BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 10 “Hidden” Signs of a High-Upside Rental Property (Buy These in 2026)

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

The “regular” rental property you’re thinking of buying? It may not look like anything special here in 2026, but it could be worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more down the road—IF it has any of the high-upside qualities we’re about to show you. For the last 18 months, I’ve said that this is real estate investing’s era of “upside.” The “easy” real estate deals you could buy in 2015-2022 are long gone, and what we’re left with are a lot of seemingly unspectacular properties—but ones with hidden upside that is just waiting to be unearthed. A property with one of these qualities is unlikely to make you rich on its own. You’ve still got to focus on buying high-quality assets at good prices today. But if your property has two, three, or more of these “upside” opportunities, its value could skyrocket five, 10, or 20 years from now. This isn't just about market-driven appreciation. These are 10 distinct advantages that aren’t on most buyers’ minds when they’re looking for a simple deal that will cash flow, but thinking about them now could pay massive dividends in the future. In This Episode We Cover The 10 upside plays that can turn a “good” property into an all-time deal Value-add opportunities that can add hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity The huge advantages of owner-occupied strategies (not just better financing) How to identify properties that have zoning upside or lie in the path of progress Henry’s “free” land upside play that most real estate investors take for granted And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1316. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The difference between a good deal and a great deal often comes down to one thing. Upside. You can buy a property with solid cash flow and call it a win. Or you can buy a property with solid cash flow and hidden upside like rent growth, value-add opportunities, being in the path of progress, and these can turn it into an equity monster over the next few years. So today, we're breaking down the upsides that separate average properties from deal of a lifetime opportunities. Some of these are obvious, but the best

ones often require a little bit of digging. I've been calling this the upside era for a year and a half now, but the market has shifted. So today, we're going to share which upsides are working best for us and a few new ones we're looking for. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what to hunt for when you're analyzing deals for almost any strategy and in any market. Hey, what's up, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at Bigger Pockets, and I'm here with my co-host, Henry Washington. Henry, what's going on, man?

What's up, buddy? Good to be here. Love talking about deals, so this is right up my alley. But I have a question for you. You've been talking a lot about this upside era in real estate. Why don't you define that for the people listening? I mean, I came up with this concept like a year and a half ago because we basically, from 2015 to 2020,

We're in this era where deals were really, really obvious. Like, you could go out and find something on the market or maybe off market and it would either cash flow right away or you could do a burr and get 100% of your money out. And we're not in that era anymore. And the big difference for me right now is that you have to buy deals that the obvious huge gains that you might get might not be in day one or week one or month one. It might be a little bit down the road. And so the framework I've been using, at least, is like, how do you buy a deal today that is good?

And then you have two or three upside potentials that could play out over the next. It could be three months. It could be three years. But you give yourself a shot to take this deal and turn it from a good one to an amazing one. And frankly, even though we're talking to this upside error, this has kind of always been the way real estate works. except for these like magical years from 2015 to 2022. So I think we're just getting back to this idea where you need to look for the long-term benefits of your deals, not just like what's working in the first day of ownership.

And so I actually originally, when I came up with this framework, came up with 10 upsides, but I think they need updating because like this was already a year and a half ago and things have changed. So maybe we could just talk through like, what has changed? And then, you know, what upsides you? think make the most sense for you right now and I'll share what's working for me. Let's do it. So here are the 10 upsides.

And again, at least my framework for buying a rental right now is buy something that cash flows today. It's a good deal today. Target two to three of these 10 upsides. You don't need all of them. You're never going to be able to get all of them. The idea is to get two or three on every deal. So here's are the ones that we had.

