BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Housing Market Flips from Seller’s to Buyer’s Market in Much of the Country

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

The housing market is finally giving buyers a break. Home prices aren’t crashing, but many of them are dropping, or stagnating, as homes sit on the market and seller confidence drops, buyer control rises, and economic sentiment remains low. Americans aren’t feeling good about the economy, but this makes buying a home even better: lower mortgage rates, the ability to get seller concessions, and longer negotiation times put buyers in the driver’s seat. So, how should you take advantage? Dave brought the entire expert investing panel from the On the Market podcast to the show to share what they’re buying, what they’re selling, and how they’re investing during this new buyer’s market.  Not every market in the US is experiencing a buyer’s market, but if you’re in one of the many major metros that is, we’re sharing how to take advantage of it. Fear means opportunity, and the opportunity is here. If you’re buying rentals, how does this affect your cash flow? If you’re flipping homes, when should you start dropping prices before your listing gets too stale? These investors are buying, selling, and managing rentals in THIS market and giving tips on the best moves to make.  In This Episode We Cover Why the housing market is flipping back to a buyer’s market after years of aggressive competition  Asking for seller concessions and how to get a discount on your next deal Why experts are loading up on properties that are priced right before the buyer demand returns  When it’s okay to break even on a rental property’s cash flow (and when it’s NOT) Local data to look at now to see if you have more control as a buyer or a seller  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1104 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 it finally a buyer's market for houses? After years of few listings, frequent bidding wars, and skyrocketing prices, are we starting to see the tide turn? And if we are, what does that mean for investors who have maybe been waiting for market conditions to shift before making their next investment? Today, we're going to break it all day. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing here at Bigger Pockets. I've been investing in real estate for a long time, more than 15 years.

So I have definitely seen my share of market cycles, both buyers markets and sellers markets. And there is no question that we've been in mostly a seller's market across most of the country for a while now. But I think that is starting to change. And today I want to talk about it. So I'm going to be joined by three other investors who have spent their whole careers analyzing when's the right time to deploy capital, when it's a better time to protect wealth, what strategy. strategies work at different parts of market cycles. You may know these three investors as my co-hosts on the On the Market podcast is James

Daner, Kathy Fecky, and Henry Washington. But today, they're joining us here on the Bigger Pockets podcast to help us all understand what's going on in the market, but more importantly, how you can take advantage of it in building your own portfolio. So let's bring the crew on. Henry, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here, man. What's up, bud?

Glad to be here. It's good to see you. Kathy, you as well. Thanks for joining us all the way from Utah today. Looking like a news reporter as you are. Yeah. Got the handheld today. It looks very official. James, how are you doing? I'm doing good. I think I bit off more than I can chew and bought too many things at one time, but we're figuring it out. What else is new, James? That's true. How many times do you come on the show and not have too much going on? You know what? You thrive in chaos. That's the thing. Organized chaos. Or there might be a 12-step program for a real estate addict.

Yeah, yes. Admit you have a problem, James. Yeah, I am powerless over a good deal. I have to buy it. Well, this actually melds well with the topic of conversation today, which is, are we in a buyer's market? What do you make of today's market? Because there's just so many conflicting signals right now.

Market rates are going down, which is good for buyers. We're seeing inventory go up, which is good for buyers. But there's all sorts of signs that the economy as a whole might be starting to soften. So, James, you said you're buying stuff. Are you looking sort of at the macroeconomic conditions and saying this is a good window or time to buy? Or is it more just like these individual deals make sense and you're not really even thinking about the broader picture? You know, I'm a person. Does the deal make sense today? And, you know, and I do think we could have a little bit of flatness and market could change up a little bit in the next 12 months. But we just kind of build that into our underwriting. At the end of the day, a good deal is a good deal.

