You’ve got some money. You’ve got your strategy. You’ve even analyzed a bunch of rentals. But you still can’t find real estate deals that cash flow. What gives? Today, we’re going to share three things YOU can do to turn more “okay” deals into great deals!
Welcome to another Rookie Reply! We’re back with more questions from the BiggerPockets Forums, the best place to ask your questions and get top-notch advice from other investors. First, it can be disheartening to analyze rental properties and come up dry, but we’ve got a few simple adjustments that could change your fortune. We’ll also hear from an investor who’s worried about an appraisal that could break their deal and show them how to use it to their advantage instead!
Finally, we’ll share the number one investing strategy all newbies should be paying attention to in 2025. This is a low-risk way for any beginner to break into real estate investing. The best part? It can be seriously profitable!
Ashley:
If you’ve got money saved but can’t find a cash flowing deal, this episode is for you. We’re tackling investing in an overheated market, a risky hoarder house flip, and the strategy every rookie should be paying attention to in 2025.
Tony:
And today, we’re answering three rookie questions straight from our inbox, and these are real problems from real investors that they’re facing right now. Again, from appraisal worries to strategies that are working in today’s shifting market.
Ashley:
We’ll tackle these real world investment dilemmas and give you actionable advice you can implement today. I’m Ashley Kehr.
Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson.
Ashley:
Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Okay, so our first question today is pulled from the BiggerPockets forums, and this question says, for the past six months I’ve been looking for houses both single family and multifamily that can produce at least a little bit of cashflow with around 20 to 30% down. However, I’ve started to realize that this is pretty much impossible these days. I currently have $110,000 sitting in my bank ready to be invested, but I just can’t find anything that will at least produce a 3% cash on cash return. I’ve been looking for properties in and around Tampa, Orlando, and St. Pete’s, but I can’t find anything that’s worth it. Okay, so Tony, first of all, Florida, we’re going to have to address the insurance rate here, but also the impending news headline that Florida is trying to cancel property taxes too. So there could be some relief for primary homeowners in Florida if they do just completely cut out property taxes, but you have to consider that’s probably a billion dollar line item that will have to be replaced somewhere else and they’ll just find another way to tax you on it, so you’ll be paying it another way.
Tony:
I didn’t see that headline that they’re thinking about doing that.
Ashley:
Yeah, so that’s been something that’s being discussed right now. But yeah, so that could be interesting. For primary homeowners, it did specifically say that it would have to be your primary residence for the tax relief. So then as an investor, one of the options they could do is actually just triple your tax on. So maybe it’s not the best for this person who wants this property as an investment.
Tony:
Yeah. Well, a couple things come to mind for me first, a 3% cash on cash return I feel like is a very low bar, and I think the challenge may be more so around where you’re looking than real estate as a strategy. I guess some context, right? A lot of markets across the country have exploded in terms of popularity over the last several years, and Florida has seen a lot of net migration just even outside of real estate investing. There’s just a lot of people moving to Florida. There’s definitely been strong demand in that market for housing, and I think because of that you’ve probably seen prices increase faster than rents have increased in that market. So maybe prices have increased 30, 40, 50, maybe they’ve doubled in the last couple of years in seven markets, but rents have only gone up five or 10%, whatever it may be. So I think over time, hopefully we’ll start to find that balance again where the rental rates you can demand start to get back in line with the actual value of these homes. Maybe it doesn’t, right? And maybe that’s just what Florida is moving forward, but I feel like that might be a bigger challenge than the strategy of real estate investing itself.