One is rent growth. That's a great way to take a deal. If rents are good or grow, amazing. Two, obvious. Value ad. You know, you're buying a property. Maybe it's good today. you fix it up, it's even better. That's an obvious one. Three, owner-occupied strategies work very well

right now. And it's a huge upside because it gives you so much flexibility. Four is rent by the room trying to do the co-living model. It's a great way to maximize cash flow. Five, lower LTV or catch purchases. I actually think this is a really interesting one. I'm going to talk about that, but maybe putting more than 25% down if you can to secure an, I know, to secure an asset that will cash flow in the future or that you really like. Six is path of progress, which is just being in a great neighborhood where things outside of your control can help bring up the value of your property. Seven, one of my personal favorites, is zoning upside, being able to add capacity to a

existing lotter unit. Number eight, I'm going to ping you on this one, Henry, is buying deep, just a great way to really earn equity over the long run. Number nine is creative finance and seller finance. And number 10, this one is controversial. but I think is learning. I think if you buy a deal that's good today and you learn a lot, that makes it a great deal. So those are the 10 I got. I think these are great. I actually have at least one more that I'd add, but also that one may fit into one of these kind of sort of,

but we'll talk about that as we go down the list. But looking at this list, I have a question for you on the very first one. I think rent growth is obviously something that happens. Neighborhoods, increase in value, people want to live in certain areas. And so when there's more demand to live somewhere, rent can go up. There's tons of things that influence rent growth. But how does a beginner investor, maybe that's done zero to five deals, how do they look for what could be rent growth in the future without being speculative or overpaying for something in a neighborhood where they end up maybe not getting rent growth? Yeah, this is a great question. And I sort of teased at being a little bit negative about things, but this is the one I think of the upsides I was bullish on a year

and a half ago. Now I'm the least bullish on, just from like a macro perspective. But the quick answer is look at affordability and supply issues. Those are the main things. Like if there's a lot of oversupply, overbuilt, if you're a place like Phoenix or Nashville or Orlando, like you're probably not going to see a lot of rent growth. The other thing is affordability. Like affordability limits how much you can raise rent. And that should be there. Like, people shouldn't be stretched. That's not good for you. It's not good for them. It's just bad for business. So those are the two constraints. But I would almost say for most people, the only way you should add rent growth as an upside right now, if it's around value add. If you are going to take a property that rents for 1,200 right now and you're going to

make that unit better, and then you're going to be able to rent for 1,600, that's totally fine. Like, God, that is an upside. But this idea that the market's going to give you rent growth right now, I think I would remove that. I like 10 as a round number, though. So maybe your 10th that you're hinting at will replace it. I mean, I think rent growth is something you can look for. It's just not guaranteed. So for me, when I think if I'm looking for a property where I think we might get rent growth,

what I would be looking for is an area of town where there's more demand than supply and it kind of fits in with number six. So something in the path of progress. Because if it's in the path of progress, there may not be tons of people living there yet, but people are probably either living there or going to be living there in the new future. And that can help you get in now and then get rent growth in the future. But I've always found the best way to get like real rent growth is to force it through a value add. So maybe that's the amendment here to our upside is that you look for rent growth, but it has to be tight. to one of the other upsides, which is either value ad or the path of progress.

Well, I've actually got more questions for you. I have a big question around number two, which is value ad, but I'm going to ask you right after a break. Most deals don't fall apart because of the numbers. They fall apart because of the financing. You find a property that cash flows. The deal makes sense. But then the lender looks at your personal income, your tax returns, your debt-to-income ratio,

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and how to locate upside within a real estate deal. Dave has given us his 10 upsides that you can look for on almost any deal. I've quizzed them on number one, and now I've got a question on number two, which is value ad. What are some of your favorite, what are you to add value or things that you look for when you're trying to identify a deal that breaks even or does a little bit of cash flow now, but has value at potential. I love a deal that cash flows today. And then I know that there's room to grow rent or room to push equity when it's convenient. And a lot of times the convenient time is when the current tenants move out.

Or there's opportunities to put an ADU in the back. Or there's a basement that's unfinished. and that sometime in the future, I can add that value if it makes sense. You don't have to do all your value add up front. Sometimes you buy a deal. It makes sense today. And you just kind of wait and see if value add makes sense in the future, a year or two or five years down the line. And so I just like looking for things like big lots, large square footage, extra bedrooms that you can convert or sort of like utility spaces that you can convert.

Those are the things personally I like because those are what drive up rents and equity. The short term value add things that I'm looking for are easy ways to convert non-bedroom space to bedroom space. Yep. Bedrooms equal more rent. In some markets, you can get a higher ARV. For the most part, it's still heated and cooled square footage. You're not going to get a ton of bump that way, but you will get rent bump. Yeah.

