Dallas-Fort Worth is the No. 1 market to watch in 2026, a designation it has received for the second year in a row.

Global accounting and financial services firm PwC and the influential Urban Land Institute have just released their annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026 report, ranking the top 10 markets to watch in 2026 and naming the Texas city the top choice.

The list was compiled by surveying over 1,700 real estate investors, developers, lenders, and advisors in both the U.S. and Canada.

“Our primary theme was around navigating the fog. We use that analogy because there’s a lot of uncertainty, both from a macroeconomic and real estate perspective,” Andrew Alperstein, a partner with PwC’s U.S. real estate practice, told CNBC Make It. “There’s a lot we’ve got to keep an eye on here with respect to migration trends and where companies want to do their business.”

Commercial and Residential Real Estate Is Booming

The Dallas metro area secured the top spot for both commercial and homebuilding prospects due to its business-friendly environment, strong migration, and relative affordability compared to other primary markets. 

Alperstein told CNBC, ”It has a pretty diverse economy, is still relatively affordable, and there’s easy access to it.” He added that Dallas’ “great story…will likely continue from a migration perspective and ongoing development and expansion.”

The Attraction for Investors: Jobs

For real estate investors of all stripes, the big attraction to Dallas is its strong employment numbers. Large organizations like Toyota, State Farm, Amazon Web Services, and TIAA have all chosen North Texas as a base for operations, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, that has led to robust expansion in the Dallas metro area.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that DFW was now the nation’s fourth-largest metro in 2023, with more than 8 million residents, and that it added more people than any other metro, with the fastest growth occurring in counties such as Kaufman. The region now sprawls over 9,300 square miles, according to Reuters, as suburban and exurban development extends from its core, with communities such as Frisco, Prosper, and Celina meeting demand for living there.

“The talent pool in North Texas is incredible. It’s a destination for young people now,” Raymond Bellucci, chief operating officer at TIAA Retirement Solutions, told the Journal, when explaining the firm’s decision to move into a new 15-story tower in Frisco —describing the region’s business environment as having “not a lot of red tape.”

Housing, Rents, and Cash Flow

The metro attracted about 100 corporate headquarters between 2018 and 2024, according to PwC, creating ongoing demand for housing to accommodate the workforce.

DFW’s metrics align well with what investors should consider when buying real estate there. According to Zillow, the average apartment rent in DFW is about $1,975 per month, while Payscale data shows the overall cost of living in Dallas was only 1% above the national average, with housing costs roughly 6% lower than the U.S. average. Together, the Dallas-Fort Worth area offers investors the opportunity for cash flow, livability, and long-term growth.

Crucially for investors looking to buy, there is a vast amount of newer, low-maintenance housing available, with massive residential construction projects underway. A New York Times analysis of census data and PropertyShark research between 2013 and 2023 found that the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch was among the U.S. cities with the biggest shift toward newer housing, with the median build year of homes there at 25 years.

High Supply, Low Appreciation

The combination of softer purchase prices, steady rents, and an optimistic future makes Dallas-Fort Worth a metro area that checks all the boxes. 

“The old joke is that we’re going to push all the way to the Oklahoma border, but it’s really starting to look like that,” Nick Wooten, who covers real estate for The Dallas Morning News, told the Texas Standard. “I mean, obviously, you have the big semiconductor projects in Sherman with Texas Instruments. You’ve also got some movement out in Kaufman County, a lot of homes being built out that way. And then the industrial market in Fort Worth with Hillwood and Alliance is just booming.”

The Equalizer: Insurance

No investment, no matter how appealing, is completely risk-free. For DFW, those risks manifest as insurance costs. 

Severe storms comprising thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes accounted for around 59% of global insured natural disaster losses in 2024, with 75% in the U.S., and the biggest losses hitting Sunbelt metros such as Dallas-Fort Worth, according to Reuters.

Insurance is the one sticking point that could seriously eat into investors’ cash flow. Insurance increases in Dallas for average residential homes have been $1,000 per year for the last four years.

Texas currently has some of the highest insurance rates in the country. The average cost of home insurance in 2024 was $6,000 per year, having climbed almost 19% year over year, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. KPRC 2 reports that in 2025, that figure was expected to rise by an estimated 9% to $6,500. 

“Texas has been hit particularly hard by natural disasters, with 68 separate billion-dollar disasters impacting the state over the last five years,” Chase Gardner, a data insights manager with insurance comparison company Insurify, told KPRC 2. “Almost any type of natural disaster that can damage your home, Texas is at risk for that disaster.”

Final Thoughts

It seems there’s not much downside to investing in DFL Metroplex, aside from insurance. However, if you’re considering buying rentals here, it behooves you to double-check the landlord-tenant laws, as Dallas has some unique rules that might catch you off guard. Be prepared for rental property oversight programs, including regular inspections, tenants’ rights, and more.