Ashley:
And one thing too is mentioned in here, he’s saying that when he can’t find anything, that produces a little bit of cashflow. But I’m curious as to when you say that, are you looking at what the asking prices and analyzing the deal based on that, are you actually making offers as to where the deal will work and they’re getting rejected because an asking price is not the purchase price. So there could be a room for negotiation where you can actually offer where your deal would work and get your offer accepted, and then the property does pencil out. So when you are looking at properties and you see the asking price and you analyze the deal using the BiggerPockets calculators and you say, you know what? This deal doesn’t work. It doesn’t cash flow. I’m not getting the cash on cash return that I want change the purchase price. That is the easiest number to change. You don’t want to inflate the rental income, you don’t want to decrease the expenses on the property, but change the purchase price. At what purchase price does this deal actually pencil out and start making offers based on that assessment? So you have to be able to do that instead of saying no deals actually work. You can only say that if you are making offers and your offers aren’t being accepted,
Tony:
You make an incredible point actually, I think for a lot of rookies, one of their biggest challenges is just that they don’t get enough offers out and there’s this fear around, well, they’re probably going to say no. And it’s like, okay, well who cares? Right? I mean the absolute worst case scenario of you submitting an offer that’s lower than what they want is that they say no. They say, no thank you, and they leave it at that. The best case scenario is that they say yes by some miracle, but the most likely case scenario is that they try and meet you in the middle somewhere like, Hey, we’re definitely not going to go down to X, but we can do Y. And now you’ve opened up the dialogue to try and find a good deal. Actually, I was actually just talking with AJ Osborne early this week.
If you guys know aj, he’s been on the rookie podcast, the BPRE as well, the real estate podcast, really, really successful guy in the self storage space. And I was asking him this question, how many offers is team putting out right now to find deals? And he was like, we’re putting out a lot, but honestly I feel like we should be putting out more. And he told this story where there was a small self source facility they were looking at. It was like, I dunno, I think two and a half million is what it was listed at. He was like, this is a killer deal at 1.2. It’s an okay deal, like a reasonable deal that we still do at 1.5. And because the team was like, well, it’s listed at 2.5, they just didn’t even think that the seller would entertain a million dollars less than the asking price. Lo and behold, it ends up closing a few months later at 1.5 and he went back to the team and was like, well, what did we offer? They’re like, we didn’t offer anything. Why? So I think the biggest challenge for a lot of real estate investors is just getting past the fear of getting a no and realizing that it’s just part of the process and it gets so much easier to get to your yes if you’re not afraid of that next, no,
Ashley:
And I think part of it too, this was something that held me back too, is not wanting to bog down your agent with putting out a million offers for you that are low ball offers and taking up a lot of their time. That was something I didn’t want to inconvenience my agent with that. So that’s a discussion to have with your agent. As in I want to make all of these low ball offers. Is this something that you’re okay with working with me? And if they’re not, then you can go to the agent finder biggerpockets.com/agent finder and find an investor friendly agent who is willing to do this for you. The next thing is is that you can go ahead, you can get on the MLS as find out who the agent is that’s representing the seller, send them a message, email them, call them and say, Hey, would the seller be open to an offer around this amount? And they can let you know. And then if the agent says, yeah, actually they might be depending on the terms or whatever, then you can go to your agent and say, I want to write up a formal offer and move forward with it that way too. So there’s different ways to approach the low ball offers no matter the reason why you’re not doing it. There’s ways to overcome those excuses, I guess as I have learned.
Tony:
And I think the only other thing that I’d add here is that obviously I think a potential solution to getting better than a 3% return is just going out of state, going to some other location where the returns are better. Again, 19 20,000 plus cities in the United States, there’s a good chance that there’s one or two out there that will allow you to get a better than 3% cash on cash return. But if for whatever reason you’re just really hyper-focused on investing in your own backyard, then I think maybe entertain different strategies to invest. Because if you’re just looking at traditional single family long-term rentals, could you maybe look at different types of properties maybe instead of single families, can you go out and try and find small multifamily or single families with an A DU or single families with a finished basement or I don’t know, self stores, right? Just talking about aj, could you find a different type of property or could you maybe within those single family homes leverage a different property? We’ve talked a lot about co-living and room rentals recently we had a guest on Devonna Reed who talked about sober living facilities. We’ve had folks talk about assisted living facilities. I know Henry Washington’s doing one right now. So if you can’t find a deal with your current asset type and strategy, can you blend those in a different way to find something that actually does work?
