BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Chad Carson’s 2 Deals/Year Strategy That Makes You a Rental Millionaire

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Is buying rental properties still worth it in 2026? There’s no denying that rising interest rates, sluggish rent growth, and other factors have taken the shine off many properties that would have been home-run deals only a few years ago. But this is real estate we’re talking about. Buy-and-hold investing tends to reward people in the long run. It’s just that, to buy in this market, you’ve got to adapt. Chad “Coach” Carson believes these market conditions heavily favor the “small and mighty” investor—the person who isn’t looking to buy at a massive scale but actually handpick one or two great assets every year. But there’s one caveat: you must have the time, grit, and hunger to go out and find real estate deals that the more experienced, “lazy” investors can’t be bothered with. And Chad’s about to show you how to do just that. He shares how his own buy box has evolved in the last 12 months, his favorite strategies for buying off-market properties today, and what every investor can do to slowly and steadily build a rental portfolio that provides the lifestyle they want—no matter the market. In This Episode We Cover The two biggest ways to win as a “small” real estate investor in 2026 Why getting a strong cash-on-cash return today isn’t as important as you think The new investor’s superpower when looking for off-market properties Chad’s 3-2-1 strategy for building a portfolio with new construction homes The number one mistake most investors make shortly after buying a rental property The exact blueprint Chad would follow if you dropped him in a new market today How to arrive at “enough” when everyone tells you to keep scaling And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1295⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 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

Is buying rental properties still worth it in 2026? Rising interest rates, sluggish rent growth, and other factors have taken the shine-off properties that would have been home-run deals only a couple of years ago. But this is real estate we're talking about. Buy and hold investing tends to reward people in the long run. It's just that to buy in this market, you've got to adapt. Chad, Coach Carson, believes these market conditions actually heavily. favor the small and mighty investor. The person who isn't looking to buy at a massive scale,

but who will actually handpick one or two great high upside assets every year. But there is one caveat. You've got to go out and find the real estate deals that the more experienced, sometimes lazy investors, can't be bothered with. And Chad's about to show you exactly how you can do that. He shares how his own buybox has evolved in the last 12 months. months, his favorite strategies for buying off-market properties today, and what every investor can do to slowly and steadily build a rental portfolio that provides the lifestyle they want, no matter the market. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at Bigger Pockets.

Henry Washington is here, too, and today we are joined by one of your favorite guests on the show, Chad Carson. Chad is an investor in South Carolina who has pioneered the small, but mighty real estate investing strategy, which is still working even in today's housing market. Let's bring on Chad. Chad Carson, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Always fun to have you here, Chad. Thanks for your time.

It's so good to be here. Thanks for having me back. Well, let's just talk a little bit about what is going on with you. What are you seeing in the market today and how are you sort of adapting your own portfolio and behavior? Yeah, I've got a couple lenses. One is just my own portfolio, which is in Clemson, South Carolina. line. People haven't heard where I am. And I'm in a sort of a later stage investing strategy. So like I'm not trying to make major moves, but like buying two or three new properties a year,

or in my case, building two or three new properties a year is sort of the pace I'm at. And I prune my portfolio a little bit. I'll sell off one or two properties that are not ideal. And then build a couple. So I've built two houses. I haven't built them with my own hands. I have a builder partner who's built them for me. That's one part of the story. But the other part of the story. I think just, I think a lot of us are just trying to figure out the market. Like, where is this? Where is my micro market? What's going on? And I think that's the name of the game for like people like me, small and mighty investors, is just experimenting, trying little things. And I think that's one of our advantages. We can do one or two deals. Does that work? Does that not work? And if something works,

you keep doing it. If it doesn't, you stop and you pivot. And you didn't like put all of your resources on one thing. And that's, that's sort of where I am. I'm experimenting and testing, but I'm always in the market just trying to continue moving forward. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the whole, if you're familiar with like startups, you know, the whole lean methodology, like the fail fast, fail off in ideas that like not everything's going to work out. But the goal, at least early in your investing career, is to maximize your rate of learning. Like, how quickly can you learn what you're good at, what you like doing, what is actually profitable for you? And I think that makes a lot of sense with real estate, what types of projects, though, do you think people can get into and learn quickly?