Dave:
Zillow has released their 2026 housing market predictions. Here’s what I think they got wrong. And fair enough, what they got right too. Mortgage rates, home prices, affordability. We all want to know what’s going to happen this year in the real estate market. I’ve made my predictions. Zillow has published theirs. Let’s see how they stack up. Hey everyone. I’m Dave Meyer. I am a trained data analyst and I’ve been analyzing the housing market in particular for 15 years now, alongside being a real estate investor as well. I released my own personal predictions for 2026 mortgage rates and home prices back in December. And of course, when the biggest names in the real estate industry release their own forecasts, I like to see if my forecast is aligned, if we agree or disagree on some of the big points. So that’s what we’re going to do today.
I’ll go down the list of Zillow’s 10, 2026 housing market predictions and tell you which I think will come true and which I’m not so sure about. Zillow’s key takeaways from their predictions are that home prices will rise about 1% nationationally and that sales volume will increase 4%. They see the housing market getting healthier and better conditions for buyers. And I broadly agree with that sentiment, but not every single one of these predictions. So let’s get into them one by one. All right, prediction number one from Zillow says, “Home values will rise modestly.” They say, quote, “US home values are forecasted to grow 1.2% in 2026. After national values were roughly flat in 2025, next year’s forecast reflects expectations of gradually improving affordability and steady buyer demand. Mortgage costs should ease a bit in 2026, helping more buyers stay in the market and support modest price growth in many parts of the country.” So Zillow is saying they are expecting very modest growth, 1.2% that is a modest nominal home price.
They’re predicting, I should mention, real home prices, so inflation home prices would fall in the scenario about 2%. Now, if you didn’t watch the episode where I made my own predictions about home prices, my prediction was that home prices will come in a range of negative four to 2%. So I think roughly flat is about where we’re going to be. And if you had to ask me today, am I leaning towards plus 1% like Zillow or minus 1%? I would say minus 1%. But for all intents and purposes, I think Zillow and I are saying pretty similar things here, right? Because it’s pretty hard a year out, especially given everything that’s going on in the economy to say, “Yeah, it’s going to be just north of zero or just south of zero.” But I think the important takeaway here is that both Zillow and I, and I should mention other major forecasters who do these types of projections are all basically saying they don’t expect home prices to move that much on a national basis.
And that’s really where I’ve come out. Inventory growth has really sort of stalled out. We’re basically where we were a year ago. It’s same year over year, new listings are flat and demand has stayed relatively strong despite all the economic uncertainty. And because of this, we’ve sort of gotten to this point where there is relative balance in the housing market. For years during the pandemic, it was a strong seller’s market. This year it became more of a buyer’s market, but it’s coming back closer to balanced, which is why I think both Zillow and I are saying it’s going to be relatively close to flat because when things are in balance, that is what happens, right? Things are pretty much flat. Now, the reason I’ll just tell you, I’m leaning just slightly towards the negative. I would not be surprised at all if they were up 1% next year.
Not at all. But if you’re saying why, when I made my predictions back in December, I said just a little bit below zero, it’s because I think the economy is really fragile right now. The labor market is really uncertain. Inflation, we haven’t gotten data for that in two or three months now because of the government shutdown, but you see all these signs that Americans are stretched and are struggling with affordability and housing affordability is absolutely part of that. But I think what happens when we see more people struggling to pay their auto loans or struggling to pay their student debt, or just pulling back in general, we might see some fall off in demand in the housing market. Now that could be offset by falling mortgage prices, but just in the markets I operate, things are cool. Days on market are going up. No one is eager to buy right now.
Even though people are buying, it’s taking a lot longer. In all the markets I operate in, prices are feeling pretty soft. And that’s why I think over the course of next year, they’re not super likely to accelerate again unless we see big decreases in mortgage rates, which we’ll talk about in just a minute. So for prediction number one with Zillow, I think we’re directionally in the same place saying that home prices are likely to remain close to flat. I am slightly more pessimistic about prices, but generally I think we agree. Prediction number two from Zillow says fewer owners will be underwater as prices firm up. “With home values expected to rise in most major markets, fewer homeowners will see their zestimate fall below what they paid for their home.” This stands in contrast to 2025 when home values have fallen in 24 of 50 largest markets as of October, a number of Zillow forecasts will be cut in half to 12 markets next year.
Stabilizing prices means more homeowners will continue building equity rather than losing it at least on paper. Now, I was trying to not split hairs with the first prediction of being positive 1% and negative 1%, but maybe they’re making me make a call here because if I am correct and the prices are down a little bit, then I can’t agree with the second one and say that fewer owners will be underwater as prices firm up because if prices go down even 1%, I think by nature that means that you’re going to have more mortgages underwater. Now, if you don’t know what that term means, a mortgage underwater is basically when you owe more on your loan, then the property is worth. So maybe you bought a house at $300,000, you put 10% down, so you had only $30,000 in equity, you borrowed $270,000, prices go down and now the home’s worth $265,000, that is a mortgage that is underwater.
Right now, there are about 900,000 mortgages that are underwater, which is about 1.5% of the total mortgage market, and that number has definitely gone up because anytime prices go down, that’s when that starts, right? If you’re in a constantly growing market, almost no mortgages are underwater, because the value of those properties keep going up and up and up. And so being in a housing correction like we are in right now, you are of course going to see more mortgages go underwater. So that doesn’t really concern me. If you listen to our housing market updates, I talk about this a lot that mortgages being underwater doesn’t worry me on its own. If you have mortgages underwater in combination with forced selling, that’s a problem, but there’s no signs that that’s happening right now. So for me, it sounds like Zillow is saying that the correction that we’re in is going to bottom and that we’re going to see prices go up again next year.
If you’re asking me as of today, I don’t think so. I think that we are going to be very close to flat. I would say there will be marginally more mortgages underwater in 2026 than there were in 2025, but I don’t think it’s going to be dramatic. I think it’s just going to be a little bit more. All right, so that was prediction. Number two, I’m going to disagree with Zillow, but I’m guessing if we each had to forecast the total number of underwater mortgages, they would probably be pretty close, but we’re doing this for fun. And so I’m going to say, I disagree with this one. I think this one, underwater mortgages are going to go up. Prediction number three, the one you’ve probably been hoping I will get to is mortgage rates will hold above 6%. Sorry for everyone who is holding their breath for lower mortgage rates.
Zillow does not see them coming below 6%. They say, “Even for the experts for seeing mortgage rates a year out is about as difficult as predicting next year’s weather forecast. However, mortgage rates are shaped in part by inflation and Zillow has been accurately predicting shelter inflation, which makes up 40% of the consumer price index. Because of that, we are willing to put ourselves on the record. Mortgage rates are unlikely to fall below 6% in 2026. Borrowers have already seen some relief this year pushing affordability to a three-year best. Gradual rate moderation should help more buyers reenter the market, even if ultra low pandemic error rates remain far out of reach. Okay. Zillow planting their stake in the ground. Is that a saying? Plant their … What is the saying? Putting their foot down. I don’t know. They’re doing something. They are being bold and saying that mortgage rates are not going to come down below 6%.
And I agree with that. I think there might be a point in 2025 where we get into the fives. I’m not saying that that’s impossible, but if you were to ask me for the average of mortgage rates for all of 2026, I believe it will be above 6%. I said in my December mortgage rate forecast that I think we are going to have mortgage rates stay in the range of five and a half to six and a half percent. That’s for a whole year, right? Mortgage rates move a lot. So if you want to forecast where they’re going to be for a whole year, it’s kind of hard to just pick a number. So you got to give a range. That’s the range that I am giving. And if you asked me where I think the average will be, if you took an average of every day in 2026, I think they’ll be at like 6.1%, 6.15.
I don’t know. Somewhere just a little bit above six is my guess. That is an improvement from where we are today. As of this recording, they’re in about 6.3%. So I do think there is some room for improvement. I wouldn’t be surprised if they fall to six. If they fell to 5.9, I’d be a little surprised, but I’d be happy, but that’s within my range. But I agree with fundamentally what Zillow is saying here, that inflation is going to keep mortgage rates higher than most people are forecasting and most people are thinking. This is unfortunate, but inflation is likely to go up for a couple of reasons. You look at things like tariffs, you look at things like our national debt, you look at the price of inputs for manufacturers. There are a lot of reasons to think that we’re not getting below the 2% target the Fed has set in the next couple of years.
And I think there is reasonable risk that inflation keeps going up. I don’t think it’s going to go crazy, but it might keep creeping up a little bit. And that is likely to keep bond yields and mortgage rates high. I won’t get into all of the details of this, but what you should know is inflation is the number one barrier for mortgage rates coming down. And it’s really less to do with what the Fed is going to do in terms of rate cuts and has more to do with inflation. I think that’s the main theme in 2026. And so if inflation starts to come down, mortgage rates can come down more, but it’s moving in the wrong direction right now, which is why I agree with Zillow on this one that mortgage rates on average in 2026 will remain above 6%. So those are Zillow’s first three predictions.
Home values will rise modestly. I think they’ll decline modestly, but I feel pretty aligned with Zillow on that one. They said fewer owners will be underwater as prices firm up. I’m predicting the opposite, but I agree with them when they say mortgage rates will hold above 6%. We do have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about existing home sales and whether sales volume will finally pick up. We’ll talk about new construction, rents, and much more. We’ll be right back. Running your real estate business doesn’t have to feel like juggling five different tools. With Ree Simply, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly, for free, and reach out with calls or texts all from one streamlined platform. The real magic AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects and even grade your conversations so you know where you stand.
