BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Expert Investor Shares How He Made $100K with Just One Property

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Would you spend thirty hours finding a deal if it could make you over $100,000? Of course you would! And that’s exactly what David Lecko, CEO of DealMachine, suggests you do to find better real estate deals in 2025. After hundreds of calls and mailers, an extensive rehab, and two appraisals, he walked into six-figure equity on a single rental property! Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast! David has achieved financial freedom by building a real estate portfolio of nineteen cash-flowing, appreciating properties. His big secret? Buying the same property over and over in a market he knows inside out—Indianapolis, Indiana. He’ll scour tax-delinquent lists for distressed properties that fit his buy box and use the BRRRR method (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) to snowball into his next deal. But now that David has moved to Austin, Texas, he faces a brand-new challenge—investing in real estate out of state. While most investors would hire a property manager to oversee their properties, David self-manages from hundreds of miles away and employs an assistant to be his eyes and ears. Tune in as David shares all of the details on his latest deal and the strategies investors can use to gain a competitive edge in 2025! In This Episode We Cover: The strategy David used to make $100,000 on ONE real estate deal How to self-manage your rental properties (from hundreds of miles away) Why the BRRRR method (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) still works today How to scale faster and make higher returns by staying within your buy box The midwestern markets that allow you to earn cash flow and appreciation Why you shouldn’t wait for interest rates to drop to buy your next property And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Buy the Book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area From Burnt-Out Tech Worker to $95K in Passive Income in 2 Years Connect with David Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (02:32) Tax-Delinquent Properties (07:46) $100K from ONE Deal (13:10) David’s Buy Box (17:12) Self-Managing (Out of State!) (23:23) David’s Plans for 2025 (27:31) HUGE Market Opportunities (31:42) Connect with David! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1048 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

You think Burrs don't work anymore? How about making a hundred grand on a single deal here in 2024? Hey everyone, it's Dave, and today I'm joined by David Leco. David is a real estate investor with a portfolio that he has had for a couple of years, but is still actively growing in Indianapolis, and he's also the CEO of Deal Machine. You may have heard him on a previous version of this episode. He was on episode 830 about a year ago, And today, I'm looking forward to catching up with him and what he's been doing with his own personal portfolio because he sort of left us dangling a year ago with some big deals that he had in the works. So today he's going to update us on some of the things he's been doing and his plans for 2025.

Let's jump into it. David, welcome back to the show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, man. I was looking that episode 830 was October 12, 2023, almost a little over a year ago. Dude, and look at us now. We're like in the thousands. We've been making a lot of podcasts, but we're excited to have you back because a lot has happened

in the last year. I know. I was excited to tell you about some stuff on my end, too, with real estate. Well, before we jump back in, David was a guest on the show about a year ago. And for people who didn't listen to that, can you maybe just give us a brief intro? Yeah. So it was called, I believe, burned out tech worker to over $2 million in real estate. The primary method I used was the Burr method and bigger pockets pretty much invent.

that, but if nobody knows, it's, you know, buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat. Or how I like to describe it is like when Nike shoes puts together materials and they buy it and then they sell it to you for like three times more than it costs them. It's kind of like what you're doing with a rundown house and you add in new drywall, new roof, et cetera. And now all of a sudden it's worth, you know, three times what you originally paid for it. So it did that. So recycled the down payment. I wasn't rich by any, you know, means. But then I held those nine properties for like, five years and they appreciated collectively a million dollars. So that was in Indianapolis where the average price of the house was probably 150. So it was pretty significant for me, somebody that was in

my mid to late 20s when I got started. And then we kind of to connect the dots talked about one of the latest deals I had found and I can now tell you the completion of that bird deal. And some big lessons that I learned along the way to the biggest deal that I've done for sure. I know you do a lot of deals. You've been doing this for a while. And I think the big question, me and our audience has is, what deals are you doing today and what's still working? Because obviously, things have gotten harder. So it sounds like you just completed the biggest deal you've ever done. Yes. The biggest deal that I ever did so far was from a tax delinquent list in Indianapolis. I actually pulled the tax delinquent list. And that data comes out almost like a year

