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Making $6,000 in monthly cash flow from just four rentals?! Given the current housing market, it seems impossible, but today’s guest is about to show you the secrets to building a profitable real estate portfolio. There are opportunities out there—you just need to know where to look!

While many beginners hope to one day earn enough rental income to quit their W2 jobs, Jamie Banks did the reverse—leaving her job to go all-in on real estate investing. This risky move paid off, as in just two years, she has already built a portfolio with enough income to replace her salary. She started out co-hosting, and while this strategy helped her learn the ropes of residential investing, it wasn’t going to help her build wealth. So, she turned her attention to buying rental properties instead—using her superpower, networking, to find private money lenders who could help fund her deals!

Jamie’s journey hasn’t been all smooth sailing. She has heard “no” more times than she can count, tried several investing strategies, and bought a property that barely breaks even. But despite the setbacks, she has always found a way to learn and grow. And Jamie isn’t taking her foot off the gas any time soon. Stay tuned to hear how she plans to scale to $10,000 in monthly cash flow and break into commercial real estate!

Ashley:
Hey, rookies, mortgage rates are falling, but the uncertainty of the economy is slowing. Real estate sales opportunity is still here, but getting specific with your strategy is key to finding a good deal.

Tony:
Our guest today built a major cash flowing real estate business in just two years with more growth opportunities on the horizon. Using her superpower of networking, she assembled the right financial partners, informed a specific roadmap to reach financial freedom. Get ready to take notes. There’s a lot to learn in today’s episode.

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

Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson and welcome to the show. Jamie, thank you for joining us today.

Jamie:
Thanks so much for having me,

Ashley:
Jamie. You have so many amazing stories that we’re going to get into, but first could you walk us through on a high level your journey from that first property in Philadelphia to your current portfolio of four properties in just two years?

Jamie:
Sure. So I bought my first investment property in January, 2023, closed on it and a few days later actually got my first arbitrage a few doors down, so became hooked a little and then from there realized that I had a primary residence that I wasn’t house hacking and so I needed to do that as well. So I got kind of a few rentals fairly quickly. I ended up giving up my arbitrage, but after that bought another property in New Orleans, which I think we’ll kind of touch on later as an MTR. And then late last year bought a property in a new market in Indiana, which I did a lot of research on and really found which market in the US works best for my strategy. And so that one’s been a lot of fun as well. So really went from Philly to a few different other markets, but I’m currently utilizing the MTR strategy for all four.

Ashley:
Well, Jamie, I can already tell we’re going to learn a lot of different things from you, from market selection, deal analysis, strategy choice, but you used the word arbitrage. Can you explain what arbitrage is and how you implemented that into your real estate investing journey?

Jamie:
Sure. So arbitrage is essentially renting an apartment or house and then subleasing it or renting it out at a higher rate to another party. And so essentially I worked at the time in commercial real estate and did a lot of research in the multifamily industry. And so my first property was in Philadelphia and I knew and brought it in January I think, which I mentioned and I knew in January and Philadelphia properties have a lot of vacancy because it’s cold and because no one wants to move to Philadelphia in January. And so I kind of essentially door knocked, but they were large apartment buildings. So I apartment knocked and just went building to building, told them I plan to rent to tribal medical professionals, corporate professionals, and basically just went around to different buildings. And so one told me yes, and so from there I had quick numbers on what I thought I could rent it out for because at this time I’m still furnishing the one I just bought, so I don’t really know my right yet. And got a small studio apartment but was in a great area in Philly, which I’ll just say area and location in Philly is very important and so it’s garage parking. And so having those amenities really just kind of helped me really be able to make the most out of that arbitrage.

Tony:
So Jamie, I mean first just super impressive on your end I think to go door knocking to all these different apartments. Did you have a background in door to door sales or what gave you the confidence to just kind go out there and start hitting the pavement in that way?

Jamie:
No, not at all. I think my confidence was more so of understanding the numbers and I will say I did some kind of insider research and had access to CoStar, which for those who don’t know is a huge commercial real estate marketplace. You can pull vacancy rates, occupancy rates, rental rates for all types of commercial real estate assets. And so I could basically pull the numbers for the vacancy rate for different apartment buildings and was able to see the one I ended up or the few that I ended up kind of targeting first were fairly new build and had under 40% occupancy. And so coming to them saying, Hey, I’m willing to sign a 12 month lease or a 14 month lease or I’m willing to move in tomorrow, and just using different negotiation tactics helped me get in. Actually when I first went, I asked for six months of free rent and they came back at four, so I didn’t know I was going to get any, but I was like six months and they kind of talked among themselves and I was like, well, four works. And so it’s just once having the four months obviously really helped my numbers. And so once it was time to kind of renew the rate, the numbers no longer worked, but it was definitely great while it lasted,

Ashley:
I’m starting to rethink my life choices. Maybe I need to go and find new development and negotiate free months of rent and just every year move to a new development and only pay for it for half the year.

Jamie:
I had kind of insider information and I knew from we would do originate commercial loans. We did a lot of preferred equity, which was kind of second position, senior debt to large multifamily. And I knew developers, they’re just trying to get basically people in there so they can refinance and develop something else. So I cannot use that to my advantage.

Ashley:
I’m so impressed by how you were taking all this information to use it to your advantage to create a strategy for yourself.

Jamie:
Thank

Tony:
You. And I love the idea of different leverage points in negotiation like, hey, I’ll move in tomorrow. I think that’s a really, really unique strategy to get them to play nice with you. You start to build your portfolio and just walk through the 30,000 view again. So you buy a property, you get the arbitrage, you exit the arbitrage. What exactly does the current portfolio look like today and what all markets are you currently in?

Jamie:
Yes, so I am currently in four different markets, Phil, Pennsylvania, which is where my first property that I bought was. Also the arbitrage that I’ve since exited is I have a property right outside of DC in Northern Virginia that was a house hack, but I recently moved out of, turned into a whole home MTR, also have a MTR in New Orleans, Louisiana. And then my newest one is right outside of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Tony:
Now something you mentioned, because I’m just curious how this plays into the story, but you said that you worked in preferred equity or private equity. Was that your day job working in that or what was that line of work exactly?

Jamie:
Yeah, so it was my day job and so essentially when I would say interest rates started to increase even I would say the end of 2022, before I would say residential investors started kind of seeing the pain points in commercial real estate, 1% increase on a $40 million property is a lot. And so then there was a deal that I worked on where the bank about a week before closing said instead of lending at 75% LTV or loan to loan to value, which meant basically it was 25% of equity that had to be raised in the deal, they would only lend at 50% and I think that deal was maybe 50 million. And so they’re asking us to come up what’s an additional 25 million or what is that like over 10 million in a week? And so basically the company I was working for at the time really started doing preferred equity, which essentially was coming in as equity, but it was a second kind of a secondary lien. So I think the same way people might use private money and a residential deal, we would come in and offer for a really high rate. The last deal that I originated in 2023 before I left my W2 was at 15%. And obviously interest rates kept going up from there. And so it was more flexible because we weren’t a bank I think definitely helped me catapult into where I am today and how I look at different investments.

Ashley:
And when you transitioned out of your W2 job, you took on co-hosting, is that correct?

Jamie:
Yes.

Ashley:
Yeah. So tell us why you started that business and how that’s going.

Jamie:
I started the co-hosting business when I finished, when I quit my job because to be honest, I didn’t think of how am I going to earn active income. And so as all investors know, you might have amazing cashflow. I would tell you I do have great steady cashflow, but one hot water heater or one month of vacancy can take that away. And so I started co-hosting as a way to see which markets and kind of test out different markets that I would want to invest in because while arbitrage is a generally low cost way to get into a midterm rental, it’s not free. You still have to pay security deposits first, sometimes last month’s rent, and there’s still an initial investment required where I actually got paid to set up in different markets. And so that was a way how I grew my active income.
Another thing I was able to qualify for real estate professional status, which is definitely a key and I only a game changer to me and my husband’s wealth building strategy. Also, I was able to see that I don’t love managing midterm rentals in a lot of different markets. I did that for about a year. I had a team of VAs who was pretty much doing most of it, but I like to do, and I learned this from my W2 days, an annual review of just how is the business doing, how is my time best spent? How is each investment doing? And my co-hosting properties were netting me a few hundred where I have, and we’ll talk about a little later in my portfolio net’s me a few thousand on average per property. And so I saw that for me it was best use for my time to stop co-hosting and focus on raising private money, which is something I already started doing to grow my portfolio because then from there I was able to cashflow more and it’s also less stress because I’m answering to myself versus someone else. And then also I’m able to benefit from the tax strategies as well. So pivoted from that. I think for me, it’s funny, I kind of consider it an internship even though it was my full business, but I think for me, in order to see if I want to do something, I have to do it at scale and test it out. And so it was definitely great to show me markets that are good and markets that are bad for MTR and then also help me identify what makes the best midterm rental market.

Tony:
Yeah. Well Jamie, you seem like just a complete hustler to go from, Hey, I’m going to do this deal, I’m going to do this arbitrage, I’m knocking on the doors. Now you’re setting up the CO and business. And I think far and above and beyond just the skills and the strategies we’ll talk about today, I hope one of the things that the rookies take away is that you just have a very strong bias for action. And I’m sure that’s helped lead to a lot of your success. So we want to hear more Jamie about your investment strategy and how it’s evolved. And I hear you’ve got a little bit of a superpower when it comes to networking, so we want to break that down as well. But first we’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from today’s show sponsors.
Alright, so let’s get back to the show with Jamie. So Jamie, I hear that one of your superpowers is your ability to network. So can you share with us how you networked your way into finding some of these money partners, some of these financial partners to help you fuel your growth? I think for a lot of rookies that are listening, the biggest challenge is, well, where am I going to get the funds maybe after my first deal or my second deal to keep scaling. And it sounds like you solved that problem. So what is the secret? How can I network define all these folks that have the capital?

Jamie:
Yeah, I would say one, it really goes from knowing your investment strategy. And so for me, knowing that for my investment strategy, I need private money for three to five years, which isn’t typical, but knowing this, I’m able to back into, okay, now who is my ideal lender? The same way you have an ideal tenant, you might have an ideal property, a buy box. I like having my ideal lender and for me that’s personally someone who worked a W2 job that they left and they still might be W2 now, but really they have money but not time. And I like to work with people who have, I say left there a prior W2 job because generally they have funds in a 401k or IRA or another investment vehicle that can be transferred to a self-directed IRA and self-directed IRAs allow, basically it allows you to self direct the investment to anything.
So you can self direct it to Tony because he needs 10 bucks or you can self direct it to me or you can self direct it for different things. And so I’ve seen that those lenders or more flexible with a three to five year term because it’s retirement money that they can’t touch anyway. And so with that, I would go to real estate investment meetups conferences and I’m really looking for that specific person. And then also too, just sharing my journey on social media. One of my repeat lenders has actually been from social media and we’ve never met in person, but we’ve talked, she was actually a client of mine with some services I offer. She came to me to learn more about midterm rentals, realized that she doesn’t have time for it, and then decided to invest with me.

Tony:
Jim, you said that one of the other places that you’ve gone is to local meetups and I think that’s just so accessible for most rookies because not everyone’s going to want to hop in front of the camera and make content for social, which I get, but the meetup is something or the local events or the big conferences, those are things that are accessible to everyone. So you said that you had an idea of who you wanted to go after or who, I shouldn’t say go after who you wanted to connect with, but once you found those folks, what were you actually saying to open up that dialogue? How do you go from, Hey, we’re strangers meeting at this meetup to hey, you’re now potentially funding a deal that I’ve got?

Jamie:
Yeah, I think there’s key words that now that I’ve raised a lot of money that I hear, and usually it’s like, oh, I’ve always wanted to invest in real estate. And usually the but is time, right? Or it could be, oh, but I only have $25,000 and I’m in California, which is not going to go really far. And so hearing those things that they’re interested in real estate, I always just let them know that there’s ways to invest in real estate without actually being the landlord. And I was like, and doing all the hard work like I do. And so then if they engage in the conversation, then I’ll just start to let them know that was my last investment. I worked with someone who lended the money and who was the bank who got a fixed return. And then I’m able to operate the property and I take on the risk where the lender gets a fixed return.
And I explain to them a lot of times, obviously it depends, it’s different if we’re at a meetup where we might only have a few minutes versus a conference where we can kind of step aside. But my goal is always to have a separate conversation because I like to have at least three different contact methods before working with someone and starting to negotiate rates because even though this person isn’t a debt partner, not an equity partner who you’re, but maybe talking to continuously, you still are a partnering, you’re still partnering and you don’t want someone and you want to understand it’s like are they going to ask for the money back? Is this their last 50,000? Because you definitely don’t want that. And so I think just kind of asking questions but also just times I’ll even bring up, oh, I worked with someone who was kind of like you and lend this money and just kind of giving the example.
And when someone starts asking questions, I think that’s when you can really just say, Hey, well let’s schedule a call. No pressure to talk about it. And I’ve also started doing webinars where I call ’em how to passively invest in real estate and I don’t just talk about investing with me. I’ll talk about how to invest in res, how to invest in reefs and different investment avenues. Then obviously I want them to invest with me. But I think just even having those webinars that are low pressure and just telling someone, Hey, if you want to learn more, just come to my webinar. No pressure. Think people sometimes like that better than hopping on a one-to-one call where they’re kind of nervous to be sold to. That’s kind of a low pressure way to get the information without having to talk one-on-one.

Ashley:
Now Jamie, it seems like you’ve pretty much stuck to your niche of medium term rentals. What about your locations? You mentioned a couple different cities. What is kind of your geographical niche of where you actually want to invest in?

Jamie:
That’s a great question. All over the US right now, don’t recommend that by the way, Indiana. So I will say that I’m the one, I think Tony said before I take a quick action, and I think part of that is deciding when it’s time to pivot. And so with Philadelphia bought in Philly two weeks later, the market started regulating short-term rentals. And essentially if the property wasn’t owner occupied, it couldn’t be a short-term rental. And so overnight, I’m kind of a data nerd, so I track different data points because for midterm rentals there aren’t the same, it’s not the same data out there that it is for short term rentals. There’s no air DNA and things like that. And so overnight, I track the percentage of properties on the OTAs, the online travel agencies, which are Airbnb, vrbo that are MTRs or that have a 30 plus day minimum. And so that number overnight went from 12% to 30%, which if you look at 30%, that’s one in every three properties on Airbnb is a midterm rental.
One in every three travelers is not a midterm traveler to Philly. There’s definitely going to be more short-term demand. Things like that have showed me, okay, it is time to pivot. I shouldn’t keep buying in this market even though if my property is doing great, it’s definitely time to look at a new market. For me, I’m looking at Indiana right now mostly for, I’ve done a lot of research on different markets, especially since I think I’m, I’m not scared to go to different markets, but it’s been one having solid, I like having medical demand. So that’s from hospitals, that’s from travel. Medical professionals can be a MTR tenant, not my usually ideal MTR tenant because my properties are up to four bedrooms, so they typically needed something smaller. But even if there’s hospitals that have surgery centers and things like that, you’ll have travelers who need to come in the area for long periods of time for let’s say medical reasons.
Also, I like to have education, so this is schools, universities I’ve housed everything from, I housed a couple who were professors at UPenn and Pennsylvania and Philly, and they were from the UK who you never think that teachers and professors come from different countries. So I like having that education demand because no matter what, you’re always going to have your midterm traveler from students. And then third, I like to have a strong corporate demand. Corporate is usually where the most money is. And so I chose Indiana, basically. I chose Indiana because I went to Indianapolis to a meetup and told everyone I wanted to do, and they just started shouting markets and like, oh, go to this place. And someplace was like, no, that’s all corn fields. And so I heard all these markets and I was there for a week by myself, rented a car, and I drove to all these markets.
If I drove to the market, I remember one market I got there and I’m like, there’s no way. I just passed it. It was one or two houses, I don’t think they’ll need to get out, but some markets. I went and went to the chamber of commerce, went to the city planning and zoning to learn what does the city have. And so the city that I invested in, it’s in Boone County, Indiana. Basically I learned that Eli Lilly is investing 4.5 billion in this small town. Meta just committed 800 million to this small town. But another thing is, which I think is key for MTR operators and even STR operators is it’s near Indianapolis, so it’s 30 minutes outside of Indianapolis, which means I can still hire Indianapolis Labor because when I was co-hosting, there was times I was in markets that were small but so small that the labor pool was so small.
So if that one cleaner decide she’s not working today, well, you can’t get your property cleaned. And so for me, it checked all the boxes and then I just started making offers and then ended up getting something a few months later. But I think for me, kind of all those aspects of demand, and especially when there’s one huge demand, like the market I invested in, there’s construction workers who, the construction project that’s going on now where Eli Lilly invested is going on through beginning of 2028, which means there’s going to be construction crews needing housing through 2028, and it took me about three weeks to get a construction crew and they just keep extending and extending and extending because they’re finding work, they have housing, and so it’s a win-win. So I’m trying to buy more there.

Tony:
Jamie, I just want, you’re saying it’s so common and collected, but you’re describing a massive amount of effort. You just said, I went and I spent a week in this market that I was thinking about investing into. I went to this meetup, I drove around, I did all of this research beforehand, and I think it’s so easy to sensationalize the end result of, Hey, you’re at X dollars in cashflow per month with these many properties, but then we overlook everything that you just said about the work that you put into it. So I know I keep harping on the same fact, but I think it’s so important for Ricks to understand that the work that you put into it directly indicates the kind of results you’re going to get. And I’m just super impressed by how much work you put into it. But I do have one follow-up question. How the heck did you know about meta and about Eli Lilly coming into this small town? You said Bloomfield, Indiana, never heard of it before. So how did you get that inside scoop?

Jamie:
Her name is Jennifer. I don’t think she listens to this, but she is my contact with the city and planning department. So the first time I’m driving through, I stop in, and this is before I even knew I was going to invest here, and I just go in and just tell her, Hey, I’m an investor. I like working with businesses who need housing. And she was like, whoa, did you know that? At the time, I think Eli Lilly was only but investing 2 billion, and she’s like investing 2 billion and there’s construction workers sleeping in their car. And I was like, really? Tell me more. And so she’s telling me all about it and then we exchange emails and I will say I do email Jennifer at least once a month, sometimes once a week just to kind of keep that contact. I go usually once every three months.
I think especially it’s a small town where showing my face is really important and it really building trust in everything with vendors has helped by being there. So just keeping that connection. She tells me everything. When it went from 2 billion to 4.5 billion, she just sent me an email. She was like, Hey Jamie, I know you’re interested in this, so I wanted to send you this article. So now she just feeds me all the information, but it really was laying the groundwork and letting her know. And I think not a lot of people go in anymore. A lot of people call. And so I think just me going and I went basically three times in a six month span. And I would say not a lot of people who look like me who are going in to a small cornfield town in Indiana to ask about real estate.
And so that helps me in my favor where I stick out. And so that’s helped people remember me. Even I go to the same bakery, they’re like, Hey, you love the blueberry muffin last time, try this one. And so now that I really know I want to invest in this town, I see the opportunities in this town. I’m trying to find off market leads in this town. So I drove for dollars one time I was there. And so just talking to people, getting out, walking downtown, I have to use air quotes because I’m from a large city where I can’t really call it a downtown, but it’s about a block each side, but just really planting roots in that area. I’ve had even my neighbors would do my shoveling and stuff for snow and won’t let me pay them, I think because I’ve came out and brought them blueberry muffins. So just I realized stuff like that goes a long way where in markets like New Orleans made the mistake of not making those connections beforehand. And so it’s much harder to operate. So just trying to do it better this time.

Ashley:
One other great way to find out about what’s going on in the city is going to the city website and reading the planning board meeting minutes. It’s so boring, but it’s actually so interesting. You will see so many things in there as to what’s upcoming on the agenda for the next meeting that maybe you actually want to attend because it’s something that could affect your business or whatever. But that’s another good way. If for some reason you can’t actually physically get to the town to walk into the town hall there to meet the clerk.

Jamie:
That’s another great tip.

Ashley:
Okay, we’re going to take a short ad break real quick, but when we come back, I definitely want to hear about this New Orleans property and how it’s not as easy to manage as the one you have in Indiana. We’ll be right back. Okay. Welcome back from our break. So tell us about the New Orleans property and it has not gone as you had hoped. Can you tell us that story and maybe some key things you learned from that deal? Specifically?

Jamie:
My New Orleans property is definitely my hardest to manage and breaks even barely sometimes. Most months, no, this property I will say I bought creatively and being completely honest, I looked at, oh, I’m buying my first creative deal with not a lockdown. And the terms were great, and I looked at that and how I was acquiring it favorably more than the MTR rates and the area and just some of the things that I’ve done in other markets. And so definitely paying the price for that. It was vacant for nine months last year, so felt the pain a lot, but learned a lot as well. I think just about one, making sure that you’re doing research in the market. And so in Philly, Philadelphia is a, I think Philadelphia has a connotation that most people know, but New Orleans doesn’t always have that same connotation, but can be a much harder market to operate in.
And so the property where I bought is about seven minutes from the French Quarter and Bourbon Street where the party is, but it’s a few minutes in the wrong direction. And so definitely should have sent someone out to do a sweep of the area and walk behind the property, walk a few blocks and go to the grocery store and just see of what is the neighborhood like. Also, I have done a great job with other markets of building business to business relationships and renting outside of Airbnb and other direct platforms and building my own relationships where frankly, this property isn’t in an area where businesses will want their employees or clients to live. I’ve had great success now that I’ve listed mostly on Airbnb and lowered my rate a ton, but it took some hard lessons on going for a lower rate just to break even. And then also we’ve got hit with, our insurance went up about 150% since buying taxes doubled. And so the numbers are just squeezed. I definitely learned more about even if you’re able to acquire the property at $0 down, you still want to do the same analysis you would if you were putting a million dollars down because at the end of the day, the property management, the reserves and all of the continuous asset management of the deal can really make or break you.

