BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Don’t Bet on the Fed: What Investors Need to Do Now as Rates Rise Again

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

The Federal Reserve just cut rates by another 0.25%, but mortgage rates went…up? This is now the fourth time the Fed has lowered its federal funds rate, and mortgage rates have defied them. It’s b...ecoming clearer than ever before: real estate investors cannot rely on the Fed to save them. If you’re waiting for mortgage rates to get back in the mid-to-low 5% range, you might be waiting for a while. But you don’t have to. Dave (and the guests on this show) are actively buying real estate deals, building their portfolios, and increasing their cash flow, all while interest rates are high. You can do it too—no matter what the Fed decides. In fact, right now may be a low-rate period that future investors will wish they could return to. There are six things you can do right now to lock in great real estate deals, even with rates rising higher. This is the opportunity for investors. Average homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines, many investors are still scared to jump back in, all while sellers are lowering prices, offering concessions, and willing to negotiate. You wanted a time to get better deals? This is it, and the Fed’s moves are only giving you more control. In This Episode We Cover The Fed rate cut update and why mortgage rates went up after the announcement  The real reason why the Fed’s cuts aren’t moving mortgage rates lower  Six ways to take advantage of a high-rate, lower-competition housing market  The “relatively affordable” pockets of the country that are seeing rising housing demand  Why real estate forecasters could be dead wrong and rates could rise over the next few years  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1194 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠advertise@biggerpockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The Fed cut rates on Wednesday, and mortgage rates went up. So what gives? Hasn't every person on the Internet been saying that there will be lower mortgage rates because the Fed will cut rates? Well, I haven't. I've been saying mortgage rates aren't moving that much, and that hoping the Fed will make investing easier is not a viable strategy for 2026. So today, I'll make this confusing situation make sense.
Starting point is 00:00:27 Underneath all this noise about Fed rates, about mortgage rates and home prices, there is opportunity for investors. Let's unpack. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Thank you for joining us on the show today. We have a good episode here for you.
Starting point is 00:00:51 In today's episode, I will talk briefly about what happened this week with the Fed and why my thesis about rates has been right so far. But we're going to focus more on how to invest. in an environment where rates might not be coming down. So first and foremost, I just got to say this. I get it. I know that people want mortgage rates to come down. I know that they want homes to be more affordable.
Starting point is 00:01:14 I want homes to be more affordable too. And I get that people have been eyeing Fed rate cuts as these magical periods where all of a sudden things are going to get easier. But hopefully now you see that that is not the case. Four times in a row now, when we have the Fed, cut the federal funds rate, we've actually seen mortgage rates go up. Now, they've gone down leading up to those decisions, but hopefully you can see that these events, these magical days, don't actually exist. And I know that can seem confusing because
Starting point is 00:01:45 there are a lot of counter narratives out there about how the Fed is going to push down mortgage rates, and then it doesn't happen. So I get that that can be really confusing. But if you listen to the show, you know I've been saying this would happen all year because people who actually study the housing market, knew that this was a relatively likely scenario. So we're going to talk about that today, why rates haven't really budged and why it might not happen for a while. But I think focusing solely on rates in this episode is a mistake. It's important, but people are sort of obsessing over the wrong things. Instead, people should be focused not just on rates, but other fundamentals and how to invest even in this higher rate
Starting point is 00:02:27 environment that we're in. People, in my opinion, should be focused on finding great markets, taking advantage of the better inventory levels that we have, using their leverage to negotiate great deals, positioning themselves for long-term growth, because people have been investing in real estate for decades, for centuries, really, and rates do what they do. But the real investors, they find ways to make it work regardless of the rate environment. And in today's episode, you're going to learn to do the same thing. All right, so first, let's talk about what actually happened. They cut the federal funds rate, 25 basis points on Wednesday, the 29th of October. 25 basis points just basically means 0.25 percentage points, so a quarter of a percentage
Starting point is 00:03:13 point. And this was basically a foregone conclusion. You know, there are actually markets where people bet on this stuff. And it was actually like 100% odds that this was going to happen. So this was not a surprise at all. And with that, we saw all these people on social media, and honestly, in some of the regular media, too, pointing to lower mortgage rates. But unfortunately, those people don't understand how this work, and that's okay because it is kind of complicated, but let me explain to you how this actually works. The Federal Reserve controls one interest rate, and this does influence other borrowing costs, but what it impacts is short-term borrowing costs. In the world of finance, mortgages, the things that we as real estate investors care about, are
