November 13, 2024 • 53 mins
Real estate investing is a topic that we don’t spend nearly as much time discussing compared to the early days of the podcast. And even then we were both less enthusiastic about it compared to a decade ago! Back before we started the podcast it was pretty much all that we talked about but does it make sense to continue investing in real estate today? Well our guest thinks so! We’re joined by long-time real estate investor Dave Meyer. Dave is the Head of Real Estate at BiggerPockets which is a site and online community that provides resources and education for investing in real estate. We discuss the current state of the housing market, where Dave thinks it’s headed, a breakdown of his portfolio, why he thinks there's opportunity to be had with value-add real estate, and much more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Hout of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking real estate investing in a murky
market with Dave Meyer.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
That's right, and not just investing in real estate, but
we'll touch on some topics for the first time buyers
out there who are looking for a good, old fashioned home.
But Joel investment properties, man, like, this isn't something that
we talk about as often as we used to. I
should say, like I'm thinking about a decade ago, like
rental properties. It was like the only thing on our minds,
(00:47):
the only thing we were talking about. In fact, like
when we first batted around the idea of starting in
the podcast, we even thought about making it solely about
real estate. But that being said, a lot has happened
since then. The housing market, it's definitely not what it
used to be. There's many reasons for that, and so
the question that we're asking today is does it make
sense to continue investing in real estate? That is the
(01:08):
topic of conversation with our guest today, Dave Meyer. And
Dave is a longtime investor. He is the head of
real estate over at Bigger Pockets, as well as host
of multiple podcasts over at Bigger Pockets, which you definitely
need to check out if you want to take real
estate investing. Seriously, if you've never heard of Bigger Pockets,
you need to check it out. But Dave, we're excited
(01:30):
to have you join us today on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Thank you, Thank you for having me. I'm super excited
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Of course, Yes, Dave, Matt and I we like to
drink beer. We know, actually you live in a place
where there's a lot of good beer, and Matt and
I we are even while we're drinking expensive craft beer,
we're still doing the smart thing. We're saving investing for
our futures. What do you like to supoort John in
the here?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Now? What's your craft beer equivalent?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Oh, it's definitely taking nice vacations. I have a weak
spot for a nice hotel. And I do live in
Europe and so I get to travel quite a lot,
and I do it with reckless abandon.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I like that reckless abandon Well, it makes all the
sense in the world too.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Like once, it's like when you when you hear about
folks who do a study abroad and they're like, all right,
I'm going to do a semester in Cortona with my
art program, and like you got to spend every single
week in traveling basically when it's just like a a
thirty minute flight or an hour flight and you're basically
on the other side of other side of Europe. So
is the travel Is that a large a big reason
(02:31):
why maybe you've continued to kind of kick the cane
down the road as to you know, versus coming back stateside.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, just for some contexts.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I moved to Europe because my wife was transferred here
for work five years ago, and that was part of
the appeal.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It seemed like.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
A really cool opportunity to live in a new culture.
But also being in Europe you have such great access
to unbelievable destinations. And the first two years we were
here is actually COVID and so we didn't get to
travel very much. And we've stayed so that we could
tick quite a few places off our bucket list, which has.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Been a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
But I will say, you know, people say the Netherlands
Belgium has great beer. I will tell you America has
better beer. And I know I won't say that loudly
outside of my home, but I miss America.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, your neighbors don't let them hear you say that.
But I think you're right, like all this fighting words, Drue,
although I think per capita we have more great beer.
But some of the beer in the in Belgium specifically
is some of the best in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
That is true. But like your average brewery.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That you just go to in the US is so good,
and here a lot of places you go it's just
Heineken and Amstell. You know, it's hard to find craft beer.
I think that's the problem, your typical euro pills exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, that is something that's pretty great. And we don't
talk in depth about craft beer half another show. But
the fact that pretty much any like small little town
that you go to now has their own local craft
brewery that is putting out pretty decent beer when it
didn't used to be the case a decade ago. What
are the other things that has happened over the past
decade that I certainly welcome.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Quick shout out by the way, for you, Dave, but
for anybody else who visits Amsterdam. There's a beer store
called Debier Cooning, which I think means the beer king.
It does the you and oh.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
My god, gotch accent, by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, he totally nailed that I should move there.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
But seriously, the best beer shop maybe I've ever been
to in my entire life.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
So good, Really, I don't I've never been. I am
going to look this up right now or when we
get off.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Is that where you did the beer trade? Yes? I
brought some US beers, brought him.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Dozens of beers overseas to trade with it, and I
brought tons of great Belgian and Netherlands beers back with me.
And it was like the best thing I've ever done
in my life besides Mary and my wife.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Probably.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Wow, that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, I am whoa. It's not far from where I live.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh, just let me know what you think of that place.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I mean, I'm looking it up right now.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
It is an eleven minute bike ride from here.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Oh yeah, Oh my gosh. Could you imagine text me
pictures later from there and buy some n for yourself
if you send us some in the But I don't
have to.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You don't have to, Dave, just text me your address.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's not about real estate investing, because fine, you are dude,
like you are all about it. I feel like you're
a real estate investing Ninja, But how did you originally
get into investing in real estate in the first place.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I sort of fell into real estate investing. I was
living in Denver right after college. I had moved there
for fun and was waiting tables and trying to sort
of figure out what I wanted to do with my career,
and was skiing a lot with this guy who wound
up just buying a rental property with his girlfriend at
(05:37):
the time and was making all this money, and I
sort of just got jealous and was thinking that if
this guy, who was good dude, not my smartest friend
of all time, I was like, if this guy could
do it, I feel like I could do it. And
luckily I had had some internships in college where I
learned financial modeling, so I felt pretty confident in the
(06:00):
analytics deal analysis kind of side of it. And I
had had a job cold calling for a commercial real
estate broker who agreed to help me, and so I
kind of just backed into it. It was never like
I was in the fire movement or I analyzed all
of these different asset classes and chose real estate. It
just I wanted to make some extra money, and real
(06:21):
estate seemed like a good way to do it. Given
this was twenty ten, so it was a little bit
easier to find cash flowing deals.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
But we can get into how I pulled it off.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, well, okay, I.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Would love to hear how you pulled off your first deal.
But I'm also curious too, why real estate over the
stock market or starting a more traditional business. And when
you're talking to people who listen to bigger pockets, why
did they often choose real estate? Would you say over
some of those other options that maybe are less labor intensive.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
There's something about real estate and the tangibility. Is that
a word, tangibleness? I don't know, the fact that it's
tangible really touch up. Yeah, actually I.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Have.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It was weird, No, I don't.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I never was super interested in the stock market because
I just didn't understand it. Whereas real estate, one of
the great benefits to it is that it's actually quite
a simple business. The revenue is very simple, the expenses
are limited. You're not reinventing something, and all the operations,
all of the strategy or things.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That you can borrow from someone.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
You don't need to be some stock picking genius or
anything to succeed in real estate, and that simplicity really
appealed to me, especially when I was young, and I
had always been somewhat entrepreneurial. I had started a few
businesses in high school and college, just little things, but
(07:50):
I liked the idea of just figuring something out for myself,
and real estate just seemed to be prime for that.
And this was in twenty ten, and so things were
pretty cheap and finding cash flow was relatively easy, and
it felt so tangible to me that I could buy
this deal and even with pretty conservative underwriting, could increase
(08:13):
my income by two or three hundred dollars a month,
which at the time was really meaningful to me.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So one of the things you just said was that
it was simple and straightforward. I don't know how closely
you monitor like the real estate social media space, but
I feel like, if you, it's just like this sort
of endless rabbit trail. And I feel like there are
a whole lot of different pitches as to how really
investing in real estate is being presented. But I'm curious,
will A do you kind of keep up with different
influencers over there?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I doah, Okay, some might even call me a real
estate influencer, which is cringey.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
But I'm on Insta.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
But in a more forthcoming way, in a less like
hype and yeah, like the hype and the I feel
like folks are getting steered wrong. Like what do you
see as like the predominant message that you think a
lot of folks might be hearing as opposed to what's
actually accurate out there.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yeah, there's there's so much to that. But I think
that I'll just be real with you guys. I think
that a lot of influencers make real estate more complicated,
seem more complicated than it is, because that's their business model.
They rely on convincing people that they have some secret
that only they know, and that being part of their
(09:19):
mastermind or their group is going to unlock some secret
thing for them, and that you could should pay them
five or ten thousand dollars to be a part of
this community. The reality is that on bigger pockets, we
give almost all this information away for free. We just
have a different business model, or a media business, and
so we thrive and we can be honest because our
(09:41):
whole business depends on us giving good advice, not convincing
people that we know someone something that no one else knows,
and so I would just you know, not all of
them are bad. I have a lot of friends who
have courses that are very reputable and really really good.
I would just caution people who are wanting to get
into real life state investing about just like, think about
(10:02):
people's motives and why they're saying the things that they're saying.
And in almost all cases, especially if you're new, you
can learn everything you need to about real estate for free.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, that's We had a question not too long ago
on the show where a listener was considering signing up
for I want to forget exactly how much the real
estate course costs, but I'm pretty sure was five figures,
like ten grand plus, and he hadn't really read a
book or listen to a podcast or like some of
the basic things that you would advise someone to do
before you even consider signing up for something more in
(10:36):
depth that costs that much money. Go for the low
hanging fruit first at least, and honestly, for most people,
that's that's probably all you need. I'm curious, Dave. You
wrote a book called Start with Strategy, and you talk
about how people like not only need to consider how
much money they have to invest, but what they want
out of becoming a real estate investor?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Real estate?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
The thing I love about it is how flexible it
is and how you can really design a real estate
portfolio around pretty much any goal that you can imagine.
So for some people, if you want to be a tycoon,
you can do that, and those courses might teach you
how to be a tycoon. I think for most people
that I encounter, which is many hundreds or thousands of
(11:19):
real estate investors all the time, are people who just
are normal and who have full time jobs and who
want to either augment their income, they want to provide
some hedge against a job that may be uncertain or volatile,
or they want to move up their retirement by five
years or a decade, all of which are possible through
(11:43):
real estate. Some people want to quit their jobs in
five years, some people in twenty, and knowing what your
overall and long term objective is will allow you to
create a portfolio that's right for you. And to me,
that's been one of the most single eye opening and
biggest unlocks for me in real estate investing, because I
(12:05):
at first sort of felt bad about myself in my
portfolio because you go on social media and I don't
have hundreds of doors and I don't aspire to start
a fund anytime soon. I mean, I'll never say never,
but I have absolutely no plans to do that. You're
setting your sites too low, Dave.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, but like, yeah, maybe I am. And I'm from
with that. No, But I think that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Was sort of what changed my whole real estate investing world,
is realizing like I don't want that, and that's okay.