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Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer going over Zillow’s 2026 housing market predictions. Before the break, we talked about home prices. We talked about mortgage rates and we talked about the number of mortgages underwater. Let’s move on to Zillow’s fourth prediction, which says existing home sales will climb slightly. Zillow’s forecast calls for 4.26 million existing home sales in 2026, a 4.3% increase from this year’s projected total. Years of limited inventory and high mortgage rates have created a pent up demand to move that should start to release as affordability improves. A stronger than expected fall season has hinted at what’s possible this spring if recent affordability gains persist. This is optimistic, and I actually agree with them. I think that home sales will climb up a little bit. I think demand has been pretty good this fall, surprisingly good. And although I have my concerns about the economy, I do think demand is not going to fall off a cliff.
I think we might see more supply than people are expecting and some of the de- listings that have been coming off the market recently might go back up, which is why I’m kind of leaning towards modestly negative home prices next year, but I am optimistic that we will start to see more home sales. Now, I know for most people home prices and those predictions are what people really care about. That’s kind of the sexy thing to look at, but for the housing market to get back to a healthy level, we got to have more home sales. It’s just slow. This year we are on pace for about four million existing home sales, which may sound like a lot, but it is well below the long-term average of 5.25 million. So we’re more than 20% down from normal. And it feels particularly dramatic because during the pandemic, we are at abnormally high levels of home sales like six million.
And so we’re down about 50% from where we were in 2022. That’s why the market, I think, feels so slow to people. But for anyone who works in the industry, if you’re an agent, a lender, a property manager, this should be good news. It’s probably not where you want to be. They’re saying it will go up to four and a quarter million. It’s not a good year. In any other year, this would be a bad year, right? But we got to see things turn around and hopefully they are correct and this is a baby step towards more housing activity incoming years. And so I’m going to agree with this one that existing home sales will climb slightly. Zillow’s fifth prediction is about new construction. They say new construction will see its weakest year since before the pandemic. Zillow says, quote, 2026 is shaping up to be the slowest year for single family home construction starts since 2019, following a notably weak year in 2025.
Because there’s a large stock of new homes already built and others still under construction, builders are expected to hold back on starting new projects. Single family starts are trending 5% below last year’s pace as of the latest reading in August. A further 2% drop off of that pace in 2026 would bring starts below the roughly 947,000 homes begun in 2023. Currently, the low watermarks since the start of the pandemic. Expect builders to continue leaning heavily on incentives such as rate buydowns to keep inventory moving, particularly in markets where affordability remains tight. So do I agree that we’ll see less total new construction starting in 2026 than 2025? Yeah, I think that’s probably likely. We have seen an incredible amount of incentives have to be used to move inventory in 2026. And with just unclear forecast for inflation and affordability, builders might pull back a little bit further in 2026.
So I generally agree with this, but I just want to say their headline that this is going to be the weakest year for new construction since before the pandemic, that’s from the builder’s perspective. I just want to offer a different perspective because from a buyer’s perspective, from an investor’s perspective, this might be the best year for new construction that we have ever seen. Actually, as of this recording, the median price for a newly built home is cheaper than that of a existing home. That has never really happened before. And this, I have said before on the show, I think is a really interesting opportunity for investors because of all the things Zillow just said, and I agree with, builders are offering huge incentives. They’re buying down mortgage rates. They’re offering seller concessions. They’re offering free upgrades to sort of like spruce up the finishes on a home.
They don’t really like lowering the price, but if you negotiate really hard, they might be willing to do that, but they’ll probably do lots of other things worth tens of thousands of dollars to get you to buy a home. And so I continue to believe that we’re in this very unique time where new construction is a viable option for real estate investors. It’s not good everywhere. It really depends on the location. A lot of new construction happens to be out in sort of these remote, random kind of tertiary markets or like in the suburbs of a tertiary market. I wouldn’t buy that stuff personally, but there are places where you can actually in good markets with strong fundamentals buy new construction at a good rate. It’s probably not going to be the best cash on cash return ever, but if you can find ones that’s cash flowing, you might actually do better on that in terms of cash long term because your CapEx, your repairs, your maintenance costs are going to be lower.
And that’s really appealing because everything is brand new. But also secondly, if you’re getting a rate buydown into the fours, which I have absolutely heard happening, this is definitely happening. A rate died down into the forest, definitely into the fives. Your cashflow might not be that different from an existing home because yeah, you might be paying a little bit more, maybe not, depending on the market you’re in, but your costs are going to be a little bit less, your rent’s going to be higher because you’re renting out a brand new home and your financing costs might actually be lower. So I think the weakness that Zillow is citing for new construction is actually strength for investors and buyers of new construction. It’s one of the things I’ve personally looked at a little bit. There’s not a lot of new construction in the markets I’m investing in right now, so that’s the reason I haven’t pulled the trigger on it, but I know other investors in Texas and Florida who are doing these kinds of deals because they’re getting deep value on them.
So something depending on where you live, you could consider for your 2026 strategy. All right, let’s move on to Zillow’s sixth prediction, which is that apartment renters will see relief. They say rent affordability is expected to continue improving in most of the country after a year in which 35 of the 50 biggest markets saw incomes grow faster than rents. A median income household would spend 27.2% of income on the typical US rent as of October, the lowest share since August of 2021. Zillow forecasts multifamily rents to rise just 3% in 2026, giving incomes a chance to catch up even further. Single family rents are projected to climb by 2.3% as many buyers delay home purchases. Okay. So will apartment renters see relief? Yes, I agree with this one for sure. I think there’s an important caveat for everyone to understand because you might be thinking Zillow just said rents on single family homes are projected to go up 2.3% as of this year.
How is that relief for apartment renters? And this just comes down to some basic economic stuff here. But what Zillow is saying is that if rents go up only 2.3% for a single family home, but wages, the average amount that people earn is up, let’s say 4%, it’s kind of close to where it is today. If went up 4%, then relatively rents are getting cheaper, right? Even though the price you pay on paper is going up, your ability to afford that rent is improving because your income is rising faster than your rent. And I do agree with that, particularly on the multifamily side. I don’t think we’re going to see much growth in rent on multifamily. They’re close to flat. They’ve been flat for a while. I know that we are working through this multifamily glut. I am very well aware of that, but I just think this is just me.
I think household formation is going to be muted in the next year. We’re seeing data from all over the economy that people are struggling, car payment, delinquencies are going up, student loan delinquencies are going up. It’s not an emergency by any means, but it can weigh on household formation. The other piece of this though is the wage piece. And I am hopeful that wage growth will continue to stay positive. There is this thing in economics, it’s called real wage growth. It’s like, is our wage is growing faster than inflation? And that has been one of the bright spots of the economy since I think it was February 2023, we sort of crossed this threshold where wage growth was higher than the rate of inflation. And that has still happened. We’ve had that for the last, I guess it’s almost two years now. We’ve had real positive wage growth.
Now the amount of that real wage growth has declined a little bit. It was about 2% a year ago. Now it’s about 1%, but I’m hoping that that will continue. I do have some fears about that. I’ll be honest with AI and rising unemployment rate, people tend to lose negotiating leverage in their wage negotiations. And so that can lead to lower real wages, but I am optimistic that wage growth will stay above the pace of rent increases. So I say yes to Zillow, apartment renters will see some relief. All right, we have made it through six of Zillow’s 10 predictions for the 2026 housing market. I got four more for you though. We got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. The Cashflow Roadshow is back. Me, Henry, and other BiggerPockets personalities are coming to the Texas area from January 13th to 16th.
We’re going to be in Dallas, we’re going to be in Austin, we’re going to Houston, and we have a whole slate of events. We’re definitely going to have meetups. We’re doing our first ever live podcast recording of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and we’re also doing our first ever one-day workshop where Henry and I and other experts are going to be giving you hands-on advice on your personalized strategy. So if you want to join us, which I hope you will, go to biggerpockets.com/texas. You can get all the information and tickets there.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m Dave Meyer going through Zillow’s 10 2026 housing market predictions. So far, I think we’re agreeing in principle on most things. I’m nitpicking a couple things here or there because that’s why we’re doing this podcast episode. But I think overall, we see the housing market in relatively similar ways, but let’s go on. We got four more to go and we’ll see if we agree or disagree. Number seven reads, “The lifestyle renter will emerge as a force.” Zillow says, quote, “For a growing share of Americans, renting is a deliberate choice that supports mobility, reduces home maintenance burdens, and better fits the way they want to live.” Nearly three in five renters say they plan to keep renting next year, according to the Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report. Even if mortgage rates dropped, only 37% say they would buy down from 45% last year.
