BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 6 Predictions for 2026 That Could Reshape the Economy and Housing Market

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Has real estate finally bottomed? Ben Miller, CEO of Fundrise (managing over $7B in real estate), says it’s so. And he’s not just talking about commercial real estate. If true, one particular type of real estate investment could do exceptionally well over the next year, but most people (even Dave!) are going in a different direction. Where could the next big real estate boom happen? We’re getting into it! To continue this prediction season, Ben joins us to walk through a few crucial economic outlooks that could greatly affect the housing market. From AI stunting hiring to inflation actually going down (below 2%!), American wage trends changing dramatically, and the assets that will perform best, we’re getting his take as someone who manages billions of dollars in real estate. Want mortgage rates to go down? We need lower inflation, and Ben says there’s good news on the horizon for stable prices. New technology adoption could lead to much lower inflation (even deflation in some cases). Could this be what reignites the housing market as mortgage rates react to a more stable economy? Ben gives his full take, with some surprises even Dave wasn’t prepared for.  In This Episode We Cover The bottom for real estate prices? Why Ben thinks it’s here (or very close) The end of runaway inflation: How AI could kill the concern over rising costs  More Americans making less, and what happens when AI takes tens of millions of jobs  The one type of residential real estate that is poised to perform best in 2026  A new AI tool that could be pivotal for rental property investing research  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1215 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

How will AI impact the economy? And what does it mean for investors in 2026? It's a massive question that may define the next few years and beyond. And today, we're diving deep. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, housing market analyst and head of real estate investing in bigger pockets. My guest today is Ben Miller, the CEO of Fundrise. Ben is a thought leader in the real estate and finance space, and he has a long track record of finding value and making deals work in many different investing markets. We had him on last December when he came on to the show and presented a case for real estate investing in 2025 that mostly proved correct.

But since the market is always changing and we face a lot of uncertainty heading into next year, I had to bring Ben back on to share his expectations for the economy next year and how he recommends real estate investors take advantage. We talk a lot about AI and its potential impact on different parts of the economy and the housing market, including how you can leverage new tools in your own analysis and investing. Ben, welcome back to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I am always looking forward to these conversations. You are exposed to a lot. You see a lot of different stuff in real estate and in the economy. And you always have a very unique perspective on where things are going. So maybe we can

start there and have you tell us just what's your read on real estate and the housing market right now? Yeah. I mean, I think real estate's bottomed, but I I've been humbled by the last half decade. We had COVID, we had interest rates, so I'm much more humbled than I was before. There are three or four really big things happening in the world today. Obviously, AI, interest rates, the political environment affects the business environment a lot these days. And then the good news is that supply is going away. New supply of construction has really fallen off a cliff.

So those are part of the big four things driving real estate these days. All right, great. Well, let's dig into each one of them. of time. But before we do, when you say real estate has bought them, do you mean that for multifamily specifically? Well, I guess all real estate is interest rate sensitive. And I think interest rates are approximately, but it's my point of view, obviously, it's impossible to know. But it's, yeah, I think interest rates are going to keep falling. The market doesn't believe that. The market doesn't know. There's a lot of debate about that. And I think so that would affect all real estate,

including single family housing. So you think the federal funds rate will keep falling. Is that right? but you also think mortgage rates will fall as well? Yeah, I think everything will fall. I can walk you through my argument. So let's just set the stage, right? So the stage is they cut rates, 375 to 4. The Federal Reserve doesn't want to cut anymore because they really don't know. Inflation has been stuck at about 3% for the last 18 to 24 months.

And the long end of the curve, the 10-year-of- Treasury has also pretty much been stuck at the low fours. And so what you're seeing is essentially a lot of uncertainty about the future interest rates. Some people arguing that we're going to see a reacceleration of the economy. And then some people argue it's going to soften. And so the reacceleration in the economy would happen for two main reasons. One is that the great beautiful bill, that big bill is going to start hitting the economy around April. And so a lot of those tax incentives will hit in 26. and there's an argument that companies will start spending and hiring as they get all these tax