Ashley:
Well? We’re going to find out what happens when you do find a property and it’s a mess inside, like hoarder level messy. Let’s talk about what to do when the appraisal might kill your flip right after. A quick word from our show sponsors. Okay, welcome back to the show, Tony. What’s our second question today?
Tony:
Alright, so our next question says we are trying to buy an off-market hoarder house flip. The seller wants an appraisal to set the price, but the house is full of clutter and will need a new roof AC and basically a full reno. I’ve run my comps, but I’m worried that the appraisal might come in too high and kill the deal. What should I do?
Ashley:
This is really interesting, like the seller requesting an appraisal.
Tony:
Well, let me ask actually. Has that ever happened to you before? If you’ve done an off-market transaction where the seller wants their own appraisal?
Ashley:
No, but I have had it where they had an appraisal in the past, even years ago, there was one campground where they had went and done, got a second lien or something on the property and they had had an appraisal done to get a short term loan, and it was from probably I think three years. And they were going based off of that appraisal what they wanted and how they thought it had increased even more in value over those three years or whatever. So they were using an old appraisal to kind of justify their asking price at that point. But I’ve never gone into a situation where they’re talking about selling but asking for the appraisal to be done to set the purchase price. Now,
Tony:
Yeah, neither have I, right? So I think if we’re going to kind of not shoot from the hip, but just if we were in that situation, kind of how we approach it, and I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is that you’ve got to understand what the motivations of the seller are, and obviously price is one, otherwise they wouldn’t be getting an appraisal. If they want to talk about getting an appraisal, then price is something that’s important to them. But if it’s a hoarder house, more times than not, what you see in those situations is that it’s the convenience of selling. That’s also a big motivator because if the seller were to take this and listed traditionally with an agent, the agent’s going to say, you got to clean this stuff up. No one’s going to want to move into a house that’s filled with all of your junk.
It doesn’t happen that way. If you’re going to a retail traditional buyer, if I’m looking for my starter home with me and my family and my baby and my puppy, I can’t picture myself living there with all of your stuff. And even if I can picture it, I’m not going to move it out right? By the time I get the keys, I want it empty. So there’s a lot of work I think that’ll go in on the seller’s side to get that property ready. So if it’s me, the conversation I’ll be having is like, Hey, look, Mr and Mrs. Seller, I totally get that the appraisal says X, but what it’s not accounting for, it’s a time, effort and energy that you’ll need to put into it to get the property ready to actually sell for that amount. And what I’m offering you is the easy way out where I will come in, you can leave everything, I’ll clear this whole house out. You don’t have to lift the single finger aside from the stuff you actually want. And it’s the convenience that I think will help you bridge that gap between whatever you’ve agreed to and what that appraisal is.
Ashley:
And I think there’s a part of it as to doing things. The seller wants to get it under contract or to establish that working relationship. So if they really want an appraisal, what’s an appraisal cost in your area? Is it 500? Is it a thousand? Depending on how big of the house is it 1500? I would say, okay, we’ll do the appraisal. Sure, no problem. That’s what you want. Assuming in this situation, you as the buyer are going to be the one paying for it. I’m assuming they’re asking you to pay for it. If they’re going to pay for it, great. I would ask to have it under contract. If you are going to pay for the appraisal, I would get it under contract and I would set an amount and then I would say to them, but this will be contingent on the appraisal.