This is just another example of why I’m saying I think household formation is probably going to be tepid this year. I just don’t think we’re going to see a lot of it because even if mortgage rates drop, if you do the math, for most people, for a lot of people, renting is still a better decision. Now, this is a real estate investing podcast. I’m not saying it’s a better decision than investing in real estate. I have made the argument many times that I think renting and buying rental properties is actually a great way to grow your portfolio, but I’m saying that if you were just to do the straight up math of, should I buy a home or should I live in a similarly priced rental, oftentimes the rental is better. Now, if you plan to live in that home or that rental for six, seven years, the math changes.
But if you’re just trying to figure out where you’re going to live for the next couple of years, rentals are often better. And so I do agree with this idea that lifestyle renters will emerge as a force. I think there are going to be people who choose to rent indefinitely. Looking at the housing market, looking at the rising costs of maintenance, of insurance, of taxes, like these expenses, we all know this as investors, right? That stuff’s going up. I understand that some people just see this and they’re like, “Man, it’s too expensive. I don’t want to deal with the stress. I like having a landlord.” And I know people have really strong opinions with that, but I do think we’re going to see more and more people opting for that. Now, what does this mean for real estate investors? I think the market for higher end and single family rentals is going to be strong for the foreseeable future.
I think if you as a landlord can offer a family a stable place to live in a good neighborhood that they feel like they can comfortably live in for three, four, five years, those are going to be really high demand and you’re probably going to be able to get really good renters. I really like this idea of appealing to people who are choosing to be renters and want to live in a high quality home for a long time. To me, that creates really good mutual alignment between the property owner and the renter. You both want the place to stay in good condition. You don’t want vacancy, you don’t want to move, you don’t want to leave, and you want a stable, predictable thing. I personally would be willing to think about longer term leases to these kinds of people with maybe a fixed or maximum rent increase for a couple of years to make them feel comfortable.
I think those kinds of things are great ways that tenants and property owners can work together to make rental housing more comfortable for people who are choosing this renter lifestyle. Now, I know this isn’t for everyone. I’m not saying that everyone should be a renter forever. It’s really a personal choice, but this isn’t even a judgment. I just am making a prediction. I think more and more people are going to choose to rent because housing is much less affordable than rentals. And I do think it is wise for investors to adapt and try to offer products that are appealing to these types of people. So that’s number seven. Moving on to prediction number eight. Zillow says kid fluence. I have not heard this word. I think they’re trying to coin a new term. Kidfluence will steer rental demand. They say, quote, “Lifestyle renting and affordability realities are changing who rents and what they need from their homes, like we were just talking about.
” Then they go on to say 37% of renters now have a child younger than 18 at home up from 33% a year ago, according to the Ziler Consumer Housing Trends Report. With Generation Alpha influencing close to half of their parents’ spending, families are bringing those prefaces into housing decisions as well. With parents making up roughly one third of today’s apartment shoppers, buildings that offer family-friendly amenities like imagination centers or homework pods will be better positioned to compete. I don’t know about this one. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m just old school about this, but I just imagine my parents, if they were shopping for an apartment and they just got a better deal on one, they would just take that regardless of if it had an imagination center or a homework pod in it. I don’t know if that’s just me and my parents, but I don’t really buy this.
Like maybe in certain cities this will matter, but I just have to imagine that if you are choosing to rent, yeah, probably school district matters and yeah, they want to be in a neighborhood that is safe, that is good for their children, where their friends live, where your friends live, where family lives, but I think these things are kind of gimmicky. Like maybe if there was two buildings sitting next to each other and they were the same rent, the same layout, the same square footage, and one of them had an imagination center and the other one did not have an imagination center, maybe the one with the imagination center wins, but I have a hard time imagining parents making huge financial decisions about something like this. It’s just, I think they’re trends. Everyone two years ago was like, “Oh, if you had a coworking space in your building, rents were going to go up.” I don’t think that’s really true anymore.
I’ve been in a lot of buildings where there’s a coworking space. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a desk be … Being used in my life. These things are a little bit gimmicky and I don’t think they’re really going to make a lot of influence over people’s decisions. So Zillow, I’m disagreeing with you on this one. Zillow’s ninth prediction is inflation savvy home features are becoming mainstream. They say, quote, “Rising household expenses will continue reshaping what buyers look for in a home. Energy efficient features such as zero energy ready homes, whole home batteries and EV charging stations are appearing more frequently in listings. Zillow predicts families will gravitate towards homes that are energy efficient and grocery optimized. Think walk-in pantries, garage-based cold zones for bulk storage, refrigerated drawers and smart organization systems that help families shop smarter and keep food fresh longer. Oh, no. What?
I’m sorry. I just don’t even understand what this is talking about. A walk-in pantry is now an inflation savvy move. What? That’s just where you keep your food. What difference does it make if it’s a walk-in pantry or just a regular drawer or a cabinet or you keep it on a shelf? What difference does it make? Garage-based cold zones. I don’t think people are going to start building this. Again, I think these are gimmicks that yeah, maybe people are putting them in listings. Maybe ChatGPT has decided these things are important. And so for all the agents out there who are using ChatGPT to make their listings, they are putting these things, but geez, I do not see this being mainstream at all. If you look at the zero energy, I don’t know about that either. How about this? I think if you look at energy efficient appliances, I’ll give you that.
Like you see stuff like WaterSense, which is like this EPA rating about water efficiency. Yeah. If you had a choice to use a toilet that’s going to cost you less money because it uses less water and it’s the same price, sure, people might be able to use that. Or if you have a fridge that is more energy efficient, it’s going to save you on your energy bill, or you get a heat pump that’s more energy efficient, save you on your energy bill. Yes, I think those things are probably going to be popular, but that’s not different. Like that is already mainstream. People already look at those things. There are stickers on every appliance telling you how much energy they use and people already are factoring those things into these decisions. So sorry, Zillow, I don’t see this one as a trend for 2026. I’m sorry.
All right. Zillow’s last prediction for 2026, AI will evolve from helpful assistant to transaction coordinator. They say, quote, “In 2026, AI will move beyond offering advice and begin coordinating steps in buying, selling, and renting process. Instead of simply recommending actions, AI assistants will help manage tasks end to end from connecting buyers and sellers with the right real estate agents to tour scheduling, to negotiations and closing prep. This agentic approach will streamline decisions, automate routine work, and make the transaction feel more predictable for everyone involved.” Okay. Maybe. Yeah, a little bit, but come on. I guess the problem is people will call anything AI. They still tour scheduling. If you were to go on showing time, you could just select a tour from a schedule. Is that AI? Why does AI need to get involved in that? It is already about as automated as possible. Does it have to predict what day you want to go and schedule it ahead of time?
I think they’re stretching a little bit on some of these things about how useful AI can actually be. Do I think AI is going to become more prevalent in real estate transactions? Yes. I do think for document management, for closing management, transaction coordination stuff like that, I think could be helped. Is it going to help in negotiations? I don’t think so, if I’m just being honest. I just don’t think that’s going to weigh into this. I personally would not trust AI to negotiate for me. I would much rather work with my agent and the seller’s agent to negotiate on something. Maybe some people will, but I think we’re still a little bit aways from that. So Zillow, I’ll give it to you on a couple small things, but I’m guessing a year from now, the transaction process for buying and selling real estate is going to look pretty much the same way it does today.
I’m not saying that’s going to last forever. I do think AI will evolve and become more involved in real estate, but I generally speaking, think that people are overestimating what AI can do right now. It’s a great research tool. I use it all the time for research, but interacting and connecting between actual humans is not really doing that right now. And maybe something will change in the next year, but I think we’re a little bit further out than that if I had to guess. So Zillow, not agreeing with you on this one either. All right, so that’s what we got. We had 10 predictions from Zillow. First one was home values will rise modestly. Although I’m a little bit more pessimistic, I’m generally in the same sense as Zillow that I think prices are going to be pretty much flat, nominal terms. I think they’re going to be down in real terms.
I disagree that fewer owners will be underwater, but I agree that mortgage rates will hold above 6%. I had a few more I agreed with Zillow on that existing home sales will climb, that new construction will be weak for sellers, but good for buyers, and that apartment renters will probably see some relief. But I disagreed with this idea of kid fluencers, not my area of expertise, but this just sounds off to me. I also disagree that their inflation savvy home features are going to emerge as mainstream. I will bet you next year, if I asked everyone I know if they have a garage based cold zone for bulk storage, 100% of them will say no, but maybe that’s a bet some of you are willing to take. Let me know. And I also disagree that AI is going to fundamentally transform how transactions are done in the next year.
I think it will be good for organization, for streamlining communications, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to work the same way one year from now as it does today. Those are my takes on Zillow’s predictions, but let me know what you think. We’ve gone through all 10 of them. I’m sure you all have your own opinions, so drop them in the comments and let me know what you think. That’s all we got for you today on the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.

