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I was recently asked by a fellow investor what I thought of the Omaha, Nebraska, market and if it was a good place for out-of-state investors to find cash flow or appreciation. I looked at price, rent, growth, and supply data from the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Building Permit Survey to find out.

The Overall Economy

The first thing I look at when analyzing a market is its job growth. Are companies moving into the area (or being created) and hiring more people? The answer is fascinating.

In the past five years, Omaha has seen a modest 1.1% increase in total nonfarm jobs. So what’s happening? According to the BLS, professional and business service jobs, as well as financial services jobs, appear to be shrinking across the metro area. 

However, the education and health services sector has really taken off over the past two years, making up for the difference. But why? It’s possible the increase in population (5.4% over the last five years) has led to increased demand for healthcare services:

After all, the largest employers in the area are numerous different healthcare centers, as well as the Offutt Air Force Base. 

Another thing to note is that Omaha’s unemployment rate (3.5%) is less than the national metro average (4.5%). While the economy may not be as hot as the popular Sunbelt cities, the growing population indicates there is a high demand for work in this market.

Housing Supply and Demand

The next thing I analyzed is the supply and demand of housing units in a market. This can be done by looking at the total number of units available and comparing that to the number of actual households.

The gap you see between those lines represents the number of vacant units. The smaller the gap, the smaller the vacancy. And a decreasing vacancy means competition for housing is rising — a great sign for landlords seeking stable occupancy and long-term rent growth. Take a look at the vacancy rate trend below:

Over time, the vacancy rate has decreased. This rising competition for housing can also start to push prices up, which is great news for investors. Just take a look at price growth over time:

This price growth data comes from the U.S. Census (which usually underestimates market price, given the nature of the survey). So, I would also like to point out the price and rent data from Zillow.

Market investment metrics:

  • Median price: $283,000 
  • Median rent: $1,500
  • Rent–to-price ratio: 0.5%
  • Five-year population growth: 5.4%
  • Five-year household growth: 8.0%

Compared to coastal markets, Omaha offers strong returns at a fraction of the buy-in cost. With an affordable median price, solid median rent, a good labor market, and solid household growth, Omaha is a great market for long-term-focused out-of-state investors.

Realbricks makes it possible to co-own high-quality, cash-flowing rental properties in Omaha with no landlord headaches. With just $100, you can start investing passively — no need to manage tenants, find deals, or fly in from out of state. It’s a game-changer for anyone who wants real estate exposure without the traditional barriers.

Realbricks does the heavy lifting — from property acquisition to management — making it perfect for first-time investors, seasoned experts looking to diversify, or busy working professionals. Click to learn more about how Realbricks works.

Like with every other asset, do your own due diligence on the market and the underlying property before making an investment decision.



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15% ROI, 5% down loans!”,”body”:”3.99% rate, 5% down! Access the BEST deals in the US at below market prices! 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Picture this: You just moved into your brand-new home, having just relocated to this town days ago to start your new dream job, and are full of excitement. The rooms are filled with that brisk smell of having recently been painted. The countertops don’t have a speck of dust on them and glisten whenever the sun’s light touches them. The master bedroom is on the second floor, with a large bay window that looks out on the beautiful park next door, the downtown in the background. 

You smile with satisfaction, knowing that all that’s left is to go through the arduous process of moving all of your stuff in, and then you can relax to a well-earned night of sleep in your new place, in a new city, with a new job.

And then…

The toilet overflows and raw sewage pours out all over your bathroom floor as noxious fumes fill the home in a vomit-inducing cloud of agony and despair. 

Now, do you think such an occurrence will increase or decrease the likelihood that this tenant will renew their lease a year from now? 

Such issues can poison what I call the second impression. The first impression is when a prospect views the property to either apply to rent or make an offer to buy. The second is when they move in or do their inspections. That second impression will go a long way in setting the tone for the landlord/tenant relationship or getting the property through the inspection period unscathed. 

It’s amazing how many little things get missed if you don’t go through and check on each detail. And sometimes, even big things can get missed. We’ve seen this over and over again. The more diligent we are in finishing a project the right way, the fewer problems we have renting it, or with the tenant after they move in.

Not doing a sufficient quality check can cause all sorts of problems with tenants and maintenance, but it can also cause issues when flipping. If a whole host of problems pop up on an inspection report, you better believe you are about to get a nasty resolution of unacceptable condition or perhaps even a cancellation.

This is why it’s not just good enough to do proper due diligence and budgeting. Nor is it good enough to put together thorough scopes of work, find quality contractors or employees, and diligently oversee construction. As Robin Sharma puts it, “Starting strong is good; finishing strong is epic.” 

This is where the punch-out and quality checks come in.

A Word on Checklists

I would highly recommend that anyone in real estate, or any business for that matter, pick up a copy of The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. It describes in meticulous detail how important it is to create systems and well, checklists, and follow through with them consistently. 

At one point, he describes how physician Peter Pronovost implemented a simple five-step checklist for a Michigan ICU when putting in a central line that was later adopted throughout the state. The steps were:

  1. Wash hands with soap.
  2. Clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic.
  3. Put sterile drapes over the entire patient.
  4. Wear a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves.
  5. Put a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in.

Seems simple enough. You would think, with seasoned and well-trained doctors and nurses, this would be little more than second nature and have no discernible effect. In fact, what Pronovost found after a year was remarkable, as Gawande notes:

“Within the first three months of the project, the central line infection rate in Michigan’s ICUs decreased by 66%. Most ICUs—including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital—cut their quarterly infection rate to zero. Michigan’s infection rates fell so low that its average ICU outperformed 90% of ICUs nationwide. In the Keystone Initiative’s first 18 months, the hospitals saved an estimated $175 million in costs and more than 15,000 lives. The successes have been sustained for several years now—all because of a stupid little checklist.”

There’s a reason you see the same thing amongst airplane pilots, mechanics, and other professions where life and death are on the line: Checklists work (perhaps Boeing should revisit this point).

You should be developing checklists throughout your business and using them consistently. They dramatically reduce the number of mistakes you will make and the number of things that fall through the cracks. But if there’s anywhere in a real estate business where this is the most important, it’s with putting together a scope of work and then finalizing everything with a quality check.

Quality Checks

Hopefully, I’ve explained why checklists, in general, and quality checklists, in particular, are critical. I will now describe how we do it. Of course, that doesn’t mean this is the best way. But we have put this system together over the course of 15 years, doing hundreds of rehabs and turnovers on our own properties and for clients throughout the Kansas City area. 

But whether you do it our way or another, it’s important to make quality checks (and thorough punch-out lists) a priority and do them consistently in the same way.

We base the quality check off our scope of work, which we put together by going through a detailed list of items and putting each one into Smartsheet (our project management software). It would be worth reviewing my article on scopes of work if you are unfamiliar with that process or think your system needs improvement. 

For each item that isn’t exceedingly obvious, we include a picture of the issue attached to that line item. The scope looks like this:

quality check checklist

Once the project has been completed, we go back through and check off each item to make sure it was done and done right. We then email the contractor (or employee) with the following color-coded list:

  • Blue: Item that needs to be done but was not on the original scope, making it an add-on.
  • Purple: Note, but no action needed.
  • Orange: Partially completed/not up to our standard.
  • Red: Same condition as before the job.

We include pictures of anything that isn’t plainly clear. The email we send looks something like this:

checklist

At this point, the contractor has until Thursday at 5 p.m. to send us pictures of each of the completed items in order to receive full payment that Friday. (We try to get this to them no later than Tuesday, usually sooner.) 

If the contract does not respond or fails to fix any of the non-blue items, we simply deduct the amount associated with that line item from their paycheck and use one of our other contractors or employees to finish up the last items. (And the contractor who failed to finish the punch-out list goes to the proverbial doghouse.)

Depending on your business, of course, this could look different. If you are operating an apartment complex with on-site property management, doing this through pictures and emails would be unnecessary, as you could just have the property manager walk down and verify the items were completed. In such properties where there are many similar units, you could also probably make standard checklists for the turnover staff to go through instead of going off the scope. 

Whatever you do, make sure to refine your system and checklist to get the kinks out of it. Then, follow through with that system the same way each time. It’s essential to make it a cookie-cutter operation. You absolutely don’t want to be flying by the seat of your pants or reinventing the wheel each time with every rehab and turnover.

Marketing and Deposit Dispositions

Last, I’ll give a quick note on marketing walkthroughs and deposit dispositions. When selling, we make sure everything is completely right before pictures, but we are a little more forgiving with rentals. Our leasing agent will take pictures and make a note if there are any items still not completed on the quality checks (or other things that they think should be done). But unless it is in terrible shape, we go ahead and market it for rent.

We then have a Last Fixes list that an employee or contractor will address as soon as we can, but because the items are so minor, we don’t wait to complete them before marketing.

The leasing agent will also do an amenities check if one hasn’t been done already. This involves noting things like if there’s a master bedroom, walk-in closet, fenced backyard, privacy fence or chain-link fence, gas stove or electric, finished basement, etc. We put all this information into our property management software and include it in our advertisements.

Regarding deposit dispositions, it’s important to know your state and local laws, as they differ widely. Where we are, we have 30 days to return the deposit to the tenant minus the cost of repairs. We do this by comparing the items on the scope of work to a cost sheet we put together. You can also use a contractor’s quote or the actual price to repair, but remember, you only have 30 days (at least where we are) to return the deposit, so you must be quick in determining the cost of the damages.

We also compare the repairs needed to the move-in checklist we provide each resident. On this form, they can note any deficiencies in the unit when they moved in. We tell them that if they don’t return the move-in checklist to us, we will assume all components of the unit were in working order at the time of move-in, so any damages will be deducted from the deposit. 

The move-in checklist looks like this:

move-in checklist

We also make adjustments for how long the tenant has been there, of course. If they lived there for 10 years, it’s not fair to charge them for replacing the carpet. Finally, we allow for appeals, but evidence our determination was wrong must be provided—and rarely is.

There is no perfect way to do dispositions, but we try to be as precise and systematic as possible and do it the same way every time to avoid heated arguments and potential legal disputes. But check your local and state laws before implementing any system for deposit dispositions.

Final Thoughts

With contractors, there are three really important things: price, quality, and speed. They say you can pick any two, but that’s it. (In case you’re wondering, you can get less than two, but never more.)

We track each of our contractors in these three departments. The way we evaluate quality is by the percentage of line items that pass our quality check. The best we ever have is 98%. But many are around 85%. 

So it should be no surprise that when you don’t do quality checks, lots of things get missed. At first, we didn’t do any quality checks. We learned very quickly that it leads to disaster. 

So we started doing them, but they were very vague. Things got a bit better, but it was still bad. So we kept getting more and more detailed, and it kept getting better. In that way, it’s very similar to our screening practices

In other words, this isn’t something to do halfway. That’s especially true with rehabs since many things that look fine are actually right on the edge. Thus, we make it a point to tell anyone moving into a house we just remodeled that it’s likely something will break shortly after they move in, because while it may have worked while being tested, it hasn’t been under a load. We definitely have more maintenance calls right after a move-in with rehabs than turnovers, so this would be a good thing to mention in such lease signings.

It would also be a good idea to make sure you can get out to properties just after someone moves in quickly to do any maintenance items that slipped through the cracks. Indeed, it might even be worth it to try and avoid having move-ins on Friday if convenient, at least when getting started. Remember how important those second impressions are. Quick, quality maintenance to fix any problems that do pop up upon move-in can pull a bad second impression out of the fire. 

A good rehab and marketing effort will provide a good first impression. A good quality check and punch-out list will provide a good second impression. Together, you will substantially improve your tenant relations and lease renewal percentage or get your properties sold more easily and with fewer headaches during the inspection period.

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What would you do with $8,500 in monthly cash flow? Quit your W2 job? Travel the world? Reinvest it? The possibilities are endless, and by blending investing strategies and getting creative when hunting for deals, today’s guest was able to “snowball” to $8,500/month with 10 rental units in just a few years!

Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! In this episode, we’re chatting with Kelsey Porter, a real estate agent who caught the investing bug when a client introduced her to BiggerPockets. While most new investors focus on one strategy, Kelsey has tried a little bit of everything—house hacking, live-in flips, and short, medium, and long-term rentals. She has even rented out her primary residence for months at a time, a move that fully funded her wedding!

With “smedium”-term rentals, unique experiences, and even a Taylor Swift-themed Airbnb—which features a full-blown scavenger hunt—Kelsey has built a highly diversified real estate portfolio. Stay tuned to learn about Kelsey’s strategy for finding off-market deals and the “all-in-one” mortgage she used to tap into her home equity and scale fast!

Ashley:
Today’s guest is a rookie investor who has used many different strategies to build an $8,000 per month cashflowing portfolio from house hacking to live and flips to medium rental strategies. This rookie proves that putting in the extra effort can mean a huge difference in your cashflow.

Tony:
And what makes this story particularly interesting is how she’s turned her properties into unique experience in an unsuspecting market, including a Taylor Swift themed unit, complete with a custom scavenger hunt. Now, Kelsey Porter has built a portfolio using creative financing, hunting for off-market deals, putting in sweat equity, and keeping an entrepreneurial mindset for every single project.

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

Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson. And let’s give a warm, warm welcome to Kelsey. Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ashley:
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. So Kelsey, you caught the bug of real estate investing from one of your clients. Can you tell us that story?

Kelsey:
Yes. So I have been a realtor since 2018, and I did grow up around new construction and investment properties, some luxury spec homes in the lake of the Ozarks. So I did grow up around it, but it was never really on my radar until as a realtor I helped a first time home buyer in his twenties. Josh from Cleveland, Ohio, shout out to you. And he was obsessed with BiggerPockets, obsessed with the idea of house hacking for his first property. And yeah, I helped him buy a very reasonably priced duplex in the greater Cleveland area out there. And he taught me all about house hacking. I understood rental properties, but he was talking about the A RV after he would do some upgrades to the unit he was going to live in and everything. And yeah, I was like, I am capable of this. I think my other half will buy in. We got to get on board with this investing.

Ashley:
So what was the first step that you took to actually start investing in real estate?

Kelsey:
We flipped a flip for our first house, so our primary residence was a kind of live-in flip that was already flipped, but they skipped out on a few detrimental pieces. And as a realtor, I actually showed the house to a couple different people before we looked at it for ourselves and people kept passing up on it, and I was like, if she just would’ve taken it to the finish line, she could have gotten so much money for this flip. So we ended up buying it after it sat on the market for a while, lived in it, renovated it, did a couple key pieces that were pretty expensive, like a floor to ceiling, beautiful marble, tiled shower, rain shower, that was a walk-in. And it took us about a year to save up the funds to do those renovations. And so after we did them and dumped this money into our primary, we were kind of sitting on the couch one day and I was like, okay, how can we house hack next?
Should we sell this house? Should we rent it out? We have so much money tied up into it. And looking back, we probably would have done a cash out refinance or a HELOC or something. We had a very low interest rate on that house in, but we ended up selling it in 2021 so that we could take those funds out and put them towards our first investment properties. We still lived in Ohio at the time, and my dad called me from Des Moines, Iowa where we live now, and he had been redoing this duplex inside and out going way over the top on it in the Des Moines area. And he was like, Hey, remember that property I’ve been updating the last two years. I’m thinking about selling it. Do you think it’s worth much more than I paid for it? And so I didn’t have access to the MLS as a realtor in Iowa yet, but I ran what comps I could and realized, holy crap, dad, this duplex is worth way more than you paid for it.
Then I got off the phone with him, sat down, and I was like, wait a minute. This duplex that my dad has completely remodeled and done up really well is exactly the criteria that we’re looking for in a duplex in Cleveland, Ohio, but it’s 70 years newer. My dad’s the one that did the remodeling. Why don’t we just buy this? So I called him back and I was like, Hey, dad, you’re going to sell this duplex and you’re going to sell it to me. And he was like, what do you want? And out of state duplex in Des Moines, Iowa for, he’s been an investor for years, but he is local to his market. And so he was an out of state and duplex, what do you want that for? And I was like, no, no, no, we want it.

Tony:
And I love that your first two deals came from relationships or properties that you had a firsthand knowledge of. And obviously not everyone’s going to be in that same situation, but I think the lesson for rookies is that sometimes the right deal could be right underneath your nose and you not even recognize it. But I want to go back to the rehab on the flip that you flipped. So did you have any experience, I know you said you kind of grew up in new builds and things like that, but did you personally have any experience prior to that in managing a rehab or DIY projects of that sort?

Kelsey:
So being around my dad building houses when I was a kid, we were always bouncing around. He would put up a spec home, we would move into it, and then he would sell it out from under us and we’d have to move into the next one and so on and so on until he built his dream custom home. That took him several years to finish. But I was always kind of around that new construction, live in kind of renovation and finishes. So I have kind of always been around that project management, remodel, new construction. I just never really even thought about it until we bought this house that needed the shower for daily use.

Tony:
And aside from the shower, Kelsey, what other maybe leverage points did you guys focus on to increase the value of that property?

Kelsey:
Yeah, so just little bitty things. We did replace the basement windows, which they were original from the 1940s, so that adds a little bit of value, but it’s not sexy. The shower was very sexy, it was expensive. We also replaced the garage door. It was the old original, really, really heavy wood door with glass windows. It was a liability to be honest. And we replaced that with a new garage door with a motor and electric opener. I mean, who wants what first time home buyer, millennial nowadays wants to move into a house where they have to get out of their car, open up the garage door, drive in, shut it manually. I mean, it’s just little things like that. We added a patio out back, we added some arbor for privacy. There were still a couple houses behind us that hadn’t quite been brought up to today’s standards. But yeah, it was in an A plus neighborhood. We bought really, really well. I’m sure part of that was luck. And then part of that was skill, being a realtor myself and knowing what people are chasing.

Ashley:
Did you have any lessons learned on this project? Like looking back through the whole live and flip project that you did, is there anything that you would’ve done differently or you learned from that experience?