Ashley:
So Jamie, why haven’t you sold the property? Can you kind of break down what your plan is with the property and why you didn’t just offload it?

Jamie:
Great question. So we definitely did try. We basically had a list for sale and rent as an MTR essentially at the same time just to see whatever one kind of bit. First we found an MTR tenant first, and that person has been there a long period of time, and now that I know the pricing, which was just a lot lower, again, new Orleans is another market that’s experienced short-term rental regulations. And so it’s just been really squeezed me, and I have a partner on this one, and we actually did do kind of an analysis on should we sell it, and right now we would lose a good amount because the seller financed a part of it at 0% interest, but we would have to pay the seller back upon sale. And so right now, even if it stays at the same price that we bought it at, just where we at in the loan cycle, the seller owned it for 10 years, we’re getting a lot of principal pay down.
And so right now it’s breaking even, I think last month cashflow at $115. But the month before that might’ve been negative $300, but the fact that it’s breaking even, we haven’t put any money into it in a few months, we are decided just to hold on at least for another year. But another thing too, it’s funny that there’s other benefits of real estate because one last year in 2024, I wouldn’t have been able to get my reps or real estate professional status without the property. A vacant property takes all your time, all of it. And so that’s helped because the other properties were doing great and my virtual assistants do most of the management, and so I probably wouldn’t have been able to claim rep status. Another thing is New Orleans is my favorite city in the us and so getting to go and use it as a business expense, of course everything is a business expense, but that’s another benefit. And so it’s definitely something that we’re going to offload as soon as it financially makes sense.

Ashley:
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that because I think it’s a great example of when somebody gets into that situation is maybe there’s more options than just like fire sale, let’s get rid of the property and move on where that sometimes may be the best option, but it’s important to compare and look at all the different options that you have when a property is not performing as expected. And in your case, you are being optimistic and looking at the other benefits that you are receiving still from this property and those outweigh taking the loss of selling the property now as is.

Tony:
Well, Jamie, there’s always ups and downs, and like Ashley said, I think we appreciate you sharing that, but it sounds like you’re also eyeing a transition over to commercial real estate. So I guess what is the strategy there? What’s the plan there? Maybe even before that, what’s the motivation? It seems like you’re doing pretty well with your midterm rentals. Why jump over to commercial real estate?

Jamie:
So we didn’t talk as much about my well as we did my past and being in commercial real estate. And so that’s what I did right out of, and it’s funny, I felt like I’ve relearned a lot about single family, but with multifamily, and I’ve underwrote businesses as well, it’s a bit easier for me to analyze just because what I was taught. And then also, I definitely want to grow my midterm portfolio. My goal cashflow is 10,000 a month right now with four properties. I’m at 6,000 a month,

Ashley:
More than halfway there.

Jamie:
Yeah, it’s really three properties because one, again, it doesn’t really count, but I definitely want to buy more cashflow in midterms to get to that 10,000 a month. But then I see commercial real estate as more of wealth building. My goal has been cashflow with most of my properties, especially since I’m doing this. And so I see commercial as being something just fun different, I like commercial. I think there’s different strategies that you can implement in commercial. And before leaving my job, I was managing their whole commercial, their multifamily portfolio. It was about 14,000 commercial units spread throughout like 22 markets. And we would do things in different markets like installing smart EV chargers, and just I would see how it would impact NOI and our evaluation because at that role, we re underwrote properties and redid the valuation every three months. And so I’ve just seen the power of commercial real estate and how small changes to other incomes, small ways to cut expenses, can really catapult the NY, which goes to the valuation, which goes to your wealth. And so it’s definitely not something I’m going to do this year unless someone brings me a great deal. But it’s something I’m still learning multifamily, and I’ve done mixed use as well, is what I’m comfortable with. But I’m just looking into different asset classes. I’ve looked into boutique motels and hotels or self storage, and I do have a bit shiny object syndrome. So now I’m just looking at the feasibility of different commercial assets to see what might be next in the next few years.

Ashley:
Well, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciated you taking the time to come onto the show and to share your journey and your learning experiences. Could you let everyone know where they can find out more information about you?

Jamie:
Sure. And thank you so much for having me. I’m most active on Instagram. It’s Jamie Banks, so my first and last name, real estate, and yeah, you can follow along my journey there.

Ashley:
Awesome. Thank you so much. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Ricky.

 

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Home prices are falling fast in some prime real estate markets across the country while others remain stubbornly stuck. What’s the defining factor between a stable housing market and one where sellers are actively cutting prices? Housing inventory! This metric defined the 2020 – 2022 run-up in home prices, but the rubber band of demand is snapping back as buyer power grows, housing inventory rises, and investors get even better buying opportunities.

Remember when people said, “I’ll buy when prices drop”? Well, now might be the time.

ResiClub’s Lance Lambert joins us to provide a holistic view of housing inventory, prices, demand, and emerging opportunities. Lance walks through the most up-to-date data on where housing inventory is rising fast, where prices are quickly declining, and which markets are holding on as sellers remain in control.

We’ll also talk about why homebuilding costs are about to JUMP and the reason Warren Buffett sold his homebuilding stocks shortly after buying them. Will construction slow down, limiting new inventory and leading us back into ultra-low supply? If so, this could push home prices higher, creating a prime opportunity for real estate investors.

Dave:
Hey everyone. Welcome to On the Market podcast. This is Dave Meyer here. There’s an episode of the BiggerPockets podcast that we just recently ran that I think is a great episode for our audience here on the market. It’s an interview I did with Rezi Clubs, Lance Lambert. He’s actually been on the market several times before, and if you know anything about him, Lance is a data journalist. He runs his company, Rezi Club, where he tracks all sorts of real estate data in a really cool way. It’s very visual and super helpful in understanding some of the biggest trends. And in this conversation I had with Lance, we’d go in depth about inventory and why comparing inventory levels to last year is kind of useless. And comparing inventory levels back to 2019, which was the last time the housing market was even a little bit normal, is actually much more useful.
And Lance is going to use that framework to help us understand which markets are turning into good buyer’s markets and the markets where sellers still have the power. And I couldn’t resist because I had Lance here after we talked about inventory. I picked his brain a little bit about construction trends and how rising costs and shrinking builder margins might impact the future of single family construction and how the median age for first time home buyers has shifted and how that shift may impact rental demand in the future. Let’s bring on Lance. Lance, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Lance:
Thank you for having me, Dave. Housing, housing, housing. There is always so much going on in the US housing market.

Dave:
There is so much going on and you do such a good job of summarizing and visualizing everything that’s going on. I’m a charts geek and you put out some of the best charts, some of the best heat maps, everything out there. I’m excited to have you here.

Lance:
Yeah, and really excited too. I think BiggerPockets, you have a huge audience and in particular, Dave, I think you put out really good smart content.

Dave:
Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. Well, let’s jump into some of the inventory trends you’re seeing right now and just for our audience, if you’re new to this concept of inventory, it’s one of the more useful metrics in the housing market, at least in my mind because it sort of measures the balance between supply and demand. There’s tons of different ways you can look at it, but generally speaking, when inventory is stable, you have equal or relatively equal amounts of buyers and sellers in a market. When inventory is going up, that typically means that you have more sellers than buyers. And when inventory is going down, the reverse is true. So just wanted to provide a little bit of context there, but Lance, tell us a little bit about what trends you’re seeing in inventory right now.

Lance:
So that’s exactly it. Is that active inventory, not new listings, active inventory, it’s the equilibrium of supply and demand in the market. So actives can rise active inventory even if the number of listings coming on the market is very low. And the reason that it can rise is because demand could pull back so much. And that’s kind of what we’ve seen in a lot of these Sunbelt markets, these pandemic boom darlings, these remote work booms, the short-term rental booms where there was a lot of people going into these markets to buy during the pandemic housing boom, there was a lot of migration in. And what that did is it drove up home prices even more than a lot of other markets saw. So once rates moved up and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, these markets were a little more strained relative to local fundamentals.
And because the migration in, let’s take a place like Florida, they were going from between summer of 21 and summer of 22, seeing over 300,000 people on a net basis moving into the state. Now it’s only around 60 k plus, so it’s still positive, but it’s not as much as before. And so what that means is the market has to rely more on local. When comes to support where prices got to, that becomes a little bit of a trouble. And so it creates a greater demand shock on the market, pushes active inventory up more. Now the other factor is a lot of these Sunbelt markets are more of what economists would call supply elastic, where they have more home building levels, more multifamily home building levels. And so when you’re in this constrained affordability environment and you still have that supply coming in, what has to be moved?
And so builders do a little bit of the affordability adjustments, these mortgage rate buy downs. And so instead of people having to get a 7% rate, six and a half percent average 30 year fixed mortgage rate, they could go to a builder, maybe get four and a half, maybe get even three something from some of these builders, some of the deals they’re running. And so what that does is it pulls the attention of some of the buyers who would’ve otherwise wanted to buy an existing or resale home, and it pulls them to the new market. And so the existing and resale market has a harder time selling. And so the active inventory builds. And so this active inventory is really a great metric for the supply demand equilibrium. And if you see active inventory move down quickly, that’s suggesting a market that’s heating up greater competition sellers gaining power. And if you see a market where active inventory is moving up beyond the normal seasonality, that’s just a market where buyers are gaining power. And if it happens very quickly, buyers are gaining a lot of power. And so I’m going to share my screen and actually show some of the data across the country. And for everyone who’s listening

Dave:
To this on audio, we will describe it to you in great detail.

Lance:
So this is active inventory across the country now versus the same month in 2019. And so the same month in 2019, I use as a proxy for the previous norm for the housing market. The housing market went through the boom where active inventory across the country was down 60, 50, 70, 80%, and a lot of markets very quickly from pre pandemic 2019 levels. And then once rates shot up, active inventory on a national level has been building, but some markets have gotten back and above parts of Texas, parts of Florida, right, parts of the mountain west. And then there’s also this big swath still of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and then almost all the northeast, including also West Virginia and Virginia that are still very tight for active inventory. And those are the markets where sellers have the most power. So if you look at this map and you see the dark brown, that’s where sellers have the most power.
And if you see the green, that’s where buyers have the most power. On a state level, you’ll see that four states, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Tennessee are now above pre pandemic levels. Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Nebraska, Hawaii, Washington State, they’re almost pretty much there. And then you have some other markets that are kind of getting close. But if you go down, you look at a place like Connecticut where there are 3,100 homes for sale at the end of February. And if you go back to February, 2019, there were 14,000. So right now there are 3000 homes for sale and the whole state of Connecticut, and there were 14,000 homes for sale pre pandemic. And so places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois, Vermont sellers just in New Hampshire or Maine as well, sellers still have a lot of power. And there’s still a lot of other states like that. Virginia, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where things are still very tight.

Dave:
So Lance, tell me, approaching pre pandemic levels of inventory, which makes sense to me as a metric, but should that be seen as a good thing or a scary thing for, I guess it depends on your perspective, but how do you interpret that?

Lance:
So I think the first thing to note is that we were in a very unhealthy housing market during the pandemic housing boom, home prices went up 21% in 2021 alone, which is the most ever in US history for one single year, even more than any of the years during the inflationary spike of the 1970s on a nominal basis. And so that’s not healthy, that’s not sustainable, that’s not how the world should operate. And so the market we’re in is a market that is normalizing from an unsustainable increase in housing demand during the pandemic, during the pandemic housing boom, the Federal Reserve estimates that those first two years housing demand went up so much that to match it home construction housing starts would’ve needed to increase 300%. That’s not possible. Housing starts cannot go from like 1.4 to then 2.8 million and that’s only a hundred percent increase then up to 4 million and then over 5 million.
You can’t go from 1.4 million housing starts over 5 million housing starts in a short period of time. There are hard constraints on the market for supply, right? The labor force, only so many people know how to do windows, carpet construction, the foundation, all of that. And then there’s the supply chain dynamics where it takes years to build a supply chain for lumber, for windows, for concrete, all of that. And so housing starts moving up 10, 20, 30% is a lot, let alone to go up 300%. And so housing supply, the actual number of units in the country is not elastic like demand is. Housing demand can move very quickly. And so during the pandemic housing boom, housing demand surges, that’s all the stimulus, the ultra low rates, of course the work from home arbitrage effect all of that at play. And so as that occurs, the market cannot absorb all of that demand.
And so the demand that got to transact was the demand that paid the most. And so prices overheated and that’s how the market decided who got to actually purchase. And so coming out of that, we’re in this period where the housing market is trying to normalize. And so that normalization in some markets like Austin normalization means correction, home prices actually coming down and some other parts of the country. It hasn’t quite been that it’s just been active inventory starting to build. But to answer your question, I think zoomed out. We don’t want to stay where we were in 2021 long term, but in the short term for some people in the industry, different stakeholders, it can be jarring.

Dave:
Lance, thank you so much for this explanation. I do want to ask you how all of this will impact housing prices, but first we have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Hey everyone, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Lance Lambert. We are talking all about the, what I think is fascinating topic of real estate inventory. We’ve been talking about some of the overall trends and how inventory has been shifting upward over the last couple of years, and that there’s basically four states right now that have inventory above pre pandemic levels with another couple of states getting close. Lance, I’m curious, do you think that these markets where inventories is either close or above 2019 levels have a risk of price declines? I mean, some of ’em are already seeing price declines, but do you think that’s sort of a trend that’s going to continue?

Lance:
Yeah, so my view of active inventory is that when you see big increases in active inventory, especially if they happen quickly, that is a market where the absorption usually has shifted, right? Where homes are having a harder time selling and so they’re beginning to pile up on the market. It’s not necessarily that there’s a lot of people in Florida right now who are selling, but it’s that people who are selling in Florida are having a harder time selling. And so the active inventory, what is available in any given month is rising as that has occurred, we’ve already seen pricing weakness in Florida. And so here I have the markets that have enough condos to be measured for condo prices. And you can see that condo prices are pretty much down across the state, and you can go through a lot of these markets down eight, 10, 9%, 13%, and it’s had the most impact on older condo buildings.
So condo buildings built in the OTTs are weaker for pricing than condos built in. The 2000 and tens condos built in the 1990s are seeing bigger price drops than condos built in. The OTTs condos built in the eighties are seeing bigger price drops than condos built in the nineties, and you can just keep going back every decade. And then for the single family market for Florida, it’s a little more resilient in some pockets, especially in some of the northern Florida markets, it’s been a little bit more stable or it’s been a little bit more balanced as a market. But in southwest Florida, places like Sarasota, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, peg Goda, we’ve seen price declines outright for single family as well. And a part of that is that South Florida saw a bigger pullback and net domestic migration once the pandemic housing boom ended. And actually some of the pockets of southwest Florida temporarily saw net out migration. Some of the people who moved in during the pandemic moved out. So that created a greater demand shock. And so we’re seeing prices fall in some pockets of Florida, but if you go across the country, most of the country is still seeing prices either go sideways or a little bit up, and a lot of that is like the Northeast and the Midwest, but it’s definitely not anything close to what you saw during the pandemic housing boom.

Dave:
So I just want to hash some of what Lance showed us here in case you’re listening. Basically Lance, the condo market, when you pulled that up, he was showing a map in Florida all red. There was basically only Miami and the Miami area was showing blue. And then when you look at the single family homes, it was mostly southwest Florida, that was red. There was pockets of growth there in Tallahassee, Gainesville, Orlando, that sort of thing. How closely do you think this map correlates to the inventory question that we were talking about earlier? If you overlay these, would they look almost exactly the same where you could sort of use inventory to predict these future price declines?

Lance:
Here is a map of where inventory is back to or above pre pandemic levels, and that’s the green areas. And then this is how home prices have shifted since their respective peak in 2022. And you will see that the markets where inventory is back to or above pre pandemic levels correlates with where prices have declined from their peak and that the places where things have stayed very tight active inventory has not built up much. Those are the places where prices have actually moved up a little bit more since their 2022 peak.

Dave:
One last question here on inventory, Lance, I am like anyone else, I see these constant headlines that are like inventory is up 80% or 70% in any given market and it’s getting over maybe the last year. How important do you think that recent trend is? Because as you said, inventory was down so far during the pandemic, does it matter if it’s shifting from last year to this year or is the comparison to right now to 2019 really what matters?

Lance:
I do think that 2019 is a really great reference point, and it’s not necessarily that a market today that gets back to 2019 is back to being a 2019 market because what took them to getting back to 2019 was the fact that the market was so unhealthy and that a lot of the homes for sale couldn’t transact. So I’m not saying that a market that is back to pre pandemic levels today is the same as a 2019 normal market, but it is a market that has seen softening and weakness to get back to that level. And so the interpretation of inventory over time is going to change and that this 2019 reference point, if you interpret it a year, 2, 3, 4 years down the road could shift. But I do think it is a really good reference point. And what I would be looking at in my market is pretty much this, looking at the actual number of inventory for sale and seeing how it shifted and if it’s moving very quickly, especially in a local market that’s telling you there’s weakness there. But if you’re in a market where it’s like, let’s take Kansas, this is like a slow grind back up, well that’s probably a market where sellers still have more power than what you’re hearing about in these headlines. Even given that the percentage change for inventory might rank kind of high,

Dave:
That’s super helpful and a really important takeaway for everyone in our audience right now as we’ve been talking about inventory is super important. If there’s one metric honestly that you’re going to track to understand what’s going on in your market, this is the one I look at. And as Lance said, comparing it to 20 19, 20 25, if you’re going to do just one thing, that might be the thing for you to do to understand your market health. Lance and his company Resi Club do a great job of doing that. But there’s tons of other places where you can also just look up this data for free. We talk about them a lot on the show, but you can just also just Google this and check this out. It’s a great, great thing for you to do for yourself.

Lance:
And if they sign up for the Resi Club newsletter, go to resi club analytics.com. In my free list, I send out the state inventory. Datas like this every month to people.

Dave:
Awesome. All right, we do need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to ask you, Lance, about a couple other articles unrelated to inventory that you wrote about construction costs and first time home buyers. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Resi Club Lance Lambert. We’re talking all sorts of different things in the housing market. We just had along great conversation about inventory, but I want to shift gears here a little bit. Lance, talk about two different articles you wrote about construction in general. The first one was about cost breakdowns for single family homes and just the general cost of construction, which to me is so important with the future long-term trajectory of the housing market. So can you just fill us in a little bit about construction costs and trends in that industry?

Lance:
Yes. So construction costs, just like home prices went up a lot during the pandemic housing boom, and there hasn’t been much relief for construction costs. The one area of relief is like framing lumber, but the problem there is that while it’s coming off those peaks that it saw in 21 and 2022 is that there is a tariff scare, right? And it’s not just what Trump’s talking about doing. It’s also the fact that we have this system for soft wood lumber coming from Canada that goes through an automatic review for duties. And the duties this year are expected to double, and that’s without anything else that Trump does. So if Trump were to actually put tariffs on Canada, that would put even more pressure upward on lumber. And even if he doesn’t, they’re still going to be upward pressure on lumber. And that’s been one of the few areas of relief. And so in terms of construction costs up 40, 50% for most categories that you look at.

Dave:
Yeah. So do you have any expectation or idea of how tariffs will impact this further? I mean, do you think it will be exactly equal to the amount of the tariff if it’s a 20% increase on appliances, let’s just say, do you think that will correspond almost one to one?

Lance:
It’s hard to say and it’s also hard to say what actually is going to incur with the tariffs,

Dave:
Right? Yeah, we just don’t know at this point

Lance:
Exactly. I think a lot of what’s been talked about for China, I think that’s probably going to go into, but what Trump is talking about with Mexico and Canada, those might be bargaining chips for other types of deals that we reach with them. Maybe it’s getting Canada and Mexico to actually also put on tariffs on China. So it is really hard to tell what would actually happen, but if it does occur, it would be a shock for different categories. And even if it doesn’t, I think there is still a shock coming for lumber and for wood over the next year. So if you look at the breakdowns from builders, and this is over the past two years, the biggest category is framing, including the roof, and a lot of that is the lumber. And so you can see that’s been one of the few areas they’ve actually seen relief, but now that’s one of the ones that they’re going to get some upward pressure on.

Dave:
Alright, so we’re looking here at Lance’s chart and what we’re seeing is that lumber, yeah, was one of the places that there was actually some relief from 2022 to 2024, but we’re looking at electricals up plumbing, hvac, wall finishing cabinets, roofing. And so this just really makes me wonder about trends in construction right now because if rates stay high, right, isn’t there a reasonable case that construction’s going to slow down again, even for single family?

Lance:
So one of the challenges here is that when inflation was roaring in 21 into 22, builders had a lot of pricing power. And so as things were running up, they could just pass it to the consumer. There was an unlimited number amount of housing demand out there essentially is what it felt like to builders. But now that shifted, builders don’t have all the pricing power, but on the other side they’re getting squeezed by some of these higher components. And what’s occurring here is that between some of these markets like Texas and Florida where they’re having to spend more on incentives and maybe bring down net effective prices, and then these increase on the inputs, it’s compressing the margins. And so it could in some of these markets begin to have an impact on activity for single family.