incentives from the bill. That's one acceleration argument. The other one is obviously AI and data center build. Those are the two main arguments for why the economy re-accelerate. I'm skeptical on both. I think that the economy is not doing great outside of AI, outside data centers, and that most companies, most people, if you get a big windfall from your taxes, are you going to spend it on hiring people or is you going to basically sock it away a little worried about the state of the economy? Yeah. I personally think most people aren't like in a risk appetite mood. It's risk off, right? Like most people are risk off right now and wait and see. And although a tax boon might help some people start hiring, I don't think it fundamentally changes that outlook

in a way where people are going to feel confident about making large investments. I think that on a business level, and actually on an individual level as well, just like average consumers. Totally. That's my view as well. And I say, you know, a year ago when I passed that bill, they didn't realize that sentiment would be so much more negative. And so maybe it would have worked a year ago, but I think it's not going to reaccelerate the economy in any material sense. April's a while away. Things could change. So it's possible. But that's not my expectation. It doesn't seem to be yours either. The other one is AI, AI data center. Really AI data center. spend is the biggest cap-x or biggest, like, dollars moving the economy. It's absolutely insane.

That's wild. I think it's real. I think that it's not a bubble right now and that the amount of money, I mean, it's definitely going to keep the economy propped up. But it's such a narrow part of the economy that, like, I don't think it's enough to re-accelerate inflation outside of like transformers, electrical equipment, things that you need for data centers are going to be really inflated. But There's like limit to spillover effects the way that you have spillover effects and like housing, huge spillover effects and housing construction. If we were spending a trillion dollars more on housing construction, we'd see massive spillover effects. I just don't think that's true for AI. So what would cause things to get slower? I think that you have sort of two main things.

One is that generally things outside of AI are not that strong, not that hot. I mean, it's like high interest rates really did slow down the economy. Homebuilders are as like strained as they've been in more than a decade. You know, inventories are high. Multifamily constructions off a cliff. All real estate is pretty, pretty depressed outside of AI. Wage growth is not really strong. Hiring is not very strong.

So generally the economy is pretty soft. And then on top of that, I mean, everybody knows this, but it's one of those things that people forget. So the tariffs were put in place in April. Companies did raise prices. They raised prices April, May, June, July, August. And so we saw inflation stay high for longer because of all of tariffs. But I think we'll start to see, hey, actually, you know, there really isn't any more inflation in the economy. I think the

inflation is gone. There's, it's just not a driver of the economy anymore. And then people will realize, oh my God, interest rates are too high. Like inflation is not three percent. It's actually 2 percent or low twos. And then I think everyone's going to wake up to that. And that's just going and cause interest rate-sensitive things to get really, really, really valuable. I see. So my opinion is that mortgage rates wouldn't change very much in 2026 because I think until we get a line of sight of like, what's the bigger risk, inflation, or recession, bond yields are kind of locked up.

And like people are kind of locked up. And so it sounds like you think we'll get that line of sight sometime in 2026. And your feeling is that inflation will be, maybe we don't get back down to 2%, but people see the path down to 2%, and that will feel more confident that the risks, whether it's, you know, tariffs or some other risk that could create inflation, will be mitigated. And then for reasons, bond yields start to come down, spreads start to come down. We start to see better buying conditions and a lot more activity in real estate. Yes, completely. That's exactly what I think.

And then I think if you were sort of play that out, I think there's like two main questions. One, you know, the market's forward looking. So as possible, we start seeing that sooner than October or November or something. Like probably really, really like 100% by November or December. But like the market probably starts to like get anticipatory like signals earlier than that. And there, you know, everybody, you know, this is at this point like you always end up like conditioned by recent events. So everybody got conditioned by inflation, high inflation. And it's like, usually what happens is because everybody's conditioned for it, it's the least likely thing to happen.

Huh. That's interesting. It's like the thing we're defending against. That's my view. And then I think the question is going to be, what happens after that? Well, what then? Now I'm going to take a really big leap. I think it goes through 2%. Really? Why? I'm curious. Because AI is deflationary. Yeah, yeah. So please expand. Yeah, so I, okay, so so we'll use do Funrise. So Funrise, we're 200 people. We have a lot of different departments. Customer service, we get 6,000 tickets a month. Half of them are handled by AI. Wow. Maybe more. We used to have twice as many investor relations people handling tickets as we do now. You know, we have like cybersecurity, IT. We used to have eight people, now we have five. We used to have three people doing

copywriting. Now we have none. I mean, just go down the list. Everywhere that AI touches, it either suppresses the number of jobs hiring or it gets rid of jobs. And then that will suppress wage growth. Yes, I agree with that. I was actually just debating this with someone on the market, our other podcast earlier that I thought real wage growth was going to go negative next year. I just think that trend is going to continue. So basically, people are going to lose their negotiating leverage in labor negotiations. And so wages are going to go down. Yeah.