Kelsey:
Absolutely. I think I touched on it already, but we would have cash out Refied at the time, interest rates were still super low, so we would not have been sacrificing a low rate for a high rate or anything like that. But we absolutely would’ve done a cash out refi. It was a killer location, super close to Lake Erie in this beautiful park with a waterfall. We loved this house so much. We probably could have lived there forever. We loved our neighbors, we loved the community. The house was just absolutely adorable and came together so well. So looking back, I think that would be our biggest learning lesson is maybe don’t sell the real estate just because you need the money to invest and move on and do other things. Sometimes there’s more creativity you can put into it.

Tony:
So Kelsey, I think the million dollar question here is how did this live in flip actually turn out for you? So if you can just walk through the numbers quickly. What was the purchase price? What did you guys put in for the rehab? What were your total acquisition costs, and then what did you net on the backend when you sold?

Kelsey:
We paid $226,000 for this single family home in 2019. In 2020 we sold it for 3 25, so about $99,000, exactly more than we paid for it. Of that 99,000, our expenses in there. So our rehab expenses, the closing costs, marketing expenses, that kind of stuff that we were able to subtract out ended up being about 25,000. So our pure net on this property was approximately 75,000. And I know this off the top of my head because we had to pay capital gains. So I forgot to tell you that was another beautiful, wonderful, you don’t know what you don’t know. Learning experience from that one was we did not quite live there for two years. And I am notorious for asking for forgiveness rather than permission. So I knew capital gains was on my radar, the whole idea of it, but I was like, I think we’ll be able to get around this for sure. Let’s just sell it. Let’s keep this momentum going. No analysis paralysis here. Right? And then what do you know our CPA was like, yeah, you have to pay capital gains.

Tony:
It’d be funny if the IR Rs actually worked that way where you could say, Hey, my bad actually didn’t know about this. Can we just rewind and pretend like this didn’t happen? But IRS wants to get paid, so I don’t know if there’s someone you could ask for forgiveness

Ashley:
Maybe now that they’re cutting huge departments in the IRS that you will be able to do that.

Tony:
My bad. Yeah.

Ashley:
Okay. We have to take a short ad break, but when we come back, we are going to hear more from Kelsey on how she’s mastered the medium strategy and how she finds off market deals. We’ll be right back. Let’s get back into it with Kelsey. So Kelsey, I’m one of your more recent deals. You were house hacking a duplex. Can you give us an overview of this project and how you made it work?

Kelsey:
So we currently live in our dream home that we will probably live in for a very long time and potentially raise kids in and having Airbnbs in our portfolio already. I came home one day and I was like, Hmm, I wonder what someone would rent this new construction, four to five bedroom, three full bathroom, finished basement home for right, because that’s just how you think as an investor is like, I wonder what someone would rent our primary out for. So we put it up online and turned a few groups away that just didn’t necessarily make sense. And then we got a knock on our door one night, and this really, really nice absolute pleasure of a couple was building their dream home. It was a custom build that was taking significantly longer than they expected, and they needed a place to stay than your average kind of Airbnb situation.
And so they wanted to live in our house for three months. So we said, okay, we’ll be out in a few days. And then they moved in. And then that project ended up taking almost a year. It was about nine months that they rented out our personal residence furnished, which paid for our wedding that we have coming up in October. Fun little thing there. And while we were doing that, we bounced around our rentals, one of which was a house hacked duplex. We purchased, we lived in the first unit, we completely gutted it. And yeah, I wrote these letters to duplex owners and this couple got back and they were like, we’re moving out of state to be closer to family, which is what we did when we moved here to Des Moines and we are considering selling our duplex. And I was like, cool.
We are considering buying it. Let’s talk about it. So we ended up getting that deal off Market House hacked it completely gutted the inside of one unit and the outside of the entire duplex. We lived in both sides. At one point, I’ll rent out anything, don’t leave your house vacant too long because my parents joke that I will have their house rented out when they come back from Florida. I can rent out anything and for a lot of money, so I’ll make you a lot of money if I rent your house out. But that’s just something I’m notorious for. So we finished gutting the inside of the one unit while we’re living there, which we lived without a living room for about 30 to 35 days. So we were just working and relaxing at night in bed. We spent way too much time in bed when we didn’t have a living room. And then once we started coming to a completion of the inside of that unit, I actually filled it on furnished finder with a travel nurse for the winter. And so I was like, Ooh, sorry, I’m kicking us out and we have to move next door into the other unit and do the same thing all over again because I’ve got a travel nurse moving in here.

Ashley:
I want to go back to the very beginning. Just on a whim, you decide to list your primary residence. Was this on Furnish Finder too that you listed it on?

Kelsey:
Yes, on Furnished Finder, on Airbnb and on Zillow, just because it’s a more luxury, medium term situation. So we kind of put our eggs in a lot of baskets.

Ashley:
So in this situation, you get somebody that wants to rent it and you move out with, you said a couple of weeks. What are some of the things that you must do? You’re living in this property to get it ready. Is there anything that was like, you must do these three things if you are moving out of your primary, leaving all your stuff basically to get it ready for a renter or nothing, you just have to take your personal longings and go,

Kelsey:
Yeah, so this was a pretty unique situation in the sense that we didn’t have a lot of competition in our suburb, and these people wanted to move in really quick, really sought after this property and knocked on our door. And so I was actually at pickleball, it was a Tuesday night. My fiance texted me and was like, somebody just knocked on our door and wants to rent our house. And I’m like, what? And so they were like, we know it’s really sudden, but we’d love to move in Sunday. This was Tuesday night. And he was like, no way. That’s too soon. And they were like, it’s fine. This house is perfect. We just really want to be here while we’re waiting on our new build. So whatever you need to make work, we can make work. And so I come home from pickleball and he’s like, yeah, get this.
They wanted to move in Sunday. And I was like, ha ha. And then I thought about it and I was like, I think we could do it. And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah, I think we live very minimalist. We have two spare bedrooms. It’s just the two of us. We have barely any photos up on the walls. It’s all just simple artwork. We’re just pretty minimalist. We don’t have a bunch of stuff in all of our closets. I do have a very organized OCD storage room for my Airbnb supplies. So that was a bit of a cluster. We kind of moved that into, my parents have an outbuilding, but it’s like 45 minutes to 50 minutes away from Des Moines. So that was not very convenient. But yeah, I mean basically I just got Ale Keypad, which I’m like a huge SLE gal, and I put it underneath our stairs to the basement. There’s a little closet where I keep my real estate stuff and my signs, my lock boxes and all that. And so we just started dumping everything we didn’t need for what we thought was going to be three months, but ended up being nine months plus. I mean, honestly, this couple treated our house better than we do. So yeah, they were great. And we just put a keypad on a closet door and shoved everything we didn’t need to take with us.

Tony:
Now the other part, you said that you moved into this duplex, but you briefly mentioned that you founded by sending out letters to different owners. I guess a couple of follow-up questions here, but first, how did you build this list of potential duplexes to send to? Were you driving for dollars? Were you pulling from some website? And then what did you actually say in the letter that prompted the response?

Kelsey:
Yes, I’m an open book about these letters because they are a little bit of work. So we would drive for dollars. We drove for dollars for probably the first six months we lived in Des Moines. But yeah, so I’ve sent about 75 of these letters out over the last couple years, and I have successfully closed three deals from them. I’ve had seven total responses. Two of them were crazy and wanted way too much, and I was like, whatever. And then two of them, I’m nurturing. So those are nurture leads. And I know for a fact I will buy those duplexes in the next couple of years because I’m going to be the first person they call. And yeah, I’ve been nurturing those relationships. So it is a Canva designed letter, and I’m an open book about sharing that with other people, mainly because I know a lot of people won’t put in the work. It takes work to hand write some of the details on the envelopes and the letters and to get ’em printed and to take ’em to the post office and to drive for dollars and then stock who owns these properties. It’s a lot of work, but it’s been extremely fruitful for us.

Ashley:
Well, getting seven callbacks and closing three of those, I feel like that’s a pretty good ratio. I mean, I’m not in sales, but I feel like that’s pretty good.

Kelsey:
Yes, no, it really is. And as a realtor, I have sent out thousands of mailers. I’ve spent thousands of dollars doing these mailers as a realtor to try to pick up listings and clients, and I’ve never gotten a callback, not once. And I’ve used all these fancy schmancy systems and all this stuff. So I just went back to the basics, back to old school. I’m going to design this letter, I’m going to print them, I’m going to hand write as much as possible. I’m going to send them manually. And that has worked.

Tony:
Kelsey, what are you actually saying in the letter when you mail it out?

Kelsey:
So I start by introducing, hi. So we have a picture, have a cute picture of us on there because I think it’s really important to put a face to a name and I just introduce us. I say I’m Kelsey and Carson. We own the duplex over at 1 2 3 Main Street. I actually put one of our duplex addresses, whichever one’s closest to the duplex, I’m asking them to sell me. And that is strategic. I want these middle-aged retired landlords to drive by our duplexes and see, wow, younger couples really taking care of their properties. They really are doing things right. I’m not afraid of people knowing what we own when I’m trying to buy something from them. So I actually put in the letter, we own the property over at 1 2 3 Main Street and that we’re looking to grow our portfolio that I’m a realtor, so I do disclose that upfront and that he is a data analyst and that we’re just obsessed with real estate and we really want to grow our portfolio here locally in Des Moines and that we live down in the Norwalk suburb.
And I’ve got family that helps us, and it’s a whole family team ordeal that we’re doing. And then I go on to let them know how long we’ve been together. We’ve been together about 13 years. We met at Truman State University in northeast Missouri. And everyone in the Midwest kind of knows the surrounding Midwest states. And so the fact that we’ve got family in Kansas City and St. Louis and Omaha and down in rural parts of Iowa, it’s relatable, I think, for a lot of these people. And then I just close it out by basically not being salesy at all and just open-end. We would love to buy this duplex from you. We could potentially have a cash conventional financing or seller financing option for you. And then I kind of explain in one little quick sentence without being pushy that the seller financing option could mean complete passive income, which as landlords, we all know that almost doesn’t exist unless you’re a private money lender or something. It’s hard to be very hands off and still make that mailbox money. So I actually say that directly with the seller financing option. And then I close out by saying, if you’re not willing to sell this to us, no big deal. We also love networking with other investors locally, and we’d love to hear your story and how you got started. I think it’s just very not pushy, not salesy, and it just opens the floor for relationship building.

Ashley:
Kelsey, how have you been able to finance all of these properties?

Kelsey:
So we have been self-funded up until now, and basically we’re just, again, frugal live under our means. So if that means continuing to cook meals in all the time and squirreling away funds or traveling only when we have a place to stay because friends have a vacation home somewhere or stay with friends somewhere, whatever it takes to squirrel away as much as possible to snowball into that next property, that’s really what’s worked for us. And then house hacking previously and putting less down to be able to have funds to do the remodels and the furnishing of units, that’s really helped as well. But most of our loans have been conventional either five to 10% down primary residence, house hacking loans, or we’ve had a few that are just traditional investing loans too, where we put 25% down, and those always hit a little harder because you got to come up to the closing table with so much more cash. But in the end, we’ve been doing the short and medium term method with these units so that we can cashflow more than any other method so that then we can snowball into the next.

Tony:
I love that idea. And just one last question from me on the direct mail piece, so fascinated by this amazing response rate that you have, but you had also mentioned that you’ve got a couple of leads right now that you’re nurturing. And I think that’s something that a lot of Ricky’s don’t fully grasp is that the likelihood of you sending a piece of mail and closing that deal in one conversation or even two conversations is exceptionally low. So what does nurturing look like for you, Kelsey? How are you nurturing these leads to the point where they actually say yes on you buying their property?

Kelsey:
So I think this comes from years of experience as a realtor and top top and training as a realtor. But when I say I’m nurturing these leads, that means that every couple months I have a touch, which means I am in contact with them some way if that’s just shooting them a text saying happy birthday, or I hope everything’s going well with your daughter and the new grand baby you have, or if it’s, Hey, just drove by the property and noticed you guys removed that tree, it looks so good. And then also I include, this is so funny, but I include all of these nurture leads for potential investment properties. I include these people’s names and personal residence addresses on our Christmas card list. So they’re getting a Christmas card from me every year. They’re getting these touch points every couple months. And then once in a while I’ll send out a postcard follow up to that letter just saying like, Hey, don’t forget about us. We want to buy your duplex when you’re ready. So again, not salesy. I do not believe in cold calling as a realtor or an investor. I’ve had to do that before for work, and I have not enjoyed it, and I only believe in doing things that I enjoy. So yeah, it’s just some touch points throughout the year to just remind them why wouldn’t they call me when they’re ready to sell, is what I want the whole aura of the situation to be.

Ashley:
It seems like one of your strengths as a real estate investor is the networking and just keeping in touch with people sending out those mailers to Christmas cards. Is there anything else that you are doing to keep in touch with other investors or contractors or leads that you’re doing that sets you apart from other investors that aren’t as active in the networking piece?

Kelsey:
So I go to any networking event that has anything to do with real estate or contractors or real estate investing in the greater Des Moines area. I’m always, always looking at what is my next event? I’m going to, I’m very involved at the local level through our chamber of commerce here, and so I’m meeting other people in business constantly with that and building relationships with other investors locally is one great because I’m a realtor, so if I ever have a property, I could take it to them if it fits their buy box and maybe sell a house from it. But mainly I build these relationships because I believe in an abundance mindset. I think that there are investors out there and realtors and any industry has them, but I think there’s a lot of people out there that think, Ooh, this deal crossed my desk.
I have to have it. I’m not letting anyone else buy this. And I believe in abundance mindset. So if it’s not good timing for us and our finances, if we’re still bouncing back from that last property we purchased, or maybe it just doesn’t quite fit our buy box exactly, I’m going to pass that on to another investor. And ideally someone who hasn’t even bought any properties yet and they’ve got that bug and they want to start, but they don’t know where to begin. That’s what I believe in with my networking is building these relationships, having that abundance mindset, being able to pass off these deals if they don’t necessarily work for us at that time, because there’s always going to be another one. And while there are finite properties, and that’s why I love the Mark Twain quote of buy land, they’re not making any more of it. There is finite real estate, but for X, Y, Z reasons, people are selling things all the time and offloading properties all the time. So if this deal doesn’t work out and I can hook someone else up with this deal, the next one is going to be even more perfect for our buy box. So

Tony:
Now something else I want to ask you here, Kelsey, is I know that you’ve spent a lot of time researching the right loan product, and I think Ashley and I both have benefited as we’ve built our portfolio and getting access to certain loan products, maybe other folks were overlooking weren’t aware of or maybe just weren’t offered at the banks that they were going to. And you’ve got something called this all in one mortgage. So I’ve personally never heard of this. Ashley hasn’t, our listeners probably haven’t as well. So what is it and why has it been beneficial for you?

Kelsey:
So that was actually our very first duplex. So if you remember, I said we put a bunch of our funds that we pulled out of that first flip into our first duplex. We bought it traditionally in terms of it wasn’t a house hack, it was a true investment. So we had to put 25% down. Well, if you remember, we just put about 25 grand into that flip out of pocket and had to sell, or we thought we had to sell at the time to pull money out to buy our first rental. So we were thinking like, dang, if you got to put 25% down every time you buy a property, how are you possibly ever going to be able to save up to buy the next one? It just seems like, seems you’re treading through concrete sometimes when it comes to these heavy down payments.
So we ended up doing some research and really it was more of an experimental thing. It was really hard to find any information on it, but basically there’s a couple different names for this style loan and all in one mortgage. It’s also referred to as an offset mortgage, and then it is also referred to as an interest only mortgage. And so basically what it is is kind of like a heloc, so a home equity line of credit where you can, instead of having to sell the property or refinance and do a cash out refi to get money out of the property that you have in it, you can actually have access to those funds and it’s just an interest only payment. So instead of a traditional mortgage every month that you’re paying principal interest, taxes, insurance, you’re just paying the interest. In theory, we could take money out of that account, use that for the down payment just like you would a heloc, and then you’re only paying interest on the balance of that loan.
It’s pretty common in some other countries and parts of the world. But it was really hard to find any articles or videos of people explaining what this is. And it is really powerful. And as you can imagine, the underwriting process on this type of loan is extensive much more so than a conventional or commercial loan from my experience. Because as you can imagine, it’s a lot of power to give someone to be able to access funds after closing. And it works just like a checking account essentially. And you even get a debit card in the mail, which is terrifying. But yeah, after closing, we basically got a letter in the mail with a debit card to that account, and it works like a checking account.

Ashley:
So basically it’s a clarify, this is a home equity line of credit where you have the line of credit. So right now for my two line of credits that I have, I email the bank, I send them a form saying, I’d like to request a draw. They put that money into whatever checking account. I want that money in with this all in one mortgage. What they’re doing is they’re giving you access to a line of credit with a checking account, and that money is sitting in the checking account then, and then you just use that debit card or you use a checkbook to actually write a check. And then you’re only paying interest on what you’ve used out of the checking account. Is that tracking

Kelsey:
Correct? You’re paying interest on the balance of that principle of that mortgage. So we put 25% down right away because we bought it as an investment. So 75% of that purchase price is what we’re paying interest on the loan, but the more money we pump into that, the lower our principle comes down, the less interest we’re paying, the more money we take out of that account, the greater our principle is on that loan, the more interest we’re paying. So it’s kind of like this give and take. So we always thought we would use this as an emergency fund situation where we don’t have the access to the funds in other ways, so let’s pull it out to buy this next property. We’ve actually used it more to pump money into because it’s saving us 4%, 6%, it’s a variable rate after the first three years.
So it’s saving us the more money we pump into this account, it is saving us in interest rather than just sitting in our checking account, not really doing anything for us. So we’ve actually done the opposite and we pump more money into it, but we do knowing that we have access to those funds if we need them. We don’t like to use the debit card a whole lot, but we have wired directly from this account to close on a property before. So we have kind of used it like we thought we would, but instead of taking more and more money out, we’ve actually been leaning more towards putting and more money in. To save us on that interest,

Ashley:
We have to take our final ad break, but when we come back, I want to hear the overall picture of what your cashflow is on these properties. We’re going to be right back after this. And if you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you are subscribed to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel, and if you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, make sure to leave us a reading and review. We’ll be right back. Okay. Welcome back from our break. We are here with Kelsey. So Kelsey, what does the overall cashflow look like on your properties today?