So I'm looking for those on the short term. I'm looking for things like homes with no true primary suite where, there is a big bathroom somewhere close. So maybe I can just split that bathroom into two and create an access point from the primary bedroom or homes that need an additional bathroom and they're on crawl space. So like I know I can inexpensively create a bathroom space because there's a crawl space. So these are all things that I'm like, I look for this that I can do in the short term. When I buy this house, I can renovate it. I can add the value for those things. And then I can capitalize on that by renting it for more or selling it for more as a flip. And then I have a bucket

of what are some of the more longer term value add things. And for me, those are lots that allow you to have like an ADU or potential for bringing in, you know, modular homes and putting them on the land, like if it's zoned appropriately, properties that are in opportunity zones where you can do a little bit of extra building and potentially get some benefits for that. But I think where people get in trouble is they try to buy a property where they have to do that tier two value add in order for the deal to make any sense at all. Yeah. In other words, they have to buy the property. They've got to renovate the main house, fully renovate that, get that rented out and build an ADU and get that rent it out for it to actually cash flow. And I think that that's where people get in trouble. So that's why I

kind of bucket in in two tiers. There's stuff I want I need to do now that I can do quickly and inexpensively to add value and then there's stuff that's like that could be cool in the future and it could make me a ton of money later but I don't want to have to do it. I want it to be icing on the cake. For me like the combination of like value add zoning upside plus path of progress is like the sweet spot because then you buy something that's like cash flowing today and like maybe the rents are it's not worth updating the kitchen and the bathroom right now because you're not going to get better rents. But if the half the progress upside hits, then you do the value add, then you do the ADU, like, then it turns into this whole thing where you can make it like massive. Like this can go from a good deal

to an amazing deal. That's kind of the whole idea behind this framework is like, don't go buy something bad today. Like it has to make sense today. But like when you're buying a deal, you should be thinking about like if things go well, what are options two, three, four, five for me to make this go incredibly well? And to turn this into. a once in a lifetime kind of thing. All right, that's really cool. I totally agree with you on that. Another one I have a question on is owner occupied.

How do you see owner occupied as a upside? Oh, this one I love. Doing an owner occupied strategy. So honestly, it works either way. You're either doing a house hack where you're living in one part, renting out the others, or even doing a live-in flip. I think it's perfect for the upside era because it buys you time. Like in this kind of area, if you want to figure out how to make the most money out of this property,

you're living in the property. There's no urgency to it, right? Which is my favorite part of this. Like, I'm living in a house that I'm living in Flip. I decided to take a year off and not do the renovation. It's no problem. I still know this is a great property. I still bought it at a good price.

It still has a great ARV. But it's just allowing me more time to figure out exactly how I want to optimize this property. same thing goes with a rental property. You can move into a house hack and opportunistically renovate properties for it when you have time. You're going to be living there, right? So someone moves out.

You could do the turns yourself. You could do the value ad. You could DIY some improvements to the property. It just makes it so easy to optimize an investing strategy for your property over two or three years. And I know people want a house hack every year. If you can do that, great.

But like, you don't have to. And if you want to just like take your time and make one property excellent, which works, by the way, like buying the right deal and just focusing on that and making it an excellent performer, owner occupied is such a good way to go about that. Yeah. The pressure is kind of off with an owner occupied deal because of the loan that you get to use to get in the property. You're getting 30 year fixed rate debt typically.

It's a more affordable lower down payment. And if you're at a place where you feel like, hey, if I move out now, I probably can't get the rent that makes sense for me. Well, guess what? You just don't have to move. You could just stay there. Exactly. Yes. Weight it out for sure.