I have a great, very profitable real estate investing portfolio
because I figured out why I was doing this in
the first place and sort of worked backwards to design
a portfolio that is designed to meet that specific goal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I love that it can cater to your lifestyle and
you can find that portfolio that's right for you. And
what you said there about building it backwards, like figuring
out what you want the end to look like and
be like, okay, how can I get there? But for
some people, they do want to be you know, you
said that like you had, you know, no desire to
be like a tycoon, Like there might be some folks
out there who want to be real estate moguls. And
so how do you help those folks to think about
(13:11):
how rapidly to acquire some of these additional properties as
they are looking to ram things up. Well, like, would
you agree with the advice out there that that says, hey,
let's just find this strategy and this approach that works
and this repeat it as quickly as possible.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah, I think you can do that if you want
to scale really quickly. I do recommend people to really
try and master one element of real estate, and I
think there's two different ways to do that. You can
either get really good at one type of deal, so
maybe be great at flipping or multifamily or self storage
or whatever. The other way you could do it is
(13:47):
get really good at a specific market. So for you guys,
for example, just mastering the Atlanta market, and then if
you're super good at that physical you know, geographic location,
then you can flip and do multi family and short
term rentals all within it because you understand the market
so well. I do just think that it's important for
people to realize that scaling quickly and risk go hand
(14:11):
in hand. And so if you want to scale very quickly, well,
there's nothing wrong with that. You're going to have to
take on more risk. That might be in the form
of riskier deals. It might be using more leverage, it
might be taking on partners that you.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Don't know as well. All those are fine.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
They just come with risk, and if you're comfortable with that, great,
But if you're not, you're going to have to move slower.
And these are just some of the trade offs that
you need to think through as you build out your portfolio.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So the three of us, Dave, I don't know how
old you are, but I think we're probably in that
same sphere about when we started real estate investing, and
we were investing at a time where finding deals was
not terribly difficult, So it kind of felt like shooting
fish in a barrel, essentially. Finding that makes retrospect.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean at the time it didn't, but definitely in retrospect,
it certainly feels like they were just everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
If I could go share and turn back time, like
I would go buy a whole lot more properties in
eleven right, So yes, I don't know, how would you
say buying real estate has changed, and how does that
change your advice to investors?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It has changed.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
It was very easy to find deals in twenty ten,
and the flip side though, is very difficult to find loans.
It was very difficult to find financing back then, and
so I think there are always trade offs. There was
I think there was like this sweet spot at like
twenty thirteen twenty fourteen where the credit markets were a
little better and deals were still easy to find. To me,
(15:43):
that was like the dream time. But I still think
there are great deals in real estate investing. I do
believe the challenge. There are real challenges with it right
now too. I just think it's all about expectations and
goals because for me, I've actually bought more deals this
year than I have in the previous couple of years combined.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And it's because I just recognize that my goal is
to have rental properties that are going to be hitting
their stride and are going to supplement my income when
I want to retire, which I think is like ten
or fifteen years from now. And so I'm looking at
(16:25):
the real estate market and saying, I don't think prices
are really going to go down, and yes, interest rates
aren't great, but there's not a lot of competition right now,
and I'm able to buy deals that I think have
good intrinsic value at a price that I don't think
I'm going to see again.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
And does that mean I'm going.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
To make a huge profit this year. Probably not. But
I only buy cash shlowing deals, so I'm not going
to buy something that's going to bleed me. And I
do think that, you know, over the next couple of years,
this is going to turn into a very strong investment.
And I can do that because I take this long view.
You not everyone is going to do that, and not
(17:04):
you know, there's a lot of rhetoric in the social
media space in this industry about quitting your job in
two years or three years. That's just not going to happen,
to be honest, like unless you're starting with ten million bucks,
Like I just don't think that's going to happen for
most people right now. And I don't think that's what
most people want. And I think resetting of expectations to say, hey,
(17:24):
real estate is you want to work hard, you know,
or work at this for ten to fifteen years, you're
going to be in a phenomenal place. And I don't
think that has changed at all over the last ten
you know, since when I started, or right now, real
estate's always been a long game, and yeah, it's a
little bit harder to find, you know, have the confidence
in that right now, But I firmly believe that's still true.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, you said there's still a lot of opportunities to
be had. I think I've heard you describe what's happening
now as a stalemate. And so it seems like we've
got fewer buyers, we've got fewer sellers. Why, like, why
have Can you kind of explain the state of the
market and why things have kind of slowed down?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yeah, it's a very strange time in the real estate market,
especially if you don't spend all day looking at data
like I do. But basically what's happened is during COVID
we had a huge influx of buyers to the market.
This is due to low interest rates, which makes things
more affordable, but also due to demographics. This is often overlooked,
(18:24):
but in you know, the millennials, now the largest generation
of the United States, hit their peak home buying age
in about twenty twenty, and so there's this big demographic
tailwent a lot of people want to buy homes right now.
When interest rates went up, we start to see that
affordability leave the market, and so that part of demand
has declined considerably. Millions and literally millions of people have
(18:47):
been priced out.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Of the market.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
But what and that part seems obvious, right, That is
a really intuitive thing. Prices went up, less people can
afford to buy homes, demand goes down. The reffusing part,
at least on the surface, is why prices haven't decline
that right, because you think demand's gone, prices should go down.
But what has happened is that low affordability caused by
(19:12):
high interest rates, has also caused supply to go down,
meaning that people don't want to sell their homes. And
this is one of these unique characteristics about the housing
market because seventy percent of people who sell their home
go on to buy another home. So when buying conditions
decline like they have, it doesn't just hurt demand, but
it sort of weirdly impacts supply. And so we've seen
(19:36):
just a slow down in the total market where there's
just not a lot of buyers. There's not a lot
of sellers. But as of right now in November of
twenty twenty four, even with high interest rates, there are
more buyers than there are sellers. And prices are still
going up modestly, and we can talk about forecasts into
(19:56):
the future, but that's the best summer I can give
quickly of where we stand today.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
No, that's I think that's helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We want to talk mostly about real estate investing here,
but I do want to ask a question about a
lot of our listeners who want to buy and we
get I feel like someone asked me the question, what
are you hearing the most on the How the Money
podcast right now? I said, if you had to boil
it down to one thing, it's a lot of people
who want to buy a home and aren't sure whether
or not it makes sense, or whether they should continue
renting or not. So if someone's been sitting on the
(20:25):
sidelines and they're saying, I'm waiting for price reductions or
I'm waiting for rates to go down, or hey, I'm
seeing this disparity between rents and what I'm going to
pay to own a home, the mortgage, all the other
things included, like does renting continue to make sense for
me for potentially years to come, even though home ownership
is something I desire. What would you say to that, I'm.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Going to make a lot of social media people angry
with this, but I actually think renting makes sense for
the majority of people right now.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
And I know as.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
A real estate investor and who's someone who has owned
a primary residence. That may sound hypocritical, but if you
just do the math, and there is very easy math
to do, and you can go on bigger pockets. I
actually built a buy rent calculator that you can check
out there or just google it.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
There's plenty of them.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
It is just cheaper to rent right now, and especially
if you invest that money into something else. So I
think that's the big caveat is if you're just gonna
if you're going to say, let's just use a round number.
If you had fifty grand to invest in a primary residence,
if your choice is invest that into a home or rent,
(21:31):
but not invest that money into the stock market or
into rental property, I'd say put it in a home,
like that's a better investment. But right now, if what
I recommend to people is to rent and buy a
rental property, I rent right now. I've been renting for
the last five years and I think it's worked really
well for me. I still buy property, but just not
(21:52):
as a primary residence or I mean, I'm not a
stock expert, but I do invest in index funds. If
you're going to rent and put money into index funds,
that could be a better decision right now for people.
That's I think broad advice. But the second thing I'll
say is it really comes down the math comes down
to how long you intend to stay in a home,
(22:13):
and it's usually like five or six years. If you
intend to stay more five or six years, it's usually
better to buy. So those are two variables to think
about as you make that decision for yourself. Is how
long you would anticipate staying in that home, and what
you would do with the money for the down payment
should you not buy a home one hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's always It's always what it comes down to. Are
you disciplined enough to not take that money completely squander it.
If so, then maybe you're fine running and you can
do the hit the easy button sticking your money in
the market. But speaking of markets, I think you started
looking at your first property deal there in Denver, but
you don't live there anymore. We're going to talk about
investing in different markets from where you live. We're going
(22:54):
to talk about finding a deal and more we get
to all of that.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Right after this, we're back from the break, still talking
with Dave Meyer of Bigger Pockets, talking about investing in
real estate even when kind of we're in a funky
market and Dave, as Matt alluded to, you invest in Denver,
(23:17):
I think, is that the only market that you owned
properties in.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
No.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
I started in buying properties in the Midwest in the
last few years, and I also invest in syndications passively
all over the country.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Okay, so how do you think about location and the
potential profitability of investing. So let's say someone out there
is listening Matt and I we live in Atlanta, Like,
should we invest in Atlanta or should we be looking
to another part of the country because hey, I know
I've heard Cincinnati is a great market or something. When
it comes to the hitting closer something closer to the
(23:50):
one percent rule, can it be a better idea for
people to invest in a market that isn't their hometown.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
I think the short answer is yes, it can be
better to invest outside of your home market. But I
would also say that all things being equal, it is
easier in your home market. So the way I often
advise people is to again. I know this is why
my book is called Start with Strategy. I'm not trying
(24:18):
to pitch the book, but I really just think people
need to think about their goals first. So this is like,
if your goal is to get cash flow and you
can't find cashow in your market, then you should absolutely
look somewhere else. If your goal is for great appreciation
and you can get that in your home market, then
invest in your home market. Like if you can get
even close to the national average or better for cashal
(24:42):
or appreciation in your home market, I would say do
that because you're going to have a lot of advantages
just knowing the neighborhoods, being able to drive somewhere, you
just knowing the town. It just matters and it helps.
But as someone who has done both both invested in
a local and invested long distance, it's not as hard
(25:04):
as you think to invest long distance, and depending on
your goals, it can really make sense. I'll just give
you an example, like I started buying in the Midwest
because I wanted to balance out my portfolio. I have
a lot of appreciation centric deals where I'm investing places
that are growing and they're expensive and they're probably going
(25:26):
to go up in price, but they're not the best
cash flow. I wanted to augment that with some deals
that provide cash flow and are likely to grow at
least a little bit, but maybe not as fast as
some of those other markets. And so I chose a
market in the Midwest and buy there as well, so
that I can have a balance of portfolio of different deals.
(25:51):
That's for me. I've been doing this for fifteen years.
I think for people who are just starting, whether the
biggest thing is whether you choose to invest in your backyard,
in your home market or somewhere else, start with one
and don't obsess about what the best deal is. Just
find a place that has pretty good fundamentals and where
you have a team that you can trust that's like
(26:12):
a property manager, an agent, handyman like those are the
two things that you really need, is like solid economic
fundamentals and a good team. That's what I would build around.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So obviously, yeah, you're all about getting folks the right
people in play. So I guess for somebody who's looking
at that very first deal, though, I'm assuming that you're
down with them self managing the property as they're learning
the ropes.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, that's what I did. I think it teaches you
a lot about the business. I self managed for jes
nine years, ten years. Yeah, and so you learn a
lot about the business, and you don't need to do
it that long. I think if you're getting started, i'd
do it for a year or two because you'll learn
what good looks like. And for me, I learned what
(26:56):
bad looks like.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I was just not handy, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
And I learned what things I wanted to outsource, what
things I felt I was good at and should continue
to focus on in my portfolio, and that whole that
that just taught me a lot.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
But it's a steep learning curve.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It is. It's you know, it's steep, but short.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I would say, oh, yeah, you know, it's you learned
a whole lot, really exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
But if you try to skip that and you try
to hire somebody, you miss out on even knowing what
questions to ask the person you're trying to hire, Like,
you need that couple of years. I think of managing
your own property to even know how to proceed moving
forward as a real estate thing.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah, I do think that's generally true. I know people
who have invested long distance successfully for their first deal.