Kelsey:
So our portfolio so far, we average about $8,500 a month, and that is after all expenses, reserves, the mortgage, the full pity payment, the principal, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, everything said and done. We are at a point where our portfolio is cash flowing 8,500 on average. So now, because we do run short-term rentals out of a lot of these units and medium term rentals or midterm rentals, and sometimes we do shortterm rentals on some of these properties, we’re doing short-term rentals in the summertime, medium term rentals in the wintertime when the Airbnb market kind of dies down here in Des Moines. So you can imagine our pure cashflow varies from month to month, the winter months being a little less when we kind of pivot into that slightly less cash flowing midterm realm. And then it obviously shoots way up in the summer in the heat of the busy Airbnb market here in Des Moines in the summertime. So on average though, for the last three years, that is our net cashflow between our 10 doors. That’s awesome.

Ashley:
Congratulations.

Tony:
Yeah, over eight grand in cashflow with 10 doors is amazing. Now, we talked a little bit about you going into the kind of medium term rental, moving out of your own place, but you’ve also just got some truly dedicated short-term rentals, and you’ve got a unique take because you’ve been focusing on experience, which I think is a very important part of being successful as a host today. So how are you leveraging or creating kind of unique experiences for your guests?

Kelsey:
Yeah, so every time we furnish a new unit, we try to grasp onto some type of theme or vibe that differentiates this unit from our prior units because our buy box is very strict here in Des Moines. And we started noticing after the first two units that when you are really strict on your buy box and your neighborhood that you’re shopping for these properties in, you start competing with yourself. So not only are you competing with the growing STR boom here in Iowa, but you’re also competing with yourself and your own properties. And so we really wanted to cast a wide net in a way that each one has its own little vibe or theme, and that way we’re getting in front of as many eyes as possible, grasping as many eyes as possible, and as many tastes as possible. So we have a rustic industrial, very Iowa, welcome to Des Moines themed one.
We have the Taylor Swift themed Airbnb like you talked about. We’ve got a little cactus house, which is a western, almost coastal cowgirl theme that people love. And so we really just did that out of necessity to differentiate our own properties from one another, and it’s really been a strategy that works for us. And yeah, our Airbnb, that is Taylor Swift themed is definitely the one that people we get the most questions about because I was actually not a swifty going into this. I love music and of course some of her biggest hits over the years I’ve listened to and loved, but I would never have considered myself a swifty. But then I was trying to think, this was our sixth of eight furnished rentals, and I was kind of running out of ideas, and so I was thinking, what do a lot of people in the world love that is really unique?
And so I started doing research in other destinations on Airbnb and the theme, Taylor Swift kind of came up, and of course it’s in Nashville and in these bigger cities where people come for her concerts and stuff like that, those made more sense. But I was like, Hmm, I wonder if we could pull that off in Des Moines, Iowa. So I called up my fiance’s sister, who’s been a swifty her whole life, and my best friend who’s also a big swifty, and I was like, I need to schedule conference calls so that you can tell me everything you know about Taylor Swift, because I think we’re going to do this Airbnb and I need all the details. And they were like, okay. So I did legit conference calls with these two friends, and they told me everything they know about Taylor Swift, and then I started only listening to her music and God loved my fiance. I only allowed him to listen to Taylor Swift for the two months that we did all the research and furnishing of this unit. Then now we’re both, both listen to her music all the time. We really bought in. This was around the time she started seriously dating Travis Kelsey, and then they won the Super Bowl last year, and I couldn’t have paid for better amping up marketing to release a Taylor Swift Airbnb than if I would’ve paid Travis Kelsey to date her or something.

Ashley:
Well, you have to be a fan after she’s made you money in your Airbnb. How could you not?

Kelsey:
Yes, no, exactly. Now we are both very much caught the bug, and yeah, we do listen to other music too. Now, after we released it, I allowed us to open up our realm of music again. But yeah, we were all in, and that’s how I like to do things right. I don’t like to halfway do anything. I want to give 110% on everything I do. So that’s why I was like, I need to talk to the biggest swifties in the world that I know. I need to take all these notes. I need to really dive into this. And so we did actually style this unit in a way that if we, God forbid, have to transition it into a different theme than Taylor Swift if it doesn’t work, because again, this was a little experimental. I designed it in a way that we could fairly easily transition it away from that theme if we need to down the road. So that was a big strategy that I think gave us peace of mind going into such a niche theme.

Ashley:
Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us today on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information about you?

Kelsey:
Honestly, the gram Instagram, that’s my favorite social media platform. It’s the easiest way probably to get ahold of me and my handle is at porta style reel estate. And yeah, I’m just so excited to have been here and to meet you guys. This has been such a pleasure.

Ashley:
Yes, thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to share your experience and your journey. We can’t wait to have you back in a couple years to hear who’s the next pop star themed Airbnb that you have going on. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, a real estate rookie, and we’ll see you on the next one.

 

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The US economy is shrinking, with GDP declining this quarter. We’re getting closer to recession territory, so why aren’t mortgage rates dropping? We’ll explain how one crucial part of the economy is staying strong—keeping the Fed from cutting and delaying the typical rate-drop that comes with a recession. What’s stopping us from going back to sub-6% mortgage rates? We’ll break it down in this episode.

The economy is changing—fast. The US saw its GDP turn negative last quarter as many Americans braced for the impact of tariffs. But even with the overall economy lagging, labor data remains strong. Jobs are still being created, unemployment is relatively low, and Americans are going to work. This may be the single factor keeping the Fed in limbo, unable to cut rates any further. So, what happens if the labor market breaks?

Home builders were already anxious over the past year, and now they’re getting even more hesitant to build. With tariffs pushing up prices for materials, building (and buying) a house could get much more expensive. And with builders already dropping prices, could this lead to a broader decline in home prices across the nation?

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Read the Transcript Here

Dave:
The US economy shrank in the first quarter, but at the same time, the labor market is holding strong, but home builders are raising red flags today and on the market. We’re breaking down the most recent economic news and what it means for the real estate investing industry. Hey everyone, it’s Dave head of Real Estate Investing at BiggerPockets. This has been a week with a lot of interesting news and data, which as always means big implications for real estate investors. And while I would love to cover every news story, we don’t have time for that. So we’re gonna focus on three big stories you need to know about. The first story we’ll cover is that the economy contracted in the first quarter. The second thing is we’ve gotten a ton of labor data this week, which is probably the number one thing that’s gonna impact mortgage rates going forward.
So it’s something we all should be paying attention to. And lastly, we’ll talk about some interesting news from home builders that could spill into the broader housing market. Alright, first story, like I said, GDP, which is just a measure of the entire economic output for the country. It stands for gross domestic product. This shrank in the first quarter of 2025. A very modest decline of just 0.3%. But this matters, right? It really, it is unusual for the economy to shrink in any given quarter. No one really wants total economic output to go down. So anytime we see the GDP decline, it is worth noting. Talking about and trying to dig into a little bit, the most common reason people talk about GDP is just trying to determine whether or not we’re in a recession. And now, I know I’ve explained this several times on the show, but I’m gonna say it again, that in the US we have this very weird system about recessions.
There’s actually not any single objective measure of what’s a recession and what’s not. Recessions are actually in this country decided on afterward after they’re over by the National Bureau of Economic Research. And so the rest of us in real time are trying to figure out if we’re in a recession or not. It’s kind of hard, no one can do it officially, but a lot of people use this rule of thumb, which is two consecutive quarters of GDP declines. That is what most people consider a recession. And so we just had our first one, right? We just had in Q1, a single quarter of GDP decline. And so seeing this news rightfully brings up the question of whether we’re gonna see this rule of thumb definition of a recession takes place. And I’ve been saying this for a while, obviously no one knows, but I do think it is more likely than not that we are going to see this definition of recession to consecutive quarters of GDP decline.
And of course we’ll have to see what happens. But my general feeling is that if GDP declined before the Liberation Day tariffs and before the trade war really started to accelerate, it is likely to go down in Q2. Even Trump himself and a lot of his advisors have said there will be at the minimum short term economic pain as he implements this new trade policy, this new economic priorities that he has, and the pain that he’s describing could come in the form of lower GDP. That wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I think that is probably the most likely outcome from what is going on right now. Now is this going to be called a recession by the National Bureau of Economic Research? Who knows? But it’s probably going to meet this common definition. But I actually encourage all of you, I say this to people all the time, I encourage people to think less about what it’s called because this word recession has lost almost all of its meaning.
I, I don’t really personally take too much stock on it because again, there’s only some subjective measure in it. People try and, you know, on both sides of the aisle politicize the idea of a recession. And I think what’s really important is instead to just focus on the actual things that are happening, the actual implications of conditions on the ground, right? Because whether or not they call it a recession doesn’t change the labor market, the labor market’s doing its own thing. Same thing with inflation, same thing with GDP. So what’s likely to happen with GDP declining? Well, I think that we are probably in the next couple of months gonna see business spending fall a little bit. You read the economic news like I do every day. You are all these businesses saying they’re scaling back on expansions. They’re sort of in wait and see mode to see where a lot of the tariffs come out.
And so that doesn’t necessarily mean this will be a long-term protracted, you know, decline in business spending, but we’re talking about whether or not GDP is gonna decline in Q2. I think there’s a lot of people saying, yeah, we’re spending less money in Q2 and that is a major driver of GDP. We also are hearing a lot of things about consumer spending falling that hasn’t materialized in the data yet. So just keep that in mind. But you hear these businesses like credit card companies and McDonald’s are coming out and saying consumer spending is down. And so we haven’t gotten that data for the last couple of months yet, but there are some lead indicators that suggest consumer spending could be down. But what happens with the labor market still up in the air? And that’s our second story, we’ll still get into that in just a minute, but my general opinion is if labor holds up, even if we go into a recession, and that is an if, I think it will be a mild one, right?
If people hold onto their jobs, they will get used to the new situation that we’re in and we’ll probably go through a short and mild recession. If the labor market quote unquote breaks, that’s could be a different, that could be a longer issue, especially if tariffs stay in place. Like I think the sort of the case for a bad recession is if the labor market really breaks and unemployment goes up and we still have a lot of restrictive trade policies through an aggressive trade war or heavy tariffs, both of those things are still up in the air. I’m just saying like what it would take in my mind to make a recession bad. Now normally I think what matters for real estate investors is that normally these types of things where we see lower GDP, the potential recession is going up that would spell lower interest rates.
That is normally what happens in a recession if a recession happens and inflation stays low. But rates haven’t really come down even with this news of GDP, we’ll get into that more in a minute. But I think the bond market is generally waiting to see if we have inflation because most economists believe that tariffs are gonna lead to inflation, but that’s gonna take a few months. This, this stuff lags. And so even if there is gonna be some inflationary impact, it might not hit in the data until May or June or even July. Uh, and so we’re just gonna have to see, and I think this is sort of a hint for where I think things are going. I think the Fed is probably waiting on that data too and we shouldn’t hold our breath for any sort of rate cuts in the short run.
Now before we move on to our next story and sort of dive into the labor market, which is the other critical piece on mortgage rates, I should just mention if you really wanna get nerdy about this, and you’re listening to this podcast, so I’m guessing you have some mild interest in this, is that there is something going on with what happened with GDP in the first quarter. And it might be a little bit distorted just with the way that GDP is calculated. Now people always say, oh, the government’s changing the way definitions happen. Sometimes that does happen. This is not like a change in the way GDP is calculated, it’s just kind of weird the way it’s calculated. Basically it measures a whole bunch of things. Consumption, which is just, you know how much consumers are spending on goods and services. We have business spending and investment, government spending and investment.
These all go into GDP, but there’s also this calculation that matters, which is exports minus imports. And so we don’t need to get into the math of it, but basically what can happen is if you have a lot of imports in a given quarter, it can make GDP look negative. And that’s exactly what happened in Q1 because people, it seems businesses and individual consumers we’re concerned that tariffs were gonna raise prices and so they imported a lot of stuff before prices went out and meanwhile exports stayed relatively flat. And so that makes GDP look negative. Does that mean our total economic output was bad? I don’t necessarily think so. I think this is sort of a reflection of what’s going on with GDP. Obviously this is the way it’s calculated and so you sort of need to, if you’re looking historically at GDP, this is the way it’s always calculated.
So I do think it’s worth noting that it went down in Q1 but also keep in mind that there are some extenuating circumstances that have made this happen and may not really be reflective of some inherent weakness in the economy. And I think that might be true because a lot of what Q1 was before the tariffs, I personally am much more interested in what happens in Q2 as we start see sort of the impact of the tariffs and the ongoing trade war that’s going on. All right, so that was our first story talking about the GDP decline. We do have to take a quick break, but when we come back we’re gonna dig into the labor market, the somewhat contradictory data we’re getting there and what it means for mortgage rates. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to on the Market. I’m here reviewing three really big economic news stories, all of which that really are going to impact real estate investors. We talked about GDP and how normally the decline that we saw would lead to lower interest rates and lower bond yields or mortgage rates, but that’s not really happening. And one of the main reasons that’s not happening is what’s going on in the labor market, what’s going on with unemployment and all that. So just in the past week we’ve gotten a lot of jobs data and I think it’s an important narrative to keep in mind as we’re talking about GDP ’cause remember before I was kind of saying the word recession is sort of meaningless. GDP, that’s not like really something that most Americans feel like GDP matters. Sure, but mostly to economists because what normal American really notices GDP going up and down in their daily lives, right?
What matters are things like the labor market. Do you feel secure in your job? Are you and your loved ones gainfully employed? What’s going on with wages? What’s going on with inflation? This is the stuff that actually matters to most Americans and it’s why I encourage people to think less about the word recession and think more about these things and whether they’re going to impact you both on an individual and personal level or in your real estate investing. The other thing is that yes, GDP matters, but mortgage rates, which obviously matters to all of us real estate investors, are really impacted by the labor market. And I know it’s kind of a couple steps removed, but this is true because the Fed has repeatedly said that what they care about is inflation and the labor market. And so if the labor market is strong, then they’re less likely to lower rates until they see that inflation is really tamed.
If the labor market starts to break and there’s mass unemployment, they might take down rates even if inflation risk is still high. And so that’s why we need to pay attention to the labor market. Now what’s going on in the labor market is super confusing and it has been for several years now. We get a lot of conflicting data. There are tons of different ways to measure the labor market. None of them are perfect, but the way I look at it at least is I just try and look at all the measures and see what direction they’re heading. And you can sort of get a general sense of the strength of the labor market by looking at a couple different ones. I’m gonna talk about three today. But overall the feeling I have is that the labor market has been really resilient over the last couple of years despite higher interest rates.
I think it’s a real show of strength for the American economy. It is impressive to me that the labor market has stayed as strong as it has. Now this metrics that we’re talking about don’t show everything. There are areas of weakness. There are, you know, problems in certain sectors, but we got jobs data for April and the economy added 177,000 jobs. That is really pretty impressive. Unemployment’s at 4.2%, that might not make sense without context, it’s pretty low. Like it’s up from where it was a couple of months ago, a year or two ago. But 4.2% unemployment is still really, really good from a historical perspective. So biggest picture, look at the labor market doing pretty good. There were however, a couple other data points that are worth noting that point to maybe some weakness, but I wouldn’t get too concerned about it just yet.
There’s something called continuing unemployment claims. That’s just basically how many people are continuing to look for work and haven’t been able to find a job that’s up to 1.9 million higher than it’s been recently. Not by that much, it’s just one week of data. It’s not really something I would take into account just yet unless it becomes a trend. So the same thing happened with initial unemployment claims, which basically a measure of recent layoffs, people filing for unemployment insurance for the first time, that is also up this week. But nothing outta the ordinary when you look at these things together that like we’re not seeing any crazy breaks in the labor market just yet. This is just another reason I believe that the Fed is going to be pretty patient on rate hikes. They probably will still cut rates at some point this year, but I don’t think they’re going to be in any particular rush.
The reality is that the way the Fed thinks, and I’m not saying this is how I would think about it, maybe it is, but like the way they think is that right now they don’t need to cut rates. Their job, as we’ve talked about many times is to sort of balance these competing priorities of controlling inflation and maximizing employment. And if hiring is still going on, if they still feel that the labor market is strong, that means that they can focus their monetary policy more on the inflation picture. And inflation data has actually been quite encouraging recently it continues to go down, it’s still above that 2% target, but it’s in the two point a half percent range, which is pretty good considering where we were a couple of years ago. But most people expect that this lagging inflation data will come and will see an uptick in inflation from the trade war.
And so if I were putting myself in the fed’s shoes, given their mandate and what they’re responsible for, they’re probably thinking, okay, we think that inflation may go up in the next couple of months, but the labor market is still strong. So why don’t we just wait and see what is going to happen with inflation before making any decisions on monetary policy. Because the main reason we’d lower rates is to boost employment, but employment’s doing good so they don’t have to do it. So that’s sort of my take. Maybe they’ll cut rates the June meeting, I don’t know, but I think they are going to be relatively patient just given the data that we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks. And this is one of the reasons why I keep saying that rates will stay higher as, as you know, the Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, but they do influence it in ways.
And I think the fact that they’re probably not gonna be super aggressive about rate cuts at this point in time, things could change second half of the year. But you know in Q2 I wouldn’t expect many rate cuts. Maybe there will be one, but I would be surprised if there’s anything lower than that. And I know that’s probably disappointing to people who are hoping for lower mortgage rates. I know everyone listening to this probably wants lower mortgage rates. I do too. But I think it’s important to remember that a strong labor market is good for the country. It is good for the economy. And personally I am never going to root for people to lose their jobs. I think rates will trend down even without the labor market breaking. And my hope is that we have a more gradual approach to rates coming down because the economy is still doing well.
Like that’s the best case scenario to me where we don’t go into a huge recession or we don’t have people lose a lot of jobs, but we still have some other forces like the spread going down and maybe some slowing growth, not full recession, but some slowing growth that pulls mortgage rates down. To me, that’s sort of the best possible blend of things. You might think differently. But I personally don’t want to see the labor market break. I think that could lead to a lot of economic pain that hopefully none of us have to go through. So I, I think we just need to sort of like circle back here for a minute about why I just think this word recession is kind of meaningless because we just had one quarter of GDP losses. I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll have a second quarter.
I could be wrong about that, but I think it’s more probable than not that we’ll have two in a row. Like does that matter to the average person if the labor market stays strong, if wages keep going up, which they have, if inflation stays low, like does it matter if we call it a recession if the labor market’s good inflation is low? I don’t think so, right? That’s the stuff that really matters to us. And just to be clear, I’m not saying that that’s the outcome that will arrive. I think the labor market’s really anyone’s guess. I think we will see some modest increases in inflation. But I’m just kind of trying to make the point not to dwell on this word recession. ’cause you’re gonna hear it a lot in the media right now. Do not dwell on it that much and think more about the actual conditions that matter to you, your family, your investing portfolio. All right, that is my rant about the word recession. I promise I will move on from this right after this break when we’re gonna talk about some interesting construction trends and news that we’re hearing from home builders that could spill over into the rest of the housing market. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m here recapping some important economic news that will matter to real estate investors. We’ve talked about GDP declines, we’ve talked about resilience in the labor market. Now let’s talk about construction trends. ’cause this has been in the news a lot over the last couple of weeks and a few things have happened recently with builders. The main thing I actually track a lot is sentiment. And we’ll talk a little bit more about permit data, but builder sentiment actually matters a lot because this is a business that lags for a while. And so when builders aren’t feeling great about things, it usually means construction’s going to decline in the future. And so this is something in data analysis we call a lead indicator, right? It’s something that helps us predict what might happen in the future. And so builder sentiment is sort of a good lead indicator for what’s happening with construction, but also a lot of the rest of the housing market.
And so what we’re seeing right now is that builder confidence in the US housing market is low as of April. It did go up a little bit in April, but it’s still low. And I think that’s what actually matters. There’s this index basically that’s put out by the National Associate of Home Builders and Wells Fargo and 50 is the normal level that’s like neutral and it’s at a 40. So it’s not like they’re super, super negative but they’re not feeling particularly great about building conditions. And I think the more important thing is that this index has remained negative for a year now. And so I think these sort of ongoing negative sentiment coupled with what most economists are projecting to be higher construction costs because of the tariff situation might lead to declines in construction, which we’ll talk about the implications of in just a minute.
But I just wanted to share like why is builder sentiment low first when this survey asks why builders aren’t building as much or why they don’t feel good about it, the majority say because of tariffs and material costs, 60% of builders have reported that suppliers have already raised prices for building materials due to tariffs. So that happened really quickly. Real estate always tends to get hit first. And we’re seeing that right here. It’s not great, but this is kind of what happens. Average material costs are up about 6.3% already, which is a lot just in like a month or so. And that is estimated to add approximately $11,000 per new home built. So that really matters, especially in an environment where consumer sentiment is down because you know, if things were going great in the economy, maybe builders could pass that 11 grand off to consumers to home buyers, but that might not be possible.
So that is the main thing. Driving down sentiment. The other things that were mentioned were policy and economic uncertainty, labor and land shortages and of course mortgage rates as a result of these conditions, builders are increasingly having to turn to price cuts and to sales incentives or concessions, right? We’re seeing now basically 30% of builders cut prices in April, which is not that crazy a number, but it is, it is notable. And at the same time, the number of builders who had to offer these are things like buying rate downs or paying for some of your closing costs that ticked up from 59 to 61%. So nothing crazy in one month, but it does show continued deterioration of at least the new home market. And it’s important to remember here that the dynamics of the new home market and existing home sales are different, right?
If you are reselling a home, you know, you’ve lived in, it’s different than new home sales. They just have different business models, sellers who are selling their home, just think about this differently than the way builders do who have to move inventory and have cashflow problems. A lot of them are publicly traded companies that need to, you know, maintain earnings for their investors. So keep in mind that those things are different, but it is important to know that the new home sales market is really seeing some considerable weakness. So what does this all mean? Well, as of right now, we haven’t seen huge changes in construction. Data permits for building are actually up from February, but they’re about flat year over year. Housing starts are up a little bit year over year, but they’re down from February. So we don’t have a clear reading on what’s going on.
But the question to me is, will this spill over into the bigger market? Because as I said, new home sales, existing home sales, they’re kind of different. Normally in normal times, new home sales are only about 10, 12% of all home sales. So it’s like this kind of a smaller thing, but because there’s been such low existing home inventory, it makes up a bigger percentage now than it does. So the question is, is it going to impact the housing market? I think the answer is sort of yes. I think it’s going to continue to help contribute to softness in the overall housing market, right? If builders are lowering their price for new builds and consumers who are looking for homes and they’re, you know, we’re entering a buyer’s market. So buyers are gonna be able to be discerning if they have the option of buying a new home for the same price, in some cases actually cheaper than existing homes with concessions, they’re probably going to do that.
And so I do think this will, until this inventory issue with new homes get sorted out, it’s probably gonna spill over into the existing home markets depending on the market and the southeast. I think this is a lot of what we’re seeing. ’cause that’s where a lot of the construction has been over the last couple of years. Meanwhile, I think probably one of the main reasons why the Northeast and the Midwest still have strong housing markets right now is because there hasn’t been a lot of building there and it’s not really spilling over. So that’s, that’s one implication I think to keep in mind. The second thing is that a lot of what has happened in the housing market in really the last 15 years or so is impacted by what happened with construction after the 2008 crash. A lot of builders went outta business and we saw this huge lull in construction for years.
It took a decade basically for this to recover. And we are a long way from that. We’re not even close to that. But I am curious if tariffs stay, which is a big question, but if tariffs stay and permanently change the economics of building new homes, who knows what could happen? It could lead to sort of like a significant decline in construction. And I don’t want to be alarmist, that isn’t happening yet, but it’s on my mind, right? Because if you’re thinking about it, builders are already not feeling great and if rates stay high and their costs go up, that could really dissuade them from taking on new projects, which would be probably not great for the country long term. We need more construction, we need more units, but for people who own existing homes, it could contribute to less total supply and that would put a long term upward pressure on housing prices.
So just to be clear, I’m thinking short term, what’s happening is new home construction softening the market, but if builders stop building because of tariffs, and that’s a big but, but it’s something I think we should watch given what they’re saying in their earnings reports. Given what these sentiment, uh, surveys are saying, if we start to see a real pullback in construction that will alter the existing home market, it’s too early to call. I just wanted to mention that. So it’s something if you all are like me and like following the stuff, it’s another sort of like data point news story that you may wanna follow. That’s it for today, guys. Those are the three stories I wanted to share. GDP went down, but the labor market luckily is holding strong. Meanwhile, builder confidence is falling. All this is going to impact real estate investors for now.
I think these sort of like counterbalancing ideas that GDP went down, but the labor market is doing okay, is gonna keep rates relatively steady. Again, i I keep saying this, I don’t think rates are gonna fall. I wouldn’t hold my breath in the next couple of months. What happens towards the end, middle of the summer, end of the summer? That’s a different question, but I’m not expecting any big changes May or June and I personally am basing my own investing decisions around that. So that’s it. Thank you all so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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In This Episode We Cover