Dave:
So that actually reminds me of another article of yours that I read about builders margins shrinking. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that?

Lance:
Yeah, so what’s been happening to builders is that during the pandemic housing boom, they had pretty much unlimited pricing power and their margins soared. A lot of these builders, if you go look at their earnings reports, had the greatest ever profit margins during the pandemic housing boom as they just had so much pricing power, even though a lot of these costs were rising. But what we’ve seen since then is margin compression from a lot of the builders is they’ve done affordability adjustments to kind of meet the market, but now we’re starting to see a little bit of another leg down for some of these margins at some of these builders. And so Lennar, their forecast is the Q1 will be their lowest gross margin in a decade. And then even the most resilient builder out there, the publicly traded, which is Toll Brothers, and their typical home is around a million dollars even they are seeing a bit more margin compression than was expected. This is what Toll Brothers CEO said the other day. While demand has been solid in our first quarter, we’ve seen mixed results so far for the spring season. And when I talk to a lot of the people in my network, spring’s not necessarily as good as they were hoping for. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a terrible spring, but it’s not necessarily as good as they were hoping for so far as of the end of February into early March. Got

Dave:
It. Okay.

Lance:
And so what does this mean from a home buyer perspective this year? It means that in builder communities where the builders are set on trying to maintain sales, so they’ll do adjustments to kind of meet the market. And in these places, like in pockets of Florida and Texas where there’s a lot of spec inventory and they got to move, it means that the retail buyer could see some deals from some of these builders in the markets where they have more spec inventory. And then from a seller’s perspective, if you’re in these markets where builders have a lot of spec inventory that they’re trying to sell at discounts, it’s going to create some pressure for you and greater cooling and softening in your own market as some of those buyers who would’ve otherwise looked at the resale and existing market turned their attention to the new market.

Dave:
Last topic I wanted to cover today on your reporting is just about the median age of a first time home buyer. I thought this was super interesting. Can you just give us the headline here?

Lance:
Yeah. So over the past three decades, we’ve seen the median first time home buyer age go from 28 years in 1991 to now as of 2020 4, 38. So back in 1991, the typical first time home buyer in the US was 28 years old. In 2024, the typical first time home buyer is 38. So over three decades it’s went up 10 years. And I’ve had some people message me after I put this out that, oh Lance, that’s only because life expectancies went up so much and I pulled the numbers for life expectancy. It’s only went up less than two years during this 30 year period. And so it’s not all because of life expectancy. And I think what’s occurring is a few factors. One is we have a secular shift happening not just in the US but across developed worlds where people are going to school longer, they are marrying later, they are having kids later, and when they do have kids, they’re having fewer kids and then they’re buying homes later.
And then the other factor is that people are also living longer. And this is more for the distribution of household size, which we’re seeing an increase in one household sizes and two household sizes and everything else is decreasing, but the composition of the homeowner is getting shifted out as people live longer as well. And so what we’re seeing here is that the typical age of repeat buyers has gone up from 42 to 61, and all home buyers has gone up from 35 to 56. And the other factor of course, as well, which has kind of pushed this up over the past two years, has been the deterioration in affordability. And so a lot of the people who are older, they have a lot of equity, 40% of the US homeowners, their primary residents, they don’t have a mortgage. It’s paid off. And so for those folks, they don’t have a lock and effective rates If they want to sell and buy something else, more of them are doing it. But on the first time side, the people who are financing it more likely to finance it, more of them have pulled back from the market than the all cash buyers because of where rates have gone to. And that’s put additional upward pressure on the median first time home buyer age, sending it from just a couple years ago at 33 up to now 38.

Dave:
It’s just so interesting, these big cultural dynamics. And I think for anyone listening who doesn’t yet own a home, you get it right? Affordability is low and that’s making it really challenging to buy a home. I’m curious, Lance, from an investor’s perspective, do you think this changes in any way the makeup, the demand for rental properties? Because if people are waiting longer to buy a home, does this mean we’re going to have more families renting single family homes or apartments? That’s been sort of on my mind about my own investing decisions.

Lance:
It’s tough to say. I think there was that assumption by some when rates went up a lot in 22 and it’s like, well, a lot of people are not going to be able to afford now, and so they’ll have to rent. But then there was the factor of often historically when the purchase market softens, the rental market also softens because some of the dynamics that led to the softening and purchase led to the softening in rentals. And of course there was a lot of the supply that was financed a lot of the multifamily projects that were financed during the period of ultra low rates. And so as that kind of rolled in and all those completions came in, that kind of softened the market for rentals and kind of negated some of the effects that some people were hoping from the softening of the purchase market.
But as we look out, I think the biggest thing is if we see the completions for multifamily roll over and in some markets roll over harder, I think that will begin to put some positive momentum into the rental market. And maybe some of these other effects that we’re talking about here could have some impact. I think the biggest impact is really the secular impact, which is a lot of people rented in their twenties. That’s been historically true for a long time and a lot of that product multifamily. But as people were spending more of their thirties and forties renting, that’s creating greater opportunities for the single family rental market and for also kind of that mixed product, some of these townhomes, right? And I think that’s why we’ve seen so much expansion over the past decade in the builds rent side of the business.

Dave:
That’s super. Yeah. Thank you for explaining that, Lance, because if you all have heard me talk about the upside era and sort of the different ways to look at investing right now and evaluating deals, one of my thesis is about future rent growth. And although I’m not saying it’s a good thing that housing prices are unaffordable and people are going to be renting longer, it does just seem that the data is pointing that way. And it does make me wonder, and I think as investors, it’s something to think about what type of housing units might be more in demand in the future based on some of these trends. So that’s sort of why I wanted to get at that. And thank you for explaining that to us, Lance. Alright, well that is what we got for today’s show. Lance, thank you so much. There’s three really interesting topics. You covered them all in great detail, really great explanations. Thank you for sharing your reporting and information with us here today.

Lance:
Yeah, thank you for having me Dave. And if people want to follow my work, get some of my stories in their inbox, they can go to resi club analytics.com, just put in their email and they’ll start getting these data stories.

Dave:
Awesome. And thank you all so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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A secret blacklist? It sounds like something from a Netflix thriller. However, that’s the scenario unfolding when some condo owners have attempted to sell their homes and investments, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Described as a Fannie Mae-maintained “secret mortgage blacklist,” it refers to a list compiled by the government-funded mortgage backer in the wake of the Surfside condo collapse in Florida in 2021 that killed 98 people. Properties on the list are, in the eyes of Fannie Mae, in need of considerable repairs or do not have adequate insurance. A property on the list makes it harder for a buyer to get a mortgage for it

The Journal article mentions real estate agent Paul Gangi, who was on the verge of closing his listing in Shadow Ridge, a 440-unit townhouse and condo complex in Ventura County, California, in December. “I got a panicked call from the lender saying, ‘Sorry, we’ve just found out Shadow Ridge has been blacklisted,’” he said. After trying other options for the loan, the buyer had to back away.

Developers and Homeowners Are Suffering

The list has mushroomed to 5,175 properties nationwide from a few hundred before the Surfside collapse. Unsurprisingly, the states with the most properties on the list (1,400) are based in Florida, with California next, followed by Colorado, Hawaii, and Texas. 

Fannie Mae and its sister government-sponsored enterprise, Freddie Mac, buy roughly half of the country’s home loans from lenders and package them to sell to investors, then guarantee payments on them. They have increased their insurance guidelines to such an extent that lenders now have to check whether a property in the two government entities will accept loans on a specific project. Although Fannie refused to classify its property data as a “blacklist,” in theory, that’s what it is. 

Insurance Costs Are Crippling

The advice is simple for investors interested in transacting a property that could be affected by the new guidelines: Do your research and consult with your lender before attempting to get a loan. Even if your condo is not on the list, the transaction could still run into trouble when monthly association costs are calculated. Condo association board members say insurers have aggressively raised prices due to the new Fannie and Freddie guidelines.

In the case of Shadow Ridge, the LA complex blacklisted in December, a Fannie-compliant policy was quoted at $2.6 million per year, 10 times its current amount, making it virtually impossible to sell through a Fannie-backed lender and making it prohibitive to for people to live there. However, the specter of another Surfside or natural disaster has Freddie and Fannie wanting to cover their bases with ramped-up insurance.

Reasons a Condo Could Be Blacklisted

There can be many different reasons a condo could be on the Fannie Mae mortgage blacklist, including:

  • Structural or safety issues that have not been addressed
  • Insufficient financial reserves to cover ongoing maintenance or repairs
  • Legal issues: Pending litigation could pose financial risks
  • High investor ownership: When a condo development is owned by a large number of investors, it is less appealing to lenders.
  • Inadequate insurance: Fannie Mae’s heightened insurance demands mean a building might fail to meet requirements. 

How to Navigate the List

If you have done your due diligence, had a condo inspected, and wish to proceed with a purchase—only to discover it’s on a mortgage blacklist—a few options are available to you:

  • Buy the property for cash or seek alternative financing.
  • Ask the owner to self-finance, explaining that they would find it difficult to sell otherwise, as it is on a mortgage blacklist.
  • Approach Fannie or Freddie to discuss their concerns and ask for clear criteria for blacklist reinstatement.
  • If the issue is repairs, see if the seller is willing to undertake these for a new price.

The Insurance Conundrum

While repairs and financing can be mitigated to a degree, increased insurance is the one area for which it is hard to find a workaround. There are only so many insurance companies; without them, getting a loan is impossible. 

However, in disaster-prone areas like Florida, where most of the properties on Fannie Mae’s “no lend” list are located, alternative insurance types have surfaced. In an article titled “The Quiet Rise of Lightly Regulated Insurance,” Bloomberg revealed that homeowners are turning to a type of insurance more commonly used in commercial real estate to protect companies with unique risks, such as fireworks factories and nuclear waste projects. 

Referred to as non-admitted policies, they are lightly regulated, not backed by the state (i.e., if the company fails, the state won’t step in), and far more pricey than traditional insurance—which may defeat the purpose of using them. However, in the face of a refusal of coverage, a 

complete lack of an alternative, or sky-high rates, they could be an alternative for some. 

According to the article, between 2022 and 2023, non-admitted home insurance premiums grew 27.5% compared to 13.8% in the admitted market. In Florida, between 2009 and 2023, non-admitted insurance used by homeowners grew by 73% to more than 92,000 homes. 

Surplus lines insurance is similar to non-admitted insurance in that it is an alternative to state-run insurance programs and is from highly specialized insurance companies. The market for this type of insurance is growing, particularly in California.

Final Thoughts

If you plan to buy or sell a condo, you’ll need to do some research, particularly if you live in one of the states most affected by the mortgage blacklist. As the list isn’t publicly available, checking a property’s status will mean contacting the condo association or lender. 

Also, check the HOA financials to ensure there are cash reserves and that maintenance issues are being taken of. If an investor plans to buy a development, check to see if the owner has a recent structural report. If not, it is worth investing in one. 

The price of insurance will remain an issue for investors and homeowners alike. Costs are spiraling out of control, making affordability and cash flow difficult. Solving the crisis will require some type of federal or state intervention; otherwise, the housing market in at-risk states like Florida and California could be in big trouble. However, given the current climate surrounding government funding and Fannie Mae itself, that’s far from a certainty.

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Despite their limitations, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) are incredibly powerful. And you can do all kinds of creative tricks with them to build a huge nest egg, tax-free. 

Try these “alternative” IRA strategies to get the most out of these tax-advantaged retirement accounts and potentially retire with nothing but tax-free income. 

1. A Roth SDIRA With Secured Debt Investments

Debt investments can offer predictable monthly interest payments that you can live on. Unfortunately, the IRS taxes interest at the regular income tax rate. Don’t expect any baked-in tax advantages like you get with real estate syndications or rental properties. 

This past month, our co-investing club invested in a secured note paying 16% interest. The note is secured with first-position liens against a portfolio of single-family properties. Collectively, our members invested $569,000. 

For most of us, that means paying a full tax rate on that juicy interest income. But if you invested using a self-directed Roth IRA, those interest payments would pile into your IRA account tax-free. You can keep reinvesting that money for an ever-larger tax-free portfolio. When you retire, you pay no taxes on the withdrawals, either. 

2. A Roth SDIRA With High-Yield Equity Investments

The same principle applies to real estate equity investments that pay a high distribution yield or cash-on-cash return. 

For example, last year, we invested in a land-flipping fund that pays 16% in distributions. That part is fun. 

But again, the IRS taxes distributions at the regular income tax rate. Not so much fun.

Once again, if you invest through a Roth SDIRA, those distributions will just keep compounding your account balance—tax-free. 

3. A Roth SDIRA With Syndications Targeting “Infinite Returns”

A typical value-add real estate syndication works like a giant property flip: The operator buys a run-down multifamily property (or other large property), renovates it and raises rents over a couple of years, and then they sell for a tidy profit. 

Some operators take a different tack. They approach it more like the BRRRR strategy: After renovating the property and raising rents, they refinance based on the new higher value. Upon refinancing, they pay passive investors like you and me some or all of our original capital back—but we keep our ownership interest. 

And we keep collecting cash flow, even though we may no longer have any money tied up in the property. That means we can reinvest the same capital again and again and again, creating a cycle of “infinite returns.” 

If you invest through a Roth SDIRA, there’s theoretically no limit on the returns you can earn on your initial contributions. 

4. A Roth SDIRA With Flip Profit Splits

“Brian, if you run a full-time house-flipping business, you can’t invest your SDIRA dollars in your own business!” 

True enough. But what if you go in on some house flips as a silent partner in someone else’s business? 

Last year, we partnered with a house-flipping company on a series of flips. The company is flipping as many houses as they can with our money over an 18-month period, then returning our capital along with our share of the profits. 

The partnership structure itself builds in a compounding effect. Our partner company can flip larger or more properties as they sell partnered houses, and our share of the profits gets reinvested in more deals. 

At the end, we get a payout with a chunk of long-term capital gains. That itself saves us money on taxes: Instead of being taxed for short-term gains on each flip, we only receive our portion of profits after 18 months. 

But imagine if you invested through a Roth SDIRA. You get all the compounding from that fast turnover and that high velocity of money. And you don’t pay a dime in taxes. 

5. Combine a “Normal” IRA With Tax-Advantaged Real Estate Investments

My investment portfolio includes roughly 50% stocks and 50% passive real estate investments. 

If I’m going to own both stocks and real estate anyway, why not hold the stocks in a simple brokerage IRA while owning the real estate investments “taxably”? 

Granted, not all real estate investments come with built-in tax advantages. I’ve outlined a few, such as secured debt investments, that don’t come with any. 

But real estate syndications and some funds and private partnerships come with outstanding tax benefits. You can take advantage of accelerated depreciation through cost segregation studies (and possibly bonus depreciation if that gets extended). 

So, you show a loss on paper on your tax return, even as you collect distributions in the real world. 

And when the property sells, you face the big bad wolves of long-term capital gains taxes and depreciation recapture? Just reinvest the money in a new syndication or fund using the “lazy 1031 exchange” strategy. 

Easy-peasy.

6. Open a Solo 401(k)

If you’re self-employed—and that includes real estate investors—you can open a solo 401(k)

“Why would I bother opening a solo 401(k)?” Because the contribution limit is a whopping $70,000 in 2025. If you’re over 50, that rises to $77,500. 

And yes, you can open a Roth solo 401(k), not just a traditional one. 

You can also roll over funds from your solo 401(k) to your self-directed IRA. It opens a world of possibilities for your real estate (and other alternative) investments. 

7. Invest Through an HSA for a Secondary Retirement Account

Health savings accounts (HSAs) offer the best tax benefits of any account. They combine the perks of traditional and Roth accounts: You can deduct the initial contribution, the investments compound tax-free in the account, and you pay no taxes on withdrawals. 

“Yeah, but only if I use the withdrawal to pay for health-related expenses, right?”

Sure—which is a broad category, and you’ll have no shortage of health-related expenses in retirement. Have no doubt about that.

All this means you can use your HSA as a secondary retirement account. You get a write-off today, and you get tax-free withdrawals later. 

As an added benefit, if you reach financial independence and retire early, you can start withdrawing money from your HSA at any age. You don’t have to wait for 59 1/2. 

8. Income Too High? Do a Backdoor Roth Conversion

If you earn more than $150,000 as a single filer or $236,000 as a married couple in 2025, you can no longer make a full contribution to a Roth IRA. Above $165,000, you can’t make any contribution at all. 

Fortunately, Uncle Sam left a back door open for clever investors. Instead of contributing to your Roth IRA, contribute to a traditional IRA. You can’t write off the contribution—but you can roll it over to a Roth IRA. 

And from there, the money compounds tax-free just like your other Roth IRA funds, and you pay no taxes on withdrawals in retirement. See why it’s called a backdoor Roth contribution

Final Thoughts

If you want to win the game of money, you need to know the rules. And nowhere is that clearer than tax strategy. 

I pay very little in income taxes. Part of that is because I live and invest from overseas and take advantage of the foreign-earned income exclusion, but I also get enormous tax benefits on the hands-off real estate investments I make. 

In fact, these tax benefits wipe out all the taxes I’d otherwise owe on my stock and other investments as well. And I’ve steadily been converting my traditional IRA funds to my Roth IRA—paying no taxes—so I can live tax-free in retirement.



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The stock market is shifting, and your portfolio needs to change NOW if you want to reach or stay FIRE (financial independence, retire early). Many early retirees are sitting anxiously, watching their net worth fall by 10% (or more), making each withdrawal from their portfolio increasingly risky. If you’re close to financial independence or are retired early already, you CANNOT risk losing the gains you’ve worked so hard for. This is what we’re doing NOW to keep our FIRE portfolios crash-resistant.

Last month, Scott talked about his big decision to sell off a chunk of his index fund portfolio in fears of overvalued stock prices. What followed? A significant stock sell-off, with some major indexes falling 10% already. Scott urges those close to FIRE to “lock in” their gains and avoid unnecessary risks to push their FIRE numbers higher.

So, what did Scott move his money into, and should you do the same? Should you switch to bonds for a safer but lower-return correction hedge? What happens if this stock downturn lasts years? Should someone in their 20s or 30s, just starting on the FIRE path, stop investing or double down? We’re answering all of your burning FIRE questions today!

Mindy:
What happens when the stock market takes a nose dive while you’re climbing your way to financial freedom, or what happens if it does this after you’ve already retired? Today we’re going to be talking about how to succeed in market downturns, and we promise you this isn’t going to be a doom and gloom episode. There will be takeaways for everyone no matter where you are on your financial journey. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is Mike still believes in fire co-hosts Scott Trench.

Scott:
Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and always excited to spark a debate with you, which I think we’re about to have today. BiggerPockets has a goal of creating 1 million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you’re starting, including if you are afraid of a market crash.

Mindy:
Scott, have you been watching the news lately?

Scott:
I have been watching news very closely lately. How about you?

Mindy:
Not so much. I have heard something about a market downturn maybe.

Scott:
Yeah, I think a lot of folks know that I got very fearful last month with sky high to me price to earnings valuations. That to me signaled that a lot of things had to go right, interest rates had to get lowered, employment needed to remain high, inflation needed to come down, AI needed to bring about a surge in corporate profits and rise in the American standard of living. And I just didn’t think that that could happen. And I think that I wouldn’t have said, oh, if the market’s going to go down 10% immediately after I say this, but I was worried about that general kind of brew of things, not being able to meet the expectations that the market had for then current pricing. And I think that if anything, at the very least it’s 10% less risky now here at March 13th than it was in February. So that’s starting to change my mind a little bit on it, but I’ve made one big permanent move and I’m happy with it and I’m living with it and I think a lot of people around the internet, especially in the BiggerPockets money community, have done nothing or made their moves a while back and they’re all content and happy with the situation and understand the dynamics of what’s going on. By and large, it seems like inside of the community that we serve,

Mindy:
I dunno that happy with the situation is the right way to characterize it. However, I will say that I am not overly concerned with the situation and I was being a little tongue in cheek. I am paying attention to the news. I am aware that the stock market is down 10% that effectively all 20, 25 gains have been wiped out based on a myriad of reasons. So I am still staying the course. I’m not considering selling any of my portfolio. I’m not considering going into bonds, taking money out of stocks and going into bonds. Although I do need to say we are building a house this year and we did just sell about a hundred thousand dollars in VGT, not because we thought that stocks were not the place to be just because we wanted to pull some money out of that particular investment due to the tax ramifications or lack of tax ramifications we had with that one. I think we got it out last week, so that was nice. But again, not timing the market. We made a sale based on where we were at the time, not because of what was going on in the market.

Scott:
Yeah, I certainly made my move based on in part what was going on in the market and

Mindy:
I want to underline that, Scott, you did research, you looked at different factors of the market and said, this makes me personally uncomfortable. I don’t want to watch my portfolio drop should it drop, so I’m going to make a change. You didn’t pull it out and put it into cash and wait to get back in. When the market dropped,

Scott:
I did pull out a good chunk and put it into, so I pulled out a good chunk, put a big chunk into real estate, and the other remaining chunk is in a money market right now, which will go into a hard money node and another rental property later this year.

Mindy:
So it’s not just sitting in a pile waiting to be done. You had a plan for that?