Starting point is 00:04:01 long-term borrowing. These are long-term loans. And long-term loans are less influenced by the federal funds rate. Sometimes they do move together. Other times they don't, like in the last couple of years. They are loosely correlated, but that correlation has been weakening over the last couple of years. But there is something that we can track if we want to understand mortgage rates, and those are yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury. That's where I talk about this. If you listen to our sister show on the market,
Starting point is 00:04:30 we talk about this a lot. And I should mention, if you like this kind of nerdy stuff where we dig into how these things really work, check out on the market. We talk about this all the time. But it'll give you a high-level overview, which is basically that the yield on a 10-year U.S. Treasury is controlled by bond investors who are very different from real estate investors. These are people who manage pension funds or hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds or family offices, huge amounts of money. And what really moves the bond market are fears of recession and fears of inflation. When people are generally afraid of recessions, they put their money into bonds and that lowers bond yields and takes mortgage rates down with them. When people are afraid of inflation, they demand a higher rate on
Starting point is 00:05:13 bonds to lend money to the government and that pushes bond yields and mortgage rates up. What's so frustrating, what's making this so hard for the housing market is that both of these things, inflation and recession are riskier than usual right now. In a normal market, you're usually afraid of one or the other. If you're in a really good economy, you're kind of worried about inflation, things getting too hot. If you're in a bad economy, you're worried about a recession, things getting too cold. But it is unusual to be in the situation that we're in right now where there is fear of both, right? You have fear on both sides of the market. And that is sort of locked in bond yields in a way. The bond market is a bit stalled. It's kind of like having this
Starting point is 00:05:56 tug of war where like half of bond investors are really worried about a recession and then the other half are really worried about inflation and they're pulling against each other and no one is going anywhere. That's kind of what's going on in the mortgage market right now. So despite what happens with the federal funds rate, bonds just aren't moving that much and that's why mortgage rates aren't moving as well. So yes, we got a rate cut from the Fed. That should actually help commercial real estate because that's a little bit more tied to short-term lending. But in the residential market, for the majority of our investors here, the BP community, you're buying one to four unit properties. It's not going to mean lower mortgage rates, at least right now. And just remember, as we get
Starting point is 00:06:37 more rate cuts in the next year or so, because I do think we will get more rate cuts, that does not mean more mortgage rate declines. And you cannot count on that happening. I think that's big takeaway right now, is that no matter what the Fed does, it doesn't equate to better investing conditions for us. And so what we need to do is look at the conditions on the ground today and figure out how to optimize for the existing market, the existing rate environment, and still make good investments, because that is absolutely possible unless you're getting distracted by the rates. So let's not get distracted by the rates. Let's not wait around for something that is completely out of our control, we got to take these things into our own hands. So that's what I'm
Starting point is 00:07:21 going to do. And I know people do want to know what's going to happen with rates. So I will just say that for the rest of 2025, I'm expecting things to be pretty similar to what we've seen recently, probably low to mid sixes. We might see, unless we see like some big change, right? Like if we see some huge change in the labor market, if we see some huge change in inflation data, then mortgage rates could actually move. But that's going to be pretty difficult. all right, because the government is shut down so we don't even have inflation data. We're not even getting half the labor market data that we normally get. So it'd be pretty hard for those things to move in any direction when we just don't have
Starting point is 00:07:55 reporting on it. So most likely, we're stuck with mortgage rates through the end of the year. I will be giving a forecast on mortgage rates for 2026 in a couple of weeks. But as of today, I don't see much changing in the next year. Which brings us to our main topic for today. How do you invest in a higher rate environment? We're going to get into that on a very strategic level, sort of a big picture, but also on a super tactical level of the things that you could be doing each and every day to build a better portfolio even in a higher rate environment. And we're going to do that right after this break.
Starting point is 00:08:29 Stick with us. 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. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of the smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can
Starting point is 00:08:57 increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords. whether it's a single-family rental, a burr builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage.