  • A worrying sign for the US economy and whether it could trigger lower mortgage rates
  • The one thing standing in the way of the Fed finally cutting rates again
  • Tariff effects on GDP and the first signs of what they could do to our economy
  • New labor market numbers and why jobs are being added as the economy shrinks
  • Are we in a recession? And does it even matter if we are?
  • And So Much More!

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This investor turned $6,000 into financial freedom in just six years. He did it in a major market and became a millionaire by age 28 simply by repeating this beginner-friendly rental property strategy over and over again. And, even though he started earlier, you can STILL buy properties like his, at affordable prices, that cash flow, in the same market today. Where is he investing, and how did he scale up so fast? We’re breaking it all down in today’s episode.

Jeremy Taggart saved every dollar from his college internship, knowing he wanted to invest in real estate after graduation. He bought his first house, a small multifamily, for just $6,000 down, lived in it, did some DIY renovations, and increased the value. Thanks to the rent savings, he bought another property the following year—this time, making $50,000 (tax-free!) by fixing it up.

This was just the start of the “rinse and repeat” strategy that would turn Jeremy into a millionaire before he was thirty. But it wasn’t easy. Jeremy was fired from his job, had to start working for himself, and did what many real estate investors won’t. The result? Complete financial independence less than a decade after graduating college. His strategy still works in 2025, but will you use it?

Dave Meyer:
This investor bought his first property with only $6,000 in cash. Then he did that six more times and now he owns more than 50 rental units. And there’s no reason to think that you can’t take your first steps today and get on a similar journey to financial freedom. Hey everyone, Dave Meyer here. I’ve been buying rental properties myself for 15 years now. I’ve written two books about real estate investing and I’m the head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. And joining me today on the show is investor Jeremy Taggart. Jeremy lives and invests in Pittsburgh where he’s built a seriously impressive portfolio of rental properties and he has a thriving agent business. Jeremy is going to tell us how he has basically repeated the same low money down strategy for almost his entire twenties. How getting fired from his day job was actually a pivotal and beneficial moment in his life. And why Pittsburgh is a market. Anyone looking to invest long distance should consider exploring, especially in today’s market. Let’s bring on Jeremy. Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Jeremy Taggart:
Hey Dave. Thanks for having me.

Dave Meyer:
Absolutely. Let’s just start by hearing a little bit about your background. How did you come to be involved in real estate?

Jeremy Taggart:
Real estate kind of came into the picture for me a little over a decade now. I was sophomore in college like many others, red, rich, dad, poor dad. That kind of light bulb went off at that moment in time. So really the next two years was just self-education on real estate investing, which was good because the fact that I couldn’t jump in right away, it basically allowed me to know as much as I could possibly learn without actually doing it. So by the time I got to graduating, basically I felt very confident that I knew the general concepts of real estate investing

Dave Meyer:
At that point. Did you have specific goals that you knew you were looking for? Were you just trying to get into the game or what were you thinking about back then because you were mostly just educating yourself and you weren’t actually doing the real estate just yet?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, so the fire movement was pretty big back then as well. I kind of caught the tail end of it, so I loved that concept. I think that was probably my goal. I want to retire early, I want to live off my rentals, not have to work a W2 job, have my own schedule. So that I think was kind of what inspired it.

Dave Meyer:
And what year was this?

Jeremy Taggart:
I graduated college in May of 2016. So it was between 2014 and 2016, kind of the tail end of when the fire movement was real big.

Dave Meyer:
Sure, yeah. And if you are unfamiliar with the Fire Movement, fire is an acronym that stands for Financial Independence, retire Early. Basically just this concept of trying to generate passive income in some way where you don’t have to work that full-time W2 job. Now, Jeremy, the interesting thing about fire, I think, at least for me, is that there’s so many different versions of this. For some people, they want to spend very little money and then they’re okay just making a few grand a year. There’s something people call Fat Fire where you want to get to financial independence, but you still want to live high quality of life and be able to spend money pretty loosely. Did you have a goal within fire that you were shooting for?

Jeremy Taggart:
My goals kind of formed over time, and they’ve changed since then as well. So I think initially it was more leaning towards the traditional fire, maybe live a leaner lifestyle, but it was worth it for me for the flexibility and that’s changed since then. Now I’m definitely a hundred percent fat fire. It’s definitely changed fat fire to a degree. But yeah, that was kind of, I think the initial goal and how things have transpired since then has kind of made me shift my mindset a bit. As far as the actual long-term goal.

Dave Meyer:
You’re learning about this, you want to go into fire. What happened when you graduated college? What was your first move?

Jeremy Taggart:
It was kind of a mindset shift from middle class to entrepreneur, business ownership from that point. But the time I graduated I’m like, there’s no way I’m working at the W2 job. So that was kind of more viewed as a placeholder at that point. And first step was House Hack. I got my first house hack in July of that year, graduated in May, so jumped into that right away. Pittsburgh’s cheap. So I only needed I think six grand to close on the thing. Yeah, it was a triplex for 125,000, which,

Dave Meyer:
Oh my gosh. What kind of condition was it? It

Jeremy Taggart:
Was a solid building. It just needed some cosmetic updates. Really? Yeah.

Dave Meyer:
Wow. I am sure people listening are salivating at that idea of 40 grand a unit right now. So it’s pretty good.

Jeremy Taggart:
And it was like a three bedroom unit and two bedroom unit. So this was a big building,

Dave Meyer:
I assume you financed it. How much did you put down and where’d you get that six grand from?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yep, FHA. That was the only option at the time for low down payment, two to four units knew about the seller’s assist. I got the 6% seller’s assist, so I only needed essentially the down payment. I had saved up money from that internship. And then like I said, I was working full-time, 40 hours the last semester of college. So that’s how I was able to get the six grand to put into it. I scraped together six grand, but I didn’t have a ton of cash available after closing, so it was most of my money basically. So I moved into the thing after we actually had to get one of the tenants out of there. So that was my first experience with Landlording was she wouldn’t leave. So I had to hand deliver a letter to her saying the bank’s making me move into this. Basically try to make it sound like she was not doing something illegal, but per the terms of the loan she needed to move out kind of thing. Her lease was up. So actually the first time we got in there, we were waiting for her to get picked up. She got picked up by a taxi and left a bunch of junk in the unit. So that was my welcome to Landlording moment as far as the first House act.

Dave Meyer:
And so what were you getting? It cleaned out. You wanted to make improvements or what was the plan for the, I assume you’re living in one unit. What was the plan for the other two?

Jeremy Taggart:
It was nice because I was living for free right off the bat, even at Below market rents from the other two units, it covered my mortgage and I think it was above my mortgage, but 200 bucks. So good situation. That was the goal from the start. I didn’t do a lot of work to my unit just because I didn’t have a ton of cash. I wanted to focus on the other unit. So one of the tenants actually passed away a few months after that. So that was my next, you want to do this thing, here you go, type deal. So it was another kind of clean out the unit. The family helped with that. And then a lot of DIYing at the beginning, the first few properties, I didn’t have a ton of cash. I was working a job getting paid 40 grand a year. This was my first property, so we did, I’m not good at DIYing, but we did a lot of DIYing, so we just kind of made it happen. And I would do some stuff too, get creative. I would buy kitchens off of Craigslist from high end areas that they bought a 2-year-old home and they wanted a new kitchen, so people would list their kitchens on Craigslist with the granite and stuff. So

Dave Meyer:
The whole kitchen, just like all the cabinets,

Jeremy Taggart:
All the cabinets,

Dave Meyer:
Countertops, everything.

Jeremy Taggart:
So we would go to pick it up in a U-Haul to save money on the materials. Facebook marketplace, Craigslist was.

Dave Meyer:
That’s so funny. Do you have to find ones that are oriented the right way

Jeremy Taggart:
Kind

Dave Meyer:
Of in the right shape of the unit? Sure. Some of ’em are like have islands or L-shape or something like that.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, we got creative with it for sure, but I actually use the same kitchen in multiple properties with apartments and stuff. These kitchens were almost million dollar houses.

Dave Meyer:
Oh, there was enough cabinets for two or three different units. Oh, that’s awesome.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, so we did a lot of that at the beginning. It was just making do with what I had and saving money on the materials, and that was kind of the first few,

Dave Meyer:
Probably a nicer kitchen than you would buy if you went and bought rental grade cabinets at Home Depot or whatever. It’s probably nicer what you bought on Facebook marketplace.

Jeremy Taggart:
These were high end homes. So it was a way to kind of cheat the system, I guess.

Dave Meyer:
So once you got these places stabilized, how did that impact your lifestyle? Trying to get fire? You’re working full time, was this generating a lot of cashflow for you or what did it do for you on a day-to-day basis?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, so obviously living for free and having that extra on top of my mortgage from the other rents to basically pay for my utilities. So that’s huge. Just having your housing covered at the beginning, it really allows you to start stacking some money just to live below your means in general. So that’s a huge expense. That’s the appeal of house hacking in the beginning. To even make it to the point where you can start saving money, you can give yourself some runway. So after a year, my plan was to house hack basically every year on the year, and I ended up doing seven of them total because of that. So

Dave Meyer:
Wait, what?

Jeremy Taggart:
Seven house

Dave Meyer:
Hacks? Seven.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yep. That’s kind of my thing is the house hacks. I’m known as the house hacker basically.

Dave Meyer:
Oh my God. Okay. So just I want to ask about that. So basically you took the money that you were generating and you just started socking it away with this idea that I’m going to go buy a house hack one year, and just for everyone to know when you buy with a lot of loans, you basically have to agree to live in the property for a year. So Jeremy’s basically saying, he’s like, all right, I bought one in one year. I can move into a new one. And so you just started taking your cashflow and saving it up, is that right?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah. So saving up for the next one, and you thought 1 25 was cheap. The next one was actually a single family because at the time it was just FHA for the two to four units. If I wanted another duplex, I needed at least 15% down. So this one was a single family that I did 5% down conventional. And then same thing there, I got the 3% seller’s assist, so I didn’t need much. It was 48,000 was the purchase price, and this thing only needed cosmetics. All we did was paint refinish the hardwoods, it was generally livable outside of that. That was the second one. It was me and my now wife, then girlfriend. We just split the mortgage basically, which was like $420 total.