But I think you just need to it just you
need to do more upfront education. I am some type
of person who just likes to learn the broad boundaries
that I should stay within when I try to take
(27:56):
on a new task, and then I like to jump
in and learn hands off. I think if you're going
to do it out of state, you just need to
be a little more academic about it.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
And that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Study and like, just learn the questions to ask, interview
a lot of different property managers. Ideally find a real
estate investor who you know or trust who can help
you interview those property managers because they can teach you
a lot. So that's sort of the advice I give.
But you can absolutely do it. I mean there's thousands
(28:27):
of people who do it all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, that makes sense. So you're talking about your portfolio
and you were looking your focus shifted to some of
those Midwestern properties because you're looking for properties that were
going to cash flow as opposed to solely appreciate. Was
there a rough portfolio allocation to either one of those
categories that you were looking for?
Speaker 4 (28:43):
So yeah, the way I think about my portfolio now
is actually less between the cash flow and appreciation and
more between direct and passive ownership. So when I first started,
the first ten years, I was just buying deals in
Denver self managing them, and that was great. I moved
to Europe and I was sort of forced to start
(29:05):
investing passively, either in syndications or I started doing private lending,
which is kind of like I mean, it is in
the real estate space, but it's a very different business
than buying property, and I really liked it. And I
started to realize that I could create a portfolio where
(29:26):
I outsourced the things that are profitable but I'm bad at,
and I could keep in house the things that I
am good at. And so I am not good at
value ad investing. That's things like flipping houses or doing
heavy renovations on properties. I've never done a multi family deal,
probably never will, not a big one, and so I
(29:49):
invest in those things passively because there are other people
who are very good at it, who I'm happy to
give up some of my income, my return to in
exchange for that. What I've done almost my entire career
as and investors just buy small multi family properties and duplexes.
Triplex's quaplexes that have good long term cash flow potential,
(30:10):
and that's a business I feel comfortable running, even from Europe.
And so that's sort of how I've divided it, and
I would like to get to a point where I'm
doing maybe i'd say forty to fifty percent direct ownership
long you know, small multifamily, twenty five percent in these
passive bigs. I consider them big swings. They're a little
(30:31):
bit riskier, but they have bigger upside. And then maybe
twenty five percent in lending, which is a whole other
thing we can get into if you want.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Well, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
One of the things typically the upsides of investing in
real estate is you the market might be less efficient, right,
so you might be able to find a deal on
a street in a neighborhood that you know exists, that
nobody else knows exists, and so you're able to get
a deal. And then the other cool thing is you
can kind of force appreciation into the property, right where
if you're buying an index and sorry, it kind of
(31:02):
is what it is and it will go up over time,
but there's nothing that you have very little impact.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
You have one vote, but.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
If you like paint the house, renovate the kitchen, put
money into the bathrooms. You have the ability to see
a lot of upside in real estate, which I think
is what is certainly one of the selling points. But
then you also look at the ROI on some of
these studies of certain home renovation projects you might take on,
and it ends up a lot of them actually end
up a lot of them end up losing you money.
(31:28):
So how do you think about being able to force
appreciation into a home versus the fact that a lot
of those renovation efforts might not be they might not
pay off in the way you want it.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Yeah, that's a great question, and it really comes down
to understanding your customer in a way that I don't
think a ton of real estate investors think about a
lot of times you walk into a home and you think,
what would I want here? And that is not necessarily
what a prospective tenant wants if you're a long term
(32:02):
buy and hold investor, might not be what a guest
wants if you're a short term rental investor. And so
I think it's really important to figure out what people
want and what they're willing to pay for, and for
a rental property, that's often quite different for what it
would be if you're a flipper and you're trying to
create value in a single family home, and so there's
(32:24):
ways to do this, but I think talking to property
managers is one great hack that's totally free to figure
this out. You know, if you call up a property
manager in Denver, they'll tell you that having covered parking
is super important, or a yard for a dog because
dogs are you know, everyone else dog in Denver. Those
(32:44):
types of things allow you to focus your investment into
value add in a way that you might not immediately
know or might not be able to into it just
by you know, basing it off your own experiences. So
I think that's really important. I think the thing that
I've done in my career that has been successful is
(33:05):
trying to add capacity to homes. And this can come
in a couple of different formats, but I often think like,
can you add a bedroom, can you add a bathroom?
Can you add an entirely new unit onto a property?
Those are like usually slam dunk ways to add value
into a property. I've bought homes where I could you know,
(33:30):
I bought a short term rental, for example, that had
three bedrooms.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
I turned it into.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Five, you know, and I you know, that totally changes
the revenue profile of that home.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Are you at like square footage or are you turning
current square footage into more usable bedroom space.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
No, So I actually told my real estate agent I
wanted a four bedroom or bigger house because I saw
in the data that that's the where the revenue inefficiency,
as you said, like.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You can get better revenue per dollar there. And I
couldn't find anything good. So I told my agent to look.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
For three bedrooms that were big, and I wound up
finding a four thousand square foot three bedroom house, which
is just absurd. It's like every bedrooms twelve hundred square feet,
but if they had a whole floor, it was like
I think it was like it was literally like twelve
hundred square foot living room in the basement. It was
(34:23):
the second living room. So I just turned it into
two more bedrooms, you know, And so something like.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
See, these are the inefficiencies that exist in real estate.
The capitalize on right.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And do you know how cheap it is to throw
up some drywall. You know, it's like fifteen hundred bucks.
So I didn't, you know, the investment was almost nothing,
and the amount of revenue can bring in for adding
a bedroom on a short term revue is crazy. That
probably paid itself off in three nights.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well yeah, Now if you've listed it for sale too,
think about how much you would sell for. Is a
fives three bit exactly? So is that what it takes
to find a deal these days? Is kind of look,
I mean looking at properties, maybe in a way that
other folks aren't.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Yeah, so I I'll just tell you what I look for.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for value add
so flipping houses. People overlook it, but it's actually quite profitable.
Right now, I'm not really a flipper because I have
a full time job, but if you're into that, it
can be really profitable. Have you guys heard of the
Burr method before? So this is just this idea of
(35:17):
buying a rental. It's kind of like flipping but holding
on to it. So you buy a property, you rehabilitate it,
you know, bring it up to its highest and best use,
you rent it out, then you refinance it and you
just keep doing that washing repeat. That was really popular
up until a few years ago, and it still should
be popular, but it's a little less efficient. Than it
(35:38):
used to be.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
But because a lot of the Burr.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Method is based on speed, you know, you want to
do it as quickly as possible so that you can
refinance and get that money out and buy your next deal.
But as I think I've told you guys, like, scaling
up quickly is not really my thing. I kind of
want to be slow and steady, and so I've been
doing this thing I need to Maybe you guys can
help me.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I've been trying to name it, but I call it
like the delayed Burr or the chill Burr, where I'm
just chills.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Yeah, it's very cold theme the chillbur So basically, what
I've done is you buy a property that is occupied
and then whenever the tenants leave, then you renovate it
and bring it up to its highest and best use
and bring up the rents. Then, if it's a duplex,
which is what I've done, you wait till the other
person leaves, then you renovate that and then over the
(36:28):
course of twelve or eighteen months, you've really increased the
rents and then you can refinance. And I've been targeting
this because you can find deals in a lot of
markets right now where that deal that you buy right
off the market is at least break even cash loow
so to three percent cash on cash return. Then by
(36:49):
the time you refinance you do the whole work, it's
maybe seven eight percent cash and cash return, which is great.
And maybe it takes you twelve months to get to
that return, but for me, that's totally fine because if
you get into the math, even a three percent cash
and cash return, when you factor in the potential appreciation,
the amortization, which is basically just paying off your loan,
(37:10):
and the significant tax advantages of owning real estate, I
still think it does better than an index fund, and
when you've done with the work, it will significantly outperform
an index fund, at least in my mind.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I feel like what you're highlighting here is like patience
and creativity, those are maybe the keys to success. Whereas,
like including Matt and I, any idiot could succeed investing
in real estate right in twenty eleven, twenty thirteen, but
now it takes maybe more of that outside the box
way of thinking in order to be successful. So like
when we're talking about running the numbers and what makes
(37:44):
a real estate purchase potentially a successful investment for someone,
what should they be thinking about?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, so I think the number one thing we started
this conversation talking a lot about influencers. I think some
of the things that you're i'd me crazy about it
is that sort of overlooking a lot of the expenses
revenue side of running a deal super easy rent times twelve,
that's your income. Sometimes you have other stuff that you
(38:11):
can rent out, like a parking spot or storage space,
or maybe you have a coin op laundry, but whatever
it is, you can figure that out. The other things
that you need to factor in, of course your mortgage payment,
but it doesn't stop there. You need to obviously account
for maintenance and repairs. But some of the things that
people miss are vacancy. Vacancy is the silent killer of
(38:33):
any real estate deal because even one month of vacancy
is eight percent of your revenue for the year. That
can make or break your entire year. And so vacancy
needs to be accounted for property management chip most of
the time taxes, And I think the big thing right
now in this market is insurance. Insurance costs have been
going crazy in a lot of markets. I don't know
(38:55):
what it's like in Atlanta, but I know a lot
of the Southeast it's been going crazy, and so that's
another thing you really need to keep an eye on,
is what's happening with insurance rates in your area and
whether they're likely to keep going up, because that can
be there's not much you can do about that, and
it can really be a detriment to your business's profitability.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
No doubt. Okay, well, earlier you said something about being
willing to go it out on a limb making a forecast, Like, oh, yeah,
you know, so let's go ahead and get you on
the record fire. I wanted to look into your crystal ball, like,
what do you think is going to be It's going
to happen with real estate moving forward because of the
lack of supply, household formations are climbing, like all of
(39:38):
these factors can combined. Do you think that continue to
leads to rising home prices?
Speaker 4 (39:44):
I do think there we're going to continue to see
a weird slow market for the next year.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So is my best gas.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
I am not of the belief I'm going to again
annoy real estate or real estate influencers. I don't think
mortgage rates are down that much, even if the Fed
cuts rates this week, which they're likely to do. I
don't think they're coming down that much. I think they're
going to stay in the sixes for at least the
rest of twenty twenty four, and probably will into twenty
twenty five. I think even in a best case scenario,
(40:14):
that may be coming into the high fives next year.