Because it does take a lot of capital. Does that mean people should be raising private capital or partnering on multiple different types of deals? Or how do you go about having sort of this iterative approach to real estate? Well, I would start with Henry. What Henry teaches, like in his book is like I would start iterating on marketing strategies because that's your number one investment before you buy the property. And I think today in 2026 and beyond, like, this is such a normal investing market in that you can't just buy retail and it makes sense. It's you have to buy something low. You've got to buy the price low. You've got to negotiate the financing low. Something's got to be low. And so the thing you've got to experiment with is how can

I find opportunities that look really juicy, like really good. And that's talking to people, that's networking, that's sending letters out, that's iterating with like, what's your postcard look like? What's your letter look like? What kind of ways are you going to try to buy properties from builders who are in distress or something. Like, you can list the 50 ideas, but those are the kinds of things that marketing is one of the ways I iterate a lot. Yeah, that's a really good point because if you think about the ability to experiment, right, the thing that allows you the freedom to try is your equity in that deal.

If you're buying something with multiple exit strategies, in other words, you've bought it at a price point where you can try to rent it and see if that works. You can try to short-term rent it. You can try to mid-term rent it. all of those on paper would actually produce a result that equals some sort of cash flow, then it gives you the freedom to experiment. And the other thing I would say, like, how the price you buy it at, that's really important. And also buying higher quality assets compared to just marginal locations.

Right. So like if I were somebody who was like a full-time job and I only had a, my skill set was I had a bunch of money to put into the deal, but I have very little time. I would go for like really high quality assets, make a big down payment, maybe partner with somebody who's finding good deals or something. But I would not try to like hit a home run on the return, cash on cash return. I might make it like a 1 or 2% cash on cash return, but I'm buying in a very rare neighborhood or a rare location with a high quality property, with low maintenance.

And so that's another way to win. Like you either got to win on the price or you got to win on like that is an unusual asset, an unusual location with the demographics look really good. Those are like two different angles. And one of them is suited for somebody who has patient money. The other is suited for more of the entrepreneurial style. Esther, who can go out and make offers and buy good deals. So, Chad, I kind of want to go back to this idea of iterating, you know, because immediately where my head was going was like, okay, try a short-term

rental, try a long-term rental, try multifamily. But that takes capital. But I love your point. Iterating on individual tactics within a deal also makes a lot of sense. So maybe Henry, both of you guys, can give us some examples of like, if you had five grand and you want to buy a deal in the next six months. Like what are some ways you could iterate on marketing and your deal flow? Yeah, I don't want to compete with Henry because he's got this thing going on. But if you drop, if you drop me into Henry's city, I would be like, put me in a car or put me on a bike. I like to walk or bike. And I'm going to bike and ride for dollars. And I'm going to look for vacant houses. I'm going to look for for sale by owners, for rent by owners. I feel like that's one of the most unscalable things you can do.

And because of that, I think it's like the best one because like I would just go and do it today. You're 100% right. Like you're talking about, yes, it's not very scalable. But that is the exact reason why you should be doing it. So first of all, when we're talking about finding deals, I think people who don't want to put in the work immediately tune out because they think I got to spend a bunch of money and send a bunch of mail. That's just one way to find off market deals. But there's a ton of ways to find off market deals. And the fact that riding your bike for dollars isn't scalable is exactly why you should be doing it, especially if you've never sent marketing, especially if you're in a market that's competitive. right? Because what you want to be able to do is set yourself apart from everybody else who's also looking for deals. And if there's one thing I know to be true about real estate investors, if there's real estate investors who've been in the game for more than a couple of years, we get lazy and spoiled because we have systems that do all of this stuff for us. And so we don't want to do the dirty work anymore. And so no one wants to knock on doors. No one wants to drive for dollars because,