Dave Meyer:
So when you moved out of the first one, you rented your old place, the rent you basically generated from that, was that enough to cover your new mortgage essentially?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, basically. And then some.

Dave Meyer:
So you’re still living for free in essence, even though you are paying a mortgage, the rent more than made up for it,

Jeremy Taggart:
And we were splitting it. So I think my portion was like 200 basically. And then this one was kind of the first burr you could say. So as I was learning more about real estate investing, the concept of Burr was starting to become more popular as well. So I’m like, okay, this one needs some work. I know it’s worth more fixed up. At the time, I think it was worth like 125,000 fixed up
Buying it for 48. I knew we could do a lot of the stuff ourselves. So I think I only ended up putting as far as cash out of my pocket, like 25,000 into it. So I had a pretty good chunk of equity after doing that rehab. So I knew that at some point soon I could refinance that, and that’s when I caught a big chunk of money to then continue to build the portfolio. I think I refinanced a couple years later after I had rented it out and I got my first big check, which was kind of cool feeling. It was like 50,000 tax free. So that was my like, okay, this

Dave Meyer:
When you actually went to refinance

Jeremy Taggart:
The money. Yeah. So I’m like, all right, there’s something. This could work.

Dave Meyer:
All right. So it sounds like you did two successful house hack, but you’ve done seven. I want to hear about the other five, but we do have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with investor Jeremy Taggart talking about how he’s done, not one or two, but seven different house hacks. We’ve got through the first two. First was a triplex, second was a single family home with the Bur. You got a big check, Jeremy 50 grand. What did you decide to do with it from there?

Jeremy Taggart:
Third one was actually at this point in time, a local bank here in Pittsburgh, they started offering 5% down owner occupant, two to four unit loans. And this was before the Fannie Freddie even did it, which I think was last year. I think that was kind of a game changer. I’m like, alright, they’re going to give me as many of these as I want. If 5% down I’m doing this. There’s no end to this basically.

Dave Meyer:
And just for everyone who knows, lending rules change all the time, but for a lot of mortgages that investors use like a FHA loan, you didn’t use to be able to put 5% down on more than a single family. That has changed. But it sounds like Jeremy beat the lenders to the punch and used a local bank that would allow him to put just 5% down on a multifamily unit. Was it a similar profile of deal that you were looking for? What was the third one? Similar to the first one?

Jeremy Taggart:
The beginning I was focusing a lot more on cashflow. That was my main metric. I wanted to find basically something that would maximize the cashflow side of things. I wasn’t quite as concerned with long-term upside, so I was looking for up and coming areas, properties that needed some cosmetic work. Maybe they were under rented. So that third one, yeah, it was a duplex. And this was interesting too because during this time, I think right after I closed on my second one, I was having issues with agents, I think went through four or five of them to find one that even relatively was on the same page as me on the investing side of things. Really? Yeah, it was a struggle for sure. I definitely knew more than all of them, which I thought was an issue because I was a new investor.

Dave Meyer:
Totally. Yeah, that’s frustrating. You want someone on your team who can teach you something, especially when you’re two or three deals into your career.

Jeremy Taggart:
This was when I’m like, alright, I think there’s a need here for investor friendly agents. So I got my license, I think it was end of 2017 is when I got it, my real estate license. And I kind of frustrated at my job too, because most W2 jobs, you’re starting out at a base salary, was like 45,000. I wanted to make more money. And I remember asking my boss, how can I make more money? And they’re like, that’s not how it works. So I’m just like, all right, I need to figure

Dave Meyer:
Something out. That’s a hard no, you’re not getting a raise.

Jeremy Taggart:
So they couldn’t give me an answer and I’m like, all right, this seems kind of like a dead end. So I got my license and I’m like, I’ll do this on the side. There’s a need for it. I think I could get clients relatively easily. Got that, did two of them at the same time. So it was kind of the same thing here. I was working a lot. I was doing the agent thing nights and weekends, even some at work, which they weren’t a huge fan of.

Dave Meyer:
Oh, I’d imagine. Yeah. That’s just moving you further away from your objective of getting a raise. I’m sure that’s not, they frowned upon that a little bit.

Jeremy Taggart:
It was kind of a slow death of me working at W2 job eventually to the point where they ended up firing me after I got the third house hack. So that was a big turning point in my career and I was fine with it because that first year I was making more, I actually made more as an agent than I did at my W2 job.

Dave Meyer:
Oh really?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah. So it was like, alright, I’ll just do this. I already kind of have a decent client base. I can jump into it and essentially there’s no ceiling on the income for the agent side of things. So that’s when things really kind started to skyrocket on the active income for me, from that point on, it was just my personality and just work ethic. It was a very good fit doing the agent side of things. So I’m still doing it now. I have a team at this point.

Dave Meyer:
Congratulations on going into being an agent. Sounds like you’re really successful. I want to ask you more about that, but I’m curious, as your income started to increase, you said you doubled your active income, which is incredible. Did that start shifting your strategy? We already know you did seven house hacks, but did you start wanting to buy or do anything outside of the house hack strategy as well?

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, so 2020 when I started to get a lot more active income coming in addition to obviously the first two properties, cash flowing at that point, I had that $50,000 check I got from the second one, which was kind of a burr and then making the extra money on the agent side of things. So it was at that point it was like, okay, I can start doing things in addition to the house hacks now and really start to scale this thing up. And I think at that point I had solidified my initial goals, which were 30 units by the time I turned 30 and I wanted to hit a million dollars net worth by the time I turned 30. So those were kind of my two goals that I set for myself in my twenties basically.

Dave Meyer:
Did you back into those goals for fire? Were you still thinking about that? Okay, if I had 30 units or a million net worth, I could retire by X date or is it just based on your momentum? It seemed like a good goal to shoot for at that point.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, it was kind of calculated to the point where I’m like, okay, this would be initial financial independence, especially in a lower cost of living area. So I’m at this point, I can essentially live off of this portfolio if I wanted to. By the time I’m 30,

Dave Meyer:
By 30, I mean that’s a great goal.

Jeremy Taggart:
So that was kind of like I worked backwards from it and figured out basically what do I need to do to get to this point? And I was deadlocked on that essentially throughout my twenties. So it was like everything revolved around me hitting that and I’m very goal oriented, so I was making sure I was doing everything the right way to make sure I hit that. That’s when 2020 was a big year for me because like I said, I started doing some burrs and I did a house flip that year as well. In addition to the house hack 2020, I bought another house hack that was a duplex, kind of the same concept. All these house hacks were, make sure it covers the mortgage, buy a 5% down, look for some stuff that needs cosmetic work. And the fourth house hack was cool because I bought that one off of Craigslist also.

Dave Meyer:
Really

Jeremy Taggart:
Craigslist was my go-to for

Dave Meyer:
Different time. Was you still or no?

Jeremy Taggart:
Not as much now.

Dave Meyer:
Yeah, I say

Jeremy Taggart:
It kind of faded Facebook marketplace now, but I actually bought two properties off of Craigslist in 2020.

Dave Meyer:
Wow.

Jeremy Taggart:
So yeah, the big thing for me in March, I bought a single family house and this is when I started using other people’s money. This was the very first time basically. So I borrowed hard money actually from a client. So just building the relationship, he lent me 80% of the purchase price and the full cost of the rehab. And then I had the seller hold a second mortgage for the down payment to the hard money lender. So I was into this thing for five grand just for closing costs. Maybe it was like three grand and that was my first big big rehab. I think the rehab costs like 80 something thousand.

Dave Meyer:
Yeah, I mean compared to your purchase price, that’s serious.

Jeremy Taggart:
And the purchase price was I think 55,000 on that. And so almost doubled the purchase price. So that was scary too because I bought it right before Covid lockdown, so I was kind of freaking out a little bit when things were shutting down and I had this dilapidated house that needs 80 grand in work and the contractors have to stop working. So we made it through that as the real estate market exploded after that, got through the rehab and this one actually was net profit when I sold it in July when the market blew up net profit of 93,000 on that flip, my very first house flip. So having that cash as well, in addition to the agent side of things, it was almost like rocket fuel at that point. So then it just became like, I’m alright, this thing’s I can use other people’s money to make 93,000. This is pretty cool if you know what you’re doing and buy good deals that have good margins on ’em, I can just rinse and repeat, do this over and over. So at that point it was house hacks and burrs is how I’m going to get to my goals essentially.
Really from 2020 until now, it’s just been house hacks and burrs. I got very good at finding good deals. I worked as an agent, I knew the market the back of my hand.

Dave Meyer:
You just don’t need to do that much more. These are a proven business model that is clearly worked really well for you Jeremy. It’s worked well for so many investors that I know. So I know people out there. There are fun, exciting things to do. Short-term rentals or rent by the room, all those things are great, but you don’t have to do all of them. If you can just pick one or two of them like Jeremy did, you can clearly get a lot of momentum and success. I want to hear more about the deals you’re doing now, but we do need to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’re here with Jeremy Taggart talking about how he has used house hack and burrs to build a really great portfolio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jeremy, I’m sure you’ve seen that market change both as an agent and as a investor a lot over the last couple of years. So tell me a little bit more about what’s going on in your portfolio, how you’re finding deals and what the returns look like in today’s market.

Jeremy Taggart:
As the market changed, my personal investment goals kind changed as well. So it shifted what I invested in basically. So like I said at the beginning it was more cashflow focused, wanted to get that initial financial freedom chunk of cashflow coming in each month to reach that goal. And once I was there, then it became still the BGE concept. I’ll always do that, buy an under market value, rehab it, have it worth more after and utilize other people’s money to get to that point. But then it became kind higher end areas, higher price properties, higher quality properties. I’ve bought a lot more side-by-side town homes rather than up downs, stuff like that. And they’re expensive properties by Pittsburgh standards. So the house hacks then shifted to instead of maximizing cashflow, my house hack criteria turned into I want to buy the most expensive property I can purchase with this low down payment that at least breaks even.

Dave Meyer:
Tell us a little just about that thought process.

Jeremy Taggart:
It was the market shifting and just me becoming more knowledgeable as an investor, what builds more wealth over time I started to look more at appreciation, rent growth principle, pay down depreciation, which as an agent, I’m a real estate professional status so I can use losses.

Dave Meyer:
You get that real good tax benefit.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, so I’m definitely taking advantage of that now. I just did my taxes this year. I had ridiculous loss on the tax return on paper that offset my agent income because of the depreciation. So then it became like I’m looking at the overall ROI on this money that I’m putting into the house hack and 5% of 200,000 versus 5% of 500,000 isn’t that much more out of pocket to acquire it,
But you’re getting way more principal pay down, you’re getting way more appreciation from a dollar amount standpoint and you’re getting way more depreciation for not much more money out of pocket. So in terms of overall ROI, using all the factors rather than just cashflow, that’s going to be your best bet on the house hacks at this point. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on as the market has shifted as my overall financial picture shifted to the point where I’m prioritizing year 15, year 20 from now to get to that point and I want to own nice properties when they’re paid off at that point, the rents are going to be way higher. So that’s kind of how it shifted for me personally and the market in general. I think,

Dave Meyer:
Yeah, I mean I’m doing the same thing I think now when I buy properties, I used to buy properties that were built in 1890, like 1910. It’s like when I’m retired at 50, I don’t want to be taking care of that property, I’m just going to buy something. Maybe the cash flow is not as good now, but I know it’s going to be in good shape. I’m not going to have to do these huge renovations on them. And I really just resonate with this idea of buying properties 15, 20 years from now. It’s so hard to guess what’s going to happen between now and then, but real estate over those long time periods always performs. And I find that in these times of uncertainty, like we’re in right now, no one knows what’s going to happen next year. No one’s going to know what’s going to happen six months from now, but 15, 20 years from now, I feel pretty good that real estate’s going to do pretty well and these properties are going to be cash flowing and they’re going to be doing better. So buying assets with that mindset to me just makes so much sense. I do want to ask you Jeremy, about Pittsburgh. I’ve always been curious, I do a lot of these analyses where I’m just pulling data on markets and there’s a lot on paper to about Pittsburgh. Obviously you’re an agent there and an investor there, you’re buying there. But tell us a little bit about Pittsburgh and why you think it makes a good investing market.

Jeremy Taggart:
Most areas are going to cashflow positive. We’re hitting the 1% rule on turnkey or close to it really. Yeah, multifamily specifically. We have a pretty good amount of them, but except really the only areas that won’t hit that are kind of a class areas, those are kind of more owner occupant areas at this point. But I like it because, and I have a unique perspective too. I grew up here so I kind of know the livability side of things. I think it’s a very good value for the amenities that we get are still the big city amenities, but it’s super cheap to live here. You can buy a mansion in a good school district for like 600 grand
As far as long-term forever home type deal. But we have all the major sports teams, we have all the amenities, so it’s, it’s a good place to live and the average home price is like 220,000. So I just, that’s wild. I’ve been to a lot of other cities too recently, traveling more. I think that it’s a good value. I think that is what appeals to me long-term that if I know it’s a good value now and anytime anybody comes visits here, they’re like, oh, this is actually kind of a cool city. I thought Pittsburgh was a rundown old steel mill, rust belt city that nobody even liked to come to and they kind of like it when they visit here. So seeing that perspective as well. So I kind of like to look at the livability side of things, which plays a big role in the investment side of things as well, I think because it’s just spotting things that are undervalued basically. The nice thing here is it’s still cash flows, but we have a lot of upside for that reason. And we have a diverse economy with employers. Like healthcare is real big. We have universities, a lot of hospitals, but the tech scene’s kind of starting to pick up as well. And the fact that it’s so cheap here, they don’t have to pay their employees as much, everything’s cheaper. So it’s liking what I’m seeing in terms of that sector.

Dave Meyer:
So this is a fun trivia question I often ask people, but we’re talking about Pittsburgh, so you already know the answer to that. Actually, the most affordable housing market in any OECD country, which is just sort of the most, I think 38 most advanced economies in the country, in the world, Pittsburgh’s the most affordable. And that’s not saying it has the cheapest housing, but the ratio of incomes to housing and other costs is the best in Pittsburgh. So I’ve always just found that fascinating and as everything in housing’s getting more expensive, everything’s getting more expensive. I always think that cities that have that level of affordability, that’s a good marker for potential growth in the future. But I guess we’ll have to see. But I think that there’s a lot to like about it.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, I think just all the Rust Belt cities, I think they’re going to be become cool here within the next five to 10 years. Affordable, my opinion, at least.

Dave Meyer:
I agree. I think there’s a lot. I actually was looking at some population data this morning and for years during the pandemic, people are leaving the Midwest and the Northeast and the west and moving to the southeast and southeast still growing the fastest per capita, but a lot of the Midwest is starting to grow again population wise. And net migration is going up in a lot of these areas. And I don’t know if that’s return to work or some just inevitable return to normal from the covid years, but I think it’s really interesting and will have an impact on the housing market that we’re going to have to watch. So Jeremy, before we get out of here, I got to ask you your goal, 30 units by 30, did you get there?

Jeremy Taggart:
It was crazy too because I hit both of them at 28.

Dave Meyer:
Oh, nice. Good for

Jeremy Taggart:
You. The net worth goal and the 30 units goal. Yeah,

Dave Meyer:
That’s awesome.

Jeremy Taggart:
It’s just funny how you set your mind on something and then it just so happens to happen like that on the same property. But yeah, so we hit that a little early and then I was planning on kind of stopping at 30 units at that point, but now we’re almost at 50, so I’m addicted to buying deals. So we’ll see how it goes here in the future.

Dave Meyer:
Well it sounds like you’re good at it and it’s probably fun. Do you have a new goal in mind or are you just kind of seeing where it takes

Jeremy Taggart:
You? I don’t know. Yeah, we’re, I’m still buying deals now, even though don’t necessarily need them, but at this point it’s just kind of compounding has taken effect as far as cashflow and net worth and all that. So we’re kind of just playing it by ear, continuing to do what I enjoy doing with the agent side of things. And I do kind of keeping it a small portfolio though, kind like the Chad Carlson’s, small and mighty. I don’t

Dave Meyer:
Ever oh for sure

Jeremy Taggart:
Foresee myself having hundreds of units just because I am good with where I’m at now, 50 units. If I have 50 units paid off, I don’t really need much more money than that, so

Dave Meyer:
That’s amazing.

Jeremy Taggart:
I’m leaning more towards that, but it’s still TBD, I guess, where we’ll end up on that side of things.

Dave Meyer:
Well, congratulations on all your success Jeremy, and thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us. We appreciate it.

Jeremy Taggart:
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me.

Dave Meyer:
And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. We’ll see you next time.

 

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It’s the start of wedding season! Have you been to a wedding? I am going to assume the answer is “yes.” 

I can confidently say that the goal of someone having a wedding (after getting married to their person) is ensuring guests have a great time. So all else aside, this is your goal as a wedding guest: to have fun and not sweat the small stuff. 

Here are some fun financial facts and advice about being a guest at a wedding.

Travel

This is the most expensive part of attending a wedding. In the U.S., a lot of people attend college and get jobs out of their hometowns. This normally means you travel for most weddings and other events. 

According to The Knot, the average cost to attend a wedding in 2024 was $610. If it is a local wedding without the need for a hotel, I can’t imagine how it would cost $610. 

What I do understand is how an out-of-town wedding can cost a guest who drove $840 or $1,680 if you flew, according to The Knot’s averages. 

I don’t know about you, but this is pretty accurate for me! A recent wedding to the West Coast definitely cost my family of four over $1,500. It really is an act of love to pay $840-$1,680 to see your friends or family get married.

Side note: No one cares if the dress or suit you wear to a wedding is new or old as a guest. 