And so as long as you underwrite it correctly and the values there, you always got to pull. that trigger. Okay. So you're clearly still buying. Kathy, what are you making of buying and market conditions today? Well, there's all these headlines about a recession and too much inventory on the market. And I love these headlines. This is my kind of market. Right. It scares everyone. They freak out. They think there's a housing crash, which is what the headlines have said for 14 years. And unless you dive into the data, you're going to believe that stuff. It's really sad to me that so many new people to real estate get fooled by these headlines. But for me, we're diving in because when there's fear, then there's opportunity. Yeah, I'll save my opinion for just a minute. I want to hear

yours, Henry first. What is your read on the market today? It's normal and healthy. Boring. Yeah. Everybody's saying things are slowing down. It's because we are slowing down from what we're used to. But things that are done well sell at some point, things that suck, sit longer. And have to do a good job now. I don't understand the problem. So are you concerned at least at all that prices in your market, at least Henry, are going to decline? Because, you know, not all over the country, but there are pockets where prices are flattening or softening right now. Yeah. I mean, I think that's going to be a nationwide trend for a little bit. Here, we're a little insulated because of the job market here. When I was looking at the statistics in this market earlier this week,

We're, I think it was like 96, 97% list price to sale price ratio. Wow. And median days on market around 35 days. So that's healthy to me. Yeah, that's totally normal. I guess my question to all of you is, is sort of how do you map out the next couple of months? Because I see these sort of like conflicting signals. On one hand, inventory's rising.

demand is kind of up and down depending on mortgage rates on any given day, it seems like. But there is a likely chance that prices are going to be somewhere flat, especially as you compare them to inflation. They might still be up a little bit nominally, but we will see, at least on a national trend. That, I think, scares a lot of people away. But I also think that there's going to be a rebound, like a year from now, where appreciation really starts to kick up.

And so, for me, I'm starting to get a little bit more excited about. real estate over the course of this year because I just think if you're a long-term investor, that this might be like kind of a good window because my expectation is that rates are going to stay like a little bit volatile for the next few months. But there will be a downward trajectory at a certain point. And I think it probably will hit the later half of next year. And I think the beginning of 2026 is almost certain, especially if there's a new Fed chairman that comes in. And so I personally am getting excited, but I feel like I'm the only one. at least when you look at headlines.

Kathy, you said you're sort of feeling the same way as I am. Yeah, let's just say that you had wanted to invest in Austin. And I don't know if you remember, Dave, but when we started on the market podcast and interest rates hadn't hiked yet, and Austin was still a super hot market, that was your choice of the hottest market. Oh, yeah. I went there and almost bought stuff. I was looking around to properties.

And that wasn't that long ago. And so have the fundamentals of Austin, changed or have just home prices changed. So people get just confused about what, you know, what was your ultimate goal? If you wanted to buy in Austin, now prices are lower and you have more options. Yet jobs are still moving there. So the only difference is that rates went up. So prices are coming down. But rates are coming down too. So that would lead you to believe that eventually prices might flatten or go back up again. So it is this little window of opportunity. If you just understand the simplest thing when it comes to economics, which is supply and demand,

supply would mean there's a lot of options and prices tend to come down. And it's a buyer's market. A buyer's market is a time to buy. There's tradeoffs in every type of market. But to me, if you're a long-term investor, the buyer's market tends to be better. If you're sort of doing value out or flips or wholesaling, like those sellers markets, you can make a lot of money really quickly. James, as someone who does both, how do you adjust your strategy in this kind of environment? Are you shifting towards any type of strategy or is it still deal dependent for you? You know, right now, we're heavy into the flips. We like them. We can turn them fast. We can control our cost and they can create quite a bit of cash for us in high returns right now.

And it's all about timing. You know, when you really crush a deal, you feel good about yourself. It was really market timing. You bought the right deal. You operated well, but the reason you are smacking that is because all the things came together, right? And that's what happens. And so the reason I'm loading up on properties right now is a lot of these are heavier fixers that are going to take me seven, eight months going in where we're going to be coming into that spring first part of the year when we're wrapping these deals up.