Scott:
Yes, but yes, I have a plan for it. I had a plan, have a plan. However, it is technically sitting in a pile of cash right now.

Mindy:
Not all of it. You bought the house.

Scott:
That’s right, yes.

Mindy:
And you have plans for the future. You’re going to put it into a hard money note. You’re going to put it into a real estate property. So the fact that you don’t have a place to put it right now? Well, it’s what is the money market returning?

Scott:
The money market is returning for a little over four, 4.1 ish.

Mindy:
Okay, and of the amount that you pulled out, would you characterize that as mostly in that rental property or partially in that rental property?

Scott:
It is about half and half.

Mindy:
Okay. Okay.

Scott:
I plan to buy another rental property later this year and I also plan to dabble in the commercial market.

Mindy:
I do think Scott has a really great point for what he has done with his funds. For him, it is not the choice that I made and I think in part I’ve been through some stock market downturns, so I’m not as concerned, but I think it’s a great point to make. If you listeners are having some heebie-jeebies about the stock market right now, maybe you need to go back and listen to the previous episode that we just released where we talk about the 4% rule and how we still believe in the 4% rule. However, the 4% rule is predicated on a 60 40 stock bond portfolio. So if your index funds are 100% of your portfolio, you aren’t following the true 4% rule withdrawal strategy.

Scott:
Mindy A recently corrected me. I said the same thing, 60 40, but they actually corrected me that there’s a range of stock bond portfolios, I think ranging from 50 50 to 70 30 stocks, bonds that the 4% rule technically addresses. So that was a fun little, you’ll learn something new every day in this and we always appreciate it when folks add that nuance, it makes us better at what we do here. So thank you. I’m so sorry to forget the individual’s name that mentioned that, but that always is very helpful.

Mindy:
Yes, thank you for the mention. Thank you for correcting me, Scott. I have not read that article in several years, so I should go back and reread that, but yes, either way it’s not a 100% stock portfolio.

Scott:
Yep, absolutely.

Mindy:
It’s not even a 10% hedge, so I wanted to underline that.

Scott:
Yeah, so let’s talk about the market dynamic right now. The 10 ish percent, 10% down from peak, nine and a half percent down from last month in context here. Mindy, what does a market crash mean for you if you are just starting out versus if you are at or near retirement, whether it be earlier, traditional retirement?

Mindy:
I will say that from talking to people on the BiggerPockets Money podcast for the last seven and a half years, if you’re just starting out, you’re at the beginning of an approximately 10 to 15 year journey. So if your year one, two, and three, this market downturn isn’t a huge deal to you, you really aren’t the people that we are addressing in this episode today. However, I do want to say that if you are at the beginning of your journey, market downturns are just part of the cycle of the market. So we’ve had downturns in the past. We’ve had downturns in the very recent past and March of 2020, the stock market dumped and then made a, it was called a V recovery. V recovery. I can’t even do this right, I’m trying to do hand signals here. A V recovery where it dropped sharply and then it went back up sharply in the downturn was a V shape.
I want to say it was three or six months and it was back to much more normal levels. The people who are really at risk for a downturn are the people who are near retirement or have recently retired even more so the recently retired. Then the ones who are near retirement. If you’re nearing retirement and you see some sort of shocking stock market manipulation, all you have to do is say, well, I’m just not going to retire next year. I’ll take another year. That’s a case where one more year syndrome I think is perfectly valid. I’m going to wait this out. I’m going to see if the stock market recovers. If it doesn’t recover, then you can start reevaluating based on your own specific situation. If you have recently retired, Scott, I think those are the people that are in the most anxious states right now because they don’t have their employment when the stock market goes down, if we get ourselves into a recession, companies stop hiring, so it’s not so easy to just go back to work. If you had planned your financial independence journey to be very lean fi, you might be subject to sequence of returns risks. Dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that we now have a BiggerPockets money newsletter. If you would like to subscribe to our newsletter, please go to biggerpockets.com/money newsletter, all one word. All right, we’ll be back after this.

Scott:
Alright, welcome back to the show. Let’s say there is a market crash or a deep recession that keeps stock prices depressed for the next five years in a meaningful way. That’s wonderful news if you’re 22 and starting out in your career, right? Because you’re going to be buying stocks at that price point for the next five years as your earnings power compounds and you’re going to be buying them at a much lower price point to get a boost on your journey and that’s not how they’re going to feel about it. Like the 22-year-old who’s just starting out. That first 20, 30,000 that they invested is going to be so meaningful to them and to see it go down a little bit will be very hard, but in practice it will be a market downturn will be their best friend because that will help them by a ton of future investments at a lower price.
That same dynamic is terrible for someone who is at or near retirement and one of the things that I’ve been harping on in the last couple of months in particular is there’s just way too many people out there who think that they’re fire and have a hundred percent of their portfolios in index funds from a financial perspective and it’s like that’s an irresponsible portfolio. It’s not a way to do it. It’s not good risk management. It’s an all out highly aggressive approach, which is perfect for our 22-year-old that’s getting started and is decades away. But when you can lose many times your annual savings rate or income in a single year in the stock market and it’s going to happen multiple times in a lifetime, that becomes the problem. And I think that’s the issue that folks are going to have here. And my fear, Mindy, now that we’re down 10%, the risk that I had from a month ago is 10% lower for all these things, but I made a permanent reallocation.
I’m not putting that money back in the stock market anytime soon. That is not my intention. I’m not trying to play a game where I have to be right twice, I have to sell at the top and buy at the bottom. I’m not playing that game on this. I made a permanent relocation with it, but I think that a lot of Americans around this country, maybe a hundred million plus who lean left are asking themselves the question of I’m mostly in stocks, be it because they just invested aggressively. That was good math in the earliest parts of their journey or simply because the stock investments that they did make over the last couple of years performed so well that it has become such a huge percentage of their portfolio. Those people are going to start asking themselves, I believe, how much do I want to leave that all in the stock market or this heavy of a concentration?
Maybe I’ll diversify a little bit, maybe I’ll buy some bonds, maybe I’ll put some money into cash, maybe I’ll stop buying for a little bit or whatever that question is ramping right now, and that’s what I believe is happening in the stock market by and large is I’m just going to pull out a little bit. I’m going to buy a little less. And I think that could go on for a long time. It could also end tomorrow. Who knows what’s going to happen here, but I’d be worried about that if I was at retirement and I would not go to zero stocks if the portfolio is there, but you should have gone to 60 40 stock bonds 3, 4, 5, 6 months ago. If you’re close to retirement and taking what you have and putting it into a portfolio that makes sense for a retiree isn’t the worst move.
There’s lots of research on this. You should go and look at it, but very little suggests being the stock a hundred percent in the stock market as you approach retirement. And also it’s like why are you in a hundred percent stocks if you’re at or near retirement age? What is the goal? Is it just to compound the wealth for the next double it every seven years in perpetuity at the highest possible risk tolerance that is with an all stock portfolio? What is that end objective? I just don’t understand it for the person who is at or near retirement in there. So that’s kind of my perspective of the situation. What’s your reaction to all that, Mindy?

Mindy:
Well, Carl has been retired for seven years and we are still all in stocks. We don’t have any bonds. We did have one rental property that was a medium term rental. We are tearing it down to rebuild a house that we will eventually move into. We are comfortable with the risk because our original fire number was so much lower than our current net worth and we believe in the longterm viability of the American stock market, the American economy, and we’ve been through several downturns already. We went through the.com bubble, we went through 2008, we went through covid, we went through I think 2022 was down the whole year. It’s just part of the cycle. On the same token, I’m generating income, so we’re not pulling out any money from the 4 0 1 Ks yet and we don’t just have money in the 4 0 1 Ks. We’ve got money in after tax funds, we’ve got money in Roth accounts. There’s just a lot of different buckets to pull from. So even if they all go down, I mean if they went to zero, I would have a bigger problem than just not having any money.

Scott:
And look, the market is not going to go to zero, right? It’s not like every publicly traded company in America is going to go bankrupt all at the same time taking this s and p 500 to zero. That will never happen, right? It’s almost inconceivable that that could happen. So I get it. I guess my point though is I can understand the framework of I have more than twice or maybe even 70% more than I need, which I think is where you and Carl are at. And so why not just let the thing compound at the maximum aggressive portfolio and I’m comfortable with a 70% drop. The issue I have here is let’s say that your net worth was $2 million and you had a $80,000 annual withdrawal target. That would be a real problem at that point. I’d be saying, Mindy, you cannot do that.
You could lose it all and not lose so much of it that you could not fund your lifestyle anymore and find yourself in a really troubling situation on it. And I think that’s where I think there’s a lot of people in the BiggerPockets money community who think that they’re less than seven years about just under 50% of the people listening to this podcast think that they’re less than seven years from retirement and about a quarter think you’re less than three years from retirement. And if that’s you, then it was time to start moving towards a more balanced portfolio a year or two ago and it’s not necessarily a bad time now at it. And there’s ways to do it. You don’t have to sell and reposition. You can put the new dollars into whatever, but I think that’s very mentally hard for people who are used to aggressively accumulating for a very long period of time to fire.
One needs to go all out aggressive for years and a grind. You put everything into the stock market, you earn as much as you can, you spend as little as you can and you do that for 10 years in a row. And I think that that mental shift of that flip at the point of fire is something that people, that person who’s wired to do that has a very difficult time with, I’m going to now take less of a return. I’m going to pay off my mortgage, I’m going to put it into bonds. That piece is very hard for people who are wired the way who are wired to listen to this podcast, for example. And that’s the switch that I think that needs to be made. If you want to really protect yourself from what you know is going to be a market downturn every couple of years and once or twice a generation, you’re going to see that be a five, 10 plus year recovery in terms of pricing to its previous levels.

Mindy:
One final ad break. We’ll be back with more right after this.

Scott:
Thanks for sticking with us. I keep part with this. I just think that there’s a lot of people out there who have won. You won, you won, you built a multimillion dollar net worth, you won, you achieve fire in a technical sense on it, lock it in, you won.

Mindy:
That’s a good point. That’s what I

Scott:
Did. That’s all I

Mindy:
Did. Alright. Now what about all of the returns that you are leaving on the table because you pulled your money out of the stocks?

Scott:
Well, we’ll see about ’em just because my plan right now is to invest in real estate and to invest in private loans and to keep a sizable cash position, which I will always keep a sizable cash position and be late leverage because frankly, writing a book called Set for Life and going bankrupt would be a highly embarrassing combination on a personal standpoint. So that will be always a part of my personal philosophy there. So always be fairly conservative, but my allocation does not preclude, for example, there being a very clear buying opportunity in the future. If the market were to go below 10 times price to earnings for something, I don’t think that will happen. But if it were to do that, I could always exit or I could always refinance my rental properties. If the market ever gets truly in the dumps like a really bad recession or depression, ary pricing level, then interest rates will come down almost certainly. So then I could just refinance my rentals and put it back in. I don’t plan to do that. It’s just an option that’s available to me. I don’t think that it’ll be a crash that bad to any of these things, but that option, not something I would miss out on.

Mindy:
So Scott, your real estate is effectively acting as a bond for you. Do you have any actual bonds?

Scott:
Yes. My retirement accounts are in 50 50 or 60 40 stock bond portfolios and the bond portfolio of choice is V-B-T-L-X.

Mindy:
Okay. Now your retirement timeline if we’re talking traditional, is much longer than my retirement timeline. If we’re talking about traditional. So why the 50 50 or 60 40 bonds at this time?

Scott:
It has to do with my overall portfolio allocation. So I took up that pie chart, the same framework I tell everyone to do here on BiggerPockets money on it. If someone handed me a pile of cash right now, how would I allocate it to maximize my odds of a smooth and enjoyable early financial independence for the duration of my life? And that included a cash position, stocks, real estate and bonds and that’s it.

Mindy:
Okay.

Scott:
The bond position made the most sense. I think it’s also a little bit more tax efficient as well to put ’em in the retirement accounts there.

Mindy:
I think that’s a great point, Scott. I am glad you’re making it. So for our listeners who are thinking about, wow, I don’t know that I love the volatility of the stock market, just like Scott, maybe pull my money out and put it someplace else. Start looking at where you would put it. Start doing some research. Dive deep into these different types of non-stock investments that make you comfortable. Don’t just jump into real estate. Scott did. Maybe Scott has an unfair advantage. Oh, maybe being the CEO of BiggerPockets and a real estate investor for 10 years gives him a bit of a leg up on how it works over somebody who has never done real estate ever and is like, oh, I heard that was a good investment. It can also be a real difficult investment if you don’t do it right. So hey Scott, is there any place people can learn about investing in real estate? Do you know of any place online?

Scott:
No, I don’t think that exists yet.

Mindy:
I’ve heard of this one company called biggerpockets.com that has forums and podcasts and blogs and books where you can talk about real estate with other people and ask questions. biggerpockets.com/forums, biggerpockets.com/blog, biggerpockets.com/podcasts. There are multiple, yeah, BiggerPockets is a really, really great place to learn about real estate if that’s something that interests you. But Scott, we’re kind of getting off track here. I want to go back to the people that we really need to be talking to, the ones who have retired in the last five years.

Scott:
Yeah, look, I think if you’ve retired in the last five years and you’re a hundred percent in stocks, and if you’re an early retiree, you’re part of the fire community, you’re a hundred percent in stocks, then all this, you’re super smart. You built a multimillion dollar, most likely net worth. You participated in a great bull run and I think you have to just stop trying to be so smart here. My portfolio says I’m not trying to be smart. I’m not trying to be smart. I’m just saying I won and I’m going to accept a lower overall long-term rate of return and in exchange, in the event that there’s some pain in the next couple of years, I’m not going to have to worry about it. If someone hands me, if Mr. Market hands me something that’s so extraordinarily cheap, at some point in the future I may take it, but that’s not my plan. I am with it. So I don’t have to be very smart with this. I just made my move. I was uncomfortable with it and we’re there. I would just encourage folks who are retired to do the same thing for themselves. How do you lock in your win and enjoy the rest of your life?

Mindy:
You know what, Scott? I think that right there you are reframing it. You’re not moving to a stock bond portfolio and reducing your returns. You are locking in your wins so that your wins are no longer subject to the whims of the stock market.

Scott:
Yeah, Mindy, one thing I realized just talking through this is I intended to go to 60 40 stock bonds and I realized I’m only 25 75 in stock bonds. And I’m like, well, how did I screw that up? And it’s because I still have some after tax stocks and I have not put those into bonds. I have not reallocated those to bonds. And so I may make that adjustment going forward here.

Mindy:
I want to point out that you’ve already sold a lot of stocks this year and that’s a taxable event. Adding more stocks that you’re selling to turn into bonds, I don’t think is the best choice right now.

Scott:
Let’s talk about taxes real quick, right? I actually addressed that as well in the episode, but I’ll cover some of that one more time here for this. There’s a concept called tax drag, right? So if I start out with a hundred thousand dollars and I, let me pull up a visual here for those watching on YouTube, but if I start with a hundred thousand dollars and I just let it compound at 10% a year for 10 years, I’ll end up with $259,000. The highest possible marginal tax bracket that I could be in today that could change in the future that I could be in today would be about 25%, 20% for long-term capital gains at the federal level, plus four and a half percent here in Colorado, rounding up to 25%, right? If I were to liquidate this end state portfolio that grew from a hundred to $259,000, let’s assume all this started from zero. This is a hundred thousand dollars gain that we’re talking about and I’m just making a decision to sell it now or sell it in 10 years. If I take this $259,000 and I pay those taxes, I’m left with $194,000. Make sense?

Mindy:
Yes.

Scott:
If instead I sell today and I am left with $75,000 and I invest that for, or I’m sorry, in this case $65,000 is the example they’re using, and then that becomes $168,000 and then I pay taxes on it on the overall game, I’m left with something like $120,000. So it’s way more efficient or it’s substantially more efficient to keep those dollars invested and pay tax at the end than to pay tax now and pay less taxes later. So there is a real cost from a tax perspective. It’s not just like a wash on these. I still paid my taxes for three reasons, right? First, I am locking in my win.
That’s my goal here. It’s not this terminal long-term net worth number in 10 years. I want the option to play hide and seek with my kids in the next five or seven years not to have another several million dollars after they graduate college. Second, I will bet you if not in 10 years and 20 or 30 years, and I just did bet you, and in essence with my move that there is a non-zero probability that I’m actually maximizing my gains because this is true today at current tax rates. One day I believe the federal government as politics swing back and forth, will increase the marginal tax brackets for capital gains and dividends on there. And so I think that is a real risk and I’d rather lock in today than take on that risk. I could be completely wrong on that, but that is inherently a bet that I’m making here.
And then third, I’m only going to realize those gains when I think I can get better returns or lower risk with that reallocation, which I may have just done over 50 years. I certainly didn’t, but over 10 years I may have. We’ll see. So those are all things when the tax tail does not wag the strategy dog or the business dog is the real saying, but the tax is something I consider, but it is not the primary driver of moves in my portfolio. And some people around the internet who criticize realizing the realization of gains, it’s like what are you doing? Is the strategy to pay as little taxes as possible or is the strategy to build as much long-term wealth as possible and to have as much flexibility with that wealth as possible? And so part of the deal is paying taxes,

Mindy:
Yes, part of the deal is paying taxes, but in this particular instance, because your tax obligation is going to be significant this year, perhaps your tax obligation next year won’t be as significant because you didn’t sell all those stock next year. You sold them this year. So that’s why I’m saying maybe wait on the tax, maybe wait to convert to bonds until next year.

Scott:
Yeah, I don’t know. What I’ll do with that remaining piece. That’s going to be a very minor, my much bigger plays right now are going to be how do I welcome our new baby and enjoy that time for the next eight to 10 weeks. She’s doing two and a half weeks from this recording date for that. Then I will go back to how do I deploy this cash in a more meaningful way and stop getting a 4% yield to money market and move that to something that is more reasonable and more likely to beat inflation over the long term. And I’ll do that by the end of the year, and then as soon as I’ve deployed it in that private loans and real estate, then I will probably address the remaining chunk of my portfolio there. I also may just leave it a little more aggressive. I’m 34, so there is that component to it. Yeah.

Mindy:
Okay, Scott, I want to talk about sequence of returns risk.

Scott:
Yep. That’s what I’m avoiding here, right?

Mindy:
Yes, that’s what you’re avoiding. But

Scott:
Why don’t you explain this to us, what sequence of return risk is. So for folks who don’t understand that concept.

Mindy:
Yeah, so I have always heard this phrase and I didn’t really know what it meant. So I looked it up on my best friend Google. And what Google says is the sequence of returns risk, also called sequence risk, is the risk that a portfolio negative returns or a period of low returns early in retirement, just as withdrawals are starting, if a portfolio experiences a market downturn or poor returns, when withdrawals are needed, it can erode the portfolio’s value more quickly, potentially leading to a shorter retirement lifespan or the need to reduce living expenses. Imagine a portfolio experiencing a significant market crash right after retirement begins to cover expenses. The retiree may need to sell off a larger portion of their investments because it has gone down so much, potentially depleting the portfolio faster than if the market had been stable or growing. I do believe that the 4% rule takes this into account, but we are at the very beginning, hopefully near the end of the current market downturn. What if it lasts a long time?

Scott:
Well, look, that’s the big deal with the 4% rule and why the 4% rule is so obsessed over in the financial independence community. If you’re not familiar with the 4% rule, then you’re probably not ready to retire at this point, frankly, or you have so much more wealth that doesn’t really matter on front if you are. So the 4% rule, again, this is based on the idea that if you want to spend $40,000 a year and you have a million dollars, you can withdraw 4% of that million $40,000 and not run out of money in any 30 year period that we have back test for. The problem with it is that people who retire or fire when they’re 40, for example, hopefully will live longer than 30 years. They may live to 90, that’s 50 years. So your portfolio may not run out of money in 30 years, but you could be getting pretty close to zero by the time you hit 70.
And that’s a real problem. That’s what we call, that’s where sequence of return risk comes in. So if you retire with a million bucks at 60 40 stock bond portfolio and the market tanks 50% as you know it will multiple times in your lifetime because that is normal in the context of history, that could be a real problem because now you have, instead of a million dollar portfolio, the $600,000 you started with that was in the stock market is now worth $300,000 and the $400,000 you had in the bonds is now worth $500,000 because that’s why you have bonds. When the market crashes, they go up on this on that because rates come down typically in there, or that’s the theory that supports the math behind the 4% rules. Now you’re left with $800,000 instead of a million in that severe market crash. That’s a problem because then you could begin withdrawing.
You’re still withdrawing $40,000 from that. You’re withdrawing at a 5% withdrawal rate, and you could theoretically, if of certain conditions, high inflation, low returns, those kinds of things run out of money or get very, will not run out of money. You’ll come very close to depleting your portfolio in some situations less than I think a couple percentage points at a time over the ensuing 30 years. That’s sequence of return risk, right? So we want to buffer that. Most people who fire with a 60 40 stock bond portfolio here typically also have a ace in the hole. In our experience, they often have a pension that will kick in at some point in time. They often have a large cash position, one to three years of cash, for example, on top of that 60 40 stock bond portfolio, maybe a paid off house, maybe a seasonal side hustle that brings in a few thousand or 10, $20,000 in a few months of work a year. But that’s how people defray that risk in early retirement. You have that option when you’re 40. You don’t have that option when you’re 70, for example.