Gift Giving

Gone are the days when newlyweds move in together after getting married and need help setting up a house. So, what do you get a bride and groom who probably already have what they need, and how much is appropriate? Here are some ideas:

  • Anything on their registry! 
  • If you aren’t sure what to give someone and they don’t have a registry, you can’t go wrong with cash. It is nice to give cash with a suggestion on how to use it, like saying “go buy your coffees for the year,” or “date night to the movies.”
  • Absolutely nothing. This might be a controversial take, but if you are traveling out of town and spending $800-$1,600 already, it is totally OK to give a card with well wishes and leave it at that. Some aren’t in the position to take on the cost of attending a wedding and provide a gift. I want to give you permission to go to the wedding. This truly is about you taking the time to celebrate with your friends and family, and you should never feel bad about not giving a gift.  
  • In polling my friends (mostly couples), we give between $115 and $200 a wedding. You really can give as much or as little as you want. I find it best to set a baseline for how much you give each wedding and then just stick to that. 
  • Can’t attend the wedding? Feel free to send a gift, though not necessary.

Just in case you were wondering, the average gift amount in a survey done in 2024 by The Knot was $150. 

Would You Decline a Wedding Based on Cost?

I think it is completely reasonable to decide what is important for you to spend your money on. Weddings and other life events come with social and financial pressure. It is perfectly OK to decide to skip some events and go to others based on your current financial situation and goals. If you have to decline an invitation due to your financial situation, perhaps find a way in the future to take the couple out to dinner and enjoy some quality time together. 

Some Odd Advice

I know it can be stressful navigating the etiquette, the travel, and the late nights. My last completely unconventional piece of advice is to carry a granola bar or fruit bar (nothing with poppy seeds) and shove it into the bride or groom’s mouth throughout the day. They forget to eat, and they don’t feel hungry, but they are. Trust me. 

Hope this wedding season goes well for you as a guest!

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According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Q1 GDP growth in 2025 was negative (-0.3%, to be exact).

real gdp growth

According to the BEA, “The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and a decrease in government spending. These movements were partly offset by increases in investment, consumer spending, and exports” (emphasis added).

contributions to percent change in gdp

But over time, GDP trends upward (at least in America), as do home prices. So, how related are they? After all, a growing GDP means people are generally more productive, and employment and wages typically increase. And we already know employment and wages are the two variables correlated most with real estate price growth.

A Look at the Numbers

Let’s look at 40 years of historical data, decade by decade:

At first glance, there’s no discernible pattern other than “they both go up, but not equally.”

gdp vs home price growth

GDP may be a macroeconomic signal that drives price change, but real estate is still a hyperlocal industry and is more directly influenced by things such as supply/demand dynamics and interest rates. 

But to conclude this article, let’s take a look at just how much GDP growth affects home price growth, along with some classic statistics.

After running something called a “regression analysis,” here’s what the data shows:

  • R-squared: 0.318: This means that about 31.8% of the variation in home price appreciation can be explained by GDP growth.
  • Coefficient for GDP growth: 0.88: For every 1% increase in GDP growth, home price appreciation tends to increase by about 0.88%, on average.
  • P-value for GDP growth: 0.00005: This suggests statistical significance (p

While GDP growth has a statistically significant and positive correlation with home price appreciation, the R-squared value (0.318) confirms that it is only one of several factors. Other drivers (like interest rates, housing inventory, and inflation) likely play larger roles in home price growth during specific periods.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, even if GDP continues to dip, I really don’t see this having a big impact on home prices. In fact, the only times home prices have dropped significantly in the past 100 years was during the Great Depression and the Great Recession, one of which was a housing bubble.

Ultimately, local market dynamics seem to matter much more than GDP.

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Here’s the mortgage rate “range” Dave expects to see through the end of 2025.

With so much rate volatility as of late, it’s getting harder and harder to predict when interest rates will rise, fall, stabilize, or go in a completely different direction. Behind all the fluctuations, we can see why this is happening: recession fears, inflation fears, and declining sentiment toward the American economy. There are a few ways future mortgage rates could go, and today, Dave shares his prediction for the 2025 mortgage rate “range.”

You want lower mortgage rates, we want lower mortgage rates—everyone wants lower mortgage rates—how do we get there?

Dave will spell out the scenario that has to happen for rates to fall, and if you start seeing these warning signs, you might want to prepare. Plus, if the opposite happens, what could cause rates to rise even higher? Finally, Dave shares his plan for investing with fluctuating rates and his strategy for building wealth in a volatile market.

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Dave:
This is the mortgage rate range to expect for the rest of 2025. President Trump is feuding with Fed chair Jerome Powell. Tariffs could cause inflation. Recession risks are rising. Will all this cause mortgage rates to finally fall or could they actually go back up? There’s a ton of uncertainty right now, but as investors, we all just want to know which way are mortgage rates going to move. So today I’m going to dive into why mortgage rates are changing so much, what might happen next and what smart moves you can make to protect and grow your portfolio If you’re investing in 2025 or maybe you’re just trying to decide if now is a good time to buy, you’re going to want to listen to this one.
Hey, what’s up everyone? It’s Dave head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets and maybe you’re like me and you can remember a time way back when mortgage rates were steady and were only a minor part of being a real estate investor. It feels like a distant dream, right? Because the reality is that nowadays we need to be thinking about mortgage rates more regularly because there is a lot of volatility in the housing market and as you probably know, mortgage rates really matter to me actually the direction of basically the entire housing market, including housing prices, the state of sales volume and pretty much everything else are highly dependent on mortgage rates and the direction that they move in in the coming months. So it is pretty important that all of us as investors wrap our heads around this and I think I can help this all make at least some sense.
In addition to owning and operating a real estate portfolio for the last 15 years, I’m also a housing market and economic analyst, and I think those skills have given me some advantages in my investing and I want to pass them along to you, particularly in these types of investing climates because right now we’re seeing a pretty big divide between the data and some of the popular narratives about what’s happening in the real estate market. And I think you should know the real situation. So here it is. Despite what you’ve probably heard in the mainstream media or on social media or from your random cousin, the path forward for mortgage rates is not clear. And yes, I know people have been saying for months or even years, I think that it’s just a matter of time before mortgage rates fall. And in a way that is true, but right now there’s not a clear timeline on when that will happen.
We might actually even see rates go back up for periods in the near future. We’re in this super volatile period. Just consider what has happened over the last 12 months. A year ago, rates were about seven and a half. This was last May. Then they dropped all the way down to 6% last August, which was a huge improvement, but then they just went right back up to 7.25% in January. Then in April they went back down to 0.6%. Now as of this recording, they’re back up to 7%. It has absolutely been a rollercoaster ride. And yeah, it is true that mortgage rates are always moving somewhat, but this level of change, which you might hear me call volatility is not normal. And not even just from a data perspective, let’s just call it like it is. It is super annoying and frustrating that it is always changing because having high interest rates is one thing, but having higher interest rates and unpredictable interest rates, it’s just not fun for real estate investors.
The first thing that you need to know and to remember throughout this episode is that the Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates. Let’s just say it again. The Fed does not set mortgage rates. This is something that so many people incorrectly assume The Fed can indirectly influence mortgage rates through the federal funds rate, but they do not control mortgage rates. That is pretty much up to what happens in the bond markets. Bonds and mortgage rates are very closely tied when yields on bonds go up. So do mortgages when yields on bonds decline. So do mortgage rates, just remember that. So the question then becomes why haven’t mortgage rates fallen like people were expecting? Well, it should be simple. Now, bond yields have gone up and there are a lot of complicated reasons for this, but I’ll give you the sort of TLDR version. Bond investors do not like inflation and they do not like instability when they’re afraid of inflation or feel uncertain about the US government’s commitments to repay its debts, bond yields rise and when the opposite is true, like when they’re worried about recessions, bond yields tend to fall.
And it seems that at least since September October of 2024, they’ve been basically oscillating back and forth between inflation fears and recession fears. And they’re essentially just taking all of us real estate investors along with them for this wild and frustrating rollercoaster ride. Every time some piece of news comes out or a new policy is implemented, bond investors react and I think we should be real. They seem very sensitive right now. They all just react and we’re basically at their mercy. So that brings us up to speed about how we got to where we are, but everyone wants to know where we’re going from here, why Trump and the Fed are fighting right now and what you should do with your own portfolio. We’ll get to all that right after this quick break. This week’s bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund and that’s in private market real estate with the Fundrise Flagship fund. Check out fundrise.com/pockets to learn more.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets pocket. We’re here talking about mortgage rate forecasts and before we went to the break, we were talking about how we arrived at the point we are today and how mortgage rates are largely influenced by the whims and the beliefs of bond investors. So then to figure out what comes next, we basically need to channel our inner bond investors and try to think like them as best that we can. And to me there are three major narratives that could possibly drive mortgage rates in the coming months. Those are an economic slowdown, which is a K recession inflation and this new thing called the sell America trade, which I’ll explain in just a minute, but let’s go through each of these one by one and we will start with a recession. Now I know people have been claiming a recession is coming four years now and they have been wrong, but that talk has definitely been increasing of late with a few key recession indicators starting to flash warning signs.
Now the consensus among economists and Wall Street strategists has shifted sharply in just a couple of months. The IMF cut its UF growth forecast to 1.8% citing trade tensions and weakening consumer confidence. JP Morgan pegs the probability of a recession at 60% now up from 40% earlier this year, and Goldman Sachs is about even odds at 45%. So what’s driving this? It’s definitely a confluence of things, but I think the most recent fear is because of the aggressive tariffs President Trump has implemented. He himself has said that there could be some short-term pain associated with the changes he’s making. We are seeing some generalized slowing of global growth and there’s recent data that points to consumer sentiment and business sentiment taking what I would honestly call a nosedive. It is really going down. Even still, there are a few bright spots this labor market is doing surprisingly well.
There is some resilience in consumer spending, so we’re seeing sort of both sides of the recession picture and the overall outlook is pretty cloudy. Now, the Fed people still think that they’re going to cut rates slowly and that could help the risks of a recession, but with inflation risks still lurking. They seem to be hesitant to cut too soon. That has sort of led to this public spa between Trump and the Fed, which we’ll talk about in just a little bit. But first, let’s talk about the second indicator on bond investors minds, which is inflation After the sort of wild ride that we were on in 2022 and the sticky inflation that we just got through in 2023 and 2024, the latest data is pretty encouraging. It shows us that annual inflation has cooled to about 2.4% as of March, and that is down from 2.8% the previous month.
This it’s huge progress from where we were a few years ago, and there are some particular bright spots with energy prices dropping and the very sticky rent and shelter inflation. We’ve talked about a lot on the show starting to cool off. Let’s just be clear here that in terms of the data we have, inflation has been heading in the right direction, but data is obviously inherently backward looking and there is fear inflation could swing back in the direction no one wants because the policy environment has shifted. Historically, tariffs have led to inflation and I don’t really see a reason why what they wouldn’t do the same this time around. If it costs companies more to import goods into the US or produce those goods domestically, they will very likely pass some of those costs onto consumers and that leads to higher prices, which is inflation.
I think most economists are right to think that we will see that upward pressure on prices as the year progresses. Just as an example, Morgan Stanley bumped its 2025 inflation forecast up to 2.5%. Goldman Sachs warns that core PCE inflation could hit 3% if tariffs stick around. So just as a quick summary of inflation, inflation’s doing okay right now, but there’s worries it could go back up, but no one I’ve seen, no credible source I’ve seen has been predicting some massive hike in inflation to anywhere close to what we saw in 2022 or even 2023. But they’re saying we could basically take a step or two backwards from the positive trend we’ve been on over the last couple of years. Those are probably the two big things on bond investors minds right now and why mortgage rates are fluctuating is that we have inflation fears, we have recession fears, but we need to talk about the fact that these two fears are existing at the same time because it’s kind of unique.
Normally in an economy you get either one of the other, you either get a recession or inflation. But the idea that these two things could coexist is a situation called stagflation and that could create more problems for the economy, but it’s also creating this uncertainty about mortgage rates. First and foremost, you could probably see based on what I’ve said so far, why mortgage rates are swinging. I said earlier in the show that bond yields which directly influence mortgage rates are impacted primarily by the fears of recession and the fears of inflation and which one is getting worse at a given point in time. So the fact that both of these fears exist makes sort of sense why there’s this volatility, but there is sort of more to it than that. This potential for stagflation or at least the uncertainty around the direction of GDP growth and inflation have created a difficult situation for the Fed.
It means the fed’s hands are somewhat tied. They can’t really lower rates for fear of inflation and they can’t raise rates for fear of recessions. It’s a tough spot for the Fed or any central bank to be in and fed chair Jerome Powell has said as much, now President Trump disagrees. He thinks rates should come down and he has said so repeatedly and publicly, but Powell, at least for now, has been holding his ground despite Trump’s public ponderings of whether or not Powell should be fired. So this is why, although you may be hearing that the Fed is going to cut rates, it may not happen. Most economists still think the Fed will cut twice in twenties 25, but it’s not certain, especially if inflation reverses course. But this pact between Powell and Trump, plus the general uncertainty in the economy right now leads us to our third factor that’s influencing mortgage rates, which is the quote sell America trade.
If you haven’t heard this term before, sell America trade is a term. It was just recently coined by a Wall Street analyst, but it’s sort of been picked up across the financial media in plain English. The Sell America trade is when investors, global investors dump us assets. This is stocks, bonds, even the dollar in favor of foreign markets or some traditional safe havens like gold. And this dynamic does not usually happen, but it happened over the last couple of weeks where we saw all three of these things happen. We saw stocks go down, we saw bond yields climb, and we saw the dollar decline all at once. That is very unusual. Typically when there’s a off in stocks, you see investors move their money to the safety of US treasuries. But this April we’ve seen numerous occasions where stocks have sold off, so have treasuries, the dollar is weakened.
It’s weird and it is not good because while we don’t know precisely who is selling and why, the long of short of it is that investors are moving their money out of US assets and into foreign assets. And now this might not seem like a big problem, but it is particularly for mortgage rates in the us. Like I’ve said repeatedly, our mortgage rates are dependent on US treasuries and US treasuries is dependent on demand. If a lot of investors want to lend money to the US government in the form of US treasuries, interest rates or the yields on those treasuries go down and they take mortgage rates down with them. But if there is less demand for us treasuries like we saw on these occasions where people were just selling US assets, bond yields will rise and mortgage rates will go up as well. And this is one of the main reasons alongside inflation concerns why mortgage rates have risen in recent weeks despite a selloff which would normally bring mortgage rates down, could be a one-time phenomenon.
We don’t know. It is definitely not a trend, but if it does continue, it spells trouble for mortgage rates and honestly I think for the entire US economy. But as of right now, I don’t want to raise too many alarms because it just happened once or twice in April. But it is something that is so unusual that I do think that it is worth mentioning. So just to summarize where the direction of mortgage rates are, it will depend on inflation, it will depend on recession. And our third variable, which is more of like a black swan variable, this sell America trade. Given that if you want to know where mortgage rates are going, you can ask yourself where you think these trends will go. Is a recession coming? Will inflation spike? Will investors flee us assets? Of course no one knows for certain, but if you have a strong thesis in any of these directions, you can use it to project which way mortgage rates will move and inform your own investing decisions. Now, what do I personally think and what investing moves am I going to make? I’ll share when we get back from this short break.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’re here talking about what happens with mortgage rates in this new economic reality that we’re living in. And as I said before the break, I’ll give you my thoughts on what happens from here, but you may not like it because my educated highly researched, best guess is that rates are going to stay relatively high for the foreseeable future. As we’ve talked about throughout the show, predicting mortgage rates is trying to predict the bond market, and I think there’s just too much uncertainty for bond yields to fall. Yeah, there are fears of recession that could bring down bond yields, but the risk of inflation is counteracting that. And the general caution investors are starting to show really for the first time in many, many years about American assets is also counteracting that for mortgage rates to fall, we need a recession without inflation and some more stability in our policies around trade and fed relations.
That’s how they come down. I mean, I don’t know if those things are going to happen and when, but that is the formula we need for mortgage rates to come down. If any of those three variables remain uncertain about recession, about inflation, about our policies, I think that rates stay relatively high. And frankly, I don’t know, maybe we’ll get clarity about some of these things, but the idea that we’re going to get clarity about all three of these variables in the next few months, I just don’t see that happening. And that’s why I think rates are going to stay relatively high. And of course they’re going to fluctuate week to week, month to month and maybe even up to a half a point or more, but I don’t see them going below 6.5% for the foreseeable future and maybe they’ll get above 7.1, but I think that’s kind of the range that I’m expecting mortgage rates to be for at least next three-ish months.
And I should mention that I believe this, even if Trump gets his way and the fed cuts rates, and I know you may disagree with this, and this might be controversial, but I think this may be true even if Trump fires Powell, because think about it. If the fed cuts rates, yes, that will lower some borrowing costs, but it will also spook investor about inflation, right? People are already spooked about inflation and lower rates could make that worse. So any potential cut might be offset by those inflation fears. Remember, this just happened, right? This isn’t some crazy hypothesis that I have. Remember when the fed cut rates in September and mortgage rates went up? Yeah, we have seen this movie before, but what if Trump fires Powell and rates really come down like say 200 basis points? Same thing, at least to me, right? Because that actually might even be worse.
I think that would be sort of this double whammy. Yes, the federal funds rate will come down, but I think the fact that Trump fires Powell and the ending of Fed independence would introduce this whole new realm of risk for bond investors and bond yields could actually go up and inflation fears would go up too. This would just be pretty unprecedented. So I can’t say with a lot of certainty what would happen, but I think it might not work out as cleanly for mortgage rates as you might think. We’ve already seen how the bond market reacted when Trump just threatened to fire Powell. Bond investors didn’t like that. They felt like there was risk and bond yields went up. So regardless of what you think of Jerome Powell, him being fired may not get you the mortgage rate results that you’re looking for. So that’s my take.
And honestly, it’s not really that different than I predicted at the beginning of the year. I’ve been saying rates higher than most people expect somewhere in the mid to high sixes for the coming months between 6.5 and 7%. But I do think if things calm down over the next few months, if trade deals are struck, if Trump resists firing Powell, the general trend for mortgage rates is down, it’s just going to take longer and will probably be less of a decline than most people think. So in terms of real estate strategy, what am I doing about all this? I’m buying real estate. This is the upside era. After all, long-term investing is the name of the game. And despite a softening housing market and persistently high interest rates, there are still deals to be had. Concessions are up, price drops are up, negotiations are yours for the taking.
Don’t assume you can’t find a property that works because interest rates are at 6.8% or whatever. Go find a property you think has upside, calculate what price you could pay with current rates and make that offer. If it’s not accepted, find another property and try again. Don’t get me wrong, there is risk in these types of buyer’s market that we are in, but there are also so many opportunities. This is where opportunities come. So despite everything else going on right now, I’m sticking with my long-term strategy of finding great assets with lots of upside that I want to hold for 10 plus years. That may not be your strategy, but I’d encourage you all to at least follow me with the big pillars of my strategy right now, which are, be conservative in your underwriting. Assume minimal growth for the next few years. Ensure at least break even cashflow for properties that you want to hold and find two to three upsides for each deal. If you could do that in today’s environment, there’s no reason not to be active in this market that is sure to produce opportunities. Alright, that’s what we got. The mortgage rate outlook for May, 2025. Thank you all so much for listening. If you have questions, make sure to drop me a comment, or you can always hit me up on Instagram where I’m at, the data deli or on biggerpockets.com. Thanks for listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’ll see you next time.