That makes total sense. Another one on the list I did want to ask you about, mostly because I'm jealous because it doesn't work in my market. But a lot of people are doing it and making great money doing it, which is the rent by the room. upside. This, I mean, people are bringing in, you know, tons of cash flow, $700, $900, $900 per bedroom in certain markets in certain areas, in certain kinds of houses. But it doesn't work everywhere. So when does it make sense for you to think about this as like a value add opportunity? Because yeah, anybody can add bedrooms and try to rent a house by the room, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. Totally. In this framework of upside, it's an

option for how to manage a great asset. And I think this is the same thing. I see it the same way as short-term rentals and mid-term rentals. Those are all options for how you manage an asset. You have to buy a good asset that works, I think, ideally, in the most basic highest demand thing, which is long-term rental. If you are in an area that this works, it can take what is a good long-term rental into an amazing like cash flow monster. Like that's why I see it as an upside, not as its own strategy. I've never done rent by the room. So just to be clear, but like, even if I did one or two of these, I would never say like, I'm a rent-by-the-room investor. I'd say I'm a long-term real estate investor. I buy great assets. And then I figure out the

right way to manage them, given current market conditions. And rent by the room is a tool that you can do to manage it. Yeah. I think what people should be focused on. And I think is kind of what you've been saying the entire episode is like you want the deal to break even or cash flow as is as a long-term rental right now and then you can take advantage of the upside if this house is in a neighborhood in a market where rent by the room works so instead of you just making your two 300 bucks a month cash flow you go ahead and do the rent by the room strategy and you bump that up to $2,000 a month cash flow yeah because you've got the upside but if something out of your control changes, like they change the rules or the zoning laws or something

backfires and you can't do it, then you're just back to making your two or three hundred bucks a month cash flow. It's still a good deal. I think it's the same thing for short term rentals these days too. Like this is just the way to do it. All right. We're on the same page there. But I think I have one strategy to add to your upside list. Yes. I want to hear about this. All right. Here it is. I'll tell you about it right after the break. Buying real estate has a funny way of making the future feel very real. You start thinking about mortgages, cash flow, tenants, and suddenly you realize if something happened to me,

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All right, Dave and I are back on the Bigger Pockets podcast and we are talking about investing in the era of upside. How to find properties that make money from day one. maybe they break even, maybe they make a little bit of cash flow, but they also have potential upside, which is a way for these properties to turn from a good deal to a great deal, maybe later on down the road. We've already talked about things like rent growth, value ad, rent by the room, and now I have one that I think I can add to this list because I just executed it and I've done it many times in the past. I like to buy houses on big lots or with multiple acres or that already

have two separate lots. And then I like to monetize the extra lot because the way I structure it is I essentially get the land for free. Yeah. And so as an example, I just did a flip. I bought a house on four and a half acres. And the ARV of the house was $350,000. Okay. We renovated the house. And then I was like, well, it's got four and a half acres. And only about three acres were clear.

And then there was another like acre and a half that was wooded. And so whoever bought this land was probably going to do nothing with the wooded acre and a half anyway. Right. And so I called the city and said, can I split? this lot into two. And I essentially have the three acres on one lot with the house with the clear land and then an acre and a half of that wooded land. And they said, yeah, so I spent about $3,000. We got a survey. We did it all on paper. And I split that lot. And so once we renovated

the house, I spent about 80 grand on the renovation. We sold the house for $345,000. So it still hit your RV. It didn't like change the air. Didn't change the RV. I made about $90,000. on the flip, which is what we're planning to make. But here's the upside. I then sold that acre and a half separately to a completely different buyer for $75,000. Yeah, that's so good. So I made an additional $75,000 of upside on that deal. Killer. And all I had to do was separate the lot. And I've done this multiple times. I love this land play. That's a great move. It is an upside. You didn't have to do it. Like if you didn't sell that separate lot, still would have made a, A ton of money.

Absolutely. So yeah, this could get its own place on the list. I'm not sure what we would call it, but I've done it where we split lots. I've done it where we bought a house and it came with the lot next to it. But I call it is how I get land for free. You know, essentially I sold an acre and a half of land for 100% profit because I technically owned it free and clear because it didn't affect my ARV on the flip. Yeah, I like it. What do we call on it?