there's with all the technology and AI and there's so many easier ways to just automatically pull a list and send some marketing, I don't have to think about it. And so if you are doing that too, you're competing with me. But if you're getting out and you're riding your bike and you're identifying properties and then leveraging the, like you can literally find an address, get on Claude and do some skip tracing, find a phone number and call them while you're riding your bike in that neighborhood and see if they would be interested. The more layers in between you and getting to that seller's information, like the more hurdles you have to jump over, the better for the new investor. Because people like me aren't going to do it. You're just not hungry enough,

right? Or you have other systems. But it's like you got to chase down the one that's going to be hard. Yes, exactly. Well, I definitely like appreciate the fact that I'm being lazy because later, right now my career, I am very lazy, ambitiously lazy because I'm not wanting to do that. But early in my career, I found a deal, for example, to demonstrate what you're talking about, where it was vacant. And I knew several investors who had tried to contact this property. He sent a letter. And I did a skip trace, meaning, like, I looked up who the owners, relatives were. It took me, like, weeks to track down who the cousin of the owner was in Ohio.

And I got on the phone with them, just a phone call. And I said, I know this is a weird call out of the blue. My name is Chad Carson. I'm in near Easley, South Carolina, where this property is. And I saw that you're the relative of so-and-so. I want to buy their house, but I can't get in touch with them. Can you help me out with this? And they connected me with the owner who had all sorts of problems going on.

And they weren't off the grid and all this kind of stuff. but I bought that property for, and nobody else knew about it. Yep. Because just it's pure hustle, pure just like phone call, phone call, phone call. And so speaking of iteration, like, there are deals. There's like, like, you can think about little gold nuggets like that that just, you just kind of like dig, you got to dig below the surface. But the other thing in terms of iteration, I think, Dave, to your point,

is that the best way to get market intelligence is not looking at some intelligence report on the internet is to actually get in the neighborhood and talk to realtors, talk to landlords, talk to the neighbor who's just nosy and who's cutting their grass. Like, if you're just willing to talk to people, which is so old school, you're going to learn all about what's going on in the neighborhood, what the trends are, why people like living there. That's where the ideas that we can't tell you are going to come from. They're going to tell you some opportunity that you had no idea was going to work.

For example, somebody's building three ADUs in this neighborhood, and that's a really cool opportunity. Or somebody just bought that house and they just tore it down. And that's another. I mean, so you just never know where your nose is going to lead you when you're out there. That's such a good point. Like instead of going on a walk in your own neighborhood, go on a walk in the neighborhood you want to invest in every day and start talking to people. People will tell you everybody's business.

If you start talking to people standing in the lawns and doing stuff outside, they'll tell you everything you need to know. But iterating on finding a deal, I just think it's such a cool topic for right now because there's so many things that are, that are, I would say, that they're back. They used to be a thing and then they stopped being a thing and now they're back. Like, people should be going to foreclosure auctions again. I was about to say the same for there. They're back. They're back. And people aren't attending the auctions and scooping these things up like they used to

because they weren't a thing for so long. I mean, if you just start showing up to foreclosure auctions, even if you don't want to bid on anything, the people that are there, well, who are they? They're cash investors probably. They're usually it's the older guys who've been buying properties for years. And they're not the people you're going to see on social media. They're not the people you're going to see at the RIA meetings. They just do this.

you know, they go to the diner and get coffee in the morning and then they go to the foreclosure auction and they buy a property and then you never hear or see from them again. But those are the people who you need to be networking with because that old boy that's down there buying up foreclosure auctions, he's probably got some stuff he wants to sell or he knows who's got stuff that they want to sell because they know all the other, you know, local boomer retiring landlords who are like, that's, go spend your time around those folks. Even if you're not going to bid, if you're going to bid, I mean, I think there's plenty of opportunity. I bought two pre-foreclosures in the past, I would say, six months.