Starting point is 00:09:25 Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Thinking about wholesaling or flipping your first property, but not sure where to start. The truth is, deals don't just fall into your lap anymore. you need to go out and create opportunities. That's where PropStream comes in. With PropStream, you get instant access to over 160 million properties nationwide.
Starting point is 00:09:48 Use 20 pre-built lead lists, such as pre-foreclosures, tax delinquencies, and vacant homes to find motivated sellers fast. And now PropStream has integrated batch leads and batch dialer to provide you with a complete all-in-one solution. That means you can not only find motivated sellers, but you can also reach out right away. Skip, trace phone numbers free on select plans, then send postcards, emails, or call sellers directly.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Don't worry if you're new. PropStream also gives you AI-powered insights and coms that are over 99% accurate. So you know you're making smart offers. Plus, you'll have access to PropStream Academy to guide you step by step. Start your seven-day free trial and get 50 free leads at PropStream.com slash BP. That's P-R-O-P-S-T-R-E-A-M. Don't just dream about real estate. Make it happen with PropStream.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute to come. cover something important, especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple. Is my time better spent elsewhere? I use a tool that cuts down on a lot of landlord hassles. And the wild part is, it's just $12 a month. It handles rental screenings, rent collection, maintenance requests, and accounting, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. It saves me time in tenant communication and keeps me organized for tax season. It's called rent-ready, and you can sign up for a six-month plan for just $1
Starting point is 00:11:08 with promo code BP 2025. Pro users get it for free because we believe in it. Just sign in through your pro account to get started. Rent Ready helps ensure on-time rent with auto reminders,
Starting point is 00:11:19 keeps communication professional, and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rentr-R-E-I-com slash bigger pockets. Real estate investors,
Starting point is 00:11:31 the April 15th tax deadline is coming fast. If you own rental property and haven't done a cost segregation study yet, you could be handing thousands of dollars to the IRS that you don't have to. These studies let you write off
Starting point is 00:11:44 as much as 25% of your building and generate huge tax deductions. Costsegregation.com is an online, self-guided software that makes cost segregation fast and affordable. So it finally makes sense for smaller rental properties purchased for as low as $100,000.
Starting point is 00:12:01 With pricing under $500 and an average savings of over $25,000, it's just a no-brainer. What's more, audit support is included by the number one cost segregation company in the U.S., but you must complete it before the tax deadline. Go to costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report. Don't overpay the IRS. Head to Costsegregation.com before April 15th. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Thank you all so much for being here. I am excited about this episode. I feel like for years now, the whole real estate investing community was talking about lower rates, lower rates, lower rates.
Starting point is 00:12:43 And I wish they were lower. I wish things were more affordable. But I'm hoping that by now people are seeing that the Fed is not coming to save us. And that means we have to do the work of figuring out how to make our portfolios work in a higher rate environment. And that is absolutely possible. So I am excited to talk about this because I think by the end of this episode, you're all going to see the opportunities that lie in front of us. Now, I want to sort of break down the rate thing and why people are so sort of obsessed with it right now. Rates matter because they are a critical function of affordability.
Starting point is 00:13:16 That is the thing that is holding up the housing market right now. It is why we have low transaction volume. It's why we're shifting from a seller's market to a buyer's market. It's because things just aren't affordable. But rates aren't the only function of affordability. There are one of three sort of big variables that go into the affordability of. a home. You also have home prices, of course, and you have wages, basically how much people are earning. And those three things combine are what make up housing affordability. Now, I'm
Starting point is 00:13:50 going to say something that is probably going to surprise most people, but housing affordability has actually been improving just for the last couple of months, not for a long period of time, I think it's like three or four months in a row now, and not by huge numbers, but even though mortgage rates haven't moved down in the way that a lot of people wanted or we're expecting, we're still seeing improvements in affordability. And this comes from a combination of these three variables, right? We're getting slightly lower rates, actually more than slightly. In January, mortgage rates were at about 7.1. Right now, as of today, a day after the rate cut, we're at 6.25. So that's 0.9, right? Almost a full percentage point lower. So they've actually come down. That really does
Starting point is 00:14:32 matter with cash flow and affordability. The next thing is, we have higher wages than we did a year ago. They've been growing faster than the pace of inflation, faster than the pace of appreciation in most markets. That makes homes more affordable. And then on a national level, we have pretty stagnant or correcting prices. Some markets are down, some are up, but on a national level, we'll seeing prices pretty darn close to flat. And if you look at them in inflation-adjusted terms, they're down about 2% from the peak that they were at in 2020. Looking at all those things together, that means we're actually getting better affordability. So this, even without the lower rates people wanted from this Fed rate cut, is a good sign for the housing market.