delayed from the county even because you have a while to pay your. taxes. And David, can you tell us what that is just for people who don't know what a taxed? Oh, yeah. So if you guys have a house and you have a mortgage, that mortgage has your taxes for the properties escrowed that you owe every single year. And if you have rental properties, as I've gotten some more, sometimes you have the opportunity to not escrow those payments. So there's not an automatic payment happening. So people may forget to pay their taxes. And if they do, they show up on this list, they're tax delinquent. And then they auction off the right to buy that house at a discount. But if the owner pays their taxes, they can redeem that property back and that will not be

sold from out from under them. So you always have to pay your property taxes, basically. Otherwise, the government takes it away from you and lets somebody else buy it at an auction. So you can pull this list of people who have not paid their taxes. And the guy called, actually mailed, he was an orthodox He is an orthodontist in Utah. He makes a lot of money, presumably, in that job. And he was turned on to the idea of investing in real estate. He bought five properties in Indianapolis and had a contractor that had told him. He'd partner on the deal with him. He'd make sure the houses get fixed up, et cetera. Not really sure what happened, but five years later, I'm calling him because he's tax delinquent. And this house has the hole in the roof. I mean, it is unlivable. It's so distraught.

You know, it's just terrible shape. Oh, no. And he bought it five years ago. And I actually am now talking to him, like, why are you tax lenient? What's going on? Can I help? And he said, they're just such a huge headache. He wants to get rid of it.

And I just ran my numbers. He paid it 180. I offered him 160. I was like, it's just the best I could do in order to make the numbers work for me. So he actually sold it to me for 20 less and he bought it five years ago. Wow. And also he came and paid his back taxes. Wow.

And as a thank you. He's like, oh, I've got more properties. So, and as a thank you, I was like, well, dude, let me line you up with my contractor directly and help him get some of those out from under you. So I didn't buy the rest from him. I think he, I know at least did a couple deals with my contractor. So it was a great win-win. That's awesome, man.

I love that you did that and helped him out with the contractor too. But I want to just ask a little bit more about the strategy because this is pretty fascinating. So when you go after the tax delinquent, your strategy, it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, is not to buy it off the city. You just wanted to get a list of people who were in a position where they might be, you know, looking for someone to take a property off their hands. And then you went out and directly contacted someone and found what you were looking for, essentially someone who was just fed up with this property. Correct. And wanted someone just like you to make them an offer. Correct. I didn't go to the city. I didn't invest in the tax lien because it hadn't

gotten to that point yet. But I wanted to get the list so I could get in front of those people who really may not even know they're on that list, but in this case, just had a headache property. So that's exactly what I did is I got in front of them before that process happened. It is kind of crazy. Like you said earlier, who are the people who will sell at a discount? Because just like the idea of having a property that's sitting there and rotting just gives me so much anxiety. I could never imagine that. But clearly this happens to people, and it's not just people who are, you know, fall in hard times economically. It sounds like, you know, orthodoxists, I think, make a lot of money. Yeah.

So it just sounds like there's just circumstances that arise where these types of deals are possible. I'm just curious, like, how many people like this do you have to call to find a deal? Like, what's the math look like in terms of outreach to success rate? Yes. Well, in this case, I mailed him, but I actually at deal machine. So I own, I started a deal machine. It's a software marketing tool. We launched a dialer in July. People make half a million calls on it a month. And so I actually know the analytics because they use AI to determine what happened to this conversation. Oh, was it a hot lead, et cetera. So I can look at the details and tell you it takes about 200 conversations to get like one deal, basically. So conversations would be people that picked up and you spoke to more than just, hey, do you want to sell your property? No, buy. You know what I mean? So that's, yeah. So that's,

those are the figures. And I have 200 conversations. I think it's about 30 hours of calling. Okay. Dude, that I love this. Well, I'm just a data person, so I'm super excited about that. It's really cool data. Yeah. You hear about this that off market deals, which is totally not my specialty, so I'm going to pepper you with questions about that later. But you always hear that it's just a numbers game. And I was always kind of curious what the numbers are. So that you hear it there first, about 30 hours to get the deal. So now we know some of the effort. Tell us what the payoff was. So you got this deal for, it sounds like 160. What was the rehab plan? Yeah. So I figured it should be worth about 400, but it really needed everything because it actually was not to get