And so that keeps us away from what most economists
think is sort of like the magic number of unlocking
the housing market in increasing volume, which is about five
to five and a half percent. So I think we're
going to see more low affordability, which means we won't
(40:36):
have a ton of buyers. But I still don't think
that we're going to see any sort of like sharp
decline in prices because people don't have to sell, and
they've shown over the last several years that they're not
going to unless they are forced to, and they're not
going to be forced to. This is not two thousand
and eight, where people were underwater on their mortgages and
couldn't make their mortgage payments. If you look at mortgage
(40:59):
delinquency rates, they're incredibly low. If you look at foreclosure rates,
they're incredibly low, and people are just going to chill,
like I think that's what's going to happen, and I
know that's frustrating. It's frustrating for me too, But I
don't think we're going to see any resolution to this
sort of stuck housing market, at least in the next
six months. It's really hard to forecast after that. I
(41:22):
will say that I think in certain markets we will
see price declines, but modest ones, you know too, three percent,
maybe four percent, while other markets continue to grow. We've
seen the Midwest and the Northeast continue to be very strong,
where the Southeast, particularly Florida, and we also see Texas
seeing modest declines, and if mortgage rates stay high for longer,
we'll probably continue to see some more declines. But don't
(41:46):
I never have seen a crash in the cycle, and
I still don't see it coming. Of course, there's all
sorts of geopolitical uncertainty, all this crazy stuff that could
you know, right exactly like a black swan, always possible,
and frankly, it feels more likely now than it has
in a long time. But if you're just reading the
fundamentals of the housing market, it looks like we're in
(42:09):
for some more flat slow years.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, I love seeing by the way stats be manipulated.
And it's like foreclosures up twenty percent, which means six
people instead of five.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
People exactly close.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, it's like, really and truly almost nobody is at
risk of foreclosure these days because of what's happened with
you know what, the rate that people have locked in
what they paid for the home and then what the
home is worth.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Now nine percent nine percent of is the amount of
foreclosures we have compared to twenty ten. It's just not
even close.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Which makes total sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Are we got just a few last questions to get
to with you, Dave. We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
All right, we are back from the Greg talk in
real estate investing in a Murky Market with Dave Meyer. Dave,
earlier you talked to maybe this will be like a
rapid fire sort of section. We'll see how rapid we
can keep it. But you talked about the timeline and
you said, okay, maybe like ten to fifteen years. I'm
curious why did you choose those numbers? Is that because
(43:13):
you do you have a lot of fifteen year mortgages
on some of your investment properties.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
No, no, I just think that I'm thirty seven, and
I think maybe around fifty years old is maybe when
I'll stop working full time. I don't think i'll ever,
like truly retire.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I'm what ye likes to work.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
But you know, I've been working full time and investing
on the side and writing books and doing all this
stuff for a lot of years, and at a certain
point I'll probably want to slow down. And Okay, I
think between age forty five and fifty, I'd love to
just know that when the time comes and decide, you know,
I'm tired, that I can do that without having to
really think about it too hard.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
So more about lifestyle for you, less about numbers, totally, yes, exactly,
all right.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
How do you think, Dave about tenant screening. I feel
like that is the thing that gets talked about not
nearly enough, but that can be kind of make or
break for real estate investors.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
I think it's crucially important to find tenants who are
the right fit for your property, and that can be
different for every property, every asset class. But I really
recommend people set strict criteria of what they're looking for
and stick to it. And I know I said earlier
that vacancy is like the silent killer of real estate deals.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
But actually eviction is.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Way how expensive a reviction is way worse.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
I actually just did a show on this. I have
an analyst who works for me, and I asked him
figure out what the average eviction costs a landlord, and
on the low side, it's like six grand and that's it.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, you'd rather have a market or two per expensive
of that place setting vacant than having a crummy tenant.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
That's right, And you will be much less stressed. Honestly
with vacancy. It's frustrating, but you know, I've fortunately in
fifteen years, only had to do one eviction, but it's
so stressful.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's a terrible situation.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
It's a terrible situation for tenants too, And so I
think that's the thing about tenants screening that's so important,
is like, you don't want to put someone in a
situation where they're unlikely to be able to pay and
meet their obligations. And so it's sort of on you
as a property owner to make sure that you're finding
a tenant where there's mutual benefit and mutual interest and
(45:20):
ability to meet the obligations of the contract.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
That's that's so good. I really like your perspective there,
like you are helping them succeed potentially by Actually I
don't think this is going to work out.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. It's like you don't you know.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
I think that it's tempting to be like, oh, this
will person is willing to pay, but like are they
able to pay? But I just think as a property owner,
you have an obligation to your customer to make sure
there's a very high probability.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
That you that it's a win win situation.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
The million dollar question, Dave, is real estate investing passive
or not?
Speaker 3 (45:58):
No, I don't think it is. I will say, I
invest in syndications and some funds.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Do you want to explain what those are? By the way,
cause you mentioned that term, and I know some people
just don't know what that means.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Yeah, So direct ownership of real estate, which is like
buying a property with a partner managing it, even if
you hire a property manager, like I invest in out
of state, I have a property manager. It's not passive.
I do almost nothing. I'll be honest. I spend maybe
five hours a month on it. But it still takes work,
and you know, I still have to pay attention. Syndications
(46:31):
are when a bunch of investors pool their money together
to buy large assets, like a multifamily building or an
office building or whatever. And in those types of deals,
there are typically two classes of investor. One is called
a general partner, often referred to as a GP or
a sponsor. That's the person who finds the deals, makes
(46:51):
all the decisions, actually does all the work. And then
there is a class of investor called a limited partner,
also called an LP, where you basically give money and
then do nothing. And so I invest as an LP
in some deals. Again, this is sort of my way
of exposing myself to multifamily and to value ad investing.
(47:15):
So I invest in a lot of places where people,
you know, my partner will buy a distressed multifamily property,
fix it up, get it up to speed, and then
sell it off and hopefully we all make some good money.
But those kind of deals are very very passive because
once you write the check, you don't have any rights. Really,
(47:37):
You just wait until the LP says that they're selling.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
The property and hopefully you get your cash.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
So that is about as passive as it gets It's
kind of like buying an index fund, right, Like you
pick the fund and then once you do it, you
kind of just take your hands off of it.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Wait. Yeah, so that is fairly passive, but also probably
not what most folks are thinking of, I guess as
they're thinking about dabbling and getting into real estate.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
And also a lot of due diligence required if you're
gonna invest in that way too.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
Totally, and I don't recommend people start that way. Yeah,
there's no liquidity, which is really important to know, Like
you can't get your money out, you can't sell your
share to someone else like you're in it.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
The minimum investment is fifty k. You have to be
an a credited investor. There's a whole lot of hurdles
you have to jump through too.
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Yeah, so that stuff is passive and I don't recommend
people start there anyway. I think the spectrum of how
passive direct ownership is is big. Right. If you want
to be a flipper, that's a job. If you want
to buy, you know, a long term rental that's in
your market, you could probably spend less than ten hours
(48:42):
a month on it.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
It's not like some crazy time investment, so you just
kind of have to think about what time you're willing
to put in.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Well. Nice, well, Dave. Earlier you mentioned the buy rent
calculator that y'all have over at Bigger Pockets, and of
course you've got your multiple podcasts now, But where else
can folks learn about you what you're up to you?
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Yeah, so check me out on Bigger Pockets, or if
you're into sort of economic data and news, you can
follow me on Instagram where I'm at the Data Deli,
where I share a lot of my work that I
do at Bigger Pockets doing housing market analysis and all that.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Awesome, Dave, We've really appreciate you joining us today, man,
thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me, Joel.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Nice to dive back into a topic that is sort
of at the roots of how the money and some
of the things that attracted us to at least talking
about personal finance on a personal level, you know, back
in the neighborhood, hanging out on the front porch, drinking
the beer, being like, all right, let's talk about let's
talk about rentals. You into it, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I still love talking about real estate because and I
think part of it is what Dave was talking about,
kind of the simple accessible. Everybody has had to pay
rent at one point in time for a place to
live and see it, you can go visit it. It's changeable, yes, exactly,
So I think that's why people are attracted to it.
But what was your big takeaway from this combo?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
I think mine was when we were talking about some
of the different real estate influencers out there and how
they tend to overcomplicate the process. And we want as
consumers slash investors in this case, but we want things
to be so easy, and we let that sort of
consumer nature overcome our approach to investing and truly like
it doesn't need to be packaged and placed into a
course and delivered to you over six weeks. Instead, it
(50:19):
can just be something where you're like looking for a
long time, you're looking at a specific market. You become
an expert on that market and specific properties, and you're
able to spot the deals and you say, oh, wait
a minute, that's that's actually really that's priced really well.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Yeah,
if you know what the rents are going to be
for a nice three to two in an area that
has a high demand, maybe it's in a great school district,
whatever the parameters are, it can be as easy as that.
(50:42):
It doesn't necessarily have to be this thing that you
have to take some sort of You don't have to
join a mastermind drop five figures in order to become
a successful real estate investor. Dave point, but that's what
they want you to think. I know, I know, because
that's how they're making their money. That's how their bread
gets bettered, exactly. So I appreciate that Dave was able
to highlight that because that's similar to how it is
that you I approached investing in real estate.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
That's why we wanted to have Dave on too, because
we think he's just one, he's way smarter than us.
But then two, he thinks about real estate in the
way that you and I think about real estate, just
on a much deeper level because he eats and breede
it every day.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
So, I think my big takeaway was when he talked
about the flexibility of real estate right, and he said,
that's what most people want, and there are one hundred
ways you can slice this thing up. It doesn't have
to look like somebody else's approach to real estate. But
as long as you keep that in mind and say, hey,
guess what, maybe my route to becoming a quote unquote
real estate mobile that makes sense for kind of the
goals I want to achieve is buying one property every
(51:33):
three years until I get five properties.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
So let's say that's fifteen years down the road.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
That's cool, man Like, If that's what you want to do,
and that's the approach you want to take, that can
be incredibly that could be successful for you. You don't have
to own one hundred properties in order to be some awesome,
over the top real estate investor owning a handful of
properties for a whole lot of people, Matt. And when
you look at the numbers, that's the average real estate
investor owned somewhere between two and ten rental properties. That
is the vast majority of real estate investors across the country.
(52:00):
So I think a lot of people put a bunch
of pressure on themselves to well successful real estate investor
looks like this. That's not necessarily the case, and there
is a lot of flexibility inside of real estate investing
to be able to achieve what you want to achieve,
not what someone else says is successful.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Totally agree.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
All right.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
The beard you and I enjoyed today was an attention Please,
which is a double IPA by bearded iris. What'd you think?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I thought this was kind of light, a little bit weedy,
A little bit of light lemon vibes is what I
was getting.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Oh yeah, I think the Yeah, I totally pick up
on the sharpness that you get from the like the lemonee.
I think that's from the citra but tropical notes for sure.
But overall I wasn't a huge fan of this, and
I wonder I looked, I noticed the date on here
is a little bit older. It kind of has like
that older ipa sort of metallic tinge to it.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
That sitting on the shelves too long.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, I think so kind of a bummer because I
was looking forward to enjoying the heck out of this one.
But maybe I just don't like pillow. It also says
on here it's pillowy and so, which I tend to
see is like, I don't know, soft, and I like
this like sharp abrasive, I pa is not like overly bitter,
but ones where you can really the hot presence shining through.
You don't really get that with this one here, guy, Buddy,
(53:10):
I see why sometimes you want to just cut to
the chase. But I'm glad, even still glad that you
and I got to enjoy this one today on the podcast.