We can debate, and I think it's really hard to know exactly if it goes negative or exactly what happens because certain people benefit and certain people will get punished. But overall, you're replacing people with software. And that's deflationary on wages. Yeah, right. Right. So you have this thing where people became more expensive and goods became cheaper. Yeah, or services, basically.

Like if you think about it. Yeah. So services are more. expensive. Exactly. And so AI is the first technology that really makes services cheaper. Interesting. It's going to make people cheaper. So that's the argument for lower wage growth in general. You basically have a majority of people with lower wages and then a minority of people with higher wages. Because if Dave had 10 employees in LES 5, is Dave making more money? Maybe, because he has a lot more profit.

So the average may not be lower, but like the median will be lower. Okay. All right, everyone, we've got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with Ben Miller right after this. This week's bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund. Invest in private market real estate with the Fundrise flagship fund. Check out fundrise.com slash pockets to learn more. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income.

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I'm here with CEO of Fundrise, Ben, Miller, let's jump back in. That's a scary proposition, to be honest, what I think about it, just like society-wise. To me, the idea that we'll have fewer people employed and at lower wages is a big break in the economic system, is it not? I think that there's a transitionary period that could be quite ugly. And I've actually sat down and done a lot of work on this. You can go on chat CPG, go on claw and ask these questions of like, okay, you know, what

percentage of their work can be replaced by, you know, GPT-5, GPT-6, you know, go through the tasks they do. And you can really quickly get to a pretty confident conclusion that, like, it's not less than 10% of most people's work. And in some places where you've built a customized application, like for customer service or customized accounting software for AI, it can do more than 50%, I think, let's say 50%, maybe 90% in scheme cases. And so you say, okay. And so you say, okay, let's just say it's 20%, well, 20% of 100 million is 20 million people, right? It's a lot. It's a lot. It's huge. It's too many. Yeah. And it doesn't actually cause unemployment to go through the roof. Maybe unemployment goes to five and a half percent or six percent. Is it mostly it suppresses hiring?

Well, that's kind of what's going on right now, right? Like we're not seeing layoffs. We're just seeing no one hiring. Yeah, I think that like a generation of people who are in their early 20s are going to to really get impacted. Yeah. I mean, you look at unemployment for 16 to 24 year olds right now. It's already 10%. Like, that's really high. And it's hard to imagine that picking up anytime soon. That's what I mean about the societal challenges here. Like, there's obviously benefits to it, but there's a lot of stuff that just feels uncertain. Another reason why, going back to your previous point about people not wanting to make a lot of investments, it just feels like so uncertain about these things, how these things are going to play out. We've had ChatGPT for two or three years now,

but it's still so brand new. There's going to be so many different forms of AI that start to come in, not just in large language models, that could do totally different things. So I buy the idea that this could be deflationary, at least in the short to medium term. And I can't really think in my head of precedent for that in the economy where it's been a sustained deflationary period. We've had lagging wage growth for 40 years in this country, but this seems more serious than that. Yeah, I guess I'd argue the opposite of that. You've probably seen this graph, but corporate profits have been going up for like 25 years.

And if you look at the number of people it takes to produce something, it's been falling. used to take eight people per corporate dollar, and now it takes two, and it's falling to one. So technology has been making the economy more productive, need less workers, and it's been mostly gains to capital, not gains to labor. That's right. So I think this is very consistent with that. That's a good point. So there is precedent, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's more similar, but more extreme. It's just more dramatic. Yeah. It's basically the acceleration of a pattern we've seen. Right. And it's a pattern that is both very productive and very counterproductive, counterproductive politically. Yeah. Productively from a capital point of view. I'm not as bearish. I think that like an optimistic view would be that AI is really designed for the young people. They're much more like adaptive. So it could be that like at some point all these young people are getting hired to really be the the person in the office who understands.

how to use AI. I'm following you. I mean, obviously no one really knows, but I think this is a very plausible. This is a very plausible line of thinking here. To continue sort of your thesis here about real estate in general, how do you think this impacts? Like you're saying deflationary,

that could lead to lower mortgage rates. I totally buy that if it is deflationary. So then, like, is this kind of where the thesis about real estate bottoming comes from? Is like, we're going to get cheaper cost to bar, and asset prices are going to go back up? That's my expectation, my belief that, yeah, that basically we end up in a new era. This era is different. We go through these paradigms.