Ashley:
What if rising rates made every deal feel impossible? Your cashflow no longer works and you’re starting to wonder if real estate investing is even worth it anymore. Or maybe you’re brand new in asking, how do I even break into this industry when I have zero experience?

Tony:
And when tax season rolls around, what should you actually ask your CPA to make sure you’re not leaving money on the table? Today we’re breaking down all three of these listener questions that get to the heart of what Ricky’s are struggling with right now, financing, experience, and taxes.

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

Tony:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let’s get into today’s first question. So today’s first question comes from Ray in the BiggerPockets Forums. And Ray says, “I’m a newbie looking to purchase my first rental property and I am in need of some advice. My main goal going into real estate investing is to gain some cashflow so I can scale down, not necessarily quit my day job, which seemed fairly attainable based on the deal analysis on the site and discussions on the BP podcast, but recently I’ve seen several forum posts saying it’s no longer possible to have cashflow and that you’ll be lucky to even break even. Is this true or does it just take more careful planning and knowledge in today’s world? I’ve heard high interest rates are one thing that are hampering cashflow, but my plan was to tap into the equity from our home to cover the first rental, understanding that we could get a better interest rate on a HELOC than with a traditional loan and therefore create more cash flow.
Is that correct? Or does it all depend on the LTV ratio on the HELOC as to how low the interest rate will be? The other option is to withdraw money from our Roth IRAs to pay in cash, which would give us decent cash flow on the first property, but we would still need to finance the second, third, fourth, et cetera, through a HELOC or traditional loan and would then face the same question of whether we can find a deal that gives us some as in two to $300 per month in cashflow. So I’d like to figure out, is cash flow still an option? And if so, what is the best strategy if that’s my goal? Great question. And I feel like there are probably a lot of people listening right now who are thinking about investing in real estate, but are hesitant for a lot of the same reasons that Ray just said.
They’re just hearing a lot of chatter about what real estate investing looks like today. I think first is maybe just have like a quick history lesson and then Ash, we can both give our take. Interest rates are high right now, right? A lot higher than what they’ve been in my adult life. And I think a lot of folks, even when BP got started, like BP got started right around the Great Depression. And there were a lot of folks who were investing when it was probably one of the best times in the history of mankind to invest in real estate. But even as the market stabilized and before COVID, it was still a good time. There are unique challenges today. Inventory is constrained in a lot of places that’s pushing prices higher in a lot of places and interest rates are making it more difficult. That said, I think anytime that we make blanket statements about real estate investing everywhere across every strategy, it becomes a lot harder to say things that are actually true.
And while some markets and some strategies, maybe it is difficult or maybe impossible to cash flow, there are definitely markets and opportunities and strategies that still work. And I’ll give a quick example. I was just talking to a real estate investor last week and she’s based on the East Coast and Jersey, but she buys duplexes in Philadelphia and her strategy is burring duplexes in Philadelphia and then putting in Section eight tenants. And she said her average cashflow across those deals, even for deals she’s buying today, is about a thousand bucks per month. A thousand bucks per month on a duplex in a C class neighborhood in Philadelphia. So the question isn’t, does it work or can I get cashflow? The question is, what market should I be focused on? What strategy should I be focused on? What niche should I be in? And it’s the combination of those things that I think will help you find the cashflow.
So that’s my initial take. Ash, what are your thoughts?

Ashley:
Yeah, I think the combination is key as far as not only your market, things like that and the property type, but also what other benefits you can get with real estate. Because I think a big comparison right now is, should I invest in real estate? Should I invest in the stock market? And you’re not going to get the same benefits like tax benefits, tax advantages, appreciation, things like that that you would with the stock market. You’re just going to get the value of the stock price going up, or maybe you’ll get dividends, things like that. But real estate has its own specific benefits. So first, outweigh what other things are important to you. So if you want to reduce your taxable income, real estate may be a better option for you than the stock market, even if you could get the same return on either one.
So I think those are two major investments that you could be looking at to choose between. And I think you have to look at not only the performance in the long run, but also look at the other benefits that you can get from either one. And I like real estate because I believe it has more benefits that benefit me right now in my journey. I want to hold properties for a long time and then sell them way down the road. I want to get the tax benefits right now to decrease my income and keep more money in my pocket now. So I think looking at that is really important too, is what other benefits do you have? Your tenants paying down your mortgage, you’re not even paying for the property, appreciation, building that equity in the property, and then just the tax benefits that rental income is tax different than W2 income and being able to use things like the short-term rental loophole or doing cost segregation studies on a long-term rental or short-term rental.
And also being able to get that real estate professional status for you or maybe your spouse to really be able to decrease your taxable income. So that’s something I think you also need to consider when looking at real estate as to like, oh, this is only going to cashflow $300 a month, but what if that same exact property could actually decrease you not having to pay $20,000 in taxes that year? That’s almost a little over $1,000 a month that you’re keeping back into your pocket that you’re not paying into taxes. And that’s the one thing that took me a long time to realize is this benefit besides just cash flow. So I think take that into consideration too as to how much money overall can you keep in your pocket.

Tony:
Ash, how have your maybe expectations around cashflow shifted from when you first started investing to today? Because I think that’s a big part of it too. It’s just like having realistic expectations around what’s here. So yeah, how has that shifted for you?