Head over to the show notes at how to money
dot com where you can find some of the different
links that we mentioned during our discussion with Dave Meyer
of Bigger Pockets Fame during our conversation today. But Buddy,
that's going to be it for this episode until next time.
(53:32):
Best Friends Out, I'm best Friends Out.
Welcome to Hout of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking real estate investing in a murky
market with Dave Meyer.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
That's right, and not just investing in real estate, but
we'll touch on some topics for the first time buyers
out there who are looking for a good, old fashioned home.
But Joel investment properties, man, like, this isn't something that
we talk about as often as we used to. I
should say, like I'm thinking about a decade ago, like
rental properties. It was like the only thing on our minds,
(00:47):
the only thing we were talking about. In fact, like
when we first batted around the idea of starting in
the podcast, we even thought about making it solely about
real estate. But that being said, a lot has happened
since then. The housing market, it's definitely not what it
used to be. There's many reasons for that, and so
the question that we're asking today is does it make
sense to continue investing in real estate? That is the
(01:08):
topic of conversation with our guest today, Dave Meyer. And
Dave is a longtime investor. He is the head of
real estate over at Bigger Pockets, as well as host
of multiple podcasts over at Bigger Pockets, which you definitely
need to check out if you want to take real
estate investing. Seriously, if you've never heard of Bigger Pockets,
you need to check it out. But Dave, we're excited
(01:30):
to have you join us today on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Thank you, Thank you for having me. I'm super excited
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Of course, Yes, Dave, Matt and I we like to
drink beer. We know, actually you live in a place
where there's a lot of good beer, and Matt and
I we are even while we're drinking expensive craft beer,
we're still doing the smart thing. We're saving investing for
our futures. What do you like to supoort John in
the here?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Now? What's your craft beer equivalent?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Oh, it's definitely taking nice vacations. I have a weak
spot for a nice hotel. And I do live in
Europe and so I get to travel quite a lot,
and I do it with reckless abandon.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I like that reckless abandon Well, it makes all the
sense in the world too.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Like once, it's like when you when you hear about
folks who do a study abroad and they're like, all right,
I'm going to do a semester in Cortona with my
art program, and like you got to spend every single
week in traveling basically when it's just like a a
thirty minute flight or an hour flight and you're basically
on the other side of other side of Europe. So
is the travel Is that a large a big reason
(02:31):
why maybe you've continued to kind of kick the cane
down the road as to you know, versus coming back stateside.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, just for some contexts.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I moved to Europe because my wife was transferred here
for work five years ago, and that was part of
the appeal.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It seemed like.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
A really cool opportunity to live in a new culture.
But also being in Europe you have such great access
to unbelievable destinations. And the first two years we were
here is actually COVID and so we didn't get to
travel very much. And we've stayed so that we could
tick quite a few places off our bucket list, which has.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Been a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
But I will say, you know, people say the Netherlands
Belgium has great beer. I will tell you America has
better beer. And I know I won't say that loudly
outside of my home, but I miss America.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, your neighbors don't let them hear you say that.
But I think you're right, like all this fighting words, Drue,
although I think per capita we have more great beer.
But some of the beer in the in Belgium specifically
is some of the best in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
That is true. But like your average brewery.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
That you just go to in the US is so good,
and here a lot of places you go it's just
Heineken and Amstell. You know, it's hard to find craft beer.
I think that's the problem, your typical euro pills exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, that is something that's pretty great. And we don't
talk in depth about craft beer half another show. But
the fact that pretty much any like small little town
that you go to now has their own local craft
brewery that is putting out pretty decent beer when it
didn't used to be the case a decade ago. What
are the other things that has happened over the past
decade that I certainly welcome.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Quick shout out by the way, for you, Dave, but
for anybody else who visits Amsterdam. There's a beer store
called Debier Cooning, which I think means the beer king.
It does the you and oh.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
My god, gotch accent, by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, he totally nailed that I should move there.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
But seriously, the best beer shop maybe I've ever been
to in my entire life.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
So good, Really, I don't I've never been. I am
going to look this up right now or when we
get off.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Is that where you did the beer trade? Yes? I
brought some US beers, brought him.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Dozens of beers overseas to trade with it, and I
brought tons of great Belgian and Netherlands beers back with me.
And it was like the best thing I've ever done
in my life besides Mary and my wife.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Probably.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Wow, that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, I am whoa. It's not far from where I live.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh, just let me know what you think of that place.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I mean, I'm looking it up right now.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
It is an eleven minute bike ride from here.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Oh yeah, Oh my gosh. Could you imagine text me
pictures later from there and buy some n for yourself
if you send us some in the But I don't
have to.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You don't have to, Dave, just text me your address.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's not about real estate investing, because fine, you are dude,
like you are all about it. I feel like you're
a real estate investing Ninja, But how did you originally
get into investing in real estate in the first place.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
I sort of fell into real estate investing. I was
living in Denver right after college. I had moved there
for fun and was waiting tables and trying to sort
of figure out what I wanted to do with my career,
and was skiing a lot with this guy who wound
up just buying a rental property with his girlfriend at
(05:37):
the time and was making all this money, and I
sort of just got jealous and was thinking that if
this guy, who was good dude, not my smartest friend
of all time, I was like, if this guy could
do it, I feel like I could do it. And
luckily I had had some internships in college where I
learned financial modeling, so I felt pretty confident in the
(06:00):
analytics deal analysis kind of side of it. And I
had had a job cold calling for a commercial real
estate broker who agreed to help me, and so I
kind of just backed into it. It was never like
I was in the fire movement or I analyzed all
of these different asset classes and chose real estate. It
just I wanted to make some extra money, and real
(06:21):
estate seemed like a good way to do it. Given
this was twenty ten, so it was a little bit
easier to find cash flowing deals.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
But we can get into how I pulled it off.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, well, okay, I.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Would love to hear how you pulled off your first deal.
But I'm also curious too, why real estate over the
stock market or starting a more traditional business. And when
you're talking to people who listen to bigger pockets, why
did they often choose real estate? Would you say over
some of those other options that maybe are less labor intensive.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
There's something about real estate and the tangibility. Is that
a word, tangibleness? I don't know, the fact that it's
tangible really touch up. Yeah, actually I.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Have.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It was weird, No, I don't.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I never was super interested in the stock market because
I just didn't understand it. Whereas real estate, one of
the great benefits to it is that it's actually quite
a simple business. The revenue is very simple, the expenses
are limited. You're not reinventing something, and all the operations,
all of the strategy or things.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That you can borrow from someone.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
You don't need to be some stock picking genius or
anything to succeed in real estate, and that simplicity really
appealed to me, especially when I was young, and I
had always been somewhat entrepreneurial. I had started a few
businesses in high school and college, just little things, but
(07:50):
I liked the idea of just figuring something out for myself,
and real estate just seemed to be prime for that.
And this was in twenty ten, and so things were
pretty cheap and finding cash flow was relatively easy, and
it felt so tangible to me that I could buy
this deal and even with pretty conservative underwriting, could increase
(08:13):
my income by two or three hundred dollars a month,
which at the time was really meaningful to me.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So one of the things you just said was that
it was simple and straightforward. I don't know how closely
you monitor like the real estate social media space, but
I feel like, if you, it's just like this sort
of endless rabbit trail. And I feel like there are
a whole lot of different pitches as to how really
investing in real estate is being presented. But I'm curious,
will A do you kind of keep up with different
influencers over there?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I doah, Okay, some might even call me a real
estate influencer, which is cringey.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
But I'm on Insta.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
But in a more forthcoming way, in a less like
hype and yeah, like the hype and the I feel
like folks are getting steered wrong. Like what do you
see as like the predominant message that you think a
lot of folks might be hearing as opposed to what's
actually accurate out there.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yeah, there's there's so much to that. But I think
that I'll just be real with you guys. I think
that a lot of influencers make real estate more complicated,
seem more complicated than it is, because that's their business model.
They rely on convincing people that they have some secret
that only they know, and that being part of their
(09:19):
mastermind or their group is going to unlock some secret
thing for them, and that you could should pay them
five or ten thousand dollars to be a part of
this community. The reality is that on bigger pockets, we
give almost all this information away for free. We just
have a different business model, or a media business, and
so we thrive and we can be honest because our
(09:41):
whole business depends on us giving good advice, not convincing
people that we know someone something that no one else knows,
and so I would just you know, not all of
them are bad. I have a lot of friends who
have courses that are very reputable and really really good.
I would just caution people who are wanting to get
into real life state investing about just like, think about
(10:02):
people's motives and why they're saying the things that they're saying.
And in almost all cases, especially if you're new, you
can learn everything you need to about real estate for free.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, that's We had a question not too long ago
on the show where a listener was considering signing up
for I want to forget exactly how much the real
estate course costs, but I'm pretty sure was five figures,
like ten grand plus, and he hadn't really read a
book or listen to a podcast or like some of
the basic things that you would advise someone to do
before you even consider signing up for something more in
(10:36):
depth that costs that much money. Go for the low
hanging fruit first at least, and honestly, for most people,
that's that's probably all you need. I'm curious, Dave. You
wrote a book called Start with Strategy, and you talk
about how people like not only need to consider how
much money they have to invest, but what they want
out of becoming a real estate investor?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Real estate?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
The thing I love about it is how flexible it
is and how you can really design a real estate
portfolio around pretty much any goal that you can imagine.
So for some people, if you want to be a tycoon,
you can do that, and those courses might teach you
how to be a tycoon. I think for most people
that I encounter, which is many hundreds or thousands of
(11:19):
real estate investors all the time, are people who just
are normal and who have full time jobs and who
want to either augment their income, they want to provide
some hedge against a job that may be uncertain or volatile,
or they want to move up their retirement by five
years or a decade, all of which are possible through
(11:43):
real estate. Some people want to quit their jobs in
five years, some people in twenty, and knowing what your
overall and long term objective is will allow you to
create a portfolio that's right for you. And to me,
that's been one of the most single eye opening and
biggest unlocks for me in real estate investing, because I
(12:05):
at first sort of felt bad about myself in my
portfolio because you go on social media and I don't
have hundreds of doors and I don't aspire to start
a fund anytime soon. I mean, I'll never say never,
but I have absolutely no plans to do that. You're
setting your sites too low, Dave.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, but like, yeah, maybe I am. And I'm from
with that. No, But I think that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Was sort of what changed my whole real estate investing world,
is realizing like I don't want that, and that's okay.