So if the appraisal comes in higher, we can renegotiate. If it comes in lower, we can renegotiate. This is just something for us to sign something. So basically, so you know that they don’t go out and find somebody else during this time period or whatever. You have it under contract so you have some control of the deal. And so I would say, yes, I’ll do the appraisal, but I want to get something signed in writing that we can move forward. So if the appraisal does come back at the price you want, you have it locked up. If the appraisal is way higher, then I would put in there that the amount of the appraisal is based on the home being vacant, including all of the contents. So that would mean the seller, sure, I will pay that appraisal price, but everything has to be removed from the property and it has to be completely vacant, which as Tony said, that completely removes the convenience of selling off market.
And that’s where they can maybe look at the price better and say, you know what? It is easier for me to just leave everything, and I do this all the time, even when it’s not a hoarder house is I will say, especially when it’s an estate sale, I will say, take whatever you would like, whatever you don’t want, please leave it. We will take care of it. And they don’t have to get dumpsters, they don’t have to spend their weekends cleaning out their grandma’s house. And that is a huge convenience in negotiating. So if you’re doing the appraisal, I would add that in as the appraisal price that we’re getting is based on the house being completely vacant, but I would still go ahead and do the appraisal. If that’s the only way they’re going to move forward, then yes, there’s no reason to fight doing it if you can’t change their mind on it.
Tony:
Yeah, I think the only other point I’d add is also don’t be afraid to walk away. If this seller is playing hardball and they’re like, Hey, the appraisal came in $75,000 higher than what we’ve contracted, and if you don’t give me this extra $75,000 and the deal’s over, I would say don’t get emotionally attached to the deal and end up moving forward with it just because you’ve already kind of had your heart set on closing this transaction out. Because not every deal is closeable. And there are some deals that start off incredibly positive. It seems like everything’s going right and then it takes a turn from the left and deals don’t work out. So that’s part of being a real estate investor.
Ashley:
And also too, if you are the one that’s paying for the appraisal, the appraisal is yours. So I was in a situation where I was under contract on a commercial property and I had to have an environmental study done on it, and I paid for that environmental study and something was flagged and it needed to go to the next phase. The sellers actually said, no, we do not want any more environmental studies done on the property, which right there is a red flag. And so I said, okay, well I’m not continuing and they canceled the contract, but I said, if you want, I will sell you my environmental study and you can have it. So when you go and find another buyer, you have that as a negotiation tactic that somebody that gets it under contract doesn’t need to go and get a new one done. You already have one that you can provide them. And so they actually bought it from me. So in this situation with the seller, maybe there’s some opportunity where if the contract does fall through, you’re not giving them the full appraisal, you’re just giving them the page that says what it’s at to show them or something. But you can sell the whole appraisal to them or something too that they could use to go and find another buyer to kind of recoup some of your costs.
Tony:
You make a really good point, and I want to get back, just to finish off this question, but just to follow along with what you just said. When we tried to buy our first hotel, we failed, and I’ve shared that story here on the podcast before, and we had probably invested, I believe our EMD was $50,000 on that hotel, and I think we invested 30 to 40, maybe even another $50,000 in all of our due diligence costs. And we had an appraisal, which was pretty big for a hotel of that size. We had an inspection, we did a phase one environmental. There were other things that we had to do, a lot of paperwork, a lot of professionals that we hired. And in order for us to negotiate to get back our EMD, we did what you did where we said, Hey, look, we’ve already done all this due diligence.
We’ll give it all to you if you release our EMD. So we were able to walk away from that deal, keep our EMD in exchange for all the due diligence that we did. So just for anyone that’s kind of like in that situation, all of the work that you do, validating whether or not this is a good deal, that is an asset to the seller in their next transaction. If you can leverage that to help either move the deal in the right direction or at least get your money back, it’s something to do. The last point here is, regardless of what the appraisal comes back at, I think it’s still beneficial for you as the buyer to do your own analysis, run your own comps so you can educate the seller and you can tell the seller like, Hey, look, I get what the appraisal said, but here’s the business plan that I’m going to execute.