 

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In This Episode We Cover:

  • The mortgage rate “range” to expect in 2025 (and what’s affecting rates now)
  • Everyone is wrong about the Fed—here’s who actually controls mortgage rates
  • The recession vs. inflation standoff and why the winner will greatly affect your rate
  • The “Sell America” trade that’s putting the American economy under severe pressure
  • How Dave is investing in 2025 and his plan for which properties to buy even with high rates
  • And So Much More!

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What if you reached financial independence…before knowing what it was? That’s what happened to Chris Rusin. After discovering the FIRE movement and stumbling across Mindy and Carl’s blog, he realized he was already at his goal. Then, early retirement unlocked a new life full of wild adventures, creative rebirth, and deeper purpose!

Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money podcast! Chris had been hustling, saving money, and chasing financial freedom for years before experiencing a big wake-up call. He encountered a half-billionaire who, despite “having it all,” was deeply unhappy and filled with regret. That moment sparked a shift—not toward more money, but toward more meaning.

Since then, Chris has dived for treasure with Navy SEALs, unearthed dinosaur fossils, and much more—all before turning 50! But he’s also faced his fair share of fear and uncertainty. After receiving a cancer diagnosis and losing his voice to chemotherapy, he made a promise: if his voice came back, he’d finally record the album he’d dreamed of making. And he did. Stick around till the very end to hear the “world premiere” of Chris’ brand-new song!

Mindy:
Today we are talking to one of the most boring men in the world, Chris Rusin. Chris Dove for treasure with Navy Seals in the Florida Keys. He helped discover one of the largest Toro OSA specimens ever found. Searched for the ghost of Tom Petty with Carl. Wrote a screenplay, just released an album and survived a deadly disease, and he’s not even 50 yet. Hi there. I’m Mindy Jensen.

Carl:
And I’m Carl Jensen.

Mindy:
And this is the Mindy

Carl:
And Carl

Mindy:
On Life After Fi show, where we talk about what happens after you reach financial independence.

Carl:
Why do we call this show Life After Fire?

Mindy:
Because we’re talking about and talking to people who are living their best life after reaching phi. Let’s start out with the most interesting part, his PHI journey. Chris, tell us when you discovered the concept of financial independence.

Chris:
Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on. It’s really fun to be here. Yeah. So to answer your question, when did I first find out about phi? It was after I was already phi, and so I had kind of been thinking about these concepts. I thought I had come up with something brand new, and then I started googling around and I actually found Carl’s blog first 1500 days. And then I found out, hey, he lives no more than less than a hundred miles from my house, and so does this guy, Mr. Money mustache. And from there, Carl and I ended up, I reached out, I emailed amazingly, he responded, and we met up for a beer at a brewery, and the rest is history. And so I didn’t find out about PHI until I had already thought I invented it and then realized, no, I hadn’t. But that’s great because there’s a bunch of other people I could hang out with.

Mindy:
If you were already financially independent, what were you looking for that caused you to discover Carl’s blog?

Chris:
At the time, I was working at a startup and we were trying to close a round of funding. In came a really wealthy potential investor and he is worth about a half a billion dollars with a B. He kind of threw his keys on the table and they had a Ferrari and a Porsche key chain, and he made a big show out of it. And then we were kind of telling him about our company, but he started talking about money and he was saying, when you have more money, people want something from you, and some people feel like you give them too much money and others not enough. And then he just looked around our crappy office and he said, remember this time, this is the happiest you’ll ever be, and working at a startup is rough. And so I was thinking, this guy doesn’t seem very happy, and if I’m going to try to grow into over time, that’s not the kind of life I want. And so I started kind of thinking about how much money do you need to never have to work again? What if I stopped working for other people for money and started working for myself for happiness? And that was kind of the crux of the discovery process. And that’s when I started googling around. I don’t even remember what that first search was, but it was probably something like that. What do you do when you don’t need to work anymore? Or how much do I need to not have to work?

Mindy:
So Chris, I would like to talk a little bit more about how you got to this position of financial independence. You said you were a tech worker. What was your job and what was your savings rate? Did you track any of that?

Chris:
We were wanting to get ahead and kind of didn’t have money coming out of college. We were down to the point where we couldn’t pay rent. And so my drive was to alleviate that. I started work as a mechanical engineer and I wanted to get ahead. And so what I would do is I would push for raises. What can I do to get the next rung? What can I do to get a 20% raise by the end of this year? And when you pose that question to a boss, no one wants to tell you that’s not possible because then you’re not motivated, you don’t feel a path to success. And so they give you a path to success, and that path is often really aggressive. I would pursue that every raise, every review. And so over the first eight years of working, I think I averaged around 20% raises every year, which when that compounds up, really increases your earnings. At the same time my wife was working, we saving over 50% of what we brought in, and so we were living off a little less than one salary and saving the entire other one because of that experience, because we didn’t want to find ourselves out of work and unable to get a job again. So that was our early process.

Mindy:
My dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that we have a new BiggerPockets money newsletter. If you would like to subscribe, you can go to biggerpockets.com/money newsletter while we take this quick break.

Carl:
Welcome back to the show.

Mindy:
We haven’t really talked about any of the amazing accomplishments you’ve had yet, but let’s talk about surviving a deadly disease.

Chris:
Yeah, so I just, last week actually had my, or was it? Yeah, just last week, had my three year post chemo and I am still cancer free, but that’s what

Mindy:
I, yay, hooray, Carl say, yay.

Chris:
Yay.

Mindy:
That was the worst. Yay ever. I will be very excited for

Chris:
You. I know you’re excited on the inside, Carl.

Carl:
I’m deeply happy for Chris. Yes, for many reasons. Good job, Chris.

Chris:
So yeah, to talk about that a little bit, I had been doing a number of the adventures that you alluded to in that super kind intro and then was at a spot where my wife had continued to work for reasons outside of money. She liked her job. There was a lot of exciting things going on and what she was working on and wanted to keep going, but she was starting to talk to me and saying, Hey, I think I’m at a point where I’m ready to leave traditional work. And so I was all excited about how that would change things and the things we could do together. And then just before Christmas, I guess a little over three years ago now, I found out I had metastatic testicular cancer that had spread into my abdomen. And in those early stages, you don’t really have odds yet because they don’t know what they’re dealing with. And that was a pretty scary time. Then I eventually had to go through surgery and chemo and those odds shifted over time and turned in my favor. And now here I am, three years cancer free. That experience was certainly educational and also a big kick to the face, right in the time where I was excited for the greatest time in our lives.

Mindy:
How long did it take to from diagnosis to that first doctor’s appointment where they said, you don’t have cancer anymore,

Chris:
They don’t really say you don’t have cancer. There’s an important thing there, and I think there’s a lesson here. So I guess I’ll go down that path is I’ll answer your question. And that is I got the diagnosis I was in for surgery within the week because with Christmas coming up and covid challenges, they needed to staff this hospital and get that thing out as quick as they could. And so I was in for surgery quick. I then started chemo, I think it was in January, and then it was a little over three months later when all my cycles of treatment were done. It was a very fast but extremely aggressive treatment. I mean aggressive to the point of, I don’t remember several weeks of it. It’s a blackout. An entire, I was in a funk. And then after you’re done, they scan and find nothing in your blood work and then you start your clock.
And so from there, I’m three years past that point, the reason I said they don’t really say you’re cancer free is because I kept asking that when do I know I’m out of the woods is, do we know if the cancer’s still there? Do we know if it’s gone yet? And the care staff always kept focusing on, enjoy the amount of health you’ve got now, do the things you want to do, focus on today, focus on health because, and over time I shifted my thinking to the way they talked about it, which is you never know you’re safe. And so here I am now three years at one point, it was two years at one point it was a week, and you just got to make the decision to say, I’m healthy to say I’m going to go. I’m going to make plans, long-term plans, I’m going to do the things because if I don’t, it’s like I am paying interest on a debt I might not owe.

Carl:
So I think there’s a super important lesson in your story, Chris, because whatever financial independence comes up in the media, hits all these wonderful things that you can do with it. People living in camper vans that are 20 years old that make all this money or whatever, have this beautiful life, live in foreign countries, do these wonderful things. But at the core, the most supported thing is for stuff like this. When you got this diagnosis, you were already financially independent. So if the worst case scenario you would’ve passed, at least you would’ve done that knowing that your family was taken care of. Correct.

Chris:
Yeah, and it’s a great point. We do talk about all the, or it’s the great things that people do, those huge adventures get a lot of press. But yeah, knowing that if a scan came up and insurance denied it, I could still pay that scan and I would not be in financial distress. That was a huge comfort with knowing that if treatment went sideways and I wasn’t around, that my wife and kids would be taken care of. A huge amount of relief. And really in addition to that, I did do a lot of adventures like you alluded to prior to this diagnosis.
But the subtlety of having the time and space to just relax and do some of the things and not have regret is really valuable, more valuable than a five star fancy dinner or flight to Fiji. It’s more the subtleties. It’s more the way I felt going into it. So I think a lot of the flashy stuff is the sugar that helps medicine go down. I’m going to drive a Lamborghini, I’m going to stay in the penthouse suite or something. But when you actually get there, those things don’t do much for you. And it’s some of this other stuff I was talking about that that’s a big strength of it for me, at least

Carl:
One thought I’ve had. I’m so thankful for five because to back up a second, you just reminded me of this thought I had maybe a year or two ago if I did die or knew I was going to die, I would not be happy about it if I knew I was going to die soon. But the super honest truth is I would be happy with the way I lived. I don’t think I’d have any regrets. I don’t think we’ve held back, we’ve had great adventures. We’ve done the most with what we could. And it sounds like you could probably say the same thing, Chris, is that true?

Chris:
I think for the most part, yeah. There were a lot of things I did prior to the diagnosis that were great, that were things I always wanted to do since I was a kid, but I didn’t do it all. There’s other things. So there’s a project I’m working on now is probably more important than any of that, but I never did it. I never did it until after cancer. And there are reasons for that that have nothing to do with

Carl:
Money.

Chris:
I guess I just gave myself a lead in. I

Carl:
Is that the music?

Chris:
Music? It’s a music project and music has always been a big part of my life. It’s always been something I turned to when I had trouble talking about it, I could write about it and play songs about it, but I guess I took it for granted, my ability to sing and write and play and then going through chemo, I had to take some pretty aggressive glio mycin treatments that kind of wreck your lungs temporarily. And I lost my ability to sing. I remember in that time just kicking myself, why didn’t I, I’d been working on a set of songs for years, but oh, that one harmony part wasn’t quite right or this piece still needs work.
I think the reason I didn’t do it was less about money or time bandwidth and more about just identity about, it’s nice to have the comfort of potential rather than the terror of having to deliver on that potential. But going through that process, when I was lying in that bed, I said, if I get better, if I get through this, I’m going to get my voice back and I’m going to do that album and I’m going to face this. And so that’s been my life for the last several months and it’s something I’m really into right now.

Carl:
Wow. So do you think, it sounds like this album has been a lifelong thing, but maybe all this other stuff was a kick in the butt to do it. I liked what you said, the comfort of the potential of doing so that allows you to sit on there and contemplate the whole thing without doing much of anything versus actually putting the boots on the ground and doing it. How did you finally get off your butt and do this?

Chris:
Yeah, so I mean the threat of the threat of not being able to sing again and the threat of not making it through the chemo was enough to shake me to the core and say, you’re doing this. And so coming out of that, when I started to get health back, it took quite a while to get the voice back and I knew I was doing it. I had made a promise to myself while going through that treatment. So then it was just a matter of putting in the work, which was like anything a lot more than I envisioned. I tried to find a producer who was really good and I convinced him to do it. It really is. You’ve got a great way to enlist help when you tell people your cancer story, I found you get a lot of sympathy. Hopefully there’s talent there too. But yeah, he agreed to do the project, but he was booked out eight months, so I had to then wait another eight months. I had to find a singing partner to do all the harmonies and then round up musicians and then go through the personal self-doubt of I’m horrible and this music is no good one day. And then the next day I’m a rock star and I am the most amazing musician that’s ever lived. And so there’s all of that, a lot of self-discovery and a lot of fun and challenge at the same time.

Mindy:
What genre is your music?

Chris:
So this project is folk Americana. I think of bands like the Civil Wars or Watchhouse. It’s kind of folksy, indie folk singer-songwriter type stuff.

Mindy:
We have to take one final ad break, but we’ll be back with more after this.

Carl:
Thanks for sticking with us. What is the name of the album and where can people find it?

Chris:
Thanks, Carl. I’ve just started releasing music in March, the first single came out. So it’s Chris Russin, C-H-R-I-S, last name R-U-S-I-N. And I am everywhere on all the streamers. First song, leave It In the Snow came out in March. Second one’s going to come out on the 18th of April called Senders. And I’m releasing music every month of 2025, which is super fun for me and also another giant learning experience on how to do that.

Carl:
Awesome. What is next for you? You’ve done all these crazy things, had a possible near death experience, created an album. Do you have anything on the horizon or you just going to

Chris:
The book

Mindy:
Carl? The book. Oh, the

Chris:
Book? Yes, the book, book book that Mindy is co-writing with me. I’m just kidding. Early in my life and career, I think a big thing that helped me get to Fi was I started my career in the giant tech downturn of the early two thousands when I came to Denver and 13,000 tech workers had been laid off and I was trying to get a job with no experience and I felt, I felt like I didn’t have any security. And so for me, that drive always trying to get ahead and do the next thing was healthy and it helped me get defy. But now, fast forward, different stage in life, and we talked about this earlier in the talk, things that served you well then might not still serve you is I’ve done a lot. And I think I’m at the point where I don’t think of checklists or got to do the next big thing.
It’s more about what is fulfilling, what is exciting me, what is allowing me to do, build relationships in my life and connection. And so there’s no real checklist or next thing. It’s more like an evolving sort of what is healthy right now, what feels good for the next six months. And so yeah, for me it’s this music thing that’s that’s going to be a big effort for at least the next six months. And then beyond that, hey, I’ll be happy to still have health and time. I mean, maybe that’s the cancer perspective, right? And see what comes.

Mindy:
Chris, this has been a lot of fun, but you have been mentioning all this music and I want to hear some, can you play something for us please?

Chris:
Sure, yeah. This will be a fun experiment to see how it comes through over the speakers here on the podcast. Lemme grab a guitar.

Mindy:
And now for the world premiere of Chris’s music,

Chris:
I think what I’m going to play for you is we’ve talked a lot about the journey phi and then cancer and its lessons. And so I’ll play one that kind of Carl, you asked if I wrote any about that process. Here’s one about that

Speaker 4:
In the moonlight streaming across the water. I hear though it saw from the train tracks go everywhere. I never be my heart back home. She’s right here. There’s train out. It just keeps rolling. And I used to dream of finding time. Now I dream finding time. Love.

Mindy:
Wow, that was really good, Chris, I didn’t know you had such a good voice. Oh, thank you. And you’re a good guitarist too. Wow. I have no musical talent whatsoever. I can’t sing, I can’t play any instruments. I only sing in the car when it’s by myself.

Chris:
I hope it came through over the podcast. I don’t know if you could hear it.

Mindy:
Yeah, it came through great. I really appreciate you playing for us. That was such a good song. Thank you. And world debut,

Chris:
World premiere right here.

Mindy:
Yes, world premiere. So the next time you have a world premiere album, we’ll bring you back.

Chris:
Thanks so much,

Mindy:
Chris. This was so much fun. Is there any place people can find you online? I mean, there should be because you just released an album, so people need to go and download that. But where can people find you online

Chris:
For all things music? Chris russin.com is my homepage and you can find me anywhere you stream your music by just searching Chris last name, R-U-S-I-N for anything. Phi. I do blog. I don’t blog as much as I used to, but I’ve got a blog life outside the maze.com and you can contact me through that if you have questions or follow-ups on anything fire related. And yeah, it’s been a blast talking with you both.

Carl:
Thank you so much.

Mindy:
Thank you, Chris. And we will talk to you soon. That wraps up this episode of The Life After Fire Show with Carl Jensen. I am Mindy Jensen saying See you around the dig pig.

 

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Is money getting in the way of you and your first (or next) rental property? You’re not alone! This is perhaps the most common pain point for new investors. Fortunately, we have some game-changing tips to help you get financing for rental properties—even if you don’t have a high-paying job or perfect credit score!