Ashley:
Yeah, cashflow is everything. Cashflow is king. Cashflow is how I was going to quit my job. Cashflow is how I was paying off my student loans. And for a while it worked. It was great. But I realized some of the really great cashflowing properties were headache properties. They were like in class C areas and they needed a ton of just attention. There were headaches, a lot of turnover, things like that. And I realized over time that yes, cashflow is really good and you should not ignore it and you should not buy a cashflow negative property, but there are so many other benefits. I feel like one day where I just looked at this property I bought in 2017 for $143,000 and looked at what the rents were when I bought it compared to how much I had been able to increase the rents over the years and then what the value of that property was now.
I could probably sell that property for 250 to $300,000. The tenants have paid the mortgage down to like 95,000. I had put, I think like a 25,000 down payment maybe on it, maybe 30,000. And just looking at if I sold that property now, how much money I would get, how much I’m cash flowing on that property. So really, I was in shock when I had that realization one day, like the aha moment of like, wow, those 10 years, eight years went really, really fast. And now it’s like, okay, if I keep doing that, there’s so much more value than just the cash flow. So again, the cashflow built my strong, steady foundation, and now I can focus more on that appreciation and long-term gain too for the properties. What about you,

Tony:
Tony? Yeah, I think for me, just my expectations around the type of cash flow that we can get today has definitely shifted. If you go back to like on my wife and I, we have a YouTube channel of Real Estate Robinsons, and if you go back and you watch some of those earlier videos and we talk about the types of deals we were looking at buying, we typically, there’s a 1% rule, the 2% rule in the long-term rental space. And I had like a 30% rule where it’s like, man, if I can get my annual revenue to be at least 30% of the purchase price and it’s a really good deal. So if I bought a house for round numbers sake, let’s say I buy a house for $100,000, if I can do $30,000 in an annual revenue, then it’s a good deal or a million dollar property does 300K, it’s a good deal.
Today, that number’s probably closer to like 15 to 20%, and it’s because rates have effectively doubled since I bought my first short-term rental, right? So that means that we’ve got to see the returns probably go down a little bit as well. So I think the question isn’t, should I be investing in real estate or should I not be? The question is, what is the best way for me to do it today? And we interviewed That Win and James Daynard as two investors who have been doing this for decades and they both echo the same exact thought. The people who say now is not a good time to buy are people who are probably never going to get started because there’s always a reason or some data point that you can point to to say, now it’s not the right time to buy. But it’s the people who understand that every time it’s the right time to buy, it’s just adjusting your strategy and adjusting your expectations is how you continue to get ahead.
So I get the fear guys and I get the hesitation, but you’ve got to be able to separate who you’re taking advice from. And if the folks who are telling you don’t buy real estate are people who’ve never bought real estate or maybe people who have done it without the proper guidance and education and they’re not really part of the BiggerPockets ecosystem and they’re not actively doing this, you got to kind of filter that advice out. So yes, now is still a good time to do it. You just got to figure out the right way to do it.

Ashley:
So if you can’t make the math work yet, what if your day job was your turning ground? After the break, we’ll talk about which jobs actually teach you to invest smarter. We’ll be right back. Okay. Welcome back. Our next question is from Taylor and the BP Forums. I’m a brand new investor with little to no real estate experience. My wife and I are moving back to Birmingham this summer and I am planning to invest in real estate when we do. In your opinion, what is the best job that will teach me the skills necessary to be a real estate investor? Little background, my wife is a high income professional in the medical field and I am an educator. Our plan is for me to leave the teaching field and invest in real estate full-time when we return to Birmingham this summer. I don’t have any work experience in real estate, but I started reading and trying to learn what I could back in 2020.
I’ve read a few of Brandon Turner’s books and a few others about five or six in total. So I would like to obtain a job in real estate where I could work full-time while we begin buying rentals. Our initial strategy is to buy single family homes who are buying hold long-term rentals in or around Birmingham. We are looking at buying at least one home per year for the next 10 to 15 years. I assume our plan can and will evolve over time as we are interested in small multifamily as well. So back to my question, what would be the best job for me to gain valuable experience? After a little online research, it seems something in acquisition so that I can learn to analyze deals or property management so that I can learn the day-to-day operations. What would be the best position thoughts? I actually have a hot take on this, I

Tony:
Think. Yeah. Ooh, Ashley’s got a hot take. We need like a hot take sound effect or something. What’s the hot take?

Ashley:
I don’t think that’s what you should be concerned about. I don’t think that you should worry about that. I think you should take the highest paying job to increase your income, to increase the amount of money you have to invest in real estate, and also that gives you the time to invest in real estate. So I would say being a teacher, okay, if you were to keep a teaching job, teachers can be well paid. I will say it’s not the highest paying job for the amount of work that they have to do, but you’re working school hours, you’re getting vacation days off, you’re over holidays, you’re off during the summers. So if that is like a better paying job than working at a property management company where you’re working 40 hours a week for the whole time throughout the year, maybe keeping a teaching job is actually the better solution for you.
So I think the reason I think that is because you don’t need to learn a skillset to actually invest. I do think it is very valuable to get paid to learn. That is how I started. I worked as a property manager, foreign investor, and I learned everything and definitely gave me the confidence, but I don’t think that you need to do that or that it’s going to set you apart than someone who isn’t doing that. I think you are still as capable of learning everything online at your home without actually physically working that job. If you are set on getting a job that’s in real estate, I would say not a real estate agent. It’s not consistent enough. You’re going to most likely be 1099. It’s not going to help you get loans for investment properties. Property management, unless you’re in a lot of states, if you’re not a licensed real estate agent, you can’t actually be like a property manager, but working in the office, you’ll have access to the lease documents, things like that.
What I would suggest instead, instead of getting like a full-time job, I met someone who went and worked as one of the, I can’t think of what it’s called, but they would like be the person that answered the phone for work orders and assign the work orders to people. And so they’d moved to their full-time job to doing that. What I think what you could do instead is keep your consistent job as a teacher, maybe pick up a shipped a night or on weekends leasing an apartment or doing maintenance on a property. I had met a sheriff before who he, as a part-time job, would do maintenance on properties. The investor that owned the properties would text him, this was before there was great property management software. Text him, here’s the work orders that needs to be done. And then he would schedule them and set up times that worked for him to go and meet the tenants and complete the work orders.
So I would say like if you can get paid more money to switch careers into something that’s like in the property management field, even project management, but usually you need to have some sort of like experience or a project management degree to get into a field like that can be super beneficial, especially if you’re going to be doing rehabs, maybe even in construction, working for a builder or something like that where you’re learning more about the rehab process. But I would say my recommendation would be to keep whatever job is going to be consistent income for you and that you enjoy too. Property management, you just hear complaining all the time is not enjoyable and then try and pick up something on the side or just your part-time job is going to be just shadowing an investor or something, not even get paid to do it.
So I think there’s many other options rather than just like completely switching careers.

Tony:
Asha, I’ll agree with you, but I’ll also disagree with you. And I think the advice you gave, I would agree with for most people, but there’s a caveat to what he said that I think is important. He said, “My wife is a high income professional in the medical field.” So it kind of sounds like his wife is able to hold it all down for like what they need for their life and everything. So I actually do think that in that unique situation, him going and taking a very kind of riskier job in the real estate space might actually be a really good idea. And for me, I feel like most investors, like if I was in his position, I would try and go find the biggest wholesaler in my market and go work for them so I can understand how to build deal pipeline, like how to build my pipeline of deals because whatever strategy you end up wanting to go into, the ability to find a good deal is foundational to being able to execute.
It doesn’t matter if you’re flipping, long term buy and hold, short term, midterm, whatever, name it, you still need a good deal in order for these deals to work. So I think only because he’s got this spouse who’s a high income earner that can, it seems like take care of everything, I would invest all of my extra time, effort, energy into getting really, really good at finding the best deals and then scaling up from there.