Mindy:
That’s a very interesting point. I am concerned for the people who have retired recently. I don’t think we’re at a position right now to be, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. But I do think that we are in a position where you need to be thinking about your actual portfolio. I think our listeners who are not in a 60 40 ish portfolio need to start thinking about where they’re going to get their money should this downturn continue. I hope that it doesn’t. I hope that we are absolutely recording this for no reason whatsoever. I’m not sure that we are.

Scott:
Yeah. Again, I just think it comes back down to what we said earlier. This is a real problem for people who have retired with a hundred percent stock portfolio. I’m sorry, this is a real problem. This could be a real problem. But the threat in a general sense, regardless of it’s now or in a couple of years or whatever, there will come a time when a market crashes. And again, that’s what I keep coming back to. This is that risk needs to be defrayed with an appropriately balanced portfolio for folks who are at or near retirement. Yes, you will. Mathematically, you can come at me and tell me that you have mathematically better odds of having much greater net worth in 30 years leaving it all in stocks, really, regardless of the current conditions. You’re right, but you won’t get Tuesday and you’re not listening to BiggerPockets money. At least you tell us you’re not. In order to have the maximum long-term net worth, you’ll listen to BiggerPockets money so you can celebrate, you can have Tuesday at the park without a care in the world in your forties or thirties.

Mindy:
Okay. Scott, one more question. Let’s talk about the people who are in the in-betweens, not the very beginning of their journey, not the end of their journey. Maybe they’re about a million dollars with goal of 2.5 million. What do you say to somebody who is thinking to themselves, oh, the dow’s down like 1500 points?

Scott:
Yeah, I think that that’s the hardest spot to really know what the right answer here is, right? Because if you’re 22 and you’re clearly not going to fire unless your income dramatically expands over the next five, 10 years as there’s a reasonable protection, it should. If you apply yourself and have the right career trajectory and those kinds of things, there’s every reason to believe your expenses can stay low. And there’s every reason to believe that a very aggressive 100% stock portfolio or even aggressive things like house hacking or those types of things are the right moves. You just know you’ll go nowhere fast if you put yourself into a very highly diversified stock bond portfolio, for example, at an early age. That’s my opinion. That’s what I would do in that situation. At the end, I’ve made my stance very clear that there needs to be, I think, a lock in the win, lock in the win and enjoy your life. Unless your goal is to make urban money, in which case there are other podcasts out there that can help you do that.
Go and build towards a hundred million or a billion dollars in wealth around there. If you’re in that kind of million and your goal is two and a half million, that’s really hard. And I bet you a lot of people are starting to worry in that category right now. And I think the answer is there’s a shift, right? If the beginning portfolio is a hundred percent stocks and the end portfolio is 60 40 or 50 50 stock bonds, you need to draw out what that end portfolio looks like and then kind of move the sliding scale along it. And this is a problem that has been solved, right? I’m not inventing anything new with this. This is a target date. The target date concept is out there. I wouldn’t go with a high fee target date fund, but if you were to find a, I think they’re starting to come out with very low fee target date portfolios here, and you can say, my retirement date I’m projecting to be in 2040, those will naturally actually have pretty good mixtures in a lot of those portfolios that will balance that sliding scale for you.
So I think that that math is that problem’s been solved, and that would be one of the first places I’d be looking. And I wouldn’t be looking at like, Hey, I’m 35 and I want to retire at 65, so my horizon’s 30 years. That’s not most people’s goal. Listening to this podcast, I’d be saying, my goal is to retire in seven to 10 years. What does my portfolio look like in that case? And you’ll be probably guided to a more conservative portfolio than you really like with those target date funds. And if you agree with me, then that may be right from it.

Mindy:
Well, Scott, I think that that is a great place to wrap up. I would love to hear from our listeners about this topic. Please email mindia biggerpockets.com, [email protected], or hop on over to our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/bp money and join in the chat there. Alright, Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen saying Stay sweet sugar beet.

 

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Home prices are falling fast in some prime real estate markets across the country while others remain stubbornly stuck. What’s the defining factor between a stable housing market and one where sellers are actively cutting prices? Housing inventory! This metric defined the 2020 – 2022 run-up in home prices, but the rubber band of demand is snapping back as buyer power grows, housing inventory rises, and investors get even better buying opportunities.

Remember when people said, “I’ll buy when prices drop”? Well, now might be the time.

ResiClub’s Lance Lambert joins us to provide a holistic view of housing inventory, prices, demand, and emerging opportunities. Lance walks through the most up-to-date data on where housing inventory is rising fast, where prices are quickly declining, and which markets are holding on as sellers remain in control.

We’ll also talk about why homebuilding costs are about to JUMP and the reason Warren Buffett sold his homebuilding stocks shortly after buying them. Will construction slow down, limiting new inventory and leading us back into ultra-low supply? If so, this could push home prices higher, creating a prime opportunity for real estate investors.

Dave:
After years of a very tight housing market, more homes are finally coming up for sale, which means that anyone looking to buy a rental property or a primary home has more options to choose from and may be able to find better prices. We’ll get into all the reasons behind this emerging trend and how you can leverage it to benefit your own portfolio on today’s show. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. My guest today on the show is Lance Lambert. Lance is co-founder and editor in chief of Resi Club, a really cool media company that tracks the US housing market, and Lance specializes in research and data. So I want to break down a few of the trends he’s seeing in the housing market right now that may indicate whether it’s a good time to buy real estate.
We’re going to talk about inventory trends, which I personally think are really the key to understanding the whole housing market because how many homes are available to buy is going to go a long way towards dictating whether you can find good deals or not. But the current inventory situation is a little bit confusing because it’s very different in different regions. What we’re seeing in Florida and Texas is almost entirely different than what we’re seeing in the Midwest and northeast. So we’re going to dig into the data with Lance. He brought all his charts with him and we’ll use those to identify which cities and states across the US might be better buyer’s markets than you’re probably hearing about in the headlines. Then later in the show we’ll discuss a few other topics Lance has written about at Resi Club. He recently put out an article about the shrinking margins for home builders, which could have huge implications on the future of single family, home construction and subsequent inventory. And we’ll also talk about the rising age of the median home buyer in America. Let’s bring on Lance. Lance, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Lance:
Thank you for having me, Dave. Housing, housing, housing. There is always so much going on in the US housing market.

Dave:
There is so much going on and you do such a good job of summarizing and visualizing everything that’s going on. I am a charts geek and you put out some of the best charts, some of the best heat maps, everything out there. I’m excited to have you here.

Lance:
Yeah, and really excited too. I think BiggerPockets, you have a huge audience and in particular, Dave, I think you put out really good smart content.

Dave:
Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. Well, let’s jump into some of the inventory trends you’re seeing right now and just for our audience, if you’re new to this concept of inventory, it’s one of the more useful metrics in the housing market, at least in my mind because it sort of measures the balance between supply and demand. There’s tons of different ways you can look at it, but generally speaking, when inventory is stable, you have equal or relatively equal amounts of buyers and sellers in the market. When inventory is going up, that typically means that you have more sellers than buyers and inventory has gone down. The reverse is true. So just wanted to provide a little bit of context there, but Lance, tell us a little bit about what trends you’re seeing in inventory right now.

Lance:
So that’s exactly it is that active inventory, not new listings, active inventory, it’s the equilibrium of supply and demand in the market. So actives can rise active inventory even if the number of listings coming on the market is very low. And the reason that it can rise is because demand could pull back so much. And that’s kind of what we’ve seen in a lot of these Sunbelt markets, these pandemic boom darlings, these remote work booms, the short-term rental booms where there was a lot of people going into these markets to buy during the pandemic housing boom, there was a lot of migration in, and what that did is it drove up home prices even more than a lot of other markets saw. So once rates moved up and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, these markets were a little more strained relative to local fundamentals.
And because the migration in, let’s take a place like Florida, they were going from between summer of 21 and summer of 22, seeing over 300,000 people on a net basis moving into the state. Now it’s only around 60 k plus, so it’s still positive, but it’s not as much as before. And so what that means is the market has to rely more on local comes to support where prices got to, that becomes a little bit of a trouble. And so it creates a greater demand shock on the market, pushes active inventory up more. Now the other factor is a lot of these Sunbelt markets are more of what economists would call supply elastic, right? Where they have more home building levels, more multifamily home building levels. And so when you’re in this constrained affordability environment and you still have that supply coming in, what has to be moved?
And so builders do a little bit of the affordability adjustments, these mortgage rate buy downs. And so instead of people having to get a 7% rate, 6.5% average 30 year fixed mortgage rate, they could go to a builder, maybe get four and a half, maybe get even three something from some of these builders, some of the deals they’re running. And so what that does is it pulls the attention of some of the buyers who would’ve otherwise wanted to buy an existing or resale home, and it pulls them to the new market. And so the existing and resale market has a harder time selling. And so the active inventory builds. And so this active inventory is really a great metric for the supply demand equilibrium. And if you see active inventory move down quickly, that’s suggesting a market that’s heating up greater competition sellers gaining power. And if you see a market where active inventory is moving up beyond the normal seasonality, that’s just a market where buyers are gaining power. And if it happens very quickly, buyers are gaining a lot of power. And so I’m going to share my screen and actually show some of the data across the country. And for everyone who’s

Dave:
Listening to this on audio, we will describe it to you in great detail.

Lance:
So this is active inventory across the country now versus the same month in 2019. And so the same month in 2019, I kind of use as a proxy for the previous norm for the housing market. And so the housing market went through the boom where active inventory across the country was down 60, 50, 70, 80%, and a lot of markets very quickly from pre pandemic 2019 levels. And then once rates shot up, active inventory on a national level has been building, but some markets have gotten back and above parts of Texas, parts of Florida, parts of the mountain west. And then there’s also this big swath still of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and then almost all the northeast, including also West Virginia and Virginia that are still very tight for active inventory. And those are the markets where sellers have the most power. So if you look at this map and you see the dark brown, that’s where sellers have the most power.
And if you see the green, that’s where buyers have the most power. On a state level, you’ll see that four states, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Tennessee are now above pre pandemic levels. Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Nebraska, Hawaii, Washington State, they’re almost pretty much there. And then you have some other markets that are kind of getting close. But if you go down, you look at a place like Connecticut where there are 3,100 homes for sale at the end of February. And if you go back to February, 2019, there were 14,000. So right now there are 3000 homes for sale and the whole state of Connecticut, and there were 14,000 homes for sale pre pandemic. And so places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois, Vermont sellers just in New Hampshire and Maine as well, sellers still have a lot of power. And there’s still a lot of other states like that. Virginia, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where things are still very tight.

Dave:
So Lance, tell me, approaching pre pandemic levels of inventory, which makes sense to me as a metric, but should that be seen as a good thing or a scary thing for, and I guess it depends on your perspective, but how do you interpret that?

Lance:
So I think the first thing to note is that we were in a very unhealthy housing market during the pandemic housing boom, home prices went up 21% in 2021 alone, which is the most ever in US history for one single, even more than any of the years during the inflationary spike of the 1970s on a nominal basis. And so that’s not healthy, that’s not sustainable, that’s not how the world should operate. And so the market we’re in is a market that is normalizing from an unsustainable increase in housing demand during the pandemic, during the pandemic housing boom, the Federal Reserve estimates that those first two years housing demand went up so much that to match it home construction housing starts would’ve needed to increase 300%. That’s not possible. Housing starts cannot go from 1.4 to then 2.8 million, and that’s only a hundred percent increase then up to 4 million and then over 5 million.
You can’t go from 1.4 million housing starts over 5 million housing starts in a short period of time. There are hard constraints on the market for supply, right? The labor force, only so many people know how to do windows, carpet construction, the foundation, all of that, right? And then there’s the supply chain dynamics where it takes years to build a supply chain for lumber, for windows, for concrete, all of that. And so housing starts moving up 10, 20, 30% is a lot, let alone to go up 300%. And so housing supply, the actual number of units in the country is not elastic like demand is. Housing demand can move very quickly. And so during the pandemic housing boom, housing demand surges, that’s all the stimulus, the ultra low rates, of course the work from home arbitrage effect all of that at play. And so as that occurs, the market cannot absorb all of that demand.
And so the demand that got to transact was the demand that paid the most, right? And so prices overheated and that’s how the market decided who got to actually purchase. And so coming out of that, we’re in this period where the housing market is trying to normalize. And so that normalization in some markets like Austin normalization means correction, home prices actually coming down and some other parts of the country. It hasn’t quite been that it’s just been active inventory starting to build. But to answer your question, I think zoomed out. We don’t want to stay where we were in 2021 long term, but in the short term, for some people in the industry, different stakeholders, it can be jarring.

Dave:
Lance, thank you so much for this explanation. I do want to ask you how all of this will impact housing prices, but first we have to take a quick break and before we go to break, just wanted to say that this week’s bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund, invest in private market real estate with the Fundrise Flagship Fund. You could check it out at fundrise.com/pockets to learn more. We’ll be right back. Hey everyone, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Lance Lambert. We are talking all about the, what I think is fascinating topic of real estate inventory. We’ve been talking about some of the overall trends and how inventory has been shifting upward over the last couple of years, and that there’s basically four states right now that have inventory above pre pandemic levels with another couple of states getting close. Lance, I’m curious, do you think that these markets where inventory is either close or above 2019 levels have a risk of price declines? I mean, some of ’em are already seeing price declines, but do you think that’s sort of a trend that’s going to continue?

Lance:
Yeah, so my view of active inventory is that when you see big increases in active inventory, especially if they happen quickly, that is a market where the absorption usually has shifted, where homes are having a harder time selling, and so they’re beginning to pile up on the market. It’s not necessarily that there’s a lot of people in Florida right now who are selling, but it’s that people who are selling in Florida are having a harder time selling. And so the active inventory, what is available in any given month is rising. And so as that has occurred, we’ve already seen pricing weakness in Florida. And so here I have the markets that have enough condos to be measured for condo prices. And you can see that condo prices are pretty much down across the state, and you can go through a lot of these markets down eight, 10, 9%, 13%, and it’s had the most impact on older condo buildings.
So condo buildings built in the OTTs are weaker for pricing than condos built in. The 2000 and tens condos built in the 1990s are seeing bigger price drops than condos built in. The aughts. Condos built in the eighties are seeing bigger price drops than condos built in the nineties, and you can just keep going back every decade. And then for the single family market for Florida, it’s a little more resilient in some pockets, especially in some of the northern Florida markets, it’s been a little bit more stable or it’s been a little bit more balanced as a market. But in southwest Florida, places like Sarasota, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, pun goda, we’ve seen price declines outright for single family as well. A part of that is that South Florida saw a bigger pullback and net domestic migration once the pandemic housing boom ended. And actually some of the pockets of southwest Florida temporarily saw net out migration. Some of the people who moved in during the pandemic moved out. So that created a greater demand shock. And so we’re seeing prices fall in some pockets of Florida, but if you go across the country, most of the country is still seeing prices either go sideways or a little bit up, and a lot of that is the Northeast and the Midwest, but it’s definitely not anything close to what you saw during the pandemic housing boom.

Dave:
So I just want to rehash some of what Lance showed us here in case you’re listening. Basically, Lance, the condo market, when you pulled that up, he was showing a map in Florida all red. There was basically only Miami and the Miami area was showing blue. And then when you look at the single family homes, it was mostly southwest Florida, that was red. There was pockets of growth there in Tallahassee, Gainesville, Orlando, that sort of thing. How closely do you think this map correlates to the inventory question that we were talking about earlier? If you overlay these, would they look almost exactly the same where you could sort of use inventory to predict these future price declines?

Lance:
Here is a map of where inventory is back to or above pre pandemic levels, and that’s the green areas. And then this is how home prices have shifted since their respected peak in 2022. And you will see that the markets where inventory is back to or above pre pandemic levels correlates with where prices have declined from their peak and that the places where things have stayed very tight active inventory has not built up much. Those are the places where prices have actually moved up a little bit more since their 2022 peak.

Dave:
One last question here on inventory, Lance. I am like anyone else, I see these constant headlines that are like inventory is up 80% or 70% in any given market and it’s looking over maybe the last year. How important do you think that recent trend is? Because as you said, inventory is down so far during the pandemic, does it matter if it’s shifting from last year to this year or is the comparison to right now to 2019 really what matters?

Lance:
I do think that 2019 is a really great reference point, and it’s not necessarily that a market today that gets back to 2019 is back to being a 2019 market because what took them to getting back to 2019 was the fact that the market was so unhealthy and that a lot of the homes for sale couldn’t transact. So I’m not saying that a market that is back to pre pandemic levels today is the same as a 2019 normal market, but it is a market that has seen softening and weakness to get back to that level. And so the interpretation of inventory over time is going to change and that this 2019 reference point, if you interpret it a year, 2, 3, 4 years down the road could shift. But I do think it is a really good reference point. And what I would be looking at in my market is pretty much this, looking at the actual number of inventory for sale and seeing how it shifted and if it’s moving very quickly, especially in a local market that’s telling you there’s weakness there. But if you’re in a market where it’s like, let’s take Kansas, this is like a slow grind back up, well, that’s probably a market where sellers still have more power than what you’re hearing about in these headlines. Even given that the percentage change for inventory might rank kind of high,

Dave:
That’s super helpful and a really important takeaway for everyone in our audience right now as we’ve been talking about inventory is super important. If there’s one metric honestly that you’re going to track to understand what’s going on in your market, this is the one I look at. And as Lance said, comparing it to 2019 to 2025, if you’re going to do just one thing, that might be the thing for you to do to understand your market health. Lance and his company Resi Club do a great job of doing that. But there’s tons of other places where you can also just look up this data for free. We talk about them a lot on the show, but you can also just Google this and check this out. It’s a great, great thing for you to do for yourself.

Lance:
And if they sign up for the Resi Club newsletter, go to resi club analytics.com. In my free list, I send out the state inventory. Datas like this every month to people.

Dave:
Awesome. All right. We do need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to ask you, Lance, about a couple other articles unrelated to inventory that you wrote about construction costs and first time home buyers. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Resi clubs, Lance Lambert. We’re talking all sorts of different things in the housing market. We just had a long great conversation about inventory, but I want to shift gears here a little bit. Lance, talk about two different articles you wrote about construction in general. The first one was about cost breakdowns for single family homes and just the general cost of construction, which to me is so important with the future long-term trajectory of the housing market. So can you just fill us in a little bit about construction costs and trends in that industry?

Lance:
Yes. So construction costs, just like home prices went up a lot during the pandemic housing boom, and there hasn’t been much relief for construction costs. The one area of relief is like framing lumber, but the problem there is that while it’s coming off those peaks that it’s all in 21 and 2022, is that there is a tariff scare, right? And it’s not just what Trump’s talking about doing. It’s also the fact that we have this system for softwood lumber coming from Canada that goes through an automatic review for duties. And the duties this year are expected to double, and that’s without anything else that Trump does. So if Trump were to actually put tariffs on Canada, that would put even more pressure upward on lumber. And even if he doesn’t, there’s still going to be upward pressure on lumber. And that’s been one of the few areas of relief. And so in terms of construction costs up 40, 50% for most categories that you look at.

Dave:
Yeah. So do you have any expectation or idea of how tariffs will impact this further? I mean, do you think it will be exactly equal to the amount of the tariff if it’s a 20% increase on appliances, let’s just say, do you think that will correspond almost one to one?

Lance:
It’s hard to say, and it’s also hard to say what actually is going to incur with the tariffs, right?

Dave:
Yeah. We just don’t know at this point

Lance:
Exactly. I think a lot of what’s been talked about for China, I think that’s probably going to go into effect. But what Trump is talking about with Mexico and Canada, those might be bargaining chips for other types of deals that we reach with them. Maybe it’s getting Canada and Mexico to actually also put on tariffs on China. So it is really hard to tell what would actually happen, but if it does occur, it would be a shock for different categories. And even if it doesn’t, I think there is still a shock coming for lumber and for wood over the next year. So if you look at the breakdowns from builders, and this is over the past two years, the biggest category is framing, including the roof, and a lot of that is the lumber. And so you can see that’s been one of the few areas they’ve actually seen relief, but now that’s one of the ones that they’re going to get some upward pressure on.

Dave:
All right, so we’re looking here at Lance’s chart and what we’re seeing is that lumber, yeah, was one of the places that there was actually some relief from 2022 to 2024, but we’re looking at electricals up plumbing, hvac, wall finishing cabinets, roofing. And so this just really makes me wonder about trends in construction right now because if rates stay high, right, isn’t there a reasonable case that construction’s going to slow down again, even for single family?

Lance:
So one of the challenges here is that when inflation was roaring in 21 into 22, builders had a lot of pricing power. And so as things were running up, they could just pass it to the consumer. There was an unlimited number amount of housing demand out there essentially is what it felt like to builders. But now that shifted, builders don’t have all the pricing power, but on the other side they’re getting squeezed by some of these higher components. And what’s occurring here is that between some of these markets like Texas and Florida where they’re having to spend more on incentives and maybe bring down net effective prices, and then these increase on the inputs, it’s compressing the margins. And so it could in some of these markets begin to have an impact on activity for single family.

Dave:
So that actually reminds me of another article of yours that I read about builders margins shrinking. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that?