And this is probably the business plan that most people looking to buy. This house will execute as well. So the feedback that I’m giving you will be the very similar to the type of feedback you get from any other potentially interested buyer, I need to buy your house at this number because it’s going to cost me X in repairs, it’s going to cost me y and holding costs. I typically need to make a margin of at least Z for this deal to even make sense for me. And the property’s going to sell for this number here. So if we back out of all these numbers, if I come up to this appraised amount, there’s no way that the deal makes sense for me. And look Mr. And Mrs. Seller, if it doesn’t make sense for me, there’s a good chance it’s not going to make sense for anyone else because we’re all looking at the same numbers, we’re all looking at the same comps. So I think doing your own analysis and educating the seller on, Hey, here’s what the numbers actually say, it’s harder to argue with that. Not saying that they won’t. I’m just saying it’s a little bit harder to argue with that. So running your own analysis of the tool in your tool belt here.
Ashley:
Okay, so what if you’re not flipping or buying in Florida? What if you’re just trying to figure out the right strategy in this weird market? Let’s talk about what’s really working for investors right now. We’re going to take a quick break before our last question, but while we’re gone, be sure to subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel. You can find us at realestate rookie. We’ll be back with more after this. Alright, let’s jump back into our last question here from the BiggerPockets forums. Tony, what’s the last question?
Tony:
Alright, this one says, with the market constantly shifting, some are falling out of favor. So what’s one real estate strategy more investors should be paying attention to right now? This is like everyone’s million dollar question. I actually feel like this one keeps popping up in different ways.
Ashley:
I know. Are we going to have the same answer? Is what I am wondering?
Tony:
I feel like we’re leaning into it, but I think first, just big picture, what are some of the headwinds that we’re facing right now as real estate investors? I think first the most obvious one is that interest rates have gone up. They have come down a little bit, but they’re still higher, significantly higher than where we were 2021 coming out of Covid, et cetera. And more expensive interest means more expensive mortgage payments, which means less profits so that there’s less margin on the deals. The other piece is that a lot of sellers still haven’t accepted that we’re in this new state and they’re doing one of two things. Either A, they listing at prices that are unreasonable and they’re somewhat unwilling to negotiate. Not all but some, right? So there’s just less flexibility on the seller side. And the second thing that folks are doing that is probably just as impactful is they’re just not listing at all.
They’re like, I’m just going to hold onto this deal. I’m going to see where the market goes, which is reducing the supply of listings for sale. And if supply is low while demand is high prices, there’s some stickiness there. So I think we’re kind of seeing it on both sides where less people looking to sell their homes, ones that are being less resistant to actually be flexible with their pricing. I think we have seen, just even for us as deals that we’ve offered on, we are starting to see more flexibility come back, but it’s definitely not, it’s almost a buyer’s market it feels like, but not totally. So I think there’s still some headwinds we’re facing there.
Ashley:
Yeah, I was just actually reading something this morning that said in February, new listings that hit the market were up 17% comparable to last February of 2024. So already we’re seeing more and more properties being listed, which increases supply. So it’ll be curious as to where things end up. I did look at interest rates this morning too, and they’re definitely starting to come down a little bit as you are making offers and things and getting financing and pre-approvals, look at all of the different lending options. Well, as always, as pretty much as is always been your best interest rate is going to be if it is your primary residence, which leads us to house hacking as an option. And I actually saw today that somebody commented on one of our YouTube videos and said another dumb house hacking video is everybody getting sick of hearing house hacking as a strategy. And we hear so much now about co-living, which I think co-living is going to be the hot strategy of 2025 because buy one property, rent out the rooms to multiple people and make your property cash flow that way. Instead of renting it out to one family, you’re going to be renting it out to multiple people and it gives you, you can charge more per bed that way.
Tony:
And honestly, I think it’s the people who are kind of blending house hacking with some of these other strategies where we tend to see the best returns. I was actually just talking to someone, I met them at an event and we just reconnected not too long ago, but he shared with me that he bought a big single family house near Washington DC and massive single family house, much too big for him and his family, and they ended up dividing it into three total units, three total units, and I believe short-term rents, one of the units long-term rents the other unit and lives in one with him and his family. He’s told me he was clearing, I think it was like 10 grand per month on this one property.