too graphic, but I mean, it looked like somebody, there was like just nasty stuff smeared all over the wall. You can imagine what that might be. So basically, like, all the drywall, the entire attic, because there was mold from the house, you know, having a hole in it, whole kitchen, whole roof, everything. So it ended up being 125. Okay. So if you're doing the math, that means I'm all in 285. But, you know, it was six months to even get that done. So that was quite a while. And then, so you have holding costs. General, if you're going to borrow $125,000, you might expect to pay like, six to $12,000 for the privilege of borrowing that money for that amount of time. So you're talking 300 grand-ish at this point. Yeah, exactly. So then I go to do the appraisal because in the Burr strategy,

now that you've got it all done, you want to refinance it. And the problem was it re, it appraised at like 325, which is a problem because that's not a Burr deal. That's like a retail deal. And I need to sell it quick before my holding costs start eating into profit and me going negative. Yep. But I just knew that had to be wrong. The problem that I made a mistake was I didn't tell the appraiser what it looked like when I bought it for 160 because they'll look at the price. They're like, well, we just bought it for 160 six months ago. No way it could be worth, you know, 400,000. How could that be possible? So I went ahead. I got a new lender company. This time I gave them a pre-appraisal report that showed them how much work I put into it since they

see that transaction at 160 not too long ago. Then it appraised for 425, which is above where I even thought it would. There you go. There you go. But yeah, I mean, this was such a gift from Ryan Haywood, who's a buddy of mine. And I put a gift together for you guys as well. If you wanted on my Instagram, if you DM me, I'll give you a copy of this report. Just the keyword report is set up to send it to you guys. But it's a slideshow of what the house looked like before and after the comps that I see are relevant that they may or may not see depending on how they're filtering their data. I mean, they're the expert, but it just went to show like how much better communication from my end, like, help that deal work out.

That's super cool. It's so funny, you know, this happens all the time. This, you know, people look at what you paid for it. And they're like, no way it can be worth 400. But like, isn't that the appraiser's whole job to like not look at what you paid for it and just try and understand from comps what the intrinsic value is? But it happens. If you look at just behavioral economics, this happens in all parts of the world. People like look at this kind of stuff. But it's super cool that you figured out a way to be proactive about it.

It's not like you were lying. You're just like, hey, look, this is what I did to it. And it helped reset the appraisers mind. And that has real benefits, right? When you're refinancing, then you get to take out significantly more of your equity. And it probably, I would imagine, improved your profit margin. your cash on cash return for that deal. Super cool. Yeah. So what did the profit come out to be? Well, essentially, if it appraised for 425 and you get a loan at 75% loan to value, then that means you get back over 300,000, right? So I actually put about 16,000 in my pocket, paid for the lender fees for, you know, doing that appraisal twice and the closing fees, etc. So about $100,000. Wow. Okay. So you made $100,000. That's awesome. Congratulations.

Sounds like a killer deal. You hear about these big deals, but in India, it's like not a high-priced market. So it's, like, harder to get a big deal like that. Totally, yeah. Like, if you're doing something in Los Angeles, yeah, you hear about six-figure flips. But that is pretty rare. So let me ask you this, because now you're saying you put 30 hours of time into it, essentially, and you've made $100,000, which is great.

If in theory you bought this deal on market, like first of all, can you buy a deal like this on market in Indy? I haven't looked recently. I just don't think you could find a deal like this on market. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense, especially at that price point. Even, let's just say you bought it for 160. If it was on the market for 210, which isn't all that different, you know, like the profit margin would be half. You know, it completely changes the deal. So I totally get why you would invest. that time in those 30 hours to get that kind of deal. We have to take a break for some ads, but stick around because later in the show, David will share his advice for investors heading into 2025.