At auction? No, no. I bought them before they went to foreclosure. So that's another, that's, see, I'm lazy. So I don't want to go to the foreclosure auction. So I just pull the pre-foreclosure list and I reach out to them because it's easier for me. So if you carry your butt down there, you might find an opportunity that I'm not going to see. And I also think pre-foreclosure is less risk. My first two or three years in business was 100% doing short sales and pre-foreclosures. And when you buy at the auction, you got to, I mean, there's a lot of, there's some title risk, there's issues, you got to come up with a lot of cash depending on the state. It's still a good, but I would say like a 101 strategy is if you just market to pre-foreclosures, you talk to somebody, you help

them solve their problem, you get them cash for their property, then you can go to the normal closing you always go to, get title insurance, but that is one of the marketing channels that I've had my eye on. I mean, along those lines, to talk about off-market deal funding, what people like me are doing is we're automating pulling some sort of list, right? So we'll have some criteria that we like and then some software will pull that list and then that list will go to some company and that company will send the mail, right? And then like I'm so hands off with it. And so think about what you could do to get your hands on a list. There are lists that are hard to pull in systems and easier to pull either by doing the work yourself like writing for dollars or by going down to the

city or county and going a list. So think about things like a probate. list. That's very hard to pull and just online. But if you go down to the city, you can pull the list of probate properties or inherited properties. It's a pain in the butt. You're going to talk to the lady at the office and she's going to be too busy and not going to want to deal with you. But if you can get through all those hurdles, you now have this list of distressed properties or people who may have some motivation that there was some layers in between you and getting to that list. Yeah. Another one out there was eviction evictions. I remember when I first started, I would take my laptop down to the little courthouse area and I'll just get all the paper files of all

the properties that have been evicted in the last week. And I would go put them in my little database. And some of those are online now. Like in my area, you can actually get those records online. So you can just manually go through it or get a virtual agent to do it or whatever. But like the point, I guess, that I'm hearing, like the common theme here is all these are iterations. These are experiments. It's like the pre-foreclosure list, probate list, the eviction list, tax lien list. Violations. Code violations is another good one. And so all of these are ones that you can experiment with and try. But I would say like the point we made earlier behind the scenes, you are still looking

for good deals. The numbers make a ton of sense. And so most people are just, they're not even getting to this iteration stage because they're listening online and saying, people are saying, oh, there's not a good real estate market. This is the worst real estate market. Those are amateurs. I've been in the business 23 years now.

And I know people have been in the business 50 years, 60 years. And they're rubbing their hands together during times when everybody else is complaining about, oh, this is the worst market to get in bed. They're like ready. They're like, this is perfect because everybody else is making excuses while I'm iterating and experimenting and trying new things. That's a great point, Chad. I just want to reiterate something you said earlier, Chad, because I think it's so important that the advantage of being a regular old investor is going to go out and buy two or three deals a year is that your operations aren't that complicated. You don't have that much stuff going on. So spend your time doing this. Like,

this is exactly what being small allows you to do is that you're not managing thousands of units. You're not allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. You don't have any quota you need to hit to meet your basic needs. Like this is where you should spend your time and attention. This is all you need is one or two. Spend all your time that you have in real estate investing trying to find the best two deals you can every single year. If you do it, Henry and Chad were just advising. And you spend a couple hours a week doing that. It doesn't matter what the market's doing.

You're going to find two great deals if you were committed to this, and you should just go buy them. That's just a playbook that works. Absolutely. Sounds like a challenge. Sounds like your challenge. I like it. I like a little coaching, a little tough love.

Let's do this, right? All right. Well, Chad, you have a great community yourself. And I kind of want to hear some of the iterations and experiments and things that are working for your community. but we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Vacation is expensive.