Lance:
Yeah, so what’s been happening to builders is that during the pandemic housing boom, they had pretty much unlimited pricing power and their margins soared. A lot of these builders, if you go look at their earnings reports, had the greatest ever profit margins during the pandemic housing boom as they just had so much pricing power, even though a lot of these costs were rising. But what we’ve seen since then is margin compression from a lot of the builders is they’ve done affordability adjustments to kind of meet the market, but now we’re starting to see a little bit of another leg down for some of these margins at some of these builders. And so Lennar, their forecast is that Q1 will be their lowest gross margin in a decade. And then even the most resilient builder out there, the publicly traded, which is Toll Brothers, and their typical home is around a million dollars even they are seeing a bit more margin compression than was expected. This is what Toll Brothers CEO said the other day. While demand has been solid in our first quarter, we’ve seen mixed results so far for the spring season. And when I talk to a lot of the people in my network, spring’s not necessarily as good as they were hoping for. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a terrible spring, but it’s not necessarily as good as they were hoping for so far as of the end of February into early March. Got it.

Dave:
Okay.

Lance:
And so what does this mean from a home buyer perspective this year? It means that in builder communities where the builders are set on trying to maintain sales, so they’ll do adjustments to meet the market in these places, like in pockets of Florida and Texas where there’s a lot of spec inventory and they got to move, it means that the retail buyer could see some deals from some of these builders in the markets where they have more spec inventory. Then from a seller’s perspective, if you’re in these markets where builders have a lot of spec inventory that they’re trying to sell at discounts, it’s going to create some pressure for you and greater cooling and softening in your own market as some of those buyers who would’ve otherwise looked at the resale and existing market turn their attention to the new market.

Dave:
Last topic I wanted to cover today on your reporting is just about the median age of a first time home buyer. I thought this was super interesting. Can you just give us the headline here?

Lance:
Yeah. So over the past three decades, we’ve seen the median first time home buyer age go from 28 years in 1991 to now as of 2020 4, 38. So back in 1991, the typical first time home buyer in the US was 28 years old. In 2024, the typical first time home buyer is 38. So over three decades it’s went up 10 years. I’ve had some people message me after I put this out that, oh Lance, that’s only because life expectancies went up so much. I pulled numbers for life expectancy. It’s only went up less than two years during this 30 year period. And so it’s not all because of life expectancy. And I think what’s occurring is a few factors. One is we have a secular shift happening not just in the US but across developed worlds where people are going to school longer, they are marrying later, they are having kids later, and when they do have kids, they’re having fewer kids and then they’re buying homes later.
And then the other factor is that people are also living longer, and this is more for the distribution of household size, which we’re seeing an increase in one household sizes and two household sizes, and everything else is decreasing, but the composition of the homeowner is getting shifted out as people live longer as well. And so what we’re seeing here is that the typical age of repeat buyers has gone up from 42 to 61, and all home buyers has gone up from 35 to 56. And the other factor of course, as well, which has kind of pushed this up over the past two years has been the deterioration in affordability. And so a lot of the people who are older, they have a lot of equity, 40% of the US homeowners their primary residence, they don’t have a mortgage, it’s paid off. And so for those folks, they don’t have a lock and effective rates If they want to sell and buy something else, more of them are doing it. But on the first time side, the people who are financing it more likely to finance it, more of them have pulled back from the market than the all cash buyers because of where rates have gone to. And that’s put additional upward pressure on the median first time home buyer age, sending it from just a couple years ago at 33 up to now 38.

Dave:
It’s just so interesting, these big cultural dynamics. And I think for anyone listening who doesn’t yet own a home, you get it right? Affordability is low and that’s making it really challenging to buy a home. I’m curious, Lance, from an investor’s perspective, do you think this changes in any way the makeup, the make up, the demand for rental properties? If people are waiting longer to buy a home, does this mean we’re going to have more families renting single family homes or apartments? That’s been sort of on my mind about my own investing decisions.

Lance:
It’s tough to say. I think there was that assumption by some when rates kind of went up a lot in 22, and it’s like, well, a lot of people are not going to be able to afford now, and so they’ll have to rent. But then there was the factor of often historically when the purchase market softens, the rental market also softens because some of the dynamics that led to the softening in purchase led to the softening and rentals. And of course there was a lot of the supply that was financed a lot of the multifamily projects that were financed during the period of ultra low rates. And so as that kind of rolled in and all those completions came in, that kind of softened the market for rentals and kind of negated some of the effects that some people were hoping from the softening of the purchase market.
But as we look out, I think the biggest thing is if we see the completions for multifamily roll over and in some markets roll over harder, I think that will begin to put some positive momentum into the rental market. And maybe some of these other effects that we’re talking about here could have some impact. I think the biggest impact is really the secular impact, which is a lot of people rented in their twenties. That’s been historically true for a long time, and a lot of that product was multifamily, but as people were spending more of their thirties and forties renting, that’s creating greater opportunities for the single family rental market and for also kind of that mixed product, some of these townhomes. And I think that’s why we’ve seen so much expansion over the past decade in the build to rent side of the business.

Dave:
That’s super. Yeah. Thank you for explaining that, Lance, because if you all have heard me talk about the upside era and sort of the different ways to look at investing right now and evaluating deals, one of my theses is about future rent growth. And although I’m not saying it’s a good thing that housing prices are unaffordable and people are going to be renting longer, it does just seem that the data is pointing that way. And it does make me wonder, and I think as investors, it’s something to think about what type of housing units might be more in demand in the future based on some of these trends. So that’s sort of why I wanted to get at that. And thank you for explaining that to us, Lance. Alright, well that is what we got for today’s show. Lance, thank you so much. There’s three really interesting topics. You covered them all in great detail, really great explanations. Thank you for sharing your reporting and information with us here today.

Lance:
Yeah, thank you for having me Dave. And if people want to follow my work, get some of my stories in their inbox, they can go to resi club analytics.com, just put in their email and they’ll start getting these data stories.

Dave:
Awesome. And thank you all so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.

 

 

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Many “experts” say you need a real estate LLC once you buy a rental property, but are they right? They also say you need money and great credit to invest in real estate, but we know of other creative ways to get started. Stick around to learn how!

Welcome back to another Rookie Reply! Ashley and Tony have pulled more of your recent questions from the BiggerPockets Forums, and today’s first question comes from an investor who just bought their first rental property. Do they need to set up a limited liability company (LLC) right off the bat, or can they hold off until they grow their real estate portfolio? We’ll show them the best ways to protect their personal assets!

We’ll also hear from an investor who wants to get into house hacking. The only problem? They live in an expensive market, and the deal they’re looking at doesn’t pencil out. Could pivoting to another investing strategy make it profitable? Finally, a lack of money keeps many beginners from breaking into real estate, but it doesn’t have to. We’ll share some creative ways to kickstart your investing journey if you don’t have a ton of money or credit!

Looking to invest? Need answers? Ask your question here!

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Ashley:
Creating your own LLC is talked about constantly on YouTube. Everyone says you need it as an entrepreneur, but is it maybe overkill for a rookie investor?

Tony:
In this episode, we’ll also cover house hacking and expensive real estate markets and how it can be done. We’ll cover strategy and to give you some actionable advice if you’re new to the world of real estate investing.

Ashley:
I am Ashley Kehr.

Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson

Ashley:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast.

Tony:
Alright, so our first question today and today’s rookie reply, this question says, hi y’all. I’m new to real estate investing and recently bought my first property a few months ago and got it rented out. I’m thinking about the future and how I will purchase properties in the future. I often hear you should get an LLC to protect yourself in case something goes wrong. Is that only useful if you have a large portfolio? Is that worth looking into right now as I’m only at the beginning of my journey open to any suggestions, insights, or past experiences? So I couldn’t agree more actually. I feel like we hear a lot about the LLCs and I feel like a lot of the real estate influencers have viral videos saying, here’s how I structure all my different properties. Everyone’s doing the same video with the right board, but I’ll give a quick anecdote and I want to get your take on it as well.
But we actually interviewed Brian Bradley and he’s an attorney that specializes in asset protection and I heard him tell this anecdote once about asset protection, kind of being getting dressed for a winter storm and depending on how bad the weather is, that dictates how many layers of protection you need as you go out on a nice warm, sunny day. You don’t need that much, right? You got shorts and a t-shirt. But if Ashley’s getting snowed out in Buffalo, maybe she’s got on long Johns and then she’s got her clothes and she’s got a light jacket, then her overcoat, then whatever else, I don’t know, it doesn’t snow in California, so I’m making things up right now. But you get what I’m saying, right? You need more layers as things get more intense. And he said building protection around your real estate portfolio is the same thing as your risk exposure gets bigger so too should your asset protection. But he’s seen people who kind of jump too deep at the beginning and they’re wearing parkas when it’s 80 degrees and sunny outside. So just keep that metaphor in the back of your mind that what you do today doesn’t necessarily have to be what you have five or 10 or 15 years down the road. So Ash, what’s just your initial take on this question?

Ashley:
Yeah, so I actually just interviewed Brian Bradley again on the BiggerPockets podcast. So Dave Meyer is having a baby. So I took over one episode while he’s on his paternity leave and I brought Brian Bradley on and his recommendation was at least an LLC. So he went through the layers of protection. So if you have a high net worth and you have a lot of assets and you have a lot to lose, that’s where you really need to go into holding companies and trust and really layer those things. If you don’t a lot to lose. So maybe you rent your apartment, you drive or ride a bicycle, you don’t even own a car, or maybe you don’t have any equity in your car and your underwater on it. You have just enough in savings for your reserves, for your rental property and you really don’t have that much that if somebody came to sue you, they could take it.
So then it’s not as important to have all these layers of protection. But Brian’s recommendation was that you definitely should have an LLC that you should run your numbers, making sure that you can afford the cost of an LLC. I don’t know how much I agree with that. For your first rental property, I did several rentals upfront with just having them in my personal name and I went the umbrella policy route, but obviously Brian’s an attorney and he knows a lot better as to how to actually protect yourself. So I guess there’s that risk I was taking in the very beginning by putting the properties in my personal name, but you can get the umbrella policy to kind of cover if you were to get sued. And there are the two differences. So the LLC is giving you protection against getting sued that they can’t come up after your personal assets. The umbrella policy is giving you money to pay for attorneys or pay for a settlement. So there are two different types of protection. So kind of keep that in mind as you’re deciding which route you should go.

Tony:
You could make this so much more complicated than it needs to be. And much like you Ashley, I bought my first several properties without an LLC and again, we just didn’t have a whole heck of a lot that we were at risk of losing. The portfolio wasn’t that big at the time. So for us, I think we were okay with the kind of risk reward there. But I think where I see a lot of rookies getting caught up is that they put the cart before the horse and they try and set up, Hey, I need my holding company, I need my Delaware LLC, I need my trust, I need this, I need that. And then we ask, okay, well how many properties are you trying to protect? Like, oh, I don’t have any yet. And to me it’s such a backwards way of doing things.
Get the asset to protect first put your focus on protecting the asset and then on acquiring the asset, I should say, put your focus on acquiring the asset, then you can go back and make sure you dial in the protection piece. But I see a lot of people who do the incorrect way. I also think, and this is from the conversation I’ve actually had with Brian and you just talked to him recently, so I’m sure you’ve got the same insight, Ashley, but LLCs also aren’t like the end all be all for asset protection and there are still ways, or even if you have an LLC, someone could still come after you personally. It depended on the severity of what happened or how you structured things or how you run your LLC. So there are still ways to kind of brand called it like piercing the corporate veil where you might still be at risk. So I also don’t want people to have this maybe false sense of security that just the LLC by itself is the thing that’s going to save everything because it is called a limited liability company, not the foolproof liability company. It’s called a limited liability company.

Ashley:
So we have to take our first ad break, but we’ll be right back after this. Okay, welcome back. We’re here with our second question on today’s rookie reply. So this question is we are looking at a property in the 600 thousands and up to do a house hack in a great and popular location with rising rents and upside on price with renovations, but also that will cost in the short term to improve the property. However, with interest rates in the high sixes, it would probably not cashflow after moving out with 5% down mortgage all in would be 4,700, 10% down would be 4,500 per month, 15% down 4,300 per month, 20% down 4,000 per month. The upstairs rental expectation is $2,500. The downstairs 1600, which would equal 4,100. Long story short, probably a negative cash flowing property seems house hacking or even a duplex in Denver is difficult to find positive cashflow.
Our first property we are living in now would have positive cashflow if we moved out, but that’s because we had a lower rate. Should we stay away from this property or is there a reason to consider buying this property? So Tony, I think the first thing is that they have a property now they could move out of and it’s going to be a cashflowing rental. Great start right there. Now their dilemma is they can’t find another house to move into that is going to cashflow if they move out. So my consideration here is how long would you want to stay in this house hack? So is this going to be two years, one year? Could it be five years? In five years you may have the option to refinance. Hopefully rents have gone up on the property where now you’re getting some wiggle room. I’ve definitely seen rent at my properties increase over five years.
So I guess that would kind of be an unknown as to what would be your time commitment to moving into this property. Because if you were going to house hack had half of your mortgage payment made for you, that’s cheaper than going and living in a single family house and paying your full mortgage. So you’re saving on your cost of living and then how long would you want to live there until could rent out the property? Or maybe it doesn’t make sense to actually live in the property for two years and to not rent it out after you leave, but to actually sell the property. So is there a value add that you can put into the property where it now becomes a live and flip and you can sell it for tax-free gains at the end of two years?

Tony:
Yeah, Ash, you read my mind exactly on the live and flip strategy. I think that’s what it comes down to, right? It’s like I think a lot of times as investors we kind of take a black and white approach to the deals that are presented to us not realizing there’s really a spectrum of opportunities that we can go after. And in this question, they very clearly said that the property they’re looking at is in a great and popular location with rising rents and upside on price with renovations. So it sounds like that you’re potentially getting this for a good deal and that yeah, if you made those renovations that you would have some equity being kind of forced, some forced appreciation with this deal. So I think your comment, Ashley, of doing this as a live-in flip could make a ton of sense and now they’ve built up a bunch of cash maybe two years or three years down the road and just transfer in a better place.
They can go out, deploy that capital, maybe get another house hack the cash flow is a little bit better. I think the second piece to this though is, and again this goes back to the kind of black and white, is they’re looking at this just from a strict traditional long-term rental basis. And I wonder are there maybe some other strategies that you could leverage to improve the cashflow on this deal? Now I know Denver short-term rental laws are a little strict. However, I do know, I believe, and someone can check me if I’m wrong, but I believe that there are certain pockets of Denver, like certain neighborhoods where you can short-term rent. And I also believe that I think if you’re living in it, I think there’s a little bit of flexibility there as well. I could be wrong on that piece, but even if traditional short term isn’t an option for you, could you midterm one of these units, does that give you more than the $4,100 per month in rental revenue?
Could you do something like renting by the room where you’re finding local, everyone’s always moving to Denver and when they get there, they typically need somewhere to stay. Could you be that resource for the person that’s moving to Denver to say, Hey, here’s a furnace room rental with a bunch of other people who are transplanted to Denver. They’ve got a little bit of a community there as well. So I think I would try and see if there are other options aside from a traditional long-term rental to see if maybe you can get the rents up above that or $5,000 per month where you get a little bit more cashflow.

Ashley:
Yeah, I love the idea of renting out by the room. I know the midterm rental space is big in Denver, but renting out the room I think is a great idea. We’ve had a couple of guests come on and talk about the advantages of co-living and we’ve heard their cashflow numbers, which are amazing. So I think while you’re living in the property, you could kind of experiment with that unit as to let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s try this and see how that goes. And then when you move out of the property, you could also have one unit doing midterm rentals and the other unit doing rent by the room or long-term rentals for just one family. So I like the option that you’re going to move into a two unit so that you have that flexibility to maybe have a long-term rental in there to stabilize the property knowing that you’re at least locked in for a year of rental payments and then maybe try short-term rental with the other one.

Tony:
And I think just one last thing to call out here too is just the numbers that we have, where did you actually land on those numbers for your rental income? Did you talk to a property manager and they kind of provided those numbers to you? Was it you doing your own homework? And if so, where did you go to get the data? I think just validating those to ensure that you’ve actually got the right projections. Because what if you’re saying that the total rents are only 4,100, but if you actually go out and talk to a property manager like, man, I can rent this place out for like six grand a month, now you’re off by quite a big amount. So I think going back and validating those numbers will also maybe give you some confidence on what strategy, if any, makes the most sense for you to go forward with buying this property.

Ashley:
Okay. We’re going to take a quick add break here, but we’ll be right back after this. Alright, let’s jump back in and before we get to our next question, make sure you guys head over to the Real Estate Ricky YouTube channel if you’re not already watching here and make sure that you are subscribed to our channel. We are trying to hit 100,000 subscribers, so it’d be really exciting for us. We would love it if you guys would be able to go ahead and do that if you’re not already subscribed and make sure you’re following us on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, so onto our last question today. This question says I am 18 years old with very little credit history and little capital. I am eager to start but can’t get around the glaring issue of not having initial capital. So I was wondering if there are any methods you guys would use to raise capital if you were in my shoes, or is it just time to put my head down and put in long hours? This is a great question.

Tony:
Yeah. First, can we just give this person asking this question a big round of applause for being 18, posting in the BiggerPockets forms and looking for support. It’s like I think if Ash and I have both started at 18, we would be, I can’t imagine where our portfolios would be today if we had that much of a head start. So kudos to this person for being eager to get started.

Ashley:
Yeah, God, 18 man, going off to college definitely was not thinking about buying a hollows, real estate investing, any kind of investing at that time.

Tony:
The question says, what are some methods to raise capital? Or is it just time to put my head down and put in long hours? I think the answer is yes, it is time to put your head down and put in long hours, but it’s like how are you going to leverage those long hours? What kind of work is actually going into that to make the most value from it? Now, obviously at 18, yeah, no one’s going to expect you to have a ton of capital, a ton of credit to be able to go out there and do those things. I think that the best thing that you can do right now is leverage what you have in abundance, which is your time and your energy. And if you were to come to a place like BP Con, which has happened this year in Vegas, so make sure you guys are out there, but if this person were to come to Vegas and they were at BP Con and they just shared their story, I can only imagine how many seasoned investors or new investors with capital would say, man, I would love to work with this kid.
So take what you have in abundance, which is your time, which is your energy, and leverage that to start providing value to the people who do have the capital, who do have the credit, who can get approved for the mortgage. You can cover the down payments and there’s so many different things you can do. Can you underwrite all their deals for them? You say, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Tony and Ashley, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to underwrite deals in your chosen market every single day in life. Find one that makes sense for you. But all I ask is that when we do this deal, kind of get a small sliver of equity, can you door knock? Hey Mr. Tony, Mrs. Ashley, I got this list of properties that you’re looking at in Buffalo that you’re looking at in SoCal. I’m going to go knock on the doors of every single one of these homeowners and see what I can do for you. Those are the things that take a lot of time that don’t require any capital. So I would really, really put a big premium on trying to identify how can I provide value to the people that have what it is that I need and how can I give them what it is that they need and make it a win-win.

Ashley:
One thing that I would do is get a job in real estate, if you can. Tony mentioned some of the things is to going and working for another investor, be a material runners. I got, Daryl would love it if somebody came and said, I’ll go to Lowe’s. I’ll pick up your materials. I’ll deliver them to the job site. Wait, you need a screw, I’m on it. I’m going to go and do it. So there’s plenty of different ways to get involved on the real real estate side of things, manage a real estate investors, social media, things like that. Look at your job right now, what your W2 job is or what is your skillset? Is there any way that that can kind of translate into real estate? I’ll never forget me and Tony at a meetup and somebody said, I just have no skills that I can add value to partner with someone.
And Tony is already smiling. He knows exactly what I’m going to say. And we said, okay, well what do you do for your job? And he says, I’m a project manager. The next thing we said was, who here would love someone to manage their rehab projects? And all these hands shot up? So there’s so many skill sets that can translate into real estate. But if I was this person and I want to gain more capital, I would be looking for partners. I would be putting it out there saying, Hey, I want to get invested in real estate. I would figure out exactly what strategy I want to do. So is it actually in house hack your first property, which is a wonderful way to get started. You need low money down. You can get roommates, you rent by the room, you could rent out another unit.
But I would hustle. I would be working night and day. I think about when I was in high school, I didn’t work a lot in college unfortunately. So I’ve basically spent anything I’ve made in high school, but I just remember how much money I would’ve make being a hostess and a waitress. And I just wish that I would’ve continued that hustle throughout college and it would’ve set me up even better in life if I would’ve done that. So I think when you’re 18 or anytime as to what can you gain from a W2 job, what can you gain from side hustles? What can you gain from being a DoorDash delivery person? The one thing that I would not do, if your goal is to invest in real estate, I would not start a business. I would not dump money into building a brand marketing all these expenses.
A lot of businesses don’t make money for a while because they put so much energy and effort into getting their materials, getting their supplies. Unless this is something that is going to take you very low effort, low cost. So maybe it’s mowing lawns in your neighborhood where you already have clientele. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on marketing. You don’t have to hire other people to work for you and pay payroll taxes. And now you’re so busy doing the bookkeeping for this lawn care business that you created that you don’t even have time to think about real estate. So that’s where I would put in a word of caution. Like if you’re going to go on Etsy and sell some things on Etsy, make sure that this is actually going to be an income generating thing from day one. And it’s not going to be something you have to build up and put a ton of time and effort in to actually make income off of it. If your true goal is to actually invest in real estate and build capital for real estate, I would do something that is more quick and more effective to get that fast cash.