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pairing tax efficiency with disciplined operators in a long-term approach. This isn't about chasing hype or guessing market timing. It's about building durable, tax-aware, wealth over time. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. If the new year means getting rentals back in order, listings are a good place to start. Avail, part ofrealtor.com makes it simple to list a rental for free and get it in front of millions of renters. One listing, one click, posted across 24 top rental sites. Avail even helps generate

listing titles and descriptions to save time. More visibility means fewer days sitting vacant and getting your property rented quickly. It's a fast, free way to find renters without the usual hassle. Get started at Avail.co slash bigger pockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-C-O-Sash Bigger Pockets. Let's get back into my conversation with David Leckman. So what kind of deals are you looking at today? So I'm currently looking at deals that are like a little bit less than that. My perfect buybox in Indianapolis is like a high-end rental. I notice in Indy that you can't really get something to rent for over $2,500. The low end, I mean, you could go below a $1,000. thousand, but my perfect, I think, price point for that market is it rents for about

$1,800. Okay. And because of the 1% rule, it'd be worth about $180 so that I'd like to be all in $1.305, 140. And again, the best way to do that is like how Nike makes shoes. You get raw materials, you put them together, and you create value. So I just, I want to get the benefit of doing that so I can grow the portfolio with the birth strategy, recycle the down payment, recycle the money to grow infinitely, so to say. and I've never done a build from scratch, but that seems like a lot more work than to just find

something really run down and then fix it up. That's funny you say that because I hear conflicting opinions about that all the time. Some people say, actually, new construction is easier because you can follow a blueprint, you know, and you could get something. But it sounds like you've taken the approach where you've sort of tried to, I guess you would say, templatize like the rehabs that you're doing. Yeah, like a 1,500 square foot ranch, three bedroom, two bath with a yard, attracts a tenant that's got a pet that doesn't want to live in an apartment,

but hasn't quite been ready to go buy their house yet. That just seems like my client, it's my bread and butter. Yeah. And I've done multiple houses that were in the same neighborhood. So when they say blueprint, I think they, instead of the document, I think they just meant they build the same thing every time. Yeah, business plan-wise. Like, you're doing just the same thing over and over.

Right. So that's what clicked when you said that. But I've just noticed that as well, or I'd say, like, I like to buy cookie cutter houses. I want the houses that looked similar to the ones I've already done. Oh, that's super cool. So that's your buy box. And you've been doing this for a while. Is that always been your buybox?

Or has it taken you some time to figure out exactly what you want? Wasn't always my buybox. But I just realized if I go too expensive, they're harder to rent. And then the first house I ever did, you won't even believe it. because it was a $4,000 house 600 square feet. 400. And they get this. They fit two beds and two baths in this house.

And I just knew it would work because there was a 2020 plan for the city that had four areas of development in Indianapolis. One was called 16 tech. And it's come to fruition today. It's great. It looked like a genius. But I just knew. I was like if they're building all this infrastructure around the university, it's a research park, et cetera. and it looked terrible now.

The school's like kind of nearby and I see those apartments are pretty expensive, you know, like $1,300 for 600 square feet. So that's why I figured I could charge for this house that I bought for $4,000 and I fix it up for $65. I mean, it needed to do everything, but it's tiny.

So it's like, it's not that expensive to fix everything. And so that's turned out, that was my first deal. So you could see really wide, really wide array of homes at first. Oh, that's awesome. I feel like once you find that sweet spot, it really makes things a lot easier.

Even if the houses physically don't look the same, you just develop the sort of intuitive sense of like what things are supposed to cost. You can start walking into a house. You're like, okay, this is going to work. Or this is at least worthy of consideration because you've done it so many times. How many of these buy box deals have you done at this point? So I've done like owned currently 19 properties. I would say 18 of those are the buy box. Well, 17.

There's a couple of edges are outliers, but the rest all fit in similar to that. Awesome, man. Congrats. Well, I wanted to ask how it's been for you moving to Austin because I would imagine the business changes a little bit, the portfolio, what you're doing, changes when you move from being physically in the market you're investing into doing it from a couple thousand miles away. Yes. I don't recommend people start out of market.