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and just finding a way to get good deals right now. Henry and Chad offered some excellent advice on deal finding before this. Chad, I'd love to hear from you, though, what experiments are working for your community right now? What are you seeing? Are there any themes developing? Yeah, some of us just like going against the current.

The new build trend that I'm doing a little bit, I'm seeing several, have a student in Charlotte who is building new construction. And he's a little bit more of a volume builder. But like if you have skills as a contractor, I like this idea of building three, selling to keeping one. This is actually what I'm trying to do with mine in Clemson. You divide up the property into three lots or maybe you buy several properties.

You're going to fix up all of them. But in order to raise capital to keep the third one, you are making money flipping the other two. And then you keep the third one as a rental property. and he's doing pretty well with that. Like he's paying the bills and getting the cash for down payments through flipping and then keeping the one rental. And there's a lot of benefits to that because when you're, he's able to move inventory. He's able to buy and sell.

He's able to keep his private lenders moving. I think that the mistake a lot of flippers make is not keeping stuff. They're not keeping enough of the rentals. And so that's a discipline of buy three, sell two, keep one. You can do that in the short run as a flipper. I also see that as like a harvesting, you know, you always talk about like starter, build, or harvester. when you're going from the building wealth phase to the harvesting phase, I'm seeing people strategically sell off some of their rental properties at the right time and then keep one or two

of their best ones, you know, or keep like a third or half of the best ones. I had one student who did that. He got up to 21 properties as a kind of growth strategy. He sold down to like nine properties. He's used the capital to pay off some debt. He's used the rest of the capital to do some private lending. And so he has this tiny, you know, little simple portfolio. He sold off his worst properties. So he has much less hassle and risk. I think that's like the ideal end point for a lot of us. Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. And why I think that makes a lot of sense is because I'm doing a very similar strategy. That's good to hear. All right. I've been selling off some of my problem properties and using that to pay off some of the other ones, getting my portfolio down to

something that I enjoy managing more and keeping some of the best assets. But I would say if you're somebody who's never done a deal. Like your goal is to do a deal. You're right. Your goal is to get that first one done. It's to buy something that if things don't go well, it's not going to put you in your family in a financial hardship. Don't lose your shirt. Don't lose your shirt. Do a single family, maybe a small multifamily, depending on the price point, right? Something that if it doesn't go according to plan, you're still going to be able to eat, your kids are still going to be able to eat. You're not going to lose a bunch of sleep. It might suck a little bit, but you're not going to die, right? Like that's the goal first deal.

And then I would say is like you've got to be very intentional about doing some lessons learned. Like we do this in the corporate world after a project, right? You come back and you say, all right, projects complete. What went well? What didn't go well? When we do this again, what do we want to make sure we don't do? And what do we want to make sure that we pay somebody to do or hire a consultant to come in and do? Right.

Like I think you need to do that, especially if you're going to be thinking you want to grow a small and mighty portfolio, because you're only going to have so many transactions if you're small and money, right? So that means you've got to learn your lessons from your deal. Be intentional about what those lessons are. What did you like? Do you like the property that you own? Would you like to buy something different? Do you like the neighborhood that's in?

Do you like the tenants you have to rent to? Do you like the renovation process? Right. Like really be intentional about learning what you did well, what you didn't do well, what you like to do because you may do something poorly, but you enjoyed it, right? Okay. So how do you get better at doing that? And then you can go and you can execute on your next deal based on those lessons

learned to be way more intentional. Yeah. And Henry, I think speaking for myself, I have a hard time being self-reflective when I'm in the game. And so if people are like me where they're like, all right, I did a deal, but I want to do the next deal. I don't want to look backwards. I want to do the next one. What helps for me, and this goes back to bigger pockets and the communities. We all have communities around us. You've got to have people around you who are willing to call it straight and tell you, tell you what's up and what's really going on. I think that's been really critical for me because as smart as I think I am, I don't have it all figured out. And I'm always going to

make mistakes. So if you have people around you who can give you feedback in real time, like call it mentors, call it accountability groups, call it just network of friends, who you have on your text threads. People like that have talked me off cliffs so many times where I was going the wrong direction. They're like, I don't know, Chad. Like that doesn't sound that good to me. Like, what do you think about? Why are you doing that? And that that is huge because you, information is one thing when you hear from other people. But when you can get that reflection that you're talking about Henry in real time and you can like get some feedback. That's that's so valuable. Can you give us an example of that chat? Because I think it's so, it's so true.

