVID, so we got to know the house very, very well. And it really made us very confident in the Colorado Springs market. And we refinanced it down to 2.15 during the pandemic. So it’s also become a really strong cashflow property that helps us sort of build our capital and buttress when we have a lull in some of our other properties.

Tony Robinson:
Dave, did you say 2.15?

David Epstein:
Yeah, but unfortunately, a DOD friend of mine got 1.99 through a VA loan and he beat me and I was furious about it. It was the same week. It was the same week. I was furious.

Tony Robinson:
I think you might hold the record right now for lowest interest rate we’ve heard on the podcast. I mean, you’re episode 704. So we’ve had 703 other stories before yours, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone get to a 2.15. Ash, do you know anyone?

Ashley Kehr:
God, never paid that off.

David Epstein:
No, I’ll never refinance it and I will never pay it off.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. We’ll let that ride forever.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, David, you talked about how key it is to have a property manager and one you can rely on, but were there any mistakes that you made from the beginning when you decided to be your asset manager remotely?

David Epstein:
Well, I mean, I mentioned my wife and thank God for her because I tend to not get emotional about a property, but I tend to get a little excited about completing a task and maybe not doing all of the analysis that I should do once I’ve decided on something and started down that path. So I might be looking at 10 or 12 properties, but once I start into the conversation, maybe earnest money or something like that, then I tend to kind of become a little bit fixated and she is certainly a balance there. And I think one of the mistakes I made, maybe at least twice now, is Really jumping into a deal and then not continuing to do analysis and checking numbers and checking the process once I had shot off the starting gun. And I think that it’s not so much falling in love with the property, but it’s sort of that sunk cost fallacy where I say, “Well, I’m in.
I’m in. And so maybe I can make it work or maybe this conversation I’m having with this person isn’t as bad as I think it is. ” Now again, it’s worked out, but I think that my wife has done some of that course correcting for me.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. And I invest with my wife as well, and I think there’s always a good balance there. And what I found is that a lot of times what makes two people work as a husband and wife also kind of lends itself to being business partners because in the same way that we compliment each other in our marriage, we find ourselves complimenting each other that way in our business as well. And it’s just kind of cool to see that dynamic play out. I guess just separately, just because I’m curious on this piece now, we get a lot of questions from rookies about how do I get my spouse on board with investing in real estate? And usually that conversation is, “Hey, honey, there’s a house 10 minutes away that I think might be a good deal for us.” And even that’s kind of like an uphill battle, but you were talking about doing this from a different continent with a young family.
What was that conversation like for you, Dave, to get her on board with the idea of building this real estate portfolio?

David Epstein:
I guess part of it helped from the fact that I owned this co-op in New York before we met and got married. And so there was a little bit of a proof of concept. But I mean, my wife is incredibly smart. I mean, business savvy. I mean, she understands numbers and stuff like that. And so part of it was, I was able to show her the math when we looked at the turnkey. I said, “Here’s the amount of money we have. Here’s the amount of money it will cost.” We’re not in 2008, nine again. So worst case scenario is the person moves out, it’s empty for a while, we just don’t see it as working. We sell it, we lose a few bucks, but that worked out. And then when we were in Colorado, the math was simple to say, “If we rent for two years, it’ll cost us this amount of money, but this market is good.
It’s something we previously actually talked about, so a bit of serendipity there. And here’s the numbers even after two years in terms of mortgage pay down, possible appreciation, stuff like that. ” So I said, “It’s just numbers again. It just all comes down to numbers.” And then once that proof of concept happened and when we had this property manager we loved, that’s when we bought the second property in Colorado while we were actually at the time in Belgium. So we refinanced the property in Jacksonville, pulled out some money, not down to 2.15, but we refinanced it and pulled out some money and used that to buy the second property in Colorado. So it’s a town called Fountain. It’s right down I- 25. It’s about maybe 20 minutes south of Colorado Springs. Same property manager, excellent experience, and we’re really happy with that too.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. So it all starts to stack. And I think that’s the cool part of investing in real estate is that oftentimes property one can help you buy a property two, and properties one and two help you buy properties three, and it all starts to kind of snowball from there. But Dave, I mean, you’re living in Vienna, you’re raising three kids, managing a career that sends you literally around the world. What does the next chapter of your portfolio look like? And I think more importantly, what does financial freedom mean to someone who’s kind of already living? You’re living abroad, you’re traveling, you’re living in Europe on a government salary. What does that look like for you?

David Epstein:
Well, so the first thing it looks like is to stop traveling. I want to give my kids stability. So my number one, what do they say? Moving and public speaking are like the two most stressful things. You’d rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. So all I do is move and speak publicly. All right. So I would love to stop that. Not the public speaking. I enjoy that. But the moving for my kids’ sake, they’re now 12, 11, and seven, so they’ve had to leave friends and it does now affect them. It’s hard for us, no matter what being part of an embassy community or otherwise, to plug and play and have a social life instantly. My wife, who has a degree in marine biology, I’ve now brought her to three different postings in the mountains, so she hasn’t really been able to pursue that.
And so we would like to find a way to have what we call a forever home and find a place for us and still pursue real estate investing. So we’re now looking, like I said, to repivot to the growth phase and buy a fourth property. We’d like to try to do about maybe one property every two years. Again, I’m risk averse and there’s a lot of other things on my plate. And then I’m working with a partner now to launch a nonprofit and we’d like to have some financial independence on our own after I leave the State Department at some point where I can focus on that without having to really take a cut in lifestyle. I won’t necessarily be living in Vienna, but without taking a big cut and lifestyle and being able to provide the things for my kids and my wife and things like that.
So I figure if we can get to five or six properties by the time I retire, which is not so far off, then we would have a significant cash flow. Then I’d have a pension. I have a government version of a 401k and a second chapter, a second career that would really be the bulk of my salary because I can’t actually stop. I can’t stop working. I just want to move to something else that has a little bit of more physical stability.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciated you taking the time. I know it’s late at night there, so thank you so much for joining us. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information?

David Epstein:
Well, I do have a BiggerPockets profile. Unfortunately, my activity ebbs and flows. I’m also on LinkedIn. I would love to talk to folks who are interested in the Florida market, who are interested in the Colorado Springs market, want to ask questions, want to give me advice, or even young people who are interested in careers in the state department. I mean, I would be happy to talk to people about stuff like that because I think it’s really a wonderful way to provide service to your country for folks who think that that might be an angle for them versus other options.

Ashley Kehr:
What about any ski tips for? Well I’m terrible. My wife and I are

David Epstein:
Terrible. My wife and I are terrible at

Ashley Kehr:
Skiing. No ski tips.

David Epstein:
We’re terrible at skiing. We go once in a while for the kids, but we’re absolutely awful at it.

Ashley Kehr:
My kids have a worldwide bucket list of places they want to snowboard and stuff. And I mean, they’re like, “Oh, Japan, we want to go there. Austria,” like all these crazy places they want to go.

David Epstein:
Can I plug Bulgaria? It is an amazing country, exceedingly friendly people and very, very affordable luxury. It is one of our favorite places in the world. We go back and visit quite frequently.

Ashley Kehr:
My dad owns a business and he only has a couple employees and two of them are originally from Bulgaria and they go back there several times a year. Ask them about the skiing. Yeah, so interesting. I’ll have to talk to them more. Well, David, thank you so much for joining us and everyone else, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony. I’ll see you guys on the next episode.