I have a great, very profitable real estate investing portfolio
because I figured out why I was doing this in
the first place and sort of worked backwards to design
a portfolio that is designed to meet that specific goal.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I love that it can cater to your lifestyle and
you can find that portfolio that's right for you. And
what you said there about building it backwards, like figuring
out what you want the end to look like and
be like, okay, how can I get there? But for
some people, they do want to be you know, you
said that like you had, you know, no desire to
be like a tycoon, Like there might be some folks
out there who want to be real estate moguls. And
so how do you help those folks to think about
(13:11):
how rapidly to acquire some of these additional properties as
they are looking to ram things up. Well, like, would
you agree with the advice out there that that says, hey,
let's just find this strategy and this approach that works
and this repeat it as quickly as possible.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah, I think you can do that if you want
to scale really quickly. I do recommend people to really
try and master one element of real estate, and I
think there's two different ways to do that. You can
either get really good at one type of deal, so
maybe be great at flipping or multifamily or self storage
or whatever. The other way you could do it is
(13:47):
get really good at a specific market. So for you guys,
for example, just mastering the Atlanta market, and then if
you're super good at that physical you know, geographic location,
then you can flip and do multi family and short
term rentals all within it because you understand the market
so well. I do just think that it's important for
people to realize that scaling quickly and risk go hand
(14:11):
in hand. And so if you want to scale very quickly, well,
there's nothing wrong with that. You're going to have to
take on more risk. That might be in the form
of riskier deals. It might be using more leverage, it
might be taking on partners that you.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Don't know as well. All those are fine.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
They just come with risk, and if you're comfortable with that, great,
But if you're not, you're going to have to move slower.
And these are just some of the trade offs that
you need to think through as you build out your portfolio.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So the three of us, Dave, I don't know how
old you are, but I think we're probably in that
same sphere about when we started real estate investing, and
we were investing at a time where finding deals was
not terribly difficult, So it kind of felt like shooting
fish in a barrel, essentially. Finding that makes retrospect.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean at the time it didn't, but definitely in retrospect,
it certainly feels like they were just everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
If I could go share and turn back time, like
I would go buy a whole lot more properties in
eleven right, So yes, I don't know, how would you
say buying real estate has changed, and how does that
change your advice to investors?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
It has changed.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
It was very easy to find deals in twenty ten,
and the flip side though, is very difficult to find loans.
It was very difficult to find financing back then, and
so I think there are always trade offs. There was
I think there was like this sweet spot at like
twenty thirteen twenty fourteen where the credit markets were a
little better and deals were still easy to find. To me,
(15:43):
that was like the dream time. But I still think
there are great deals in real estate investing. I do
believe the challenge. There are real challenges with it right
now too. I just think it's all about expectations and
goals because for me, I've actually bought more deals this
year than I have in the previous couple of years combined.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And it's because I just recognize that my goal is
to have rental properties that are going to be hitting
their stride and are going to supplement my income when
I want to retire, which I think is like ten
or fifteen years from now. And so I'm looking at
(16:25):
the real estate market and saying, I don't think prices
are really going to go down, and yes, interest rates
aren't great, but there's not a lot of competition right now,
and I'm able to buy deals that I think have
good intrinsic value at a price that I don't think
I'm going to see again.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
And does that mean I'm going.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
To make a huge profit this year. Probably not. But
I only buy cash shlowing deals, so I'm not going
to buy something that's going to bleed me. And I
do think that, you know, over the next couple of years,
this is going to turn into a very strong investment.
And I can do that because I take this long view.
You not everyone is going to do that, and not
(17:04):
you know, there's a lot of rhetoric in the social
media space in this industry about quitting your job in
two years or three years. That's just not going to happen,
to be honest, like unless you're starting with ten million bucks,
Like I just don't think that's going to happen for
most people right now. And I don't think that's what
most people want. And I think resetting of expectations to say, hey,
(17:24):
real estate is you want to work hard, you know,
or work at this for ten to fifteen years, you're
going to be in a phenomenal place. And I don't
think that has changed at all over the last ten
you know, since when I started, or right now, real
estate's always been a long game, and yeah, it's a
little bit harder to find, you know, have the confidence
in that right now, But I firmly believe that's still true.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, you said there's still a lot of opportunities to
be had. I think I've heard you describe what's happening
now as a stalemate. And so it seems like we've
got fewer buyers, we've got fewer sellers. Why, like, why
have Can you kind of explain the state of the
market and why things have kind of slowed down?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yeah, it's a very strange time in the real estate market,
especially if you don't spend all day looking at data
like I do. But basically what's happened is during COVID
we had a huge influx of buyers to the market.
This is due to low interest rates, which makes things
more affordable, but also due to demographics. This is often overlooked,
(18:24):
but in you know, the millennials, now the largest generation
of the United States, hit their peak home buying age
in about twenty twenty, and so there's this big demographic
tailwent a lot of people want to buy homes right now.
When interest rates went up, we start to see that
affordability leave the market, and so that part of demand
has declined considerably. Millions and literally millions of people have
(18:47):
been priced out.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Of the market.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
But what and that part seems obvious, right, That is
a really intuitive thing. Prices went up, less people can
afford to buy homes, demand goes down. The reffusing part,
at least on the surface, is why prices haven't decline
that right, because you think demand's gone, prices should go down.
But what has happened is that low affordability caused by
(19:12):
high interest rates, has also caused supply to go down,
meaning that people don't want to sell their homes. And
this is one of these unique characteristics about the housing
market because seventy percent of people who sell their home
go on to buy another home. So when buying conditions
decline like they have, it doesn't just hurt demand, but
it sort of weirdly impacts supply. And so we've seen
(19:36):
just a slow down in the total market where there's
just not a lot of buyers. There's not a lot
of sellers. But as of right now in November of
twenty twenty four, even with high interest rates, there are
more buyers than there are sellers. And prices are still
going up modestly, and we can talk about forecasts into
(19:56):
the future, but that's the best summer I can give
quickly of where we stand today.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
No, that's I think that's helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
We want to talk mostly about real estate investing here,
but I do want to ask a question about a
lot of our listeners who want to buy and we
get I feel like someone asked me the question, what
are you hearing the most on the How the Money
podcast right now? I said, if you had to boil
it down to one thing, it's a lot of people
who want to buy a home and aren't sure whether
or not it makes sense, or whether they should continue
renting or not. So if someone's been sitting on the
(20:25):
sidelines and they're saying, I'm waiting for price reductions or
I'm waiting for rates to go down, or hey, I'm
seeing this disparity between rents and what I'm going to
pay to own a home, the mortgage, all the other
things included, like does renting continue to make sense for
me for potentially years to come, even though home ownership
is something I desire. What would you say to that, I'm.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Going to make a lot of social media people angry
with this, but I actually think renting makes sense for
the majority of people right now.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
And I know as.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
A real estate investor and who's someone who has owned
a primary residence. That may sound hypocritical, but if you
just do the math, and there is very easy math
to do, and you can go on bigger pockets. I
actually built a buy rent calculator that you can check
out there or just google it.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
There's plenty of them.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
It is just cheaper to rent right now, and especially
if you invest that money into something else. So I
think that's the big caveat is if you're just gonna
if you're going to say, let's just use a round number.
If you had fifty grand to invest in a primary residence,
if your choice is invest that into a home or rent,
(21:31):
but not invest that money into the stock market or
into rental property, I'd say put it in a home,
like that's a better investment. But right now, if what
I recommend to people is to rent and buy a
rental property, I rent right now. I've been renting for
the last five years and I think it's worked really
well for me. I still buy property, but just not
(21:52):
as a primary residence or I mean, I'm not a
stock expert, but I do invest in index funds. If
you're going to rent and put money into index funds,
that could be a better decision right now for people.
That's I think broad advice. But the second thing I'll
say is it really comes down the math comes down
to how long you intend to stay in a home,
(22:13):
and it's usually like five or six years. If you
intend to stay more five or six years, it's usually
better to buy. So those are two variables to think
about as you make that decision for yourself. Is how
long you would anticipate staying in that home, and what
you would do with the money for the down payment
should you not buy a home one hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's always It's always what it comes down to. Are
you disciplined enough to not take that money completely squander it.
If so, then maybe you're fine running and you can
do the hit the easy button sticking your money in
the market. But speaking of markets, I think you started
looking at your first property deal there in Denver, but
you don't live there anymore. We're going to talk about
investing in different markets from where you live. We're going
(22:54):
to talk about finding a deal and more we get
to all of that.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Right after this, we're back from the break, still talking
with Dave Meyer of Bigger Pockets, talking about investing in
real estate even when kind of we're in a funky
market and Dave, as Matt alluded to, you invest in Denver,
(23:17):
I think, is that the only market that you owned
properties in.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
No.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
I started in buying properties in the Midwest in the
last few years, and I also invest in syndications passively
all over the country.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Okay, so how do you think about location and the
potential profitability of investing. So let's say someone out there
is listening Matt and I we live in Atlanta, Like,
should we invest in Atlanta or should we be looking
to another part of the country because hey, I know
I've heard Cincinnati is a great market or something. When
it comes to the hitting closer something closer to the
(23:50):
one percent rule, can it be a better idea for
people to invest in a market that isn't their hometown.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
I think the short answer is yes, it can be
better to invest outside of your home market. But I
would also say that all things being equal, it is
easier in your home market. So the way I often
advise people is to again. I know this is why
my book is called Start with Strategy. I'm not trying
(24:18):
to pitch the book, but I really just think people
need to think about their goals first. So this is like,
if your goal is to get cash flow and you
can't find cashow in your market, then you should absolutely
look somewhere else. If your goal is for great appreciation
and you can get that in your home market, then
invest in your home market. Like if you can get
even close to the national average or better for cashal
(24:42):
or appreciation in your home market, I would say do
that because you're going to have a lot of advantages
just knowing the neighborhoods, being able to drive somewhere, you
just knowing the town. It just matters and it helps.
But as someone who has done both both invested in
a local and invested long distance, it's not as hard
(25:04):
as you think to invest long distance, and depending on
your goals, it can really make sense. I'll just give
you an example, like I started buying in the Midwest
because I wanted to balance out my portfolio. I have
a lot of appreciation centric deals where I'm investing places
that are growing and they're expensive and they're probably going
(25:26):
to go up in price, but they're not the best
cash flow. I wanted to augment that with some deals
that provide cash flow and are likely to grow at
least a little bit, but maybe not as fast as
some of those other markets. And so I chose a
market in the Midwest and buy there as well, so
that I can have a balance of portfolio of different deals.
(25:51):
That's for me. I've been doing this for fifteen years.
I think for people who are just starting, whether the
biggest thing is whether you choose to invest in your backyard,
in your home market or somewhere else, start with one
and don't obsess about what the best deal is. Just
find a place that has pretty good fundamentals and where
you have a team that you can trust that's like
(26:12):
a property manager, an agent, handyman like those are the
two things that you really need, is like solid economic
fundamentals and a good team. That's what I would build around.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So obviously, yeah, you're all about getting folks the right
people in play. So I guess for somebody who's looking
at that very first deal, though, I'm assuming that you're
down with them self managing the property as they're learning
the ropes.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, that's what I did. I think it teaches you
a lot about the business. I self managed for jes
nine years, ten years. Yeah, and so you learn a
lot about the business, and you don't need to do
it that long. I think if you're getting started, i'd
do it for a year or two because you'll learn
what good looks like. And for me, I learned what
(26:56):
bad looks like.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I was just not handy, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
And I learned what things I wanted to outsource, what
things I felt I was good at and should continue
to focus on in my portfolio, and that whole that
that just taught me a lot.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
But it's a steep learning curve.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It is. It's you know, it's steep, but short.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I would say, oh, yeah, you know, it's you learned
a whole lot, really exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
But if you try to skip that and you try
to hire somebody, you miss out on even knowing what
questions to ask the person you're trying to hire, Like,
you need that couple of years. I think of managing
your own property to even know how to proceed moving
forward as a real estate thing.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah, I do think that's generally true. I know people
who have invested long distance successfully for their first deal.