But I felt like because I already started, I already have knowledge of the market. I have knowledge of the contractors. If I were to ever sell my portfolio, it'd be convenient that they were all in one place. If I ever wanted to hire a new person to help manage or anything, if I want to see all my properties on one swooping trip, having them all in one place just seems simple to me. So I chose to keep doing deals at seven deals the past year in Indianapolis from Austin. So at the level that I'm at now, big fan. of the concept buyback your time. It's been a popular book by Dan Martel. He's been a mentor of mine.

I did private coaching with him before he wrote the book, actually. And one of the concepts is, if your time's worth more than $15 an hour, $20 an hour, then you can continue to grow your business by finding somebody to do those tasks that you pay that much, you know. And so one of the first hires that I think anyone should do is an assistant. It was very weird at first. But we have a system now where she does help with the rental properties in minimal ways. We use like these like show mojo lockboxes to have people send us their credit card and ID and then they automatically get access to go to her the house themselves. So my assistant is not like going to the house every time somebody needs a tour.

She just puts the lockbox on. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so she's an indie. She's an indie. I'd hired her before I moved to Austin, which just worked out great. So we do that and people apply on Zillow. So I could look at those at my desk in Austin if I wanted to, but she does that as well.

And she knows my criteria. And then also if the contractor does work, he's trustworthy, been working with him for two years. But sometimes if there's a miscommunication, having a second set of eyes just reveals that, right? And then you can fix it. So she'll go in, check that out if he's done work, be my eyes and ears, you know, for checking on that. So you, what is that phrase? You people respect what you inspect, you know. So all is good.

It's just good to have that layer in general with anything if you're, if you're having somebody do work, you know, for you and with you. That's pretty cool. I like that. The idea of having an assistant in market is great. Obviously, that's not going to work for everyone. But if you can figure out a way to make that work, that makes like a lot of sense. And I think I would encourage people to think outside the box here, it doesn't necessarily

even need to be a full-time employee. Do you have a friend? Do you have a family member who wants to make some extra money, get cut in on a deal? Like, you could probably find a way to make it work. But just having someone you trust does seem like a difference maker. So you typically pay a property manager the first month's rent and then a percentage of ongoing rent. So if you're a property manager and you want to go full time, in Indianapolis, the first month's rent would be like $1,500. So if you want to make $50,000 a year as a property manager, you need about 40 property. So your best bet is going to be find somebody with a portfolio of 40 properties and you can just manage all of them. And once you do that, if somebody has one, two, three rentals, you're not going to give those as much attention, even if you have the best intentions because you know that all your bread comes from those 40 properties in the portfolio.

And then also the number one predictor of the return on investment from a rental portfolio is vacancy. and then like the number one reason why people don't want to live in their property anymore is because of bad management. Like just delayed responses. We know. We know what that looks like. So that's why I chose not to, you know, hire a third party property manager because I just felt like the incentives, if I were the property manager, wouldn't make me

focus on these onesie-twozy property. So I chose to do it myself. I also believe you should do things and learn how to do things yourself before you hire someone else to do it. That way, you know, later if they're doing a good job or not. We hire, you know, at my company's not to add capacity, but to remove things from my plate. So basically, everything in my company I've done at one point. And then once I know how to do it, I've got the process written down how to do it. I can hire somebody, come in, take that off my plate, which frees me up to do something else of higher value, you know, something new,

something growth oriented. So that's how I've, you know, landed on the way I property manage. and she is a full-time person for me, but the property management's like 10, 20% of what she does. Yeah. And I always figured if I hit 25 properties at my price point, that could pay for a full-time person that gives that really great care and also less than the traditional property management fee structure. So that's my end goal to get there. Maybe next year, 20-25.

Yeah, it sounds like if you did seven this year, you do seven next year. And I do want to ask you about your plan for 2025. So hold that thought. But I did just want to underscore, yeah, I think this idea about property management and incentive alignment is super important. You know, like you said, it's not like they're bad people or they're doing something wrong. Like anyone in their position would do this. You would pay the most attention to your biggest client. Every business does this. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I think at least something I've experienced is it changes too. Like sometimes when people are a new property manager will be super hungry.