Starting point is 00:15:15 And personally, I think for at least the next six months or so, we'll have to see what happens after that. I think affordability is going to approve. Wage growth is still up a little bit. I'm a little worried about that with AI and the state of the labor market. But I do expect prices to decline modestly for at least the next couple of months. and although mortgage rates could go up a little bit, I doubt they're going to go up a lot. And so I think we're going to have at least stagnant affordability or modestly improving affordability. And that might not sound exciting, but that's after, what, five, six, seven years of affordability declining.
Starting point is 00:15:48 So this is a good improvement. And I know some people want it to happen all at once. Personally, I don't. I think we need to get back to better affordability, but I'd rather have that gradually. So there's not a lot of pain in the housing market. that is starting. We don't know if it will continue for how long, but the signs and the data are there right now, and to me, that is pretty encouraging. But I am talking a lot about affordability, because I think it's sort of the key to our investing strategy. I am talking now about how to make
Starting point is 00:16:17 things work, how to build a successful portfolio in a higher rate environment, and affordability is sort of the key to investing right now. At least that's been my hypothesis, my thesis about investing over the last three years, and I'm sticking with it because it's been working for, me. So yeah, things are getting a little bit more affordable, but on the broad, high level, it's not going to improve that much. And that does create challenges for investors, right? That does mean it's harder to get in. But it also means that we are entering a buyer's market. And who does that favor buyers or investors, right? So this is the key thing I want people to remember is there are tradeoffs in every single market, the high rate environment that we're in right now,
Starting point is 00:17:01 right off is that things are more expensive, and that is a real challenge. But it also means that you're going to have more leverage. You're going to be able to buy assets at a discount. You're going to be able to be patient. You're going to be able to get concessions from sellers. These are things that are absolutely in your favor. And so you just need to think about in that high rate environment, what is the market giving me? What are the advantages I have as an investor in this higher rate environment? Because there's never a perfect market, ever. It doesn't exist. And so, So right now, we're in just like every market, one with tradeoffs. And the tradeoffs are between, yes, things are less affordable, but I have all these other
Starting point is 00:17:39 things that I can be taking advantage of. And those are the things you must take advantage of in order to be successful in this environment. So how do you invest in this higher environment? What are the literal steps that you should be doing, the tactics that you should be employing? Step number one, you got to leverage what the market is giving you. You can't just wait around for market conditions to return to 2021. It's not going to happen.
Starting point is 00:18:04 I've been saying this for years, and I've been right. It's not going to happen, everyone. Instead, you've got to adjust to what the market is today and think critically about how you can take advantage of the conditions the market is presenting to you. What does that mean? I said it before. Negotiating leverage. This means you can be very patient.
Starting point is 00:18:25 You can choose the deals. be very surgical with the kind of deals that you're looking for, and be really patient and really disciplined about only buying at the right price and getting the right terms on your deal. Next, look for great assets at better prices. You always want to do this. Everyone wants to buy prices at a discount. Everyone wants to place in a great neighborhood.