And we know if we hit that disposition time, there is a lot more buyer demand. And so I'm really trying to pay attention to one-way time in these deals. And then also, what's the pricing? For quicker deals, we're going for homes that are around that median home price per city. Because if you're in that medium area, that's where the masses are. There's still a lack of inventory. I don't care if it's at six months or five months. To me, there's a lack of good inventory and buyers want it.

And when there is a lack of good inventory, no matter what the conditions are, it sells. And you want to be kind of more in that more affordable range. As I said that, I just bought a house. I'm going to try to sell for $10 million. It's insane. That's a starter home in Newport, right? That's the first time I'll buy a Newport for $10 million. Yeah, it's 1,600 square feet, two bedrooms.

But the reason I'm looking at that deal, or I'm not looking at, I'm buying this thing. I'm locked in that I'm losing some earnest money. It's because it's what is trading in that market, right? And so there's a sweet spot to every market, and that's what we're trying to narrow in on. Where is the heaviest buyer demand? and that's where we want to play. And as markets change, people get a little nervous. That allows for good opportunities and good neighborhoods with good resale upside.

Well, actually, this deal that you're doing, James, is probably the least relatable deal of all time if you're buying it for $6 million and selling it for $10 million. But there is a really important lesson here, right? You've been trying to buy that deal for what, like three or four years now? Yes, a long time, three to four years. So I'm curious, do you think that market conditions have shifted? Like Kathy says, it's a buyer's market. You now have more options. You have more negotiating leverage.

Do you think these conditions shifted in a way that allowed you to buy this deal where previously the seller probably wouldn't have agreed to the price that you wanted to buy it for? Well, I mean, they got a good price for the house. But yes, the conditions did shift, A, because this house would not have lasted at best price on the street it's on. There's no way I would have been able to buy it for $6.3 million. Just wouldn't have happened. There would have been multiple offers.

Everyone wants to live on the street. but it needs some repairs. And because things are expensive, construction, financing, there's less buyer demand for that product. But what has also happened in the last six months is the values increased. Originally, I thought this house would be worth about $8.5 million. And now I think it's worth closer to $10 because a premium product, that is the sweet spot in this area.

And if it's done well and done right, people will pay that premium price. So the difference in the market is the less fixed up it is, the pricing kind of came down. and then the more fixed up, it's still increasing in value, and it created a healthy margin. And so, yes, it is market conditions, but it really didn't come to me, like, getting a best price on it. It was just getting the right price, and now the exit numbers have changed. That point you just made, James, is another reason I'm just bullish, and I think there's just a lot of upside in real estate right now is that margin is spreading.

Like you said, stabilized assets, really good assets, prices are continuing to go up, But those places that need work, they are either flat or declining. And so the margin potential, if you're going to do a value-add project, seems to be getting better, which I think is just a super exciting opportunity. Before we move on, today's show is sponsored by Resimple, the all-in-one CRM built for real estate investors. Automate your marketing, skip trace for free, send direct mail, and connect with your leads all-in-one place. Head over to reSimply.com slash bigger pockets now to start your free trial and get 50% off your first month. We're going to talk about more opportunities that you could start looking for in this buyer's market right after this break.

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I'm here with James Dainert, Kathy Fecky, and Henry Washington, talking about whether or not this is a buyer's market and what types of opportunities that you're seeing. So Henry, tell me a little bit about what's working best for you right now in this kind of market. You know, it's funny. This is like the most unpredictable, I think the market's been for me in terms of like, if I think it's going to sell fast, for some reason it sells slow. And if I think I'm going to struggle to sell it,

sells in a heartbeat. So maybe I don't know anything at all. But everything that we are listing is selling. We just sold two flips last week. One of them was listed for just under 60 days. And in that 60 day period, we got two offers. One was nowhere near what we wanted it to be. And the other was full price. It took almost two months to get it, but we got a full price offer. We did a little negotiating during the inspection period and we ended up giving them about, I know, an extra thousand dollars worth of repairs during the inspection period and we closed no big deal. The other was a flip that sat on the market for about 35 days. And on that one, again, we got two offers over the course of that 35 days. One we didn't like. The other one was a good offer.