Ashley:
If you guys are watching this on YouTube, let us know in the comments which way you would take if you were this person or if you totally disagree with both of us and have your own solution, let us know in the comments.

Tony:
Right. So from your perspective, if you think about all the different pieces that go into like making a real estate transaction happen from acquisition through management and everything in between, for a rookie, which one do you think they should focus on most or first maybe?

Ashley:
That’s a good question. I do think that acquisition piece is important, but I do think like there’s so many investors that are successful that don’t have to acquire property from scratch that you can use a real estate agent to walk you through that process, to find a deal for you, to help you with all that, or you can buy from a wholesaler. So I think it really depends on the person and what their goal is in real estate and what they want to actually get into. I have no interest in going and soliciting off market deals by cold calling or texting or door knocking. So I mean, I wouldn’t take the time to learn how to do that. I’ve sent mailers before. I do a lot of off market deals just from referrals, things like that, but I am not physically out there soliciting deals.
So I think that that makes a big difference, that it’s not useful for me to learn too much into how to spot a motivated seller, things like that. I definitely do think it’s a big thing and probably can propel you and 10X you and get you better deals, but I don’t want to put the time into that. So I don’t know what I … For me, property management definitely was really useful. I think it gave me the confidence of like not being scared of actually managing the tenant and knowing what to do and things like that. But I actually know what … I’m changing my mind. I know it would be the best thing, handyman skillset. That I think would be one of the greatest things if I was getting started, because I think that’s like one of the biggest not feeling confident about doing the rehab on the property, not feeling confident and about getting maintenance things.
So that’s what I would do.

Tony:
I like the handyman idea, but I think your initial point, Ash, is maybe even more important because what you’re basically saying is you’ve got to understand who you are as an individual, where your natural kind of skills and abilities lay, and what do you really want to focus on as you become a real estate investor? Because you’re right, there are successful real estate investors who do just use networking with agents and wholesalers to go out there and find all their deals so they can focus on the other elements. So I guess you’ve got to ask yourself what part of that cycle of a deal do you really want to be focused on and build your expertise in and then probably go do that. So yeah, it’s a great point, Ash. I guess the answer does kind of vary depending on the unique individual.

Ashley:
And for me, it was property management, but also it’s so easy to hire a property management company. So if you already know you’re going to do that, it’s not worth your time. So maybe asset management is the best answer, knowing how to manage your assets.

Tony:
For me, I’m good at property management, but I don’t like it. I do not like being a property manager. That’s why my wife handles most of the day-to-day in our real estate business, but I do like underwriting deals and kind of building that pipeline and doing that piece first. So yeah, I guess it does kind of depend on where your skillsets lie.

Ashley:
I have to say for short-term rentals, I do not like it either until I finally grew up and got good property management software. And now that I use hospitable, I love it because it does everything for me. So I feel like I’m so accomplished as a host of my rentals now, but literally just because it’s doing everything for me.

Tony:
Shout out to the right tools. So guys, DM me and Ashley on Instagram if you want all the tools that we use, because it makes a big difference in being able to run both of your long-term and your short-term rentals the right way. So there’s plenty of them out

Ashley:
There. And again, if you’re watching on YouTube, tell us your favorite tool for investing because I am obsessed with software, apps, anything that will help me run my business. So I’d love to see what are some of your guys’ favorites. All

Tony:
Right guys, so we talked about where to get started, but what happens when you actually find the deal? At some point you got to pay taxes. So how do you navigate the world of taxes and real estate investor? We’ll cover that right after we’re from today’s show sponsors. All right guys, we are back with our final question of the day. And this one comes from Daniel in the BiggerPockets Forum. And Daniel says, “I’m looking to hire a professional to help me with my taxes this year. I’ve always done them myself, but I fear I’m leaving money on the table. I have W2 income and I own three properties, all long-term rentals that I’ve had for a few years.” Are there any questions that I should be sure to ask or anything that maybe you wish you had asked sooner? Looking forward to hearing from you guys.
All right, this is a great question and we are recording this right at the end of the year, but this will release the beginning of the year. This is actually a great time to talk about taxes because I think a lot of people wait until that spring deadline to start thinking about taxes, but really you should be thinking about taxes on January one for that entire year, not the following year when you’re going to file.
We got our first CPA, not at our first deal, but it was within like the first, I don’t know, 12 months or so because by the time I filed my first tax return as someone who had several properties, I did have a good CPA that I was working with. I think the first thing, and Ashley, let me know if you disagree with this. I think the first thing that you should ask whatever CPA you go work with is what percentage of your clients own real estate? And you don’t want to get into a position where you’re educating your CPA on things like bonus depreciation or cost segregation studies or different deductions you can take as a real estate investor. So for me, I think that would be my first question when I’m going to vet someone as my potential CPA is not do you work with real estate investors, but what percent of your client base right now are in real estate?

Ashley:
I think that’s a great question for any vendor. If you’re looking for an insurance agent, if you’re a real estate agent, how many investors do you work with? I think that’s a great thing. Even contractors, like a contractor that I’ve used a lot, he really only does stuff for investors or he has his own investment properties. So he’s very like conscious that like this is a rental. This isn’t like my dream home and we don’t need to go over the top with finishes and things like that. So really can make a big difference. With using a CPA, I think there is some level of knowledge that you need to have. Of course, you want to hire the right people so you don’t have to learn all of these things, but BiggerPockets does have a couple books on tax strategies for real estate investors by Amanda Hahn and Matt McFarland, which I think are a great read just to like give yourself the basic knowledge.
So that way when you are going to your CPA, you have some knowledge about what they can offer you and also to be able to ask these right questions. So for example, I worked with the CPA for a long time that never ever told me about a cost segregation. Now I know to ask how many cost segregation studies have your clients done in the past year or have you done on their tax return or whatever. I think that just having that basic knowledge of what opportunities, tax loopholes, deductions are out there can really, really help you have that conversation with the CPA to see if they are a right fit because if they don’t know what some of these things are, that’s probably a red flag.

Tony:
I think another one for me to call out is like your entity structure, and it’s good to give advice both from a CPA and an attorney on this one because they’re both trying to optimize for different things, but I’ll give you guys like an example. The first CPA that I hired, we were flipping homes and we were holding real estate and we were doing it all together. And she’s like, “No, no, no, no. You do not want to do that because … ” I can’t even remember the reason, like something about employment taxes or something that’s like you’re getting double tax if you’re running active income through a passive income entity like it doesn’t work. So she encouraged us to split it out. So now, even to this day, we have one entity that we hold all of our real estate in, right? So all of our buy and hold rentals are in one.
Anything that we flip or any of our other active income is in a separate entity and there was a tax advantage to doing that and she was able to share that with me. So I think just sharing with your CPA, what are your current … You’ve got three rentals right now, but are you doing anything active? Do you flip as well? Do you wholesale? Do you have any other active income that you’re doing to make sure that they can give you some insight there? I think another one that’s important too is just like exit strategies, because sometimes maybe you’re thinking about selling a property and just having that conversation with your CPA beforehand so they can give you advice on, “Okay, you bought it for this much, you actually depreciated this much already. If you sell this, here’s what you’re kind of looking at from a tax perspective, but if you 1031 it, then here’s the benefit of doing that.
” So I think just keeping them in the loop about not only where you are today, but what your plans are for the future so they can give you advice on how to make the right moves.