Starting point is 00:18:47 You couldn't do that in 2021. It was super hard. You could not negotiate. You were buying whatever came on the market. And yeah, that worked out for, for some people, but it was really hard, too, in other ways. Deal flow was bad. The opposite is going to happen in this higher rate environment. We're going to get better deal flow, which means we can get better assets at better prices, and that's what you need to be focusing on. The other thing that I
Starting point is 00:19:12 think is going to happen, maybe not in the next six months, maybe not in the next year, but over the next two to five years, cash flow prospects, I do think are going to get better. I expect, I've talked about this before, that we're going into a great stall where prices are, are going to be flat or modestly declining. Rent growth is pretty flat right now. But even during big corrections, even during the Great Recession, when prices declined a lot, rent stayed sort of flat. And if that happens again, prices go down,
Starting point is 00:19:40 rents stay flat. That means better cash flow. If prices go down and rents go up, and I do think there is a decent chance that happens, that means much better cash flow prospects. So look for those opportunities to find great cash flow in a market that's offering potentially better cash flow then we've seen over the last couple of years. So that step one is really focusing in on what
Starting point is 00:20:01 the market is giving you. That is the mindset that you need to take into this high rate environment. Don't see high rates as your enemy or something you have to battle. See it as just a shift and an adjustment that you need to make. Step two here is about affordability. Remember, I talked about, and you're probably tired of hearing me talking about affordability because I really just think it drives everything in the housing market. And although I said, I don't think affordability is improving much on a national level quickly, I think it will get better over time, but it's going to take a little while. I think that relative affordability is extremely important. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. In any given city, there are areas that are more affordable
Starting point is 00:20:47 than other areas. In any given state, there are certain cities that are more affordable than others. And I believe that areas that are affordable to the average person in that area, whether to people who are homeowners and homebuyers or people who are renters, are going to perform the best over the next couple of years. I think they are going to be more insulated against downside risk than other places. I think when things turn around and start heating up again, they are going to heat up the quickest. And so for me, I am always looking for relative affordability. Think about it this way. Could the average person living in this neighborhood or within this, you know, radius of this house
Starting point is 00:21:28 afford this home? And if the answer is yes, you're going to find that it is more insulated against any downside risk and probably has better long-term upside because pricing in a home or for your rents are all a function of demand. And demand comes from people being able to afford the product that you're putting out there. So, yeah, you can make tons of money and luxury stuff, but there's going to be less demand for that. There's going to be less people who can afford the luxury stuff, right?
Starting point is 00:21:54 You can still make money that way. But when you buy affordable stuff, that's sort of the most people can afford that product. And that's going to have the most demand. That's going to push up prices. That's just how supply and demand work. So think about that in your neighborhood. We've got to take one more quick break. Stick with us.
Starting point is 00:22:15 If you own a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher gains, guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs. Steadily works exclusively with real estate investors, so they understand the details that make short-term rentals unique, and they build coverage to match it. A quick review of your rates and coverage every year can help you protect your property
Starting point is 00:22:49 and your cash flow. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, rental property insurance for the modern investor. Thinking about wholesaling or flipping your first property, but not sure where to start. The truth is, deals don't just fall into your lap anymore. You need to go out and create opportunities. That's where PropStream comes in. With PropStream, you get instant access to over 160 million properties nationwide. Use 20 pre-built lead lists such as pre-foreclosures, tax delinquencies, and vacant homes to find motivated sellers fast.
Starting point is 00:23:20 And now PropStream has integrated batch leads and batch dialer to provide you, with a complete all-in-one solution. That means you can not only find motivated sellers, but you can also reach out right away. Skip trace phone numbers free on select plans, then send postcards, emails, or call sellers directly. Don't worry if you're new. PropStream also gives you AI-powered insights
Starting point is 00:23:39 and comms that are over 99% accurate. So you know you're making smart offers. Plus, you'll have access to PropStream Academy to guide you step by step. Start your seven-day free trial and get 50 free leads at propstream.com slash BP. That's P-R-O-P. S-T-R-E-A-M-com
Starting point is 00:23:56 slash BP. Don't just dream about real estate. Make it happen with PropStream. The rise of the tech-savvy investors here. You don't need a huge team or tons of overhead to manage rental properties. Just the right tools. So I want to tell you about how I use rent-ready to get ahead.
Starting point is 00:24:10 For landlords who treat their time like capital and recognize the cost of sweat equity, this tool gives you everything you need to scale. Rent collection, tenant screening, maintenance accounting, so that you're organized come tax season, and you can run numbers in preparation for future deals and more, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop.
Starting point is 00:24:28 Modern landlords don't just own property. They optimize it. Rent Ready will keep you organized, running leaner, and ready to grow. Start with RentReady.com slash bigger pockets. That's RentR-E-D-I.com slash bigger pockets. And use code BP 2025 to get Rent Ready's six-month plan for a dollar. New Year, Clean Slate, and maybe a vacancy that needs to get filled fast, that's where a veil comes in.