Ashley:
Wow. Andy’s living in it too. So his cost of living is zero,
Tony:
So no expenses living and he’s getting 10 grand per month. But look at what he’s done. He’s molded several strategies together. He’s got house hacking, he’s got long-term and he’s got short-term. And I talk about Craig curl up a lot, but when we interviewed him about his strategy, he did a similar thing, house hacked, and he combined that with co-living, right? So he was living in one unit and the unit he was living in was renting out the rooms and then the other units, he was renting them out as full unit. So I think blending some of these strategies together, house hacking is great because as Ashley said, you get low down payment, you get low interest rates, and then adding in the kind of juicier cash flow methods, midterm, long term or midterm, short-term and co-living is how you really maximize the revenue potential. So you’re decreasing your cost of acquisition and you’re increasing your top line revenue. And if you can do both of those things, that’s how you tend to get really, really good returns.
Ashley:
In part of that too is focusing on your operations too. You can have really good operations and make more on one property than someone else can on three properties. And that’s also identifying the right property too. So we always say you have to take action. You can’t wait for the perfect deal, the perfect property, but if you find a property that has that flexibility to be molded and changed into something that’s going to generate more cashflow, that’s such a great opportunity for you there.
Tony:
I think the last thing I’d add to this question as well is also look for opportunities that are almost like businesses that are built on top of real estate transactions. So I mentioned earlier, sober living and assisted living. Actually someone in my wife’s family, they have a small portfolio of homes for disabled adults. So these are disabled adults who have some sort of mental disability and they need care kind of 24 7, and she has a house for folks who fit that mold. And these are ways to really, it’s still real estate investing, right? Because you have to go out there, buy the property, set it all up, but really it’s a business on top of that. And those are the strategies I think that can really, really, really juice some of your cashflow and strategies. We don’t talk about a ton, but that I think can really be beneficial to, even for Ricky’s that are starting out.
Ashley:
And to be clear on those two strategies too, as far as there’s a business operational piece, there are companies that run those businesses that look for these specific houses to rent where you still don’t have to run the business, you rent it to these businesses that will actually operate those. But we have had guests on that come in and they actually do the operations piece and own the property to the real estate. Well thank you guys so much for joining us today. If you are enjoying this podcast, your support means the world to us. Taking just 30 seconds to leave a review on Apple Podcast can make a huge difference. Your feedback not only motivates our team, but helps us reach more awesome listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of our podcast community. And Tony, did you have one that you wanted to shout out today?
Tony:
I do. So this one comes from Nobe, REI love. The name says, listen to this podcast every day. Love the show. Please keep making content. I need daily motivation from you guys. You are what keeps me going and dreaming. So appreciate that noob and you are. What keeps us going is knowing that folks like you’re listening to the podcast, so the gratitude is reciprocated for sure.
Ashley:
Tony, maybe we need to start doing a daily podcast or a daily voice memo and everyone can sign up for a text message from you in the morning that’s just in your calm, soothing voice. Good morning, it’s time to start analyzing deals. You can do this something very, some inspirational quote, you used to tell us all the time about your son and things you would tell him, these life lessons, these analogies. So you could basically take all of those that you’ve accumulated over his last 16 years and go ahead and put those into a little monologue to play for us all every morning to keep us motivated and inspired.
Tony:
I love that idea and it’s got a real severance type vibe to it. Do you watch severance or No?
Ashley:
I’ve watched two of the episodes. Darryl’s watching it, but I haven’t really gotten to it.
Tony:
Best show on tv, but it is really got severance vibes. I don’t, don’t know if people would get sick of hearing my voice every single morning, but hey Ricky’s, if you want it, we’ll make it happen.
Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for listening. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.
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