Tony:
I love, love, love that advice. Ash. I couldn’t agree with you more. Like if I were giving advice to my younger self, two things I would focus on. Number one, speed of acquiring knowledge, which it feels like this person’s already doing because they’re submitting questions in the forums that I would read as many books as I can, listen to, as many podcasts as I can, watch as many YouTube videos, talk to as many investors as I can, build your knowledge base and the sooner and faster and more quickly you can do that, the better. But the second thing I would focus on, which is what you touched on, is my ability to earn income. And I love your idea of getting into real estate related fields, but honestly, the one thing I think I would focus on at this age, I would get into a sales position.
And the reason I say that is because that gives you the highest earning potential, unless you’re going to be like a doctor or lawyer, whatever it may be. But a lot of times your ability to earn income is directly tied to your effort that you put into the position. And at 18 years old, you don’t have to worry about having a down sales month because you don’t have a mortgage, you don’t have kids, you don’t have someone else that’s depending on you. So you can take those kind of ups and downs to come along with building a sales career, but that is going to give you, I think, the biggest income opportunity. And then you start taking that money, you can start funneling it back into your real estate business. So building your income potential, focusing on that while also building your knowledge, those two things together, I think will put you in the best spot over the next 24, 36, 5 years to really get that first deal done.

Ashley:
So Tony, if you were 18 right now and you took your own advice and you were going to go into sales, what would be the thing you were selling? What would you try and go get a job selling for?

Tony:
I would honestly probably go into some sort of B2B sales business to business sales. And the reason I say that is because a contract are typically bigger and bigger contracts means bigger commissions. That’s what I would try and try and focus on selling. So yeah, what company? I don’t know, but just in general, selling to businesses typically means higher cost per client or more revenue per client than going business to consumer.

Ashley:
No, no, that’s great. I was just curious, was it like, oh, I would go into car sales because I feel like there’s huge potential there or whatever, but yeah, I was just curious on your thought for that. But yeah, that’s a great point. Going business to business is going to bring you more volume and higher dollar.

Tony:
I have a friend who runs an HVAC company here in SoCal, and he and his dad had been running it for, I dunno, close to 10 years now probably, but they started off like most small businesses taking whatever jobs that they could. And a lot of that was just residential stuff. Someone calls and says, Hey, my heater’s on the fritz, or my thing’s not working, whatever it may be. And now they’ve shipped it completely to commercial and they do all the grocery stores that are in their neighborhood now are their customers. And he’s like, dude, the businesses they want their HVAC system fixed yesterday and they’re going to pay a premium to get it done. Whereas when we were doing residential stuff, they’re going to nickel and dime us for a job that’s like 1% of what we get for the commercial businesses. So I think going after some kind of commercial sales would be super, super beneficial at that age.

Ashley:
Okay. So Tony, one of the things you did say also is that you would fast track your knowledge and learning. So do you have any book recommendations for this person?

Tony:
I do actually two books. One that I just reread, another one that I read for the first time. But I would read Millionaire Next Door, great book about just living frugally and what true wealth looks like because it’s not what we typically associate it with. And the second book, and this is one that I just recently read for the first time, but it’s called The Psychology of Money, and that book is exactly what it sounds like. It is just about the mindset around money. And I think if you can take those two mindsets and let that kind of grow with you as your income starts to grow, as your knowledge base starts to grow, that’s going to give you the best foundation to really maximize on all the money that you’ve been able to make.

Ashley:
Well, are you guys enjoying our 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 so much for being part of our podcast community,

Tony:
And we just want to give a special shout out to someone who recently left us in Honest Review on Apple Podcast and it says, this is from Geer Dew. I just hope I’m saying that name the right way. But it says, great podcast, five stars. I love how Tony and Ashley follow up with questions targeted for Ricky’s. Keep doing what you’re doing. Great job. So we appreciate all the Ricky’s that are listening and like Ashley said, took a few quick moments to leave that review. If you’re enjoying the show,

Ashley:
I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Ricky Reply.

 

 

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In This Episode We Cover:

  • Whether you need a limited liability company (LLC) for your first rental property
  • The differences between umbrella policies and LLCs (and which one YOU need)
  • How to create more cash flow from a house hack (even in a pricey market!)
  • How to start your real estate investing journey without much money or great credit
  • Learning the industry and making extra money with real estate side hustles
  • And So Much More!

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Buying real estate with friends or business partners often seems like a good idea, but it can be an exasperating experience when it goes wrong. With homeownership and investing becoming increasingly difficult amid high interest rates and property prices, more people are turning to “friends with benefits” to get on the property ladder.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the average age of first-time homebuyers has increased from 35 to 38 over the last year. NAR data shows that first-time buyers had a median household income of $97,000, up from $95,900 the prior year and reflecting an increase of $26,000 in the last two years. Repeat buyers had a median household income of $114,300, up from $111,700 the previous year. 

It’s important to remember that those numbers represent a national demographic. Buying is even more prohibitive in pricier neighborhoods.

Co-Buyers Make Up 30% of U.S. Home Sales

According to cobuy.io, a specialized app that helps co-buyers with documents and information for a $270 flat fee, co-buyers today make up 30% of all U.S. home sales.

Half the co-buyers in 2024 bought with a spouse or partner, 9% bought with a relative, and 7% with a friend, per Zillow research. The overriding reason people co-bought houses was financial. According to Bankrate’s 2024 Down Payment Survey, over 50% of respondents said that finding the cash for a down payment was out of reach. 

“We became co-owners of a brownstone in New York with three friends, where we still live,” Nick Allardice, 38, who co-bought his home with friends in 2021, told Business Insider. “The brownstone was easier for us all to afford because we pulled together and saved on all the costs associated with buying a property.”

“There’s been a ripple effect, too,” Allardice continued. “In 2022, three other friends replicated our exact model a few blocks away in their own three-unit brownstone.”

Non-Spousal Co-Buying Is on the Rise

Unsurprisingly, co-buying is most common in pricier states such as New York, California, and Washington. Non-spousal co-buying is particularly on the rise in these states. Co-buy.io and Nestment.com focus on helping buyers navigate this arrangement’s legal and logistical aspects.

“For the past 50 years, property prices have way outpaced wage growth, and that’s created an incredibly large gap,” Nestment founder Niles Lichtenstein told CBS News.

Though co-buying has some similarities to syndication, co-buying usually applies to small multifamilies (of two to four units) or sometimes larger single-family homes with multiple floors, and more buyers are generally on an equal footing investment-wise, putting these properties in a class by themselves.

“It was important that everybody understood we were not roommates, but had two distinct units connected in a home,” Harlem, New York, brownstone co-buyer Claire Breedlove told the New York Times. “We plan to live as neighbors, not roommates.” She and her co-buyer and friend, Charlotte Renfield-Miller, invested in a two-family brownstone that was a former art gallery and cost $2.795 million, with annual taxes of about $8,500.

“We tend to see eye to eye, but we wanted some sort of legal structure to make sure our friendship was never going to suffer because of a co-purchase,”  Renfield-Miller explained.

The agreement covered future possibilities, such as one person wanting to move or sell. “If anything does arise, we already know what the plan is without having to come up with it on the spot,” Renfield-Miller said.

Advantages of Co-owning Investment Properties

  • Easier to qualify for mortgages: This is the main reason for co-buying. Qualifying for loans has become increasingly difficult in recent years.
  • FHA mortgage compliant: One of the attractions for co-buyers is the ability to purchase a home with an FHA mortgage and enjoy tax benefits based on the percentage owned. 
  • Scale faster: Co-buying allows investors to scale faster, moving from one house to another using FHA loans and renting the home out after a period of living in it to satisfy FHA requirements. Or, you can simply buy a rental property with an investment partner.
  • Divided costs: This allows co-owners to split costs and share household responsibilities. However, as with any investment, it relies on trust and each partner being responsible for their side of the partnership. 

Disadvantages of Co-Buying

  • Risk of conflict: As anyone with a roommate can attest, the risk of conflict when you live in the same space is heightened. If owner-occupants are co-buying using an FHA model, delineating each owner’s personal space and responsibilities is paramount. For non-owner-occupant investors, each must carry their weight and be responsible when financial issues arise.
  • One buyer might want to sell or refinance: Both co-buyers need to be on the same page regarding their exit strategy with agreements.
  • Financial stability: Job loss is sometimes unavoidable, but contingencies should be discussed and, if possible, put in writing should one partner suffer a loss in income and not be able to pay their share of the expenses. This could include allowing their other partners the option of buying them out. 
  • Risk of differing goals and expectations: Goals and expectations can change over time. When one partner wants to go in a different direction, an agreement should be drawn up ahead of time to account for this.

Cash Flow and Equity

Owning rental properties offers advantages in cash flow and equity. In a co-buying partnership, there should be a clear agreement on how the cash flow is spent and the equity utilized. Vacations and fast cars should not be prioritized when building a real estate portfolio. 

Final Thoughts

Co-buying is easier when unrelated investors do not live in the same house. That said, co-buying and cohabitating can work if there is a specific game plan to sell or rent and move once an FHA or prespecified investment period has elapsed, so you are not stuck with one another if you do not wish to be. 

Business partnerships are nothing new. Many real estate investors have formed LLCs and embarked on money-making endeavors with the best intentions—only for the wheels to come off once things got tough, i.e., tenants stopped paying, and repairs were needed

No one likes dipping into their pockets when they don’t expect to. Entering into co-buying ventures requires both partners to have their eyes wide open, with an agreement that spells out each partner’s responsibilities, with consequences if they do not fulfill them, and easy exit strategies. Paying for unnecessary legal fees in a lawsuit between co-buyers is a scenario to avoid at all costs.

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For homeowners and real estate investors, accessing home equity has traditionally been a long and tedious process—until now. With new digital lending solutions, tapping into home equity is faster and more accessible than ever. 

Whether you want to renovate your home, consolidate debt, or expand your real estate portfolio, more streamlined options are now available to help you unlock your equity efficiently. Figure, the No. 1 nonbank HELOC lender in the U.S., is here to help you along the way.

Benefits of a HELOC Over a Cash-Out Refinance

A HELOC (home equity line of credit) and a cash-out refinance both allow homeowners to access their home equity, but they have different purposes and distinct advantages. Here’s how a HELOC compares to a cash-out refinance.

Keep your existing mortgage rate

  • A HELOC is a separate line of credit from your mortgage, allowing you to keep your current low-interest mortgage rate if you’ve locked in a favorable one.
  • A cash-out refinance, on the other hand, replaces your existing mortgage with a new loan at today’s rates, which may be higher than what you’re currently paying.

Flexible access to funds

  • A HELOC works like a credit card, letting you borrow and repay as needed during the draw period, only paying interest on the amount you use.
  • A cash-out refinance gives you a lump sum upfront, meaning you’ll start paying interest on the full amount immediately, even if you don’t need all the cash at once.

Lower upfront costs

  • HELOCs often have lower closing costs than a full cash-out refinance, making them a more cost-effective option for borrowers who don’t want to pay for a full mortgage reset.
  • Cash-out refinances often come with higher fees, appraisal costs, and other closing expenses.

Faster approval & funding

  • Many HELOC providers, like Figure, offer digital applications with funding in as little as five days,* making it an excellent option for those needing quick cash access.
  • A cash-out refinance typically takes several weeks due to the underwriting, appraisal, and closing procedures.

When a Cash-Out Refinance Might Be Better

  • If you want to secure a lower mortgage rate than your current loan
  • If you need a large lump sum upfront for a significant purchase
  • If you prefer a fixed loan structure instead of a revolving credit line

Why Consider a HELOC With Figure?

1. Fast and simple digital process

Unlike traditional lenders, Figure now offers a fully online HELOC application and funding process. Homeowners can apply in minutes, receive funding in as little as five days,* and avoid the cumbersome paperwork often required by banks.

2. Competitive fixed rates

HELOCs are typically known for variable rates that fluctuate over time, but some providers, like Figure, offer competitive fixed rates* to provide stability and predictable payments. This allows borrowers to plan long-term without worrying about sudden interest rate hikes.

3. High borrowing limits

Borrowing limits up to $400,000* give homeowners and investors the financial flexibility to take on major renovations, real estate investments, and high-interest debt consolidation.

4. Ideal for real estate investors

For those looking to scale their investment portfolio, HELOCs offer quick access to capital without selling assets or dealing with traditional financing hurdles. Investors can find lending solutions that allow them to leverage their home equity to purchase additional properties, fund rehab projects, or make strategic improvements to increase rental income.

5. Transparent terms and no hidden fees

A good HELOC provider ensures a transparent, fair, and upfront process. There should be no hidden fees, prepayment penalties, or surprises—just a straightforward way to access your home’s equity on your terms.

Who Can Benefit From a HELOC?

  • Homeowners looking to finance home renovations or significant expenses
  • Real estate investors needing capital for new acquisitions or property improvements
  • Debt-conscious borrowers consolidating high-interest credit card debt into lower, fixed payments
  • Entrepreneurs tapping into equity to fund business growth

Exploring Your Options

Tapping into your home equity has never been easier. With a fully digital application process, competitive rates, and fast funding, securing financing on your schedule is more convenient than ever. Figure is one of the leading nonbank HELOC providers offering innovative solutions to help homeowners and investors make the most of their equity.

Interested in learning more? Visit Figure.com to explore your options.

Figure Lending LLC dba Figure. NMLS 1717824. *Terms apply. Visit Figure.com for more information. Equal Housing Opportunity



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Could hiring a financial advisor help you reach financial independence and retire early? This isn’t a popular move in the FIRE community, but it gave today’s guest peace of mind, preserved her wealth, and helped her save on taxes in retirement. Stick around to learn if it’s the right choice for you, too!

Welcome to another episode of “Life After FIRE”! Today, we’re chatting with Amy, who was dealt a set of circumstances that altered her life and retirement plans. Amy and her late husband, Phil, arrived at their FIRE number in 2020. Just as they were preparing for early retirement, Phil tragically passed, and Amy was left to not only navigate a new normal but also take control of her finances. Still reeling from the loss of her husband, Amy hired a financial advisor, which turned out to be one of the best decisions she ever made.

In this episode, Amy shares how she used money check-ins and a year of “experimental deprivation” to speed up her path to retirement. She also discusses the pros and cons of using financial advisors, the differences between the assets-under-management and fee-only models, and how to properly vet an advisor to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth!

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello my dear listeners, as you may or may not know, my husband Carl and I have a new series on YouTube on the BiggerPockets money channel called Life After Fire. And as a very special bonus, we are going to be airing episodes here on the podcast on Wednesdays. Today we’re talking with my friend Amy, about the taboo topic of hiring a financial advisor to help her with her finances and why she chose to go this route. We’ll also talk about her fire life as a single woman and how she reached financial independence in the first place. Hi there. I’m Mindy Jensen and there’s no Carl Jensen today. This is the Life After Fire Show, and we call it that because we’re talking about and talking to people who are living their best life after reaching financial independence. Amy, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Let’s first chat about how you reached Financial Independence.

Amy:
Sure. So back in 2015, I found Pete’s blog, Mr. Money Mustache. I don’t remember exactly how I got there, but I have a hunch. It was probably through Get Rich Slowly because Get Rich Slowly. And JD Roth were the very first finance blog I ever started reading and I’d been checking in on him for years and sometimes I think he would talk about Pete or he would link to Pete. And so eventually I ended up on Pete’s site and I read that very pivotal article, the Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, the one that explains, okay, if you can save 25 times your expenses, then guess what? You can retire. And I remember just being kind of skeptical, but very, very intrigued by this. I’m like, wow, this is really interesting. Okay, so I had a full-time work from home job at the time, which meant yes, I was spending some of that time browsing blogs and reading the internet and not being 100% productive.
And I made my way down the list of every single post that had ever been made on Pete’s blog. And especially in those early days, it was all about face punches and very, you should not be spending money on these things. And it was an interesting sort of space to mentally marinate in. At the time I was married to my now late husband Phil, and I would bring these topics up at dinner or whatever, I’d be like, I’ve been reading this blog and this guy’s talking about retiring really, really young and what do you think about this? And at first Phil was pretty dismissive about it. He was like, no, that’s not possible. No way. And then I started talking about it more. I got him to look at that article. We started kind of getting excited doing the math until we were like, Hey, we could do this. We could make this happen. So that was kind of the beginning that that was in 2015, the sort of reading the blog and getting on the wagon and 2016 was when we truly, truly kicked it off. We liked that symmetry of like, okay, January 1st, this is what we’re doing. We set a timeline. At that time, we were expecting that it would actually take us about eight years to reach our goals. In the end, it took us significantly less than that. So that’s kind of the origin story of how financial independence came into my life.

Mindy:
So what kind of changes did you make to your spending and your financial life in general once you discovered this? Once you convinced Phil to join you, did you make any kind of changes to your spending or your savings?

Amy:
Yeah, we made a lot of changes. So we were actually doing a really good job. I thought of saving before this. We were maxing out our 4 0 1 Ks and our IRAs. We were saving on top of that. And because all of those kind of ducks were in a row, we were like, well, we can spend the rest of this money. We had very good salaries, so we were like, we could spend this. We don’t have to feel bad about traveling, a lot about dining out at our favorite places about, we were also in the process of totally gutting and renovating our home. So we were like, okay, we can choose nicer finishes or whatever. Nothing plated in gold, but we weren’t, we were not holding ourselves to the bare minimum where we weren’t trying to source things from the Habitat Restore or from Craigslist. We were like, let’s just buy it at Lowe’s.
Let’s go to Lowe’s eight times a day during those construction weekends. So we were coming into this from a pretty good spot and then latching on this financial independence stream just made us really kick it into high gear. That’s when we did scale all those sorts of extras back. We stopped going out to eat, we stopped traveling for the most part except for very minimalist road trips. We did start sourcing things from Craigslist and the Restore. We just kind of pulled back on all the extras. I stopped buying books as a super lifelong reader and writer. I was always buying books In the end, I actually wasn’t keeping all that many of them. I have an aversion to clutter. I was constantly weeding through my collection. But what that meant was every time the library said, oh, we’re having a book sale, come donate your books.
I would be dropping off grocery bags that I had bought most of those books off of Amazon at whatever Amazon prices were at the time, probably 20 or 30% off. So it was not very efficient. So I switched to using the library. So there were all these ways that we cut things back. For sure. We were definitely, that first year was one of, I would say, a sort of experimental deprivation. We were not freely spending in any category. It was all like, do we really need that? Even if it was like a 99 cent chapstick at the checkout at Target.

Mindy:
Okay. So you said experimental deprivation. I love that phrase. And you said it was that first year. Did that change after a year?

Amy:
It did, and I’m so glad in retrospect, it changed for many, many reasons, but it changed because it was not very fun, and it turns out mentally it’s kind of hard to see your balances go up and up and up and up and still be telling yourself no all the time, you’re not experiencing any of those rewards. You’re watching the numbers tick up, but you’re just like, Nope, can’t do anything fun. We’re not going on vacation. We’re not going out to a nice restaurant with our friends. So it was kind of too much. So after that first year, we did accounting together regularly, a minimum of once a month, and then in December it was sort of a larger review of how the year had gone and we were like, how did this go for you? How did this go for you? Oh yeah, we found out, we were on the same page about how it wasn’t super fun and we wanted to loosen the purse strings a little bit. And so that’s what we did the following years after that, I would say kind of progressively more so we just experienced more freedom in spending and it enhanced our life in many ways.

Mindy:
I think it’s funny that you were able to go and I think it’s great, not funny. Great. That you were able to go an entire year with this experimental deprivation, my new favorite phrase and then make the change. Did you have any sort of check-in meetings during that first year, or did you just plow ahead and then get to the year and say, ah, this isn’t working?

Amy:
Yeah, we had check-in meetings every month, but also probably more so we had sort of more formal ones Every month when we would update our spreadsheets, we would pull all of our balances across like, oh, okay, you’ve got that 401k over here, I’ve got this one over here. What’s this account doing? What’s this account doing? And the market was also doing pretty well. So that was really boosting us and it was fun. Those meetings were super fun. It was like, look at the progress we made. Look how much money we saved this month. This is so great. Oh my gosh. And it was very gamified. It was like, oh, we can look at our data and see that. Last year at this time, we were spending $400 a month on dining out, but this year we spent $13 on dining out because twice we ate at the Costco food court. Crazy things inside of a month, crazy changes. That did make it fun because the numbers really did stack up, but we were, I’d say there was some fatigue as the year went on. Okay, we’re getting past the first few super exciting months and maybe we’re in July or August and we’re like, okay, wow, we haven’t been out to dinner in seven months. This is sort of sad, but okay, let’s go to the Costco Food court, whatever. So there were regular check-ins for sure.