But this time the buyer and the buyer's agent were a little savier about market conditions. And so they asked for a lot. And I gave them most of everything that they asked for. I mean, and I even took it to the point where I was going to be like, look, I'm not doing that. And they were like, all right, well, we're walking away. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Okay.

Okay. I'm doing that. Yeah, I lied. And so in that regard, yeah, it is operating more like a buyer's market. Ask for what you want. If they say no, they say no. But the properties are still selling. And on both of those deals, on one of them, we made about a $45,000 net profit on the other one. we made a $50,000 net profit.

Like, those were solid numbers in my market. And then these are homes that we sold under the $300,000 price point. One we sold for 260, when we sold for $2.85. So these are just basic, run-of-the-mill, cosmetic, fix-and-flip projects. They're everywhere out there right now. They're safe because if you stay in that price point, worst-case scenario, if it doesn't sell for what we want, we throw a tenant in it until the market's more. it's more reasonable and then we sell it later. Like, again, you have to understand what the market's giving you, right?

And so, like, I'm not doing what James is doing. Like, he can't go stick a tenant in a, you know, $10 million or $16 million, whatever he's going to sell that house for, right? Like, that's not a risk I'm going to take in this market. But for the first-time home buyer type homes, like, we're making great money flipping those. Well, I think that's a great strategy. And one of the things that our audience here can take away is, like, this idea that not every part of the deal is going to make sense, especially because we're in this sort of

transitional market. Like we're talking about how prices might be flat in the interim. And that means that you might need to or want to at least make some moves that might be okay right now, but are sort of setting you up for the future as market conditions change. That's sort of like one of the principles that we keep talking about here about the upside era that we're in is like not everything's going to be perfect on day one. And I think Henry's strategy. is sort of demonstrating how you can reduce risk so you're not speculating. You know, you're not just going out and buying something hoping it will go up. Like Henry's buying a deal on fundamentals, but he has these opportunities to take these deals

from good deals to amazing deals over the lifetime of this hold. And one thing I want to point out, if you've wanted to get into real estate investing, right, if you look at the basic principles of investing in anything, it's buy, low, sell, high, right? And so, like, this is what we asked for, right? We asked for an opportunity to be able to buy when other people are scared. We asked for an opportunity to be able to buy at lower price points. And the market is kind of setting us up to be able to do that right now.

It's uncomfortable, but it's supposed to be uncomfortable. If you're buying in this market, you just have to understand what you're buying and when you're buying it and what your potential exit strategies are in the event that things go sideways or things or the economy or something takes a turn that you weren't experienced. expecting. That's why I'm really trying to stick to this under the median home price because if I have to pivot and stick a tenant in it, and I can, if I have to fire sale it and I bought it at 50 cents on the dollar and the market tanks 20% well, I got 30% room there to still fire sale that thing, right? And try to get it out of there. Right. And so this is this is the time that you've asked for. And so I want to buy right now. And I want to see if I can hold what I can hold on to.

And it's like if you can get through the next five years with your properties, I think you're going to look like a genius. Kathy, tell me a little bit about rental property investing during this time. How are you going about it and thinking strategically how to maximize your portfolio these days? Yeah, I mean, it just comes down to again looking at the data. and I'm glad you asked that because so much of the headline news we see is for people buying their primary residence. So they're not looking at things like cash flow like we are or long-term appreciation gain. So what we're looking at is prices are not rising as quickly as they have in the past few years. They're still going up, but more in a normal way, like three, four, or five percent.

But when you as a buyer, a buy and hold investor, a rental property, are able to, to get a property at a lower price. And now, just over the last few weeks, we're seeing mortgage rates down. Your cash flow has increased. So again, this is good for us. We have more inventory to choose from. We have less competition, even though there's that inventory. And the borrowing rates are down.