Splitting lots? free land land for free yeah free the free land upside free land upside the flu okay the flu that's what it is anyone else doing the flu let us know anybody else doing the flu investing method i don't know if that was going to best branders i don't know if that was going to stick like birded but you know henry's giving everyone the flu everyone really popular uh no uh no I like that one a lot. Well, I think these ones are great. We've talked to me a little bit about rent growth. Now we have a new one. We talked about owner occupied value add. Let's talk about path of progress though, Henry, because this is a big one. And I think it works in every market. Because if you look at today, people are like, oh, the market stinks. It's like, well, national average. Some areas are still booming, right? Some areas are still growing. How do you find those? Here are some things that I like to look for when I'm considering path of progress. First and foremost is you don't have to be an expert and understand. like city infrastructure and where things are going. There's tons of other companies and people whose jobs it is are to do that already.

And you can just go see what they're doing and try to follow suit. So some people call it the Chick-fil-A method. Some people call it the Home Depot Lowe's method. But like they only build Chick-fil-A's in the path of progress, right? They have an entire team of people in their real estate department whose job it is is to go and figure out where cities are progressing. So you can go on their website and see where they're opening stores. And if they're opening them in your area, that's probably going to be in what they think is the path of progress. Is it a foolproof plan? No, but it's a pretty good one. They probably know

more than you do about researching your city. So one thing to think about. Another thing is Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards. Cities will give these stores tax break. or incentives for opening up new stores in areas of town where that city is expanding in building so that people have a place to go and get supplies that isn't out of the too far off the beaten path. And so one hack that I've told people before I've mentioned on the show several times is to go and buy one stock of Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, any of these big box stores. And what that does is it gets you on their shareholders list.

they start to send you the shareholders packages or you can go on their like corporate website at that point and get access to the corporate website where they literally show you where they're opening stores. And so you can see if they're opening any in your area and that might be the next area for you to go in research. I'm not saying if they're opening a store, go buy property there. I'm saying if they're opening a store there, go start doing some additional deep dive research and figure out, is this a great place in the path of progress that you can start buying homes? And then the other things, things that nobody does that everybody can do is you can literally go online and look up your city planning department meeting schedule. And you can see who's on the schedule, what they're talking about.

They typically make people submit their documentation for the things they're asking permission to build prior to the meeting. So you can go and review all the documentation. And you can see who's building what in your area. What are they trying to get permission to build or develop in your neck of the woods? And you can learn a lot about what the immediate path of progress is by seeing what the city planning department is approving or not approving on a week-to-week basis. And you can go to the meetings. Yep, totally.

That's how I found my one off-market deal. It's also how I've looked for on-market deals, too. It just makes sense to do this. It's such an easy hack that no one does. No one does it. It's so easy, though. Like even download the minutes, put in chat, GPT, and be like, what's going on? What's happening?

Yeah, it's so easy. Please go do this. All right. Well, we've talked about a lot of the upsides here. Really good ones here. Again, we had 11 overall, but the goal here is to not go all in on one of them. I actually think the best framework here is to look for two or three of these because you don't know exactly what you're going to use.

Again, as Henry said, the idea is to give yourself options. And so if you have two or three of these upsides, you have multiple options to better monetize your deals in the future. So whether it's right growth, value add, owner occupied, zoning, path of progress, the free land strategy, buying deep, learning, all of these things are good. Look for deals that make sense today. They at least break even, offer you a little bit of cash flow today for a rental perspective. You know, that doesn't need to be day one.

As Henry said, like that might be after stabilization, right? that it's working after stabilization, and then you have this long-term benefit that you get to grow into and you get to be patient and you get to do opportunistically when it makes sense for you, when the market is giving you what you need

to pull off these strategies, that's the whole idea. So hopefully I'll learn something from this, but please share your upsides with us. If you think there are ones that are working well today that you want to share with the rest of the bigger pockets community, if you think that we missed one and there's an upside,

long-term benefit to real estate that we don't know, let us know in the comments. We would love to hear from you. Henry, thanks for asking these questions, adding to the framework. It's always great to have you here. Thank you so much. Yeah, and if y'all are listening and you're killing it with an upside that we didn't mention, apply to be on the show. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash guest and apply to be on the show.

We'd love to hear about it, potentially even talk to you about it, so that Dave and I can learn how to do it and make a bunch of, I mean, so that we can educate the community on ways that they can continue to invest in real estate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally for everyone else. Yes. All right. Thanks, everyone.

That's our show for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you next time.