And if you have 10 units with them, you're the biggest client. And then all of a sudden, they go out and good for them, they land, you know, a 50 unit client. And all of a sudden, you're not that important to them anymore. And so that's, I think, why in this industry, at least in my experience, when you do have a property manager as I do, you sort of have to cycle through them sometimes and make sure that you're at the same stage of your journey, let's say. And you're sort of like working towards similar goals at that time.

All right, time for a break. Back with more of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast in a few minutes. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio,

of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 a single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes.

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So it finally makes sense for smaller rental properties purchased for as low, as $100,000. 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 Cossegregation.com before April 15th. Thanks for sticking with us. Here's more for me and David. what is the plan for 2025 for you? So in 2025, I'm going to just keep doing what's working.

Why not? A lot of people wonder, should I keep buying properties right now or should I wait until the interest rates come down? I was reminded when I was just starting out. I worked for an entrepreneur and his main business was something else. I worked for that company, but he had five rental properties. And he's a big reason why I even got into real estate. He's like, well, if you manage these well, and his goal was to retire by 40. If you manage these well, the stock market goes up and down, but these rentals will always cash flow every single month if you manage them well. And so that was a really compelling reason for me to get into real estate. But I took a look at what was on the market, nothing would cash flow. I took a look at what he bought. I was like, well, if I bought these eight years ago, I'd be in great shape like you are. So you're so lucky that you were interested eight years ago.

Yeah. And I had to pause, you know, this year I've been posting and social media has been a big passion of mine to learn the skill of important skill for me business-wise. People reached out to me recently and they were like, oh, well, eight years ago, this would have been so easy. And I was like, dude, I said the same thing when I started eight years ago to my boss who started eight years before me. And so I had to share that. And I was like, listen, the reason is, if you look at the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, they publish these graphs, and it's the rent index in the U.S. and the House Price Index in the U.S. They have 70 years of history that they've tracked these indexes, and the rent one has never gone down. It's literally never gone down. Not even in 2008.

I was like specifically, it was like, what happened in 2008? It didn't go down. It like stayed the same for like a year and then kept going up. And then the prices. There's like maybe a one or two year period here and there where it dipped down, but overall, it's the same trend. It's like, it's like almost exponential. And so that would be why I tell people that you should not wait for the interest rates. You should find the good deals that make sense now and then just refinance later if you absolutely need to. But I've found several 1% rule deals and burr deals this year. So you could find a deal in any market. You know, it's kind of like, okay, that orthodontist who had a rundown house, you know, did he need to sell because the interest?

rates were high right now, no, he bought those in cash. It's like, it really had nothing to do with that. There's always situations like that that we can help out as investors and make some money at it. Totally. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, we'll talk about this on another episode, but yeah, we don't even know how much interest rates are going to come down. You know, like everyone's acting like it's, maybe they never will. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just, you're just hoping and guessing. And something you said before, I think is so true. Like, oh, eight years is too long. Five years. 10 years is too long. Like, I don't know about for you, man, but it's gone fast for me.

Like, I remember, I bought my first deal 15 years ago. And I remember thinking, oh, man, this is going to take a long time to build the portfolio. And like, in a blink of an eye, you're there. You know, like, and if you just keep working at it and do it in a sort of disciplined way, it's really not that long. It's a heck of a lot shorter than working at a corporation for 40 years. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

Also, there's another thing that I don't talk about very much because I wonder if people are the same. But if I'm constantly setting a goal to get these rental properties done, if I have money that I'm going to deploy and use that for marketing, use that for buying the property, et cetera. It's like, if I don't have that goal, the money goes elsewhere. It doesn't get saved. You know, it just like gets elsewhere. I don't know where it goes, but I spend it. You know, is kind of what I'm saying. So that's just not even an ROI thing. It's just like, man, having the goal is just like a great reason not to waste money. Yeah. It's true. True. Yeah, you always know, like, if you have an extra dollar or you get a bonus from work or whatever it is.