You and I've been through, I don't know how many now, three or four. So we're going into a new one, and that new one is not like the old one. COVID almost accelerated it or something. Like we went through like usually they're like about a decade and this one ended up being five years or something instead of being 10. And so the old one was money printing, inflation. inflation, high rates, and now we're going to go into something that's like high productivity growth, high returns to capital, lower inflation, but higher real interest rates, because

what happens is we have really high GDP growth and high growth that drives the real interest rate up, but it drives inflation rate down. So it's a little bit of a, you get some and you lose some, but generally, like, that's good for growth in which real estate is a levered investment in growth. and so the leverage part gets cheaper and you get more growth. And so I think you're just going to see a lot of benefits. And then it's going to be more asymmetric. I think that high end does better than low end real estate.

So San Francisco, New York, places that selling to a multi-millionaire, the high end is absolutely crazy, how much money is going to be created for top 0.1% of the country. So a high-end real estate, I think, is where you want to be. Interesting. I've been 20 years focusing on workforce real estate, real estate for middle class, because usually middle class real estate is more resilient. This is where I don't have my thinking as refined, but I think that could be impacted by this hollowing out dynamic. I haven't thought about it that way. I buy the idea, you know, if you're right, that we'll have

a lot of wealth creation at the top. That's certainly a continuation of a trend that's existed in the U.S. for a while now, I guess I've made my own investing thesis more about affordability and trying to find places similar to what you're saying about workforce housing, trying to find places where the average person can afford the average price home, is your move away from that thinking that affordability for the average American could get even worse than it is right now? That's the political dynamic that's really quite ugly. Yeah. There's affordability in terms of good.

and services, and there's affordability in terms of assets. Sure, yes. I think assets get more expensive, but goods and services get cheaper. So, like, it's harder to buy a house, but you can afford, you know, the health care maybe it gets cheaper for the first time. Not in the short term, but really, like, health care is very impacted by AI. And so that's why I have saying if you're going to buy assets, which is real estate, you want to be in assets that benefit from the wealth effect.

And we haven't shifted our real estate strategy yet around this. It's still early, early days on this, but like high-end San Francisco, for sure, no question. High-end New York, you probably want to be in the suburbs. I think it's like a challenge for where you want to invest. You really have to think about that. So you want to be near these big economic centers, but not actually probably in them. I'm curious. This is kind of another tangent, but like, how does the average person afford rent in this scenario?

You know, asset prices are going up. People are making less and less money. I see a lot of people talk about universal basic income. Is that kind of the avenue you go down? I don't think so. Have you heard this thing? It's a new concept to me. I heard it recently.

It's as opposed to redistribution. You have redistribution? No, I have not heard of that. It's actually comes from the right. But it's the argument from Oren Cass from New Compass. The argument is people don't want handouts. They want a job and they want a purpose. And so we'd rather do it as effect.

So, like, unions are predistribution, minimum wage predistribution, things that, like, are before you get to the government. So you sort of, like, you've affected the workplace. So rent control is kind of a predistribution thing. Anyways, I think it's going to be really popular. And so I think that, like, there'll be this new movement around how you address this inequality. You know, rent control is, like, obviously an example of that. And it's, I mean, it's pretty crazy in some places where, you know, you can't evict people.

and you can't raise rents and probably a million units in New York will go bankrupt because like they essentially their costs went up, their, you know, their mortgage went up, their insurance went up, everything went up but their rents didn't go up. So like all these affordable housing projects in San Francisco and D.C. and New York

and are going bankrupt. So it's like that's a taking, right? That's a way of like kind of redistributing wealth from the owner to the renter. So that's a version that's already happening. So what's the next version of that? I think it's hard. I think maybe, maybe they, you know, Europe, you can't fire people.