Welcome to another Rookie Reply! Today’s first question is from a student looking to purchase their first house hack. They’re not sure if they’ll be able to qualify for a mortgage based on their current income and job history, but we’ll provide some actionable steps to help them reach their end goal as soon as possible.

Next, we’ll hear from an investor who’s looking to tap into their home equity and fund their next rental property. The catch? If they refinance, their new interest rate will jump up by 5%. Is the investment worth it? We’ll weigh the pros and cons. To wrap up, we’ll tackle some common landlording problems—high utility bills, tenant headaches, and more!

Ashley:
We’re tackling some of the most common financing dilemmas that new investors face in this episode of Real Estate. Rookie reply from navigating FHA loans with inconsistent income history to deciding if sacrificing that amazing interest rate is really worth it for expansion.

Tony:
Yeah, I mean, today’s questions really showcase the true crossroads that so many new investors counter. We’ve got a college student with perfect credit and decent savings trying to make that first crucial move. And we also have a couple who’s kind of hit their stride with one property, but they’re kind of facing tough decisions about how to leverage their primary residence for growth. Plus we’ll tackle what to do when a tenant insists on plugging their Tesla into your property’s dryer outlet, believe it or not.

Ashley:
So whether you’re saving up for your first deal or really just trying to figure out how to scale your portfolio, today’s episode gives you practical advice. You can apply immediately

Tony:
And honestly, what makes these situations so interesting is that there’s rarely a perfect answer. So we’ll walk through the pros and cons of each scenario and really help you think through the considerations that matter most.

Ashley:
I am Ashley Kehr,

Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson.

Ashley:
Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Today we have our first question from Ethan Tomlinson from the BiggerPockets Forums. So Ethan says, hi. I am a 22-year-old college student at BYU. I’m looking to house hack in southeast Idaho. It’s been a dream of mine to house hack the moment I have learned of it, which was four years ago. So when he was 18. I’m wondering if anyone can help with the process of getting your first house hack cost, getting pre-approved for an FHA loan, who to talk to first, et cetera. I have two part-time jobs and I have no debt. I only have to pay for groceries and gas right now. So I’m able to save about 2300, 20 $500 each month after paying my living expenses each month. Here are some other things to know. My current savings are about 20 K and I have 4K in a Roth.
My credit score has been 750 plus we’re quite some time now. I have only had my two part-time W2 jobs for about a couple months before then. A lot of my labor was 10 99 or just being paid cash if I remember correctly. You need two years of income to get approved for an FHA loan. Generally, what steps should I take to inch closer to obtaining a house hack? It’s killing me more and more not being able to start this. I definitely haven’t done any deal analysis in a while with the calculators, but I used to a lot years back. Hey, so first of all, this is always awesome when we get someone really young that instead of out drinking and partying at college, they’re mad that they’re not house hacking yet.

Tony:
Yeah, I think definitely kudos some just to be that age and are to be focused on this and putting money aside, it’s it’s major. I don’t know Ashley, I think if I were him, probably where I would start is just understanding what my actual purchasing power is. What can I actually afford? Currently you talk about how much you’re able to save and what your current savings are, but we don’t quite know what your income is. It is true that more job history is typically going to make it easier for you to get approved for a mortgage, but also say that there are lenders out there who won’t necessarily need two years of income to get you approved, right? If you can show and prove or your income in different ways or different lenders have different things that they’re looking at. So I think the first thing that I would do is go talk to as many lenders from you can go to the big banks, but also go talk to the small local regional banks. Honestly, naca, I’ve talked about NACA quite a bit. We’ve interviewed guests who have used that loan product. I think that will be great in your situation as well. But that’s where I’m starting Nash is knowing how much loan can I get approved for.

Ashley:
So we have a place biggerpockets.com/lender finder to actually get it pre-approved and I think after your purchasing power, a great next step is to talk to a real estate agent and finding an agent who helps other people house hack. I think when you talk to agents, you can say, how many clients have you helped in the first year? Get a house hack, asking them specifically how many not. Have you ever helped someone get an house hack, but see what their experience is and then ask them questions about house hacking to really get a feel if they are knowledgeable about this, because this seems like this would be a huge advantage to you if you got an agent to not only help you find a deal to close on the deal, but also could help you along the process of what would make a good house hack too.
Whenever you’re looking for a real estate agent, you want to understand what those things are that you actually need from the agent. So for me, I need the agent to drop the contract, do the paperwork, schedule things. I don’t want to do any of that. If you’re a new investor, there are so many investor friendly agents that can help you answer questions about the market. They can tell you what you could actually get it for rent, but you want to make sure you’re actually talking to the right person. If you’re talking to an agent who primarily sells primary residence, they’re probably not going to have as good of a grasp onto what places rent for in the area. They could look it up, but somebody who’s actually helping investors even rent their homes, purchase them or find them that they’ll have a better understanding of what that information would look like.

Tony:
And I think once you’ve nailed down that piece of putting at least your initial team together with your agent, then it comes down to really narrowing down your buy box. Just because you know want to house hack, there’s a lot of variance within that to know what type of property you’ll actually end up buying. Are you looking for small multifamily ash? And I just did an episode on why that works really well. Are you looking for just a single family home? If it is a single family home, do you want a two bedroom where you’re living in one bedroom rinsing out the other? Or do you want a six bedroom where you got a lot of extra space to rent? Do you want a home with a basement or an A DU? What type of property are you actually looking for? I think will be the next step, but I don’t think you can really answer that question until you get a better sense of that first piece, which is how much loan can I get approved for? Right? Because if say you want to buy a six bedroom house, but you only get approved to go out and buy something half that size, well now you’ve got a natural constraint on what your buy box could be. So identifying type of property location, what specifications do you need to make it worth your while?

Ashley:
And also the part two about having two years of W twos for the FHA loan, my sister was able to get an FHA loan without even having a W2. She was a college student and then she got a job offer and just with her job offer letter, she was able to get pre-approved. So I would go out and I would talk to lenders. Maybe it’s not even an FHA loan, maybe there’s another type of loan product that would be good for you, but I would not let that stop me from getting my first house hack that you haven’t had two full years of a W income job.

Tony:
I think the only last thing that I’d add is obviously it’s super encouraging to see Ethan as a college student, so interested in real estate and I love the enthusiasm, but I think also Ethan is important to call out that you want to slightly temper that excitement and always kind of gut check or sanity check against the cold hard facts of whatever deal it is you’re looking at. You said you’ve been wanting to do house hacking for four years, which is great, but don’t let that excitement pull you into a deal that maybe doesn’t make sense. So still use the calculator, you said you’ve used ’em in the past. Make sure you’re using the calculators to identify does this deal actually pencil out and don’t buy something just because it seems like something that gives you the warm and fuzzies.

Ashley:
We’re going to take a quick ad break, but we will be back with our next question. Okay, welcome back uni. What is our next question from the BiggerPockets forums?

Tony:
Alright, so this question comes from Lindsay and man, I have some pain just reading this question because it’s talking about low interest rates, but I’ll do my best to get through without tearing up on you guys. But it says, should I refinance my 2.25% primary residence, 2.25% primary resident to a 7.5% plus DSCR to get my equity out? Now she adds some context here. She says, I’m a new investor just close on our first rental. It’s a long-term duplex. We want to keep trucking down our investing road but have a few barriers. The first being we were retired, my husband out of corporate hell in September, yay. But going all in on my self-employed business as a financial therapist means two things. One, we don’t have a ton of extra income to be saving for our next investment property, and two, we don’t qualify for a conventional loan.
We bought our first rental with A-D-S-C-R with 25% down and an interest rate of 7.5 paid 199,500 and the monthly rent is 2150. It’s a pretty good deal. Additionally, as my business is fully remote, we’re moving to Costa Rica for one year, all of 2026, which means we’re going to rent out our primary residence. For context, our house is on a 15 year conventional loan with a 2.25% interest rate. We have about $170,000 of equity in the house, but because of our employment arrangement, we don’t have access to a heloc. And honestly, I don’t know if I would want to be super leveraged anyway, according to the lenders that I’ve spoken with. We can’t do a cash out refi either. I think as we plan to rent it out for all 2026, we could either refi into A-D-S-C-R loan, however we’ll be losing our 2.25% interest rate and moving to a 7.5% rate. But that $170,000 would give us the potential to buy a few more. Any help is appreciated. Lot to unpack here. First 2.25%, man, those were the days going to 7.5% would be a really big jump. I dunno, what’s your initial reaction, Ashley hearing this question?

Ashley:
Yeah, that definitely is a huge transition and I’m trying to rack my brain for a way to get a HELOC on this property because honestly, just when the question started, that to me was the best scenario of getting a heloc. But I think that, okay, you have 170,000, what kind of purchasing power does that give you? So is that a down payment on a property? Is that an all cash purchase on a property? Is that buying two properties, the market that you’re investing in, what could you actually use those funds for? What would that actually deploy? So I think that’s kind of my first thing because my answer would change depending on that scenario too, but I think you got to really run the numbers first to see, okay, if you pull out that 170,000, your interest rate increases to seven and a half percent, what can you do with that $170,000?
So if say you purchase a property, it’s going to cashflow $1,500 a month, what is in your mortgage payment that you’re making every month compared to what you’d be making off the cashflow? So do they offset each other? Is the cashflow more than what that new mortgage payment would be? Is it less than what it would be in you’re actually not making any more money because that payment is so much higher? So I would definitely lay out the options and run the math on each scenario of what you could do with that 170,000 and if you had this new mortgage payment at the new rate on the property.

Tony:
Yeah, I think you read my mind. For me, it will come down to the numbers as well, right? Not only the difference in the 2.25% rate and the 7.5% rate, but also what kind of return do you expect to get on that $170,000 that you’re able to tap into? And if you’re only going to get a low single digit return, well it doesn’t make sense to actually go out there and deploy that capital. Now if you’re doing it for other reasons, but it sounds like you’re mostly focused on cashflow, but if you’re doing it because you want the tax benefits or maybe you’re doing it because you just want the appreciation, I guess that’s a slightly different play. But if it’s truly the cash flow that you’re focused on, you got to look at both what are you losing on the primary and then what are you gaining from return perspective by deploying that 170,000. And to Ashley’s point, it’s like how many properties are you planning to buy? Does that get you to one deal? Does that get you to two deals? Does it get you to three deals? And how does that cashflow stack up?

Ashley:
I got an idea that came to me while you’re talking. They’re moving to Costa Rica, they’re going to rent it out for a year. When they come back, are they going to move back into their primary residence? Okay, so let’s say that they are. I don’t think it says that does it?

Tony:
It doesn’t say that they are. Yeah.

Ashley:
Okay. So for this scenario, let’s assume that they’re going to rent it out for one year and then they’re moving back and it’s going to be their primary residence. Again, I would look at going and go ahead and do the DSCR loan, but look for something that has a very, very low fee. So what is going to have very minimal closing costs? Okay, so shop around, talk to different lenders, talk to different brokers. So they’re going to make you prepay a lot of expenses upfront. So those things won’t change, but compare loan products and which one actually has the lowest fees towards it. So you go ahead and you get the DSCR loan, you pull out that 170,000, you deploy it into something else. Then when you move back and it’s now your primary residence again, I would go to a small local bank, I would use one of their no closing cost loans and I would refinance back into a primary residence.
You’re not going to get that 2.25% interest rate, but it will at least decrease it from the interest rate you are getting, what was that seven point something? You’ll at least get a better rate than that with it being your primary residence again. So that is not best case scenario, but that is another option too as to where you are minimizing your closing costs, but you actually go and refinance twice. But that’s also assuming that rates don’t increase because once you move back from Costa Rica, rates could actually be higher and now you’re stuck with that payment and that interest rate. So it’s just one other thing to look at as to if that is an option. You could also see if there was a variable rate, so an arm mortgage available where you typically you’ll get a lower interest rate, but it’s only fixed for five, seven or 10 years and you could go ahead and do that right now and then go ahead and plan to refinance in the future back into a primary residence loan.
So those are a couple of options, but I would say I am assuming that this person has talked to one lender. If that is the case, go and talk to other lenders, go and see what other projects, tell them what you are doing and let them tell you what is available. You could get a commercial mortgage line of credit on the property potentially if you’re telling them that this is now going to be a rental. I have three rentals that have lines of credit on them that I can use to deploy to make purchases, things like that. So if you’re talking to one lender and maybe it’s the person who already has a mortgage on your bank or that you’ve worked with, go to even the commercial side of lending and see what you can do there. I think there’s a lot more options available, loan products or loan options, but just literally write it out in an email if you want, and copy and paste it to five different lenders in your area. You can go to biggerpockets.com/lender finder. You can search small local banks in your area, credit unions, tell them what you’re trying to do and see what people come back with as ideas for you.

Tony:
And you bring up really good points too, of them going back after this Costa Rica thing. Obviously I totally agree with you too on talking to more lenders, but if the challenge right now is that they just don’t have enough employment history per se, then I wonder if they just continue to focus on their small business while they’re in Costa Rica, they’ll have 2025 and then they’ll have all of 2026. So two solid years of them being self-employed, which for a lot of lenders is like that threshold that they’re looking for. So I wonder if you come back to Ashley’s point, you move back into your primary residence in 2027 and then now are you in a better position to maybe tap into some of that equity via heloc? So I don’t know if I would just jump the gun and give up this juicy 2.25% interest rate just for the sake of scaling quickly. I would really try and make sure, and to Ashley’s point that you’re exhausting all of your options before you because it’s going to be hard. You’ll virtually never be able to get that back.

Ashley:
And instead of maybe taking on another property, maybe you focus on paying off that other property, the other investment property that has the D SCR loan on it already, and maybe you are going to pay that property off in the next two years instead of going and purchasing another property. That’s always something to look at.

Tony:
Alright guys, we’re going to jump to our last question, but we’re going to take a quick break before we do. But while we’re gone, if you haven’t yet, please be sure to subscribe to the realestate rookie YouTube channel. You can find us at realestate rookie on YouTube. We’ll be right back with more after this quick break.

Ashley:
Okay, let’s jump back in with our last question today. So this question is, I have one of the units and my multifamily rented by the room by two tenants and the electric bills quadrupled compared to when I lived there. Turns out one of the tenants started charging his Tesla from the Tryer outlet when I found out we agreed that he paid $50 extra each month. The last couple of months he stopped paying that 50 and the bill continued to climb up $500 last month. This property is in Massachusetts. I can’t figure out why it’s so enormous as both tenants are rarely home and I have tried to pop in to see if appliances are left on nothing. So I clearly told him to stop charging his Tesla and that’s the only thing I can think of that drives up the bill Last night. The other tenant texted me a picture of the Tesla still being charged. The lease does not say anything about electric vehicles, but has a clause about wasting utilities. The heat is gas. So that’s separate. The Tesla tenant has not responded to my messages and I am guessing he’s going to continue to charge his car because it’s very convenient for him in his words. Otherwise he’s a good tenant. Any advice and how you’d address it? First of all, Tony, you have a Tesla, is your electric bill $500 per month

Tony:
Only during the summer because you run the AC so much, but never because of the charging for the car. So

Ashley:
Let me ask you, how much would you say that your electric cost each month for your Tesla?

Tony:
It’s honestly pretty negligible. If I compare our electric bill before the Tesla and after, it’s a very negligible increase. So I’m not entirely sure that it’s the Tesla.

Ashley:
Maybe does it have this one could be because they’re putting it in the dryer outlet where the actual Tesla chargers are more energy efficient maybe. I dunno,

Tony:
Highly possible, right? Because we have the actual charger at our house. So it could be that they’re just doing the wall plugin and maybe it’s eating up more juice. So I can’t say with the high degree of certainty that it will be the single thing that’s spiking the bill. So I think two things come to mind for me. First I would call it the electric company and ask ’em if they could send someone out just to see if they notice anything that might be causing this. To say like, Hey, something is off here to for extra electric bill. Mine definitely did not do that. So something else must be going on. So I would ask the electric company come out, have them take a look. I would have an electrician come out, have them take a look and just start trying to root cause what’s actually going on here.
So that’s the first thing. Get some professionals out there to give you their opinion. But second, and this part is just kind of weird, but this person says that the last couple of months he stopped paying that $50. He didn’t say why. It seems like the tenant just decided, I’m not going to pay this anymore, but I’m still going to charge my car. I feel like that’s also an issue that needs to be addressed because Ash and I talk a lot about setting expectations for the people that come into your properties right now, you are setting the expectation that the tenant, even though you’ve agreed to something, can stop doing that on their own accord. And that is a slippery slope because right now it’s the Tesla charging, what if it’s your rent next month? And he is just like, eh, I don’t really feel like paying rent next month. And it is just ignoring your messages. So I think there’s two things you need to handle. Get some professionals out there to assess the electrical issue, but then also really reset expectations with your tenant around, Hey, we came to an agreement. I need you to honor this agreement.

Ashley:
There’s one other thing that stood out to me too is the, I’m stopping by to see if appliances are left on. So I mean, does that mean you are looking in the windows, you’re walking around the house to see if the AC is running and no one’s home? So I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t recommend that. Plus, you don’t want to, you’d have to be that landlord that has to constantly go to the property. And I think calling out a professional that can help you assess the situation is great advice from Tony as to how you could figure out why this is. I wonder there’s got to be some kind of monitoring some thing with all of the home gadgets and things like that. They have the things that go under the sink that if you have a water leak, they’ll set off an alarm and you can get a notification on your phone that there’s water leaking.
I wonder if there’s something like that where when there’s a surge of electricity being used, you could hook something up to your electric panel to get notified that right now there’s more usage than the night before the virus something. Yeah. I wonder if there’s any technology. So if you’re watching this, you’re on YouTube, please leave a comment below if you have a good gadget or tech device that could actually help assist in this situation for the electrical issues. Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode of Ricky Reply. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

 

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