Ashley:
And you can also have two people help you with this, but I know you mentioned the attorney, but also like you don’t have to have one CPA that does everything. You can have a CPA that files your tax return and you could have a different CPA that does your tax planning that helps you with this going forward. So they’re the ones that are really focused on like what moves you need to be making, knowing what you’re going to have happen so they can have you do the right things before the end of the year so that when you do go to file your tax return, you have all of the information that you need for the other CPA to put onto the tax return. And I’ve actually found this to be like cheaper kind of is to like not have the really skilled person do all of it where they’re doing the fine tuning, they’re putting it into a package for me of how this is going to be the best tax strategy.
And then basically I’m giving the other CPA the fill in the blank information on my tax return because that’s what a tax return is. It’s fill in the blank and then each year the tax planner actually reviews, make sure it’s correct, things like that. So that’s another thing too, is you don’t have to rely on just one person. And it really helps having two people because if there is something that one person brings up, you can talk to the other person about and see what actually is the best benefit to you.

Tony:
Yeah, that’s true. That’s actually how we started as well. We had someone for tax strategy and someone else who’s doing the actual preparation for us. And on that note that I think the other question you should ask the CPA as well is like, how often are we meeting throughout the year? Am I just meeting you like the first week of April when I sit down with you to do everything or are we meeting multiple times throughout the year? And ideally, probably like a quarterly cadence I think is good for you and your CPA to meet to make sure that they can stay up to speed on what you’re doing throughout the year and help you plan to make sure that by year end, you’ve done everything within that calendar year to optimize that year’s tax returns. Because if it’s 20 27 and you’re now filing your 2026 taxes, well, if you’re sitting down in April of 27, it’s too late to really change much about 2026.
So the goal is that throughout 2026, throughout that year, you can make those changes, make those decisions that’ll make that tax prep in the next year a lot easier. So I think that’s an important one as well. How often are you guys going to actually meet?

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today on Ricky Reply. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

President Donald Trump’s plan to stop large investors from buying single-family houses could have far-reaching effects on all real estate investors. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Jan. 7:

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard and doing the right thing, but now, because of the record-high inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans. It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks.” 

While the president’s rationale for banning Wall Street titans from grabbing up suburban single-family homes is that this makes it more difficult for homeowners to find a place to live, there is still enough of a gray area in the information he has given so far to cause concern among investors, large and small.

Does the Ban Apply to Corporations of All Sizes?

From his announcement and his use of the term “large institutional investors,” most news outlets assumed Trump meant Wall Street titans such as Invitation Homes—one of the largest renters of single-family homes in the U.S. and formerly owned by Blackstone, which now owns Tricon Residential, as well as Progress Residential. 

However, corporations can be any size, and by far, the largest owner of single-family homes in the U.S. is not REIT behemoths but smaller, mom-and-pop investors. In his next statement, a clarification of what the president meant by “corporations” would put a lot of people’s minds at rest.

Small Investors Own Most of the Single-Family Homes

According to the Q2 2025 Investor Pulse™ report from BatchData, investors own 20% of U.S. homes, and smaller investors dominate, accounting for 87% of the market share. So, if Trump plans to ban only large-scale Wall Street investors from the single-family housing market, it will likely do little to improve homeowners’ access to housing. However, if he bans all corporations from buying single-family homes, the ramifications would be devastating for mom-and-pop investors.

“A ban could reduce home prices, but the effect would likely be modest, since most investors are small-scale buyers rather than large institutional players,” Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality, told National Mortgage Professional. He added:

“A decline in investor demand could also slow new construction, offsetting some of the downward pressure on prices. At the same time, rents could rise as reduced supply tightens the rental market, potentially pushing some buyers out of more affluent neighborhoods where homeownership is already out of reach. 

The impact would also vary significantly by location. Atlanta stands out as the only major market where institutional investors account for more than 10% of purchases, making it a place where the policy could have a more noticeable effect. Importantly, this proposal would stop future purchases, not require investors to sell existing homes—an action that would have a far greater impact on the market.”

Wall Street Prefers Build-to-Rent Communities Instead of Scattered Single-Family Homes

Further complicating matters is that the large institutional investors Trump seems to be targeting have recently appeared to cool their interest in single-family homes, pouring cash into build-to-rent communities that benefit from centralized management and ease of operation, rather than scattered portfolios of single-family properties.

The corporate ownership of single-family homes has been a contentious issue for many tenants, who fear rapid price increases and harsh eviction policies. “When institutional investors or larger landlords own the rental units, we see an increase in the number of evictions for tenants,” Ruth Jones Nichols, a former housing official in the Biden administration who now serves as executive vice president of programs at the Local Initiatives Support Corp., told the Wall Street Journal in 2024. “That’s something we really want to keep an eye on.”

In September of the same year, Invitation Homes, then the biggest single-family rental operator in the U.S., was forced to pay the Federal Trade Commission $48 million to settle charges related to misleading rental pricing and unfair evictions.

What the entire real estate industry needs regarding Trump’s social media post is specificity.

“Any policy discussion about limiting large investors in the single?family housing market must account for the essential role responsible private capital plays in restoring aging housing stock and increasing supply,” Linda Hyde, president of the Kansas City-based American Association of Private Lenders (AAPL), told Scotsman Guide. “Private lenders and investors are often the ones who take on distressed properties and return them to livable condition.”

The AAPL encourages a “data?driven approach that expands access to homeownership without unintentionally restricting the investment activity that supports housing availability and community revitalization,” according to Hyde.

The Worst-Case Scenario for Small Investors

A blanket ban on all corporations, large and small, from owning single-family houses for rental purposes would stop many mom-and-pop investors dead in their tracks. Popular investment strategies such as the BRRRR method would no longer be feasible unless practiced on small multifamily buildings. 

Considering Trump’s quote stated he planned to ban “large institutional investors,” it seems to let smaller investors off the hook. But what the president means by “large” is the next question—100 units, 1,000 or more, or another number. A more likely scenario is that smaller investors who own sizable portfolios might have to jump through hoops to acquire more properties.

Like the touted 50-year mortgage, it is unclear whether the president’s latest real estate initiative is more feel-good PR that might not stand up to scrutiny, or a well-thought-out plan to increase supply and thus lower prices. The latter appears to be a stretch unless other aspects—i.e., building new housing on a massive scale—come into play.

Speaking about Trump’s statement, National Association of Mortgage Brokers President Kimber White told Scotsman Guide: 

“This is a start. If it puts 3% of houses on the market, that’s great, because right now we have an affordability crisis, and we have no homes on the market. It’s not a huge fix. Because when you look at the big picture, it’s not going to all of a sudden magically throw this big group of houses on the market.”

Final Thoughts

Clearly, there’s a lot of specificity that needs to be given by the president, principally concerning his meaning of the word “large.” The president has close ties with Wall Street, particularly with Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, one of the large institutional investors the president was clearly referring to. It would go against the president’s M.O. for him to do anything that would hurt the interests of one of his most loyal and powerful supporters.

The knee-jerk reaction from some smaller investors might be one of joy—with no large institutional investors, there’s more room for smaller investors. However, given that small investors already dominate the vast majority of the single-family rental market and larger investors appear to have curtailed their appetite for the asset class, that logic seems flawed.