Like you're in the middle of the deal. You're making bad decisions about a renovation budget or you're going to go buy something that probably isn't right for your portfolio. Like what are the valuable questions and insights you're able to extract from your network? Yeah, I could think of a couple examples. When I was in my hardcore growth stage, I had a mentor. I got me, Louis Stone. And he was a, He was a private lender for me. And so he had a vested interest in my business because if I screwed up, he lost money. You know, that was actually a really helpful alignment because he was much more experienced than I was.

And I was, we were buying in the Clemson, South Carolina area. I started finding a bunch of leads and another area 30 minutes away called Anderson, South Carolina. And I was like, hey, I'm going to go buy some of these properties. And the number's just really enticing. But it was one of these lower, it was like a, you know, D plus neighborhood. Meaning, to me, a D plus neighborhood means it's almost all landlords and it's a lot of slumlords. And I think it's all about them not taking care of their properties. And he, I went and showed him a property. And he was like, I was all excited about it. He was like,

eh, he was just kind of lukewarm. I was like, well, would you loan money if I bought one of these? And it was basically, he tried to tell me nicely. He was like, no, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do a deal like this. And I was a little like peeved at the moment. I'm like, well, wait a minute. Like, these numbers are really good. But I, it's my credit at that time. I listened to his feedback and I pivoted and I went to another neighborhood. And that doesn't mean I couldn't have made it work in that neighborhood, but it was so helpful for me because I was just like locked in. I thought it was really good deal. He was somebody with some money on the deal who thought differently. And he helped me pivot from a location that was probably would have caused me more trouble than it was

worth. In my community, we have very similar talks. I would say a good example of something that has come up more often than not is deals that require a lot of work for you to get to the money. In other words, I often will get questions about buying a property where you have to maybe rehab the house that's on the property and then it's got ADU potential, right? And so if you build the ADU and rehab the property, then it's this amazing super profitable deal, right? But the catch is you got to do both. Right. And I always tell investors, you want to think about like for me when I do a deal, I need the original deal to make me my money. I would do that deal.

If I'd never built the ADU and I could flip that house alone and make my profit, I would absolutely do that deal because then I'm not tied to having to build an ADU and that's a skill I haven't developed yet. And I think people can sometimes get a little ahead of themselves, especially when they're new because a lot of the deals new people come across, or I should say a lot of the deals that people try to sell the newcomers are complicated deals or deals that take a lot of work and a newcomer gets very excited about the potential of the profit down the road and doesn't think about what it's going to take to actually

get there. And so, like, we're often having that conversation of, like, yes, if a deal has multiple ways to make money, you only one of them matters, the one you have the skill set to do. And if your deal is going to pay you with that one exit strategy. And then there's a potential ADU, cool, great. That's icing on the cake for you. But, you know, if I didn't have a community or have someone, you know, tapping me on the shoulder saying, hey, yeah, you could make a bunch of money, but you've got to do this thing. You've never done before, and you're probably not going to be very good at it.