Maybe they start making it so you can't fire. Maybe like unemployment insurance becomes like 10 times more expensive. So you have to like support people. Like so they, there's all sorts of possibilities. But I think it's like in a world where you have an extreme effect on AI. I think you see extreme government intervention to the private economy. Yeah. I mean, something would have to happen in this.

And if this scenario, like I just don't think you can have a functioning society where people continue to make less and less and unemployment goes up and up and all the money's going to a very small percentage of people. Like that's just the recipe for civil unrest if you look at history. Yeah, it's scary. Something would have to happen. Yeah. And what you'd hope is that somebody has a good idea. Yes, I would definitely hope that. Right. Well, mostly I'm giving you bad ideas. I mean, but I this is not your job. Like you're not a policymaker. So I understand. I'm just curious if you had any, if you had seen any good ideas. Have I seen any good ideas? I have to think about that. But I, but I mean, anyways, but you,

but you can, you understand what I'm coming from. I do understand what you mean, yes. But I mean, the point is what people say AI is a bubble. What I hear is deflation. Yeah. I say, oh, so you're going to put two, three, four trillion dollars into into AI. It's either deflationary, very deflationary. So the two versions of, of it is they put trillions of dollars into building artificial people. It's software that can do the work of, 20 to 50% of people's work. That's like my base case. Or worse, it is a bubble.

It blows up. And then we have super deflation. Because you have built trillions of dollars of AI, you know, data centers that are pumping out all these like tokens that are replacing people's tasks. And the AI economy blew up and deflated. So I'm like, oh, you know, it's just a question of how deflationary it is. Stay with us, everyone. We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Henry, it's holiday season. What do you get a real estate investor for the holidays? Well, if that real estate investor is me, you can get me a 15-union apartment building. Oh, does that work? Do people just send you apartment buildings? They are now. Well, I got a suggestion, actually. If you are looking for a gift to get a real estate investor, buy them a ticket to the upcoming

Texas Cashflow Road Show. We're going to be in Texas. We're going to Austin, Houston, and Dallas from January 3,000. 13th to 16th. We're going to be having meetups, workshops, live podcast recording. We'd love to see you all there. So if you're thinking you got a friend in the Texas area and they're trying to get into real estate investing, they're trying to scale their portfolio, go to biggerpockets.com

slash Texas and go buy them a ticket. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically. on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully

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Baselane is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank. Bank banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead. Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever.

in this economy. That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score, and they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. Welcome back to the show. Let's jump back in with Fundrise CEO, Ben Miller. All right. Well, you've given me a lot to think about a lot. Before we get out of here, though, just curious, you know, you've given us a couple of hints that you think about investing near these big economic hubs, you know, being careful about where around those hubs you choose to invest. What about different asset classes? Like, do you think residential versus multifamily or commercial will perform differently in the coming years?

Well, I definitely don't touch office. Yes. Me neither. Thankfully. Yeah. I mean, it's obvious. because, you know, I'm talking about eliminating jobs, which eliminates office and office was already bad. No, I mean, I'm a big believer in industrial and in multifamily. I think you're high end for sale housing and then also rental housing in places that are not going to be overregulated. And then we don't do high end, super high end residential, maybe super even high in retail where sort of caters to that upper class. It's not something I think I want to do, but I think that it's a, The asset classes around, like, Greenwich and Sussolito and places that are extreme wealth would just get even crazier.

And then, I mean, I'd be remiss not to talk about our AI product that we've been building. Yeah, let's do it. Because, I mean, we talked a lot about AI. So tell me how you and Fundrise are using AI and your own investing. Yeah, so we, for the last couple years, we've been building a real estate AI product called Real AI. It's not realAI.com. but it's still kind of in beta, but you can go in there.

And it's pretty amazing. I've got to use it. It's really cool. It's amazing to me because I'm like, oh, my, I mean, it makes me understand the potential of AI in a different way. Yeah. It makes me glad that I'm a podcaster now and no longer a data analyst. Yeah.