Mindy:
Dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that we now have a BiggerPockets Money newsletter. If you want to subscribe to our newsletter, please go to biggerpockets.com/money newsletter. Alright, we’ll be right back after this. Welcome back to the show. I love that you had these monthly, I love that you said that they were fun. That makes my heart sing because I know a lot of people who don’t currently have monthly check-ins are like, Ooh, I don’t want to have a monthly. Then I have to see all the things I did wrong. Well, you could also see the things that you did, and sometimes things just go wrong in a whole month. I publicly tracked my spending tracked hour spending in 2022, the first six months of 2022 and month one, I went way over on almost every category because I had a big car bill that I wasn’t anticipating because I wasn’t anticipating sliding into a snowbank and breaking the ball joint on the car. So that was way over, and I didn’t know how much I was spending on groceries, so I guessed really low and all of these other things. It can be really difficult to get to the end of the month and be like, wow, nothing went right this month. And there’s always something that’s going to go right. It’s not like you’re always going to be wrong, but focusing on the positive is really important and it can help you continue on the path and just even both of you being on the same page,

Amy:
That feeling of being on the same team definitely strengthened us in our financial independence journey so much because those meetings were not about like, oh, I bought a new sweater this month. I’m kind of going to be in trouble when we have this meeting. It wasn’t like that at all. It was like, let’s see how awesome we did this month. And that just sort of changed the whole tenor.

Mindy:
Oh, that’s a really great way to reframe it, Amy. You’re so positive. I love it. Once heard somebody say, it’s not me against you, it’s us against the world. And I love that phrase so much. I’m just going to keep saying it. So Amy, did Ramit’s philosophy of live your rich life influence you, or did you kind of come to this, incorporate the things you like by yourself?

Amy:
I think it was more organic. It was just kind of something we came to in looking and evaluating our quality of life. I was familiar with Ramit back then, but not the rich Life stuff. I don’t remember when exactly that came about for him, but my early memories of Ramit actually came from also reading Get Rich Slowly, because JD Roth would link to Ramit and I remember Ramit’s anecdote about how when he was in his twenties and going out to party and bars, but he didn’t want to pay for drinks, he would bring a flask of rum and he would order a Coke or a Diet Coke and he would put his own liquor in it. So at the time, that was my primary association with Ramit’s philosophy. It was not what it is today. I don’t know exactly when he made that evolution, but if you had asked me back then like, oh, would you say that what you and Phil are doing is something that could be called living your rich life? I might’ve said yes to that question because that is how it felt. We were very specifically kind of curating the choices we wanted to make. Where was it worth it to us to spend, and where was it really easy to not spend? And that was an ongoing conversation, but one that we were pretty much always on the same page about.

Mindy:
I love that you were on the same page. I did not read Ramit’s book. I will Teach You To Be Rich until I think the first time I interviewed him on the BiggerPockets Money podcast, and the reason I didn’t read it is because it’s called I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And I’m like, well, I already know how to get rich. You just save, save, save. I didn’t realize that what it meant was I will teach you how to live a rich life. So I thought it was going to be like, invest in your 401k and invest in your Roth ira. And I’m like, well, I already know how to do that, so I’m not even going to bother reading this book. It was definitely different than what I expected it to be, and I think that I did myself a disservice by not reading it much closer to the beginning of my journey. But we all have our shoulda Whata Couldas,

Amy:
Yeah, hindsight 2020 as they say.

Mindy:
So I love that your story was woman led. In most couples in this space, the man is trying to convince her to do this financial independence thing, this weird thing. Given that you were the driving force behind this in the beginning, why did you decide to hire a financial advisor?

Amy:
This is going to lead us down into a bigger and sadder story to be frank. So that beginning of that financial independence journey, as I mentioned, was back in 20 15, 20 16. A lot of things changed in Phil’s in my life over the years as it does for everyone. We had been living in a very low cost of living place at the time that we started this journey, and we at a certain point made the decision to move out to San Francisco for various career related reasons. And so we did that and there’s kind of a lot in the mix. And then the pandemic came, and that is when we decided to get out of San Francisco where we literally, there was one time when we didn’t leave our apartment for 14 days. It was very early days before vaccines, before testing was even readily available, and it was scary to literally be out on the street.
You were keeping this six foot wide ber around you. You didn’t know a lot of things that we now know about that disease. So anyway, we wanted to leave and we did. We moved out to Colorado at that time, and that was in May of 2020, about five years ago, in June of 2020, very shortly after we moved here, we met our financial independence goal. We hit our fine number and we’re like, oh my gosh, okay, here we are after all this time and there’s this worldwide pandemic going on and nobody’s leaving their houses. It was a very weird time to meet this number, but we were happy about it of course. And that of course also led to a discussion like, okay, what now? What are we going to do now? So Phil decided that he wanted to keep working because he was super happy with where he was.
He had sort of finally found the kind of dream setup at work that he had been looking for, and it was just something that he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. So I fully supported that. I was like, okay, great. You want to do the one more year syndrome? That’s totally fine, whatever you want. Because there was so little social life at that time. It made sense. It’s like, okay, well if you did retire now, you’d be stuck in your house just like you are now. So it made sense. I decided to go back to school, which was something I had been toying with for a while, and I did, I enrolled and I started going full-time to the local community college. So that was in June of 2020. And then in September of 2021, Phil was still working. I was still in school. We had bought a house here in Colorado and he had gone out for a bike ride. No, I’m sorry, not a ride. He was away on a bike camping trip in the mountains for one night with a friend and there was an accident on his way home and he died.
So this is obviously a part of the story that’s not going to apply to most people. This was a shocking, completely out of left field, tragic circumstance that enveloped my entire life, not just my financial life, but it absolutely did include my financial life. So that kind of threw everything into a turmoil. And within that turmoil, I knew very quickly that I was going to need help managing the money aspects because those are things that Phil had done. Yes, I had brought us to financial independence. I was the driver of that whole shebang, but he was the one, he had the software brain, the math brain. He was doing the trades and figuring out our account balancing and what are we in stocks and what are we in bonds and what’s our risk tolerance? And he did all the mathy stuff, which was not my forte.
Absolutely. It was not let alone in the wake of this horrible tragedy when I could not remember to lock my door or run the dishwasher. I was in no position to be like, well, let’s dive in and let me learn all this stuff so that I can manage my financial future. That just was not going to happen at that time. So I started trying to figure out, okay, how am I going to do this? And I got connected with somebody at Charles Schwab, which is where we did the bulk of our banking. There was a representative at sort of my local branch who reached out and was basically just like, Hey, I know you guys are new to the area, whatever, but I’m introducing myself and if you need anything, let me know. And I wrote that person back and I was like, yes, I need help. Can we talk? And I went and met with him and he was super great and supportive, and he explained that Schwab often referred people, their customers, their clients. They referred them out to financial advisement firms or wealth management firms. There’s different terms. So he kind of was like, okay, this is a path we can go down. Is that something you want to try? And I was like, yes, please. So that was the beginning of how that got started.

Mindy:
Do you have a traditional financial advisor who takes assets under management or do you have more of a fee only financial advisor or an advice only financial advisor that you’re using?

Amy:
This is very controversial in the PHI space. It sure is. We know that financial advisors at all are kind of controversial. If you have one, it’s often kind of frowned upon. It’s that face punchy like, no, no, no. This isn’t how smart people do money. If you do it, you’re an idiot. There’s kind of that vibe around advisement at all. So I just want to acknowledge that, and then you take that even a step further if you’re going to have one. It’s like, okay, well if you have to use the fee only ones for God’s sakes, don’t even consider these asset under management ones. They’re just totally ripping you off. There’s nothing they could possibly do that could help you to that extent, and you’re just so dumb if you even consider it. So that’s the water we’re swimming in, right? Would you agree with that?

Mindy:
I would absolutely agree that that is the water that we’re swimming in. Another great phrase, Amy, the queen of phrases.

Amy:
Today’s my phrase day Friday phrase day. Anyway, so to actually answer your question, the advisor that I use is an assets under management advisement firm.

Mindy:
And are you happy with the service that you’re getting from them and the cost that it is to you?

Amy:
I am super happy with the service that I’m getting from them, and there’s a few reasons for that. So obviously my situation is somewhat unique in that I kind of had to do this all at once during a crisis time. So the fact that I could sort of be linked with a professional outfit who does this all the time, who spends all of their time, the people who I work with, they got their degrees in this. This is what they do full time around the clock, yada yada. That made me feel very, very safe. It made me feel like my money was safe. It made me feel like, okay, despite the fact that my life has just exploded around me, there is a way that I can still be taken care of. I can still be financially independent. I will still be okay. I can get through this financial aspect, the rest of it TBD, but at least my money will be all right.
That was valuable. I know that that’s not the case for everyone, but I would also argue that there are lots of ways that relationships end. Usually it’s not in death. Most of them end in divorce or in breakups, the ones that end in those ways. I think a lot of these issues are still at play. There’s usually somebody who is responsible for the nitty gritty money stuff and another person who maybe had no idea what was going on, who maybe had some idea what was going on, but is maybe not super equipped to handle it on their own. So for those folks, I would just say that a financial advisor can be a godsend. I know they have been for me and there’s been many aspects of life that they have helped me with beyond just the money stuff. So yes, they manage my money.
They also did this super comprehensive audit of all of my insurances. They were like, okay, look, you have these assets. You need to have an appropriate level of insurance so that if somebody slips and falls on your sidewalk or whatever, you have some coverage for that. So that was an umbrella policy. Okay, how much do I need that policy for la, la, la? Let’s do that. What’s the appropriate level of auto insurance and home insurance? I should have, how about health insurance? So that was a big aspect. They were also super helpful with estate planning. That was kind of included in their services. So because my husband had died and we had sort of been caught kind of red-handed with not having any end of life plans in place, I knew for myself that I did not ever want that to happen to my next of kin.
So it was like, okay, it was a priority that I had from the very beginning. They helped me set up a trust. I worked with an attorney of theirs. I now have all these ducks in a row that were not in a row before or not even close to a row. They were in an S shape, all of a pond. There have been many additional ways that working with an advisor has enhanced and improved my life beyond just the money part, but specifically regarding the money part. I would say that they allow me to sleep at night. I’m not worried that I’m going to make a wrong move. We talk about everything, every financial goal, everything about earning income or spending money. I have somebody to talk to about that. My spouse is gone, right? Money is an intimate subject that we generally don’t go around talking about this stuff out in the world. It’s kind of like taboo. People have all different levels of comfort around it. But because I’m now a single person, a single woman, I have this professional outfit who is working with me to make sure that I’m successful in the financial longterm. Like yes, I can put a price on that because there is a specific price in my percentage that I’m paying them every year. But I also kind want to say, you can’t put a price on that. It’s very difficult to put a price on peace of mind.

Mindy:
We have to take one final add break. We’ll be back with more after this. Thanks for sticking with us. I could not agree more, Amy, and you said a couple of things that really made me understand where you’re coming from. So I want to stop right there and just let everybody know. Amy and I have known each other for five years. I would categorize, categorize us as very close friends. I understand all, I’m glossing over the story of how her husband passed because for this particular show, it’s not that he passed is important, but all of the goings on with that is not necessarily so important. It was covered brilliantly by Brad from Choose Fi on episode 4 76. And if you’d like to know a little bit more about Amy’s financial journey after her husband passed away, Brad did a really, really great job with her story. But I want to get back. So I don’t want people to think, wow, Mindy, you totally just jumped over the fact that her husband died.

Amy:
If you knew the hours you and I have spent talking about the fact that my husband died and all the repercussions people would understand, it’s a lot of hours.

Mindy:
I’m intimately familiar with that part of the story, but I also don’t want people to be like, wow, she’s so mean. So a couple of things that you said. You said, my financial advisor makes me feel safe. Where’s the price tag on safety? And they allow me to sleep at night. Where’s the price tag on sleep? Money is an intimate topic. Yeah, you could go and talk to a lot of people about this topic. We do have several friends in common in the PHI space and we all talk about money. You could ask these questions, but it’s also you don’t really want to just share your entire financial life with somebody necessarily, whereas you could do this with the financial advisor. And I think I almost said, I think for your circumstance, it’s okay. That is so snotty. So I’m not going to say that I’m going to leave it into the show, but I’m not going to say that I think that anybody who wants help managing their finances has a lot of options.
You have the advice only financial planner who will look at what you’re saying and just give you some advice. I think that might also be called the fee only financial advisor. You give them a specific dollar amount, they trade it for advice. There’s the assets under management, kind of like the full service. Amy and I actually spoke at an event a couple of years ago called Camp Widow, and we were talking about money and how to transition from he does it all to now I have to do it. And how do you kind of figure that out? And we spoke with multiple widows over that weekend, and it seems like about the two year mark after your partner passes is when the widow brain, the fog finally lifts and you can sort of start feeling like yourself again. And that’s not true for everybody. But that seemed, would you characterize that as kind of two years is when you start to be able to function at the same capacity that you were while your partner was still alive?

Amy:
I agree that two years is a very common milestone to be like, okay, I can be back in the world, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I have regained the capacity that I had before Phil died because I haven’t. And that feels very clear to me, and I don’t know if I ever will. And I’ve read other widow accounts who have mentioned that as well. So I want to make that distinction. But I do think, yes, two years is a reasonable point at which many widows that I have known and I have known a lot by this point do come out of the midst and are ready to be maybe a little bit more proactive, is how I would put it.

Mindy:
So in two years, your bank is not going to wait. Your investments are not going to wait. Your bills are not going to wait for you to be able to function again at a higher level. I don’t know how to say this without sounding terrible, but like you said, two years is about where it’s at, but you had two years worth of sometimes I don’t remember to lock the door. Sometimes I don’t remember to turn on the dishwasher. Did I brush my teeth today? When was the last time I took a shower? I’m pulling from my days of having an infant, which is in no way comparable except the lack of sleep and the lack of being able to focus. So having somebody to help you through all of those times, I mean, anybody listening who is like, wow, Amy, you could have done that yourself.
You know what, Amy? You could build a whole house by yourself. Why don’t you could build a car from scratch? Why did you buy one that was already done? There’s so many things that you could do for yourself that you don’t do. Everybody listening. You could grow your own vegetables. Do you do that? No. You go to the grocery store and you buy them ready grown. There’s lots of things that you could do. You hire people because they’re either better than you at it or you don’t want to do it. And I think that financial advising is just exactly the same thing. You hire somebody because they’re either better at it or you don’t want to do it.

Amy:
I agree. And I think that brings up a sort of similar but related point around how, if we think about the sort of template that we all became aware of, the retired person, the PHI person, what is the archetype here? If you think of like, oh, what’s the typical person in the PHI space? I think that answer has changed over time. But if you go back to when I first got into reading the PHI stuff, it was pretty clear and pretty narrow. It was a man, he was in software, he DIY tons of stuff, his house, his car, very into stoicism, an atheist. Does this sound about right? And I’m not trying to pick on Pete or Carl or any of the other people who have given us so much wonderful content, but I want to say that those terms for some of us, not everyone, but for some of us including me, they do not fit. That is not a box I’m ever going to fit into. My husband was very much of that ilk. I respect it, I understand it, but I do not function in that way. So I want to give an example about this.
Like I said, I was in school before and I have been chipping away at this degree that I’m working on. And right now I’m enrolled in the last class that’s required. I left it to the very last minute. I didn’t want to take a science class with a lab, but I had to take a science class with a lab. So I had to choose which one it was going to be. And in sort of a sentimental nod to Phil, even though he has now been gone for more than three years, I decided to take physics because Phil loved physics. And I’m like, there are limited ways that I can connect with him in the present day. And maybe this is one, I’m going to take a physics class. I’m going to see what the fuss is about. What did he love about all this? So right now, I’m at the slightly more than halfway point of the semester, and this class is killing me.
This class is so hard. I have, I have an A student, but in this class right now, the last time I checked I had an 89.94%, which to me, to some people that’s like, oh, that’s so great to me. That’s my other classes, my English, my communications classes. I’m at 98 or higher. I have always been historically this one I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t think I can hold an A until the end of the semester. Every assignment, every lecture, every lab, I dread it. I procrastinate about it. I put it off. This is not how my brain works. This is how Phil’s brain worked. And I respect that and I loved that about him, but it is not how my brain works and the finances are not that different. That was really good for his brain. His emotional intelligence was a fraction of what mine is.
So there were push pull things and that’s fine. I loved him, I chose him. I can say these things, it’s totally fine. But within the PHI space, I think we have these defaults of what’s allowed and what’s not. And using an advisor at an assets under management firm is a thing that is verboten. It is not allowed. People will laugh you off of a forum or whatever about that. But I have no qualms about it. It enhances my life. It is my version of a rich life to not have to worry about money. I have outsourced that worry and that planning and that care to people who are so much better at it than I am better. And therefore I can sleep at night. And I think more people should feel that this option is open to them.

Mindy:
I absolutely agree. If you don’t want to or you feel like you could hire somebody who knows more than you, then do it. And if somebody tells you, oh, you shouldn’t just say think you. I will live my life the way that I want to.

Amy:
There is a difference like you mentioned, between an assets under management fee structure versus a fee only financial advisor. And so part of my thinking, and I was thinking about this just going into this conversation, knowing that we’d be talking about this, I thought, okay, why didn’t I pursue a fee only? Or even if I couldn’t do it, then I’m in a much better mental place now. Why don’t I do that now? Why don’t I make the switch? I would save a lot of money. It’s true, I would. But the reasons I came up with are, because when you do that, that person that you’re paying the fee to, they’re looking at your stuff, your numbers for what, an hour or two, maybe an hour before they have the meeting with you, and then maybe the hour during the meeting, and then that’s kind of it.
They’re not invested in your journey, metaphorically speaking. Whereas in my position, the kind of advisor I have, I can and have emailed him at any time, at any hour, Hey, I’m thinking about maybe finishing my basement. This is kind of what I think that budget would look like. What do you think this does to my long-term plan? And then he’ll write back and he’ll have charts and he’ll have very specific answers and he’ll say whether he thinks I should do it or not, he doesn’t tell me I can’t. He’ll just say, this is my professional advice essentially. Or if I have tax questions, we have this massive tax planning meeting every year that’s like, okay, we’re going to try to make your income fit into these brackets because of the a CA that you’re on. So this is how we’re going to do that. Did you make any money this year? Okay, we’re going to put this into the Roth la la. There are many aspects of my financial life that he and his firm are helping me manage that are not included in what a fee only advisor does. So I just want to delineate that relationship. That is the main difference in my mind. Between those two are that sort of like one-off support and advice and that ongoing thing where you know can reach out anytime, any day of the year and get fast answers.

Mindy:
It sounds like you have found a really great advisor. I want to encourage anybody who is considering hiring an advisor to interview them, talk to them and see what kind of services they provide, what kind of things you’re getting. You have somebody who is fitting all of your needs. If my listeners connect with an advisor and you’re like, wow, he really didn’t do anything for me, maybe an advisor isn’t for you, or maybe that advisor isn’t for you. If you want somebody to look over your numbers and just be like, yeah, you’re doing great. Or hey, don’t forget about this tax advantage or this tax obligation that could come up. If you do this, then going to a place like Hello Nectarine or the XY Planning Network and finding a fee only financial advisor could be what you’re looking for. But if you need somebody who is more in depth, who is looking at your numbers frequently, who you can reach out to at any time, somebody like Amy’s advisor might be a better fit for you. And it doesn’t matter what Bob down the street says or Joe Blow online says, if you like this person, if you’re comfortable, understand the fee structure. But if you’re comfortable with the fee structure, then you’re just paying for a service that you value. And anybody who tells you that you’re wrong, they’re wrong. Do you think that you will continue to use your financial advisor for the foreseeable future?

Amy:
Good question. Definitely. Right now I have zero plans to change. There are added benefits. So given my life stage, I am a single woman. But that could change one day. I could meet someone I could want to get married. If that happens, there will be many conversations that I will have with my advisor about, okay, what are we doing in terms of prenuptial agreements or how do we need to structure my assets in such a way that they’re safe no matter what happens in any future relationship or marriage. So that’s just another thing that they’re going to bring to the table that I will lean on them for if or when that time comes. I think it’s possible. I don’t know. Every time I think about should I consider doing this myself, I have all these friends who are just like, oh, index funds and set it and forget it.
But I know from working with my advisor on the backend for these last few years, there’s so much more to it. I do think I know enough to be like, okay, yes. Could I dump all of my money into an index fund if if my advisement firm went away and I didn’t have that as an option anymore, I think I could do okay, but okay isn’t really enough. If I can go back to my physics class analogy, okay, right now I’m getting a B or a high B in that class when normally I’m an A student, now a B in a physics class that I don’t really need and I’m never going to go into a STEM field, that’s fine. There are no stakes with that. But if I was to get the equivalent of a B grade in managing my own investments, I would be pretty catastrophic. I would be missing out on a lot of money if I was only doing as well as a B. So I really have no plans to change at this point. I’m not going to say never, but it is not in my immediate field of vision as like, oh, I want to cut costs and this is where I’m going to do it. Those costs are what allow the other costs to not bother me. So for now I’m letting it ride and I’m perfectly happy to do it.

Mindy:
Okay. Well, I think that’s great. I think that you have made a decision based on information and facts and not based on somebody else saying something that you should do or somebody saying something that you shouldn’t do and it works for you. You understand how much it’s going to cost. That’s it. My money, my choice. Exactly. Your money, your choice. Alright, Amy, I really appreciate your time today. This was a great conversation. I think that this is going to help a lot of people who are either using a financial advisor and feeling guilty about it or wanting to use a financial advisor. Having seen all these comments, you should never use a financial advisor and saying, oh, well then I guess I shouldn’t, but they’re not really managing their money. It should be managed. So if you want to hire a financial advisor, hire a financial advisor. Amy says it’s okay, and I do too. Amen. Alright, Amy, again, thank you for your time today and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Talk soon. And if you’d like this video, please click thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to this channel for more inspiring fire videos, just like Amy’s. All right, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen saying Later days sun rays.

 

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