Starting point is 00:24:52 With Avail, rental listings can be published to 24 top rental sites with one click, completely free. That includes places renters are already searching, like Realtor.com, Apartments.com, Redfin, and more. No copying and pasting. No juggling multiple platforms, just one listing that shows up everywhere. If getting rentals organized and filled fast is on the list this year, start with Avail. Sign up for free at Avail.co-BiggerPockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-C-O-BiggerPockets. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer here talking about the things that you should do, at least the things that I'm doing,
Starting point is 00:25:30 and I recommend to a lot of people that you should be doing to be successful in a higher rate environment. I'm tired of people saying that you can't succeed in a higher rate environment. You can. You just need to adjust your strategy and here are the ways that I think makes sense to adjust your strategy and your portfolio plan
Starting point is 00:25:46 going into 2026. Step number three, and maybe there should have been step number one, given the context of this episode, but underwrite using today's rates. That is something I really want to stress. Do not count on cuts. Don't even count on a refinance unless you're doing a burr.
Starting point is 00:26:04 If you're doing a burr and you're going to build equity, you're going to force equity, that's okay. You can absolutely count on that kind of refinance. But do not buy a property saying, oh my God, it's only getting 1% cash flow today. But if rates go down, it's going to be 6% cash flow. Don't do that. Or you might be doing that.
Starting point is 00:26:21 That's fine if you're okay with that 1%. cash flow. But do not assume that rates are going to come down and that's magically going to make your deals better. That is just wishful thinking. That is not a strategy. That is not good investing. That is just speculating. The good thing is you don't need to do that. You can find deals that work using today's rates. So absolutely do that. That is step number three. You got to underwrite using today's rates. Step number four, this is a big thing that I've been harping on all year, but you've got to protect against downside risk. I would call this underwriting scared.
Starting point is 00:26:56 I think you need to assume not worst-case scenarios. I'm not underwriting deals projecting that we're going into 2008. That, to me, is a little bit dramatic. There is really no data that suggests that that's happening. But I am underwriting, assuming that I am not going to get appreciation for the next two years, at least. Maybe I will. But I just don't think it makes sense to underwrite. with that assumption. I'm also not assuming that rents are going to grow, and I'm also assuming
Starting point is 00:27:25 that vacancy is going to go up. I don't know if we're going to a recession. I don't even know what that word means anymore, but we are seeing weakening of the labor market. That means vacancies could go up. It means rent growth could stall out for a while. It means appreciation could stall out for a while. I know all these things sound scary, but you could still do good deals in this kind of environment if you plan for it. So plan for it. That's where the underwriting comes in. When you're analyzing your deals, that's where you mitigate risk. You put it into your assumptions that you're not going to get appreciation, that you're not going to get rent growth, that you're going to have higher vacancy. And if the numbers still work with that and today's mortgage rates, those are the deals you buy.
Starting point is 00:28:06 And I know that means that you're going to have to say no to a lot of deals. Good. Say no to a lot of deals right now. That is absolutely what you want to do. The whole goal here is to get great low-risk assets during a time. When fewer people are competing, you're going to be able to find great assets, but you're going to have to sift through a lot of garbage to get it. That's the job of an investor. If you're expecting to go out, just be able to underwrite deals and write offers on most of them, you're going to be disappointed.
Starting point is 00:28:38 That is not the right mindset to have. What you need to be thinking about is how do I find that one in 50 property, right? That's what you should be looking for. And you should take that as a point of pride, right? I know it's frustrating to have to look at 50 deals, but when you go and buy that, you're going to feel good about yourself. You're going to think, wow, I did the hard work to find the best deal on the market in my city for me.
Starting point is 00:28:59 That's a good feeling. That is better than just being like, oh, I just went on Zillow. I clicked a button and I bought something. So that is the whole point of this. Underwrite scared, make sure that you are finding the best possible deal for yourself because you can right now. That's something that you can take advantage of. There are good deals out there.