One of the common conversation I have in my community is assumptions. So one of the assumptions that in your case you're making is you're assuming you can get through those steps. Yeah. The assumptions, I run the numbers with a lot of people and do one-on-one calls, and they often miss assumptions on expenses,

capital expenses, that, hey, the taxes are going to go up on this property when you buy it at this price. And so that's another one. Just running the numbers is such a, it can be emotional because you get invested in this property. I want this first deal. I want this next deal. I always had the rule that I had to go and sell

it to my business partner, to my wife, to my private lender. And if I can sell it and I can pitch it and all them and I survives all those like those conversations, then maybe it's a good deal. It still might not be a good deal, but it's like that having those people around you is such a critical piece of the puzzle. And running the numbers conservatively. I think Dave and I often say, we're trying to talk ourselves out of buying a deal when we're underwriting it. Yeah. And that helps a ton. Honestly, I was negotiating a deal recently. and I was talking myself out of it and I kept, I decided, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to do it. And I just told the person and wound up lowering the price until I could get it. Like, that's how you do conservative underwriting. It just helps you back into the actual deal that works being and having that discipline and just saying no, continuously saying no until you find something that's really, really good is the only way to succeed right now. 100%. All right, Chad, thank you so much. I obviously.

think that's great feedback. Who you choose to spend your time around, A, not only let you know what's possible, but B, can keep your butt out of trouble. And this market will burn you if you do make mistakes. So having that community is hugely important. I do have a couple more questions for you about kind of what an ideal deal does look like in 2026. But we'll get to that right after the break. Most investors only think about insurance when something goes wrong, a tenant injury, storm damage, loss of rent. Then suddenly, the cheapest policy doesn't feel like the best one anymore. That's why a lot of BiggerPockets investors use steadily for landlord insurance designed specifically

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Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. All right, we are back on the bigger pocket. pockets podcast. We are talking with investor coach Chad Carson who's been sharing with us what he sees on the investing landscape in 2026. We talked a lot about how to iterate, how to find potential

opportunities as a small and mighty investor and even how to get started as a small and mighty investor from the beginning, which is probably something that Chad and I wish we did up front. But hey, what are you going to do? But now as we are growing our portfolios, right? We're learning the lessons and we're in. We're trying to get our portfolios down to a size that allows us the freedom that we want to live in life. Let's pretend there's an ideal deal out there for you right now. Like what kind of deal would you be looking to buy in 2026? I work it backwards from my tenants more and more these days. It's like in every other business in the world, you always start with your customers and say they're going to be the people buying your product. What do you do? As a landlord,

I think the same thing. My tenant is my customer. They're the most, their decisions the most important things. So my ideal tenant is someone who buys the rental, meaning they lease the property and they stay as long as possible. They pay on time and they love living there. And for me, I come back to the single family house, actually. I own multifamily properties. Single families aren't cool, Chad. We're not supposed to buy single families. That's what the internet says. Exactly. Single families are out. I heard, well, I better not say names here. I heard that's not a good thing to do. But I take the opposite opinion. Most of our tenants want to live in a house. They want to put their stuff in the garage. They have stuff. And apartment's cool, but like the aspiration of a lot of

people in our country is to live in a single family house. And so in many places, you know, exception being urban, Manhattan, things like that, a single family house is like the next step. For me, the ideal property would be brick exterior, single story ranch with a crawl space. It has hard, hardwood floors, tile in the bathroom. Like maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Like maintenance has been my love language. Yeah. So that's my house. Like I love a simple single story, 1,500 square foot house with a backyard this fence done because my tenants love that and because it's low maintenance for me.

And that combination of like desirability for the tenant, low maintenance for me as a landlord, the translation of that to number speak is that's going to be a very efficiently operating property with low capital expenses, low efficient, low maintenance. And it's going to be somebody who stays for five, 10, 15 years. Yeah. A dream. That's the best. That's my answer to long answer to what an ideal rental looks like these days. Same for me. I want a brick exterior, single family home.

I want somewhere between 70s and 90s built neighborhood in a desirable part of Northwest Arkansas, concrete foundation, something that I know I can get it a discount because of the age and it probably hasn't been updated, but it's been built recently enough that it's going to stand the test of time, not on a cross space, but, you know, just straight concrete foundation brick house three, two. Northwest Arkansas to me is like, I need to come visit you, Henry, because I mentioned biking earlier. I love bike trails too. Like I volunteer in my area trying to help build a walking and biking network.