You know, you're putting it towards something rather than, I don't know, I'm probably the same way you just kind of like invent something you want or need if you have some like money burning a hole in your pocket. So, David, this has been awesome. Congrats on your success. I love the update. We are wrapping up the year here 2024. And you obviously know a lot about the real estate market. Curious if you have any thoughts or. things that you're looking out for in the next year in the real estate, residential real estate market that do think our audience should know. Yeah, I would look for opportunities to use AI in your investing. So for those that do like direct to seller marketing, which I know a portion of the bigger pockets audience definitely does, look for ways to use that in your actual like lead generation. And I know we're working on something now where, you know, it can analyze the satellite

and the street view to determine what houses have mature trees, what houses are on corner lots, which houses look run down, et cetera. So like those would be things that if you jump on board earlier, you'll have more of the effectiveness before everyone then eventually is forced to do it and then everyone's doing it so it's not as effective anymore. Does that make sense? Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, it's just the adoption curve, right? I mean, like you said, It's that markets become efficient over time. And, you know, if you do what everyone else does, you're just going to get average returns. Like if you're the average marketer, you are going to get average returns.

If you do more than the average marketer or you do something before the average marketer, that's when you get inefficiencies in a positive way. You get advantages over the market because you have found something that no one else has figured out yet. And that's really where you need to be. Yeah. And other than that, also in 2020, I think the rents will still go up, and I think the prices of homes will still go up. I'm pretty confident on the rent since I've never seen that graph go down.

But even if I'm wrong, if there's a price dip, it's going to come back, right? Those dips only seem to last like two, three years max. And I know in Austin it's gone down here a little bit, cooled off. But, I mean, what do you think about that, the short-term prices that we'll see in 2025? Yeah, you know, I'm sort of like you. I invest for the long term. I mean, I invest in some flips and stuff, but I'm not, that's not my bread and butter. Yeah.

And so to me, when I get nervous, I look at those graphs that you're talking about, like charts of the median home price of the U.S. that go up over time. I think one of the interesting things about 2025 in general is that we've seen some of the markets that are the slowest right now have the strongest long-term fundamentals. Like Austin's a perfect example of that. I think you look at markets like some of the market. like some of the places in North Carolina or Tampa or Phoenix, you know, like a lot of these markets, great job growth, great economic growth, great population growth. But they're slow down,

probably because they just grew too fast over the last couple of years. Does that mean they're bad markets? No. It means you should be careful when you buy there right now because you don't want to, you know, catch the falling knife, so to speak. But like, to me, that means there's probably going to be opportunities in those markets in the next couple years. But curious what you think. Have you actually invested it all in Austin? No, I just see properties and prices and people moving to Austin like crazy, which pushes that price up and up and up, right? Because everyone wants to come in with a high-tech salary and buy a house. So that's, I agree with you. Maybe a little retraction. It seems like, oh, in the short term, why is this happening? But really, you just

gained 50% value of your house the last two years, right? So it's like a retraction of 25% you're still good overall. But if you time it wrong, if you're in a short-term scenario where you're trying to do a flip, that's when it could be dangerous. But dude, Indianapolis, a lot of Midwest markets, they're just kind of like a bond. They just kind of always ticked up, is from what I've seen, didn't take big hits in 2008. So do all my investing there. Yeah. I mean, I love the Midwest. I think it's got legs. It's not as sexy as some of these places. But if you're, it sounds like both of us trying to build this out for, you know, a long career, there's a good combination of growth and affordability there that I really like.

Agreed. It's not pure cash flow and it's not pure appreciation, but it's like right in the middle. Yeah. So you get the cash flow, hold the house, pays for itself, then you get the appreciation too. Yeah, the hybrid's where it's at, at least for me. Well, David, thank you so much for for joining us. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you for sharing the update on your successful birthday. Congrats again. And for sharing your thoughts on the market and some of these tips you have for finding off market deals. Appreciate it. If you want to learn more about David's company and what he's up to. We'll, of course, put links to his social media website and all that in the show notes. Thanks again for being here. Thanks, Dave. Great host. Oh, thank you. And thank you all so much for

listening. We'll see you next time for the Bigger Pockets Podcast. 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 or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only.

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