Starting point is 00:29:16 Go find them. That's step number four. Step number five is targeting upsides. We've been talking about this all year, the upside era, and how you can mitigate risk and still get great returns. You underwrite scared. That's the way you protect yourself against downside risk. But the way you get the big benefits from real estate is targeting those upsides.
Starting point is 00:29:37 These are things like zoning, value at, owner occupancy. These are all things that can take these deals that are very safe. They offer good risk-adjusted return. and make them into amazing risk-adjusted returns. Zoning, as an example, look for ADUs, the ability to add a lock-off and add a second unit to develop something in the backyard. Value at, this is just real estate investing 101.
Starting point is 00:30:03 How do you find a property that's not up to its highest and best use, bring it to its highest and best use, and get paid for it? That's value-ad investing. Owner occupancy works in the short run. Rent is still super expensive. Can you lower your living expenses by buying a great, asset during this kind of market, that's amazing. That's a great way to have a ton of upside in your deals. So step number five is targeting that upside. Now step number six, the last one here
Starting point is 00:30:31 is a little bit nerdy, but I really want y'all to think about using fixed rate debt. Now, this is sort of tactical and in the weeds, but I really think this is important right now. And I'm sorry if this sounds like being a downer, but I actually think there's a chance that mortgage rates will be higher in five years than they are today. I am not trying to discourage you. I am trying to prepare you for this. I want to tell you what, frankly, a lot of other people in this industry are refusing to say. With our national debt, with a lot of what's going on, the likelihood of higher rates is sort of getting bigger and bigger every year. Now, obviously, I don't know for sure. So much is going to change in the next five years. But I'm just saying
Starting point is 00:31:15 that there's a chance that in five years, people will be talking about how they wish they had locked in that 6% mortgage. Of course, things could go the other way. In that case, you can always refinance, but I do really feel most people should consider only doing deals with fixed rate debt right now. I think it makes a lot of sense. Also, just want to call out to people that everyone loves seller financing these days, right? Oh, yeah, you get seller financing, you get a lower rate. Sometimes that is true. But most seller financing deals, the seller is not willing to carry a 30-year note. They're not giving you a 30-year fixed-rate debt like the bank. They might not be alive in 30 years. So a lot of times what they do is they say, I'll give you seller financing for the first five years,
Starting point is 00:31:59 and then you have a balloon payment. Then you have to refinance. This is also a form of variable rate debt, because you are going to have to refinance that deal. I'm not saying that you can't do it. I'm just saying be cognizant of that. And watch mortgage rates closely if you're doing that, because, again, in five or 10 years, we just don't know. And so the idea that you could buy something and have to refinance your rate up, that's dangerous. That's what's tanked multifamily over the last couple years. That's what's tanked retail and office. That's why prices in those markets are down 20, 40 percent, depending on the asset class. I don't want that to happen to anyone here. And I'm not saying that it's definite, but you can protect yourself against this by locking in fixed rate debt.
Starting point is 00:32:40 And if you have that opportunity, I would take it. So that's what we got today. I know that a lot of people are going to be celebrating the Fed rate cut saying, oh my God, this is a magical turning point in the housing market. I think it's the opposite. I think we need to be saying, okay, we're in a higher rate environment. And that's okay. That's fine. We're going to work around this because investors have been working around mortgage rates
Starting point is 00:33:01 much higher than this. And hopefully you can see that there are tons of things that are actually in your control that can positively impact your portfolio about the environment that we're in. There are ways to make money. There are ways to do good deals. There are ways to pursue financial freedom in a good risk-adjusted way, even in a higher-rate environment. I gave you some of the steps that I'm following.
Starting point is 00:33:26 But if you have your own thoughts, share them with us. Share them with the Bigger Pockets community. That's what being a part of a community like Bigger Pockets is all about. Go on the forums and share your ideas. Share them in the comments below if you're watching on YouTube. Share them with us on Instagram. We would love to hear how you're now. navigating the higher mortgage rate environment so we can all share these ideas and learn together.
Starting point is 00:33:48 Thank you all so much for being part of the Bigger Pockets community and for listening to this episode. I'm Dave Meyer. We'll see you 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 Ian K, Copywriting is by Calico content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing
Starting point is 00:34:18 or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.w.w.biggerpockets.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 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.
Starting point is 00:34:37 Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. I'm going to be the next.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.