But I think you just need to it just you
need to do more upfront education. I am some type
of person who just likes to learn the broad boundaries
that I should stay within when I try to take
(27:56):
on a new task, and then I like to jump
in and learn hands off. I think if you're going
to do it out of state, you just need to
be a little more academic about it.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
And that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Study and like, just learn the questions to ask, interview
a lot of different property managers. Ideally find a real
estate investor who you know or trust who can help
you interview those property managers because they can teach you
a lot. So that's sort of the advice I give.
But you can absolutely do it. I mean there's thousands
(28:27):
of people who do it all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, that makes sense. So you're talking about your portfolio
and you were looking your focus shifted to some of
those Midwestern properties because you're looking for properties that were
going to cash flow as opposed to solely appreciate. Was
there a rough portfolio allocation to either one of those
categories that you were looking for?
Speaker 4 (28:43):
So yeah, the way I think about my portfolio now
is actually less between the cash flow and appreciation and
more between direct and passive ownership. So when I first started,
the first ten years, I was just buying deals in
Denver self managing them, and that was great. I moved
to Europe and I was sort of forced to start
(29:05):
investing passively, either in syndications or I started doing private lending,
which is kind of like I mean, it is in
the real estate space, but it's a very different business
than buying property, and I really liked it. And I
started to realize that I could create a portfolio where
(29:26):
I outsourced the things that are profitable but I'm bad at,
and I could keep in house the things that I
am good at. And so I am not good at
value ad investing. That's things like flipping houses or doing
heavy renovations on properties. I've never done a multi family deal,
probably never will, not a big one, and so I
(29:49):
invest in those things passively because there are other people
who are very good at it, who I'm happy to
give up some of my income, my return to in
exchange for that. What I've done almost my entire career
as and investors just buy small multi family properties and duplexes.
Triplex's quaplexes that have good long term cash flow potential,
(30:10):
and that's a business I feel comfortable running, even from Europe.
And so that's sort of how I've divided it, and
I would like to get to a point where I'm
doing maybe i'd say forty to fifty percent direct ownership
long you know, small multifamily, twenty five percent in these
passive bigs. I consider them big swings. They're a little
(30:31):
bit riskier, but they have bigger upside. And then maybe
twenty five percent in lending, which is a whole other
thing we can get into if you want.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Well, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
One of the things typically the upsides of investing in
real estate is you the market might be less efficient, right,
so you might be able to find a deal on
a street in a neighborhood that you know exists, that
nobody else knows exists, and so you're able to get
a deal. And then the other cool thing is you
can kind of force appreciation into the property, right where
if you're buying an index and sorry, it kind of
(31:02):
is what it is and it will go up over time,
but there's nothing that you have very little impact.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
You have one vote, but.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
If you like paint the house, renovate the kitchen, put
money into the bathrooms. You have the ability to see
a lot of upside in real estate, which I think
is what is certainly one of the selling points. But
then you also look at the ROI on some of
these studies of certain home renovation projects you might take on,
and it ends up a lot of them actually end
up a lot of them end up losing you money.
(31:28):
So how do you think about being able to force
appreciation into a home versus the fact that a lot
of those renovation efforts might not be they might not
pay off in the way you want it.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Yeah, that's a great question, and it really comes down
to understanding your customer in a way that I don't
think a ton of real estate investors think about a
lot of times you walk into a home and you think,
what would I want here? And that is not necessarily
what a prospective tenant wants if you're a long term
(32:02):
buy and hold investor, might not be what a guest
wants if you're a short term rental investor. And so
I think it's really important to figure out what people
want and what they're willing to pay for, and for
a rental property, that's often quite different for what it
would be if you're a flipper and you're trying to
create value in a single family home, and so there's
(32:24):
ways to do this, but I think talking to property
managers is one great hack that's totally free to figure
this out. You know, if you call up a property
manager in Denver, they'll tell you that having covered parking
is super important, or a yard for a dog because
dogs are you know, everyone else dog in Denver. Those
(32:44):
types of things allow you to focus your investment into
value add in a way that you might not immediately
know or might not be able to into it just
by you know, basing it off your own experiences. So
I think that's really important. I think the thing that
I've done in my career that has been successful is
(33:05):
trying to add capacity to homes. And this can come
in a couple of different formats, but I often think like,
can you add a bedroom, can you add a bathroom?
Can you add an entirely new unit onto a property?
Those are like usually slam dunk ways to add value
into a property. I've bought homes where I could you know,
(33:30):
I bought a short term rental, for example, that had
three bedrooms.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
I turned it into.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Five, you know, and I you know, that totally changes
the revenue profile of that home.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Are you at like square footage or are you turning
current square footage into more usable bedroom space.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
No, So I actually told my real estate agent I
wanted a four bedroom or bigger house because I saw
in the data that that's the where the revenue inefficiency,
as you said, like.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You can get better revenue per dollar there. And I
couldn't find anything good. So I told my agent to look.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
For three bedrooms that were big, and I wound up
finding a four thousand square foot three bedroom house, which
is just absurd. It's like every bedrooms twelve hundred square feet,
but if they had a whole floor, it was like
I think it was like it was literally like twelve
hundred square foot living room in the basement. It was
(34:23):
the second living room. So I just turned it into
two more bedrooms, you know, And so something like.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
See, these are the inefficiencies that exist in real estate.
The capitalize on right.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
And do you know how cheap it is to throw
up some drywall. You know, it's like fifteen hundred bucks.
So I didn't, you know, the investment was almost nothing,
and the amount of revenue can bring in for adding
a bedroom on a short term revue is crazy. That
probably paid itself off in three nights.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well yeah, Now if you've listed it for sale too,
think about how much you would sell for. Is a
fives three bit exactly? So is that what it takes
to find a deal these days? Is kind of look,
I mean looking at properties, maybe in a way that
other folks aren't.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Yeah, so I I'll just tell you what I look for.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for value add
so flipping houses. People overlook it, but it's actually quite profitable.
Right now, I'm not really a flipper because I have
a full time job, but if you're into that, it
can be really profitable. Have you guys heard of the
Burr method before? So this is just this idea of
(35:17):
buying a rental. It's kind of like flipping but holding
on to it. So you buy a property, you rehabilitate it,
you know, bring it up to its highest and best use,
you rent it out, then you refinance it and you
just keep doing that washing repeat. That was really popular
up until a few years ago, and it still should
be popular, but it's a little less efficient. Than it
(35:38):
used to be.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
But because a lot of the Burr.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Method is based on speed, you know, you want to
do it as quickly as possible so that you can
refinance and get that money out and buy your next deal.
But as I think I've told you guys, like, scaling
up quickly is not really my thing. I kind of
want to be slow and steady, and so I've been
doing this thing I need to Maybe you guys can
help me.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I've been trying to name it, but I call it
like the delayed Burr or the chill Burr, where I'm
just chills.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Yeah, it's very cold theme the chillbur So basically, what
I've done is you buy a property that is occupied
and then whenever the tenants leave, then you renovate it
and bring it up to its highest and best use
and bring up the rents. Then, if it's a duplex,
which is what I've done, you wait till the other
person leaves, then you renovate that and then over the
(36:28):
course of twelve or eighteen months, you've really increased the
rents and then you can refinance. And I've been targeting
this because you can find deals in a lot of
markets right now where that deal that you buy right
off the market is at least break even cash loow
so to three percent cash on cash return. Then by
(36:49):
the time you refinance you do the whole work, it's
maybe seven eight percent cash and cash return, which is great.
And maybe it takes you twelve months to get to
that return, but for me, that's totally fine because if
you get into the math, even a three percent cash
and cash return, when you factor in the potential appreciation,
the amortization, which is basically just paying off your loan,
(37:10):
and the significant tax advantages of owning real estate, I
still think it does better than an index fund, and
when you've done with the work, it will significantly outperform
an index fund, at least in my mind.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I feel like what you're highlighting here is like patience
and creativity, those are maybe the keys to success. Whereas,
like including Matt and I, any idiot could succeed investing
in real estate right in twenty eleven, twenty thirteen, but
now it takes maybe more of that outside the box
way of thinking in order to be successful. So like
when we're talking about running the numbers and what makes
(37:44):
a real estate purchase potentially a successful investment for someone,
what should they be thinking about?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, so I think the number one thing we started
this conversation talking a lot about influencers. I think some
of the things that you're i'd me crazy about it
is that sort of overlooking a lot of the expenses
revenue side of running a deal super easy rent times twelve,
that's your income. Sometimes you have other stuff that you
(38:11):
can rent out, like a parking spot or storage space,
or maybe you have a coin op laundry, but whatever
it is, you can figure that out. The other things
that you need to factor in, of course your mortgage payment,
but it doesn't stop there. You need to obviously account
for maintenance and repairs. But some of the things that
people miss are vacancy. Vacancy is the silent killer of
(38:33):
any real estate deal because even one month of vacancy
is eight percent of your revenue for the year. That
can make or break your entire year. And so vacancy
needs to be accounted for property management chip most of
the time taxes, And I think the big thing right
now in this market is insurance. Insurance costs have been
going crazy in a lot of markets. I don't know
(38:55):
what it's like in Atlanta, but I know a lot
of the Southeast it's been going crazy, and so that's
another thing you really need to keep an eye on,
is what's happening with insurance rates in your area and
whether they're likely to keep going up, because that can
be there's not much you can do about that, and
it can really be a detriment to your business's profitability.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
No doubt. Okay, well, earlier you said something about being
willing to go it out on a limb making a forecast, Like, oh, yeah,
you know, so let's go ahead and get you on
the record fire. I wanted to look into your crystal ball, like,
what do you think is going to be It's going
to happen with real estate moving forward because of the
lack of supply, household formations are climbing, like all of
(39:38):
these factors can combined. Do you think that continue to
leads to rising home prices?
Speaker 4 (39:44):
I do think there we're going to continue to see
a weird slow market for the next year.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So is my best gas.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
I am not of the belief I'm going to again
annoy real estate or real estate influencers. I don't think
mortgage rates are down that much, even if the Fed
cuts rates this week, which they're likely to do. I
don't think they're coming down that much. I think they're
going to stay in the sixes for at least the
rest of twenty twenty four, and probably will into twenty
twenty five. I think even in a best case scenario,
(40:14):
that may be coming into the high fives next year.