And so for like for me, it's all the stuff you said, Henry, and you can like hop on a bike or walk to the local park on a like really cool bike and walking trail. Like that to me is like rental property Nirvana. Chad in his happy place. is just like real estate investing, biking around. It's true. It's awesome. So, Chad, you talked before about having great mentors, community, people who can help you figure out your portfolio decisions, how to make the most money out of the deal. And at least in my experience, I know I am biased, but in my experience, one of the best places you can possibly do that is at BPCon, because

there are literally thousands of like-minded people who are looking for the exact same thing, all getting together, super excited about it. And this year, Chad is going to be our closing keynote speaker in Orlando. First of all, Chad, congratulations. We're super excited to have you here. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you're going to be talking about at BPCon this year. Well, I'm honored, by the way, thank you. I've been to all the, I think I've been to all the BP cons.

I might have been won a long time ago in the very, very beginning I didn't go to. So it is part. My community is at Bigger Pockets. And I love being there. And my keynote's going to be, surprise, surprise, about this concept of enough. And the fact that, you know, sometimes the aspiration that so many entrepreneurs get kind of spoon-fed from the time they just start. And I was in this boat, too, is that successful investors are the ones who have the most properties and who had the biggest portfolios and the biggest businesses. My experience has been the opposite.

My experience has been that, you know, that's cool. I'm glad there's like trillion-dollar Elon Musk of the world. that's cool, but like, that's not what most of the people I see in my world as a real estate investors who are, quote, successful. I know a ton of people who have five properties, 15 properties, 25 properties, who nobody knows their name, but they have their properties paid off. They have a lot of cash flow. They work one or two hours per week on their business. They travel. They're involved in their community. They contribute their time. And those are heroes to me. Like, those people are amazing. And so my talk's going to be celebrating that first and foremost, that small

and mighty investor, but also giving some ideas on how you can lean into that and what's that business model look like. And I'll go into more depth about the stages of investing and really just leaving everybody hopefully at the Bigger Pockets Conference. Hopefully it's an amazing experience, but leaving you with some focus and some inspiration to go build your own small and mighty empire. I love it. Help me, Chad. I need this talk. I need this in my life. So I'm eager to hear your advice on how to do it the right way. Well, I always give speeches because I'm the first person who needs to hear it. So let's just call it like it. You're writing it for yourself. I'm in entrepreneurial, A type person personality therapy, continually. But it'll together, I think,

we can think about it and make our business. Not necessarily, you're never going to stop growing. I think that's another little tidbit of a takeaway. Even if you hit your enough financially, there's an endless number of things that you can grow into and become as a person. For me, it's been, you know, family members and being a dad and traveling. It's also been, like, the nonprofit I mentioned. Like, we need more entrepreneurs, like, building things that don't make any money in their communities. And that's very ambitious, like, solving problems and doing things with your time and your

money. So that's one of my, like, really passions is, like, how can we use entrepreneurship? Don't ever stop being an entrepreneur, but, like, channel that into different parts of our life. Making the most money and the biggest properties is not the only way to channel that ambition. Awesome. Well, if you all want to listen to Chad's talk at BPCon, if you want to hang out with the three of us and tons of other speakers, and you want to find your people who can help you source deals, who can help give feedback on projects or your portfolio strategy, come check out BPCon. It's this October 2nd through 4th in Orlando, Florida. You can grab your tickets today

at biggerpockets.com slash conference. And for just a couple more days, we do have early bird tickets. It's the lowest the prices are ever going to be. So if you want to come, make sure to grab your tickets in the next couple of days. Chad, thanks so much for being here, man.

We always appreciate it. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Henry, as always, a lot of fun having you here. Thank you all so much for watching this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer.

We'll see you guys 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. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by E.N.K., copywriting is by Calicoke 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.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and

and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.