I mean, it turns ordinary people into advanced data scientists. Yeah, it does. It's crazy. We built real estate one called real estate AI, and that's basically to help. you do analysis. We're building more things so you can like, if you take like, oh, I have an OM from a broker, I have maybe I have a T12, I have some information. I upload the deal and I start using it to like interrogate the deal. Like, do you think these rents are realistic? What if tariffs get removed? And what if, like, you can do like all this is thinking, all this analysis with

this tools and then have it produced like drafts for you that you can then edit. It both saves you a lot of time, but it makes you so much smarter. I mean, so much smarter. It really does, yeah. I find myself doing the same amount of thinking that I used to. Like, I don't feel like I'm necessarily spending less time working, but it's like, I just get better information to consider so much faster. And ideas are, like, introduced that I would have taken me a longer time to come to.

Or just like, you know, I'm an analyst. So, like, sometimes AI will suggest a data set I didn't even know exist. And that means that I can now start thinking about something else. Or there's just framing it somewhere away. I wouldn't think of it. I still find myself working, of course. But it just seems it's just a much more robust and like rich set of information that I can work with.

At least that's how I'm using it right now. That's a funny way to think about it. I was on a podcast three years ago and I was on again this week. And they said three years ago, you recommended a bunch of podcasts. What do you recommend now? And I think I've been all. my time now in AI where I used to spend it like on, like listening to a podcast. Yeah, listen to a podcast, right. Yeah. Because I just spend so much time essentially like, it's a form of content. Yeah.

Where I'm like, what about this? What about that? How are it? And I'm thinking about things. It's producing things for me. And so I want to ask you, because you've, you've played around with real AI. Yeah. What do you have to say about it? I love it. I'm being sincere that like someone like me who analyze housing markets, you don't go into that career right now. Aggregating real estate data is a huge pain in the butt. We don't need to get into why, but it's really disparate. There's MLSs, there's data source, there's private sources, there's public sources, there's county and national.

It's a lot of stuff. And what Ben and his team has done and allowed us to access all this information about a city, dig into comps, dig into migration patterns, dig into ARVs, like all of it in one place, it's incredible. It just, this is like a true time saver. Like, I felt like I could do this analysis before, but I was probably one of few people who could do it confidently. But now not only can anyone do it, but you could do it in a fraction of the time.

It even took me to do it. And so I think it's going to be an interesting thing, but I can even feel myself feeling a little overwhelmed by it almost, where if you're not an analyst, digesting just, you know, tons of data might be a little bit intimidating. But for people like me who are analytical, it's a playground. You know, it's super, super fun. And I'm sure what you and everyone else is working on is just like, how do you make this different levels?

Like, how do you create a level for a beginner investor to understand things? And then a little bit more sophisticated and more sophisticated and have like different levels of communication. But the fact that it's all there is just fascinating. I am guessing, because I get messages from our audience all the time, people saying like, where do I get data about the housing? market, and they're not even talking about anything, like what you're doing. But it's frustrating for regular investors, even to go to Redfin, then to go to the BLS, then to go to the Fred website,

and just even get four or five data points, even if you're not trying to aggregate them. It's frustrating to do just that. And so I think the merging of all this information into one digestible place is going to make the job of an investor, I think, just more fun. You get to do more of the enjoyable part and less of the admin kind of back end stuff that someone like me does, at least. I think it's going to become more fun. My friend, I have a friend who's a very inappropriate person, but he says, like, you know, wake in the morning, I should have an omelette. There's the inside. He's got to get the store. He's got to get these eggs. He's got to get the butter. You got to cook it. Finally, at the end, you get to eat it. How much of the time was like not

the insight, not the eating? Oh, my God. I'll spend an hour cooking. in four minutes eating. I just inhale food. It's embarrassing. That's how I think a lot of work is. A lot. I don't think AI is going to get rid of the four minutes. I think that we're nowhere close to AI replacing people. There's so much of your work is just not valuable. It's just grindy, administrative, sucky work. That's the stuff AI is so good at. All right. Let's end there, because to me, that is an optimistic. I love that idea. That's a great positive. view of how AI might impact all of us on our work. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me. And thank you all so much for listening to

this episode of The Bigger Pockets of Podcasts. We'll see all next time. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On the host, an executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by E&K, copywriting is by Calicoe Content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment

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Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.