And so that keeps us away from what most economists
think is sort of like the magic number of unlocking
the housing market in increasing volume, which is about five
to five and a half percent. So I think we're
going to see more low affordability, which means we won't
(40:36):
have a ton of buyers. But I still don't think
that we're going to see any sort of like sharp
decline in prices because people don't have to sell, and
they've shown over the last several years that they're not
going to unless they are forced to, and they're not
going to be forced to. This is not two thousand
and eight, where people were underwater on their mortgages and
couldn't make their mortgage payments. If you look at mortgage
(40:59):
delinquency rates, they're incredibly low. If you look at foreclosure rates,
they're incredibly low, and people are just going to chill,
like I think that's what's going to happen, and I
know that's frustrating. It's frustrating for me too, But I
don't think we're going to see any resolution to this
sort of stuck housing market, at least in the next
six months. It's really hard to forecast after that. I
(41:22):
will say that I think in certain markets we will
see price declines, but modest ones, you know too, three percent,
maybe four percent, while other markets continue to grow. We've
seen the Midwest and the Northeast continue to be very strong,
where the Southeast, particularly Florida, and we also see Texas
seeing modest declines, and if mortgage rates stay high for longer,
we'll probably continue to see some more declines. But don't
(41:46):
I never have seen a crash in the cycle, and
I still don't see it coming. Of course, there's all
sorts of geopolitical uncertainty, all this crazy stuff that could
you know, right exactly like a black swan, always possible,
and frankly, it feels more likely now than it has
in a long time. But if you're just reading the
fundamentals of the housing market, it looks like we're in
(42:09):
for some more flat slow years.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, I love seeing by the way stats be manipulated.
And it's like foreclosures up twenty percent, which means six
people instead of five.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
People exactly close.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, it's like, really and truly almost nobody is at
risk of foreclosure these days because of what's happened with
you know what, the rate that people have locked in
what they paid for the home and then what the
home is worth.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Now nine percent nine percent of is the amount of
foreclosures we have compared to twenty ten. It's just not
even close.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Which makes total sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Are we got just a few last questions to get
to with you, Dave. We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
All right, we are back from the Greg talk in
real estate investing in a Murky Market with Dave Meyer. Dave,
earlier you talked to maybe this will be like a
rapid fire sort of section. We'll see how rapid we
can keep it. But you talked about the timeline and
you said, okay, maybe like ten to fifteen years. I'm
curious why did you choose those numbers? Is that because
(43:13):
you do you have a lot of fifteen year mortgages
on some of your investment properties.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
No, no, I just think that I'm thirty seven, and
I think maybe around fifty years old is maybe when
I'll stop working full time. I don't think i'll ever,
like truly retire.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I'm what ye likes to work.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
But you know, I've been working full time and investing
on the side and writing books and doing all this
stuff for a lot of years, and at a certain
point I'll probably want to slow down. And Okay, I
think between age forty five and fifty, I'd love to
just know that when the time comes and decide, you know,
I'm tired, that I can do that without having to
really think about it too hard.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
So more about lifestyle for you, less about numbers, totally, yes, exactly,
all right.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
How do you think, Dave about tenant screening. I feel
like that is the thing that gets talked about not
nearly enough, but that can be kind of make or
break for real estate investors.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
I think it's crucially important to find tenants who are
the right fit for your property, and that can be
different for every property, every asset class. But I really
recommend people set strict criteria of what they're looking for
and stick to it. And I know I said earlier
that vacancy is like the silent killer of real estate deals.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
But actually eviction is.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Way how expensive a reviction is way worse.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
I actually just did a show on this. I have
an analyst who works for me, and I asked him
figure out what the average eviction costs a landlord, and
on the low side, it's like six grand and that's it.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, you'd rather have a market or two per expensive
of that place setting vacant than having a crummy tenant.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
That's right, And you will be much less stressed. Honestly
with vacancy. It's frustrating, but you know, I've fortunately in
fifteen years, only had to do one eviction, but it's
so stressful.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's a terrible situation.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
It's a terrible situation for tenants too, And so I
think that's the thing about tenants screening that's so important,
is like, you don't want to put someone in a
situation where they're unlikely to be able to pay and
meet their obligations. And so it's sort of on you
as a property owner to make sure that you're finding
a tenant where there's mutual benefit and mutual interest and
(45:20):
ability to meet the obligations of the contract.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
That's that's so good. I really like your perspective there,
like you are helping them succeed potentially by Actually I
don't think this is going to work out.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. It's like you don't you know.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
I think that it's tempting to be like, oh, this
will person is willing to pay, but like are they
able to pay? But I just think as a property owner,
you have an obligation to your customer to make sure
there's a very high probability.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
That you that it's a win win situation.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
The million dollar question, Dave, is real estate investing passive
or not?
Speaker 3 (45:58):
No, I don't think it is. I will say, I
invest in syndications and some funds.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Do you want to explain what those are? By the way,
cause you mentioned that term, and I know some people
just don't know what that means.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Yeah, So direct ownership of real estate, which is like
buying a property with a partner managing it, even if
you hire a property manager, like I invest in out
of state, I have a property manager. It's not passive.
I do almost nothing. I'll be honest. I spend maybe
five hours a month on it. But it still takes work,
and you know, I still have to pay attention. Syndications
(46:31):
are when a bunch of investors pool their money together
to buy large assets, like a multifamily building or an
office building or whatever. And in those types of deals,
there are typically two classes of investor. One is called
a general partner, often referred to as a GP or
a sponsor. That's the person who finds the deals, makes
(46:51):
all the decisions, actually does all the work. And then
there is a class of investor called a limited partner,
also called an LP, where you basically give money and
then do nothing. And so I invest as an LP
in some deals. Again, this is sort of my way
of exposing myself to multifamily and to value ad investing.
(47:15):
So I invest in a lot of places where people,
you know, my partner will buy a distressed multifamily property,
fix it up, get it up to speed, and then
sell it off and hopefully we all make some good money.
But those kind of deals are very very passive because
once you write the check, you don't have any rights. Really,
(47:37):
You just wait until the LP says that they're selling.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
The property and hopefully you get your cash.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
So that is about as passive as it gets It's
kind of like buying an index fund, right, Like you
pick the fund and then once you do it, you
kind of just take your hands off of it.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Wait. Yeah, so that is fairly passive, but also probably
not what most folks are thinking of, I guess as
they're thinking about dabbling and getting into real estate.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
And also a lot of due diligence required if you're
gonna invest in that way too.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
Totally, and I don't recommend people start that way. Yeah,
there's no liquidity, which is really important to know, Like
you can't get your money out, you can't sell your
share to someone else like you're in it.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
The minimum investment is fifty k. You have to be
an a credited investor. There's a whole lot of hurdles
you have to jump through too.
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Yeah, so that stuff is passive and I don't recommend
people start there anyway. I think the spectrum of how
passive direct ownership is is big. Right. If you want
to be a flipper, that's a job. If you want
to buy, you know, a long term rental that's in
your market, you could probably spend less than ten hours
(48:42):
a month on it.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
It's not like some crazy time investment, so you just
kind of have to think about what time you're willing
to put in.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Well. Nice, well, Dave. Earlier you mentioned the buy rent
calculator that y'all have over at Bigger Pockets, and of
course you've got your multiple podcasts now, But where else
can folks learn about you what you're up to you?
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Yeah, so check me out on Bigger Pockets, or if
you're into sort of economic data and news, you can
follow me on Instagram where I'm at the Data Deli,
where I share a lot of my work that I
do at Bigger Pockets doing housing market analysis and all that.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Awesome, Dave, We've really appreciate you joining us today, man,
thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me, Joel.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Nice to dive back into a topic that is sort
of at the roots of how the money and some
of the things that attracted us to at least talking
about personal finance on a personal level, you know, back
in the neighborhood, hanging out on the front porch, drinking
the beer, being like, all right, let's talk about let's
talk about rentals. You into it, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I still love talking about real estate because and I
think part of it is what Dave was talking about,
kind of the simple accessible. Everybody has had to pay
rent at one point in time for a place to
live and see it, you can go visit it. It's changeable, yes, exactly,
So I think that's why people are attracted to it.
But what was your big takeaway from this combo?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
I think mine was when we were talking about some
of the different real estate influencers out there and how
they tend to overcomplicate the process. And we want as
consumers slash investors in this case, but we want things
to be so easy, and we let that sort of
consumer nature overcome our approach to investing and truly like
it doesn't need to be packaged and placed into a
course and delivered to you over six weeks. Instead, it
(50:19):
can just be something where you're like looking for a
long time, you're looking at a specific market. You become
an expert on that market and specific properties, and you're
able to spot the deals and you say, oh, wait
a minute, that's that's actually really that's priced really well.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Yeah,
if you know what the rents are going to be
for a nice three to two in an area that
has a high demand, maybe it's in a great school district,
whatever the parameters are, it can be as easy as that.
(50:42):
It doesn't necessarily have to be this thing that you
have to take some sort of You don't have to
join a mastermind drop five figures in order to become
a successful real estate investor. Dave point, but that's what
they want you to think. I know, I know, because
that's how they're making their money. That's how their bread
gets bettered, exactly. So I appreciate that Dave was able
to highlight that because that's similar to how it is
that you I approached investing in real estate.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
That's why we wanted to have Dave on too, because
we think he's just one, he's way smarter than us.
But then two, he thinks about real estate in the
way that you and I think about real estate, just
on a much deeper level because he eats and breede
it every day.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
So, I think my big takeaway was when he talked
about the flexibility of real estate right, and he said,
that's what most people want, and there are one hundred
ways you can slice this thing up. It doesn't have
to look like somebody else's approach to real estate. But
as long as you keep that in mind and say, hey,
guess what, maybe my route to becoming a quote unquote
real estate mobile that makes sense for kind of the
goals I want to achieve is buying one property every
(51:33):
three years until I get five properties.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
So let's say that's fifteen years down the road.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
That's cool, man Like, If that's what you want to do,
and that's the approach you want to take, that can
be incredibly that could be successful for you. You don't have
to own one hundred properties in order to be some awesome,
over the top real estate investor owning a handful of
properties for a whole lot of people, Matt. And when
you look at the numbers, that's the average real estate
investor owned somewhere between two and ten rental properties. That
is the vast majority of real estate investors across the country.
(52:00):
So I think a lot of people put a bunch
of pressure on themselves to well successful real estate investor
looks like this. That's not necessarily the case, and there
is a lot of flexibility inside of real estate investing
to be able to achieve what you want to achieve,
not what someone else says is successful.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Totally agree.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
All right.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
The beard you and I enjoyed today was an attention Please,
which is a double IPA by bearded iris. What'd you think?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I thought this was kind of light, a little bit weedy,
A little bit of light lemon vibes is what I
was getting.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Oh yeah, I think the Yeah, I totally pick up
on the sharpness that you get from the like the lemonee.
I think that's from the citra but tropical notes for sure.
But overall I wasn't a huge fan of this, and
I wonder I looked, I noticed the date on here
is a little bit older. It kind of has like
that older ipa sort of metallic tinge to it.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
That sitting on the shelves too long.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, I think so kind of a bummer because I
was looking forward to enjoying the heck out of this one.
But maybe I just don't like pillow. It also says
on here it's pillowy and so, which I tend to
see is like, I don't know, soft, and I like
this like sharp abrasive, I pa is not like overly bitter,
but ones where you can really the hot presence shining through.
You don't really get that with this one here, guy, Buddy,
(53:10):
I see why sometimes you want to just cut to
the chase. But I'm glad, even still glad that you
and I got to enjoy this one today on the podcast.
Head over to the show notes at how to money
dot com where you can find some of the different
links that we mentioned during our discussion with Dave Meyer
of Bigger Pockets Fame during our conversation today. But Buddy,
that's going to be it for this episode until next time.
(53:32):
Best Friends Out, I'm best Friends Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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