So it's great. I'm curious, how do you think about cash flow right now? Because it's no secret. Cash flow is harder to come by. And yes, like, rates might come down. but like, would you buy something that's not cash flowing or you're looking for break-even or sort of like, what's your threshold for cash flow these days for sort of the more buy-and-hold approach? You know, it's funny.

I'm born and raised in California where people totally invest for cash flow, but it's the negative kind, you know, because California's never cash flowed. So cash flow or negative cash flow is something that I've seen people do that strategy. I don't like that strategy. I won't do that unless I know I'm getting a property. for such a good deal. And I'm able to renovate it. And I know that over time, it's going to go up in value.

Maybe, but probably not. There's too many opportunities where you could at least break even in an area where it's kind of likely to appreciate, like where I am right now in Park City, Utah. We're able to make our property break even. And yet, the values have gone up dramatically over the couple of years that we've owned it. So it's worth it to me. It's okay. I don't mind breaking even.

I'm not really a cash flow player. I think of this cash flow alone, it's a little boring to me. Well, I tend to agree with you, Kathy. If you guys have been listening to show and me talking about this upside era and the way I've been looking at deals, it's pretty similar, Kathy, to what you're saying. Like, I needed to break even. And I'm talking not this, like, fake break even where people just take their rent and

subtract their mortgage payment. I'm talking about real break even. But then I'm just looking like, how is this going to perform over five years or 10 years? As long as it's going to carry itself, I can wait five years if it's going to be a great deal. I can wait 10 years if it's going to be a fantastic deal. as long as it's sort of carrying itself and there's relatively low risk on it. We do have to take one more quick break, but when we come back, I want all of your best advice

for our audience and how they can take advantage of market conditions right now. Stick with us. We'll be right back. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they picked the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey new construction homes, often 10% below market value in top rental markets across the country. Their local teams handle the build, the property management, and the details, so you don't

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of the Fundrise Flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. All right, rental property investors, listen up. Our friends at Dominion Financial already have some of the best DSCR rates in the industry. Now, they're the fastest, too. They just launched 10-day DSCR closing. That's right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with a DSCR price beat guarantee.

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studies with 500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with James Dainard, Henry Washington and Kathy Fecky. We're talking about what feels to me like a buyer's market. And yes, there's risk in this market. There's risk in every single kind of market.

But I'm seeing some opportunities. James, it sounds like you're seeing a lot of opportunities. you know, not everyone can go out and buy a $6 million house, of course, but for our audience of people who are, you know, just getting started or have a modest portfolio, what do you think the big opportunities or some tactics that people should start employing to take advantage of these opportunities that you're seeing? Well, to reference the $10 million house, it comes down to principles, right? Because I also, I'm also buying $220,000 trailers that we are fixing up and selling, right?

because it doesn't matter for me what the price point is, is the fundamental principles. And as you're going through a transitionary market, which we slowly are, we're going into a buyer's market. It has to have the same principles. And depending on the price point, if it has the principles, I will buy, whether it's 200 grand or 6 million. And because it comes down to those principles and the principles that I always pay attention to as we're going into a transition is I want to know what's the month of supply in the market. but for the specific price point that I'm targeting, because month of supply is data that can be stretched all different types of waste. I want to know what the absorption rate is for what I am selling.

How many actives, how many pendings in that price point are moving? The one that's $10 million, guess what? There was zero inventory in that area for that. There was one and it sold quickly. So that's why I felt comfortable with that. How long am I to hold on to it? And the other thing that I always like to pay attention to, when you go into transitioning markets, I do not like weird.

If there's negative impacts and weird, that is a reason for a buyer to move on. What do you mean weird? Just like a unique architectural layout. What does that mean? Architectural layout can always be fixed. It just costs money. So I got to buy that thing deeper if it's weird laid out. I'm talking about if it backs up to a cemetery.

I was just looking at a deal. I'm like, is that a cemetery in the backyard? No, thanks. You know, does it have a bad neighbor? does it have lack of amenities that buyers want? No yard, no parking. So no stretching. No stretching.

And that's where people get really hung up. And then you have to dig into the selling information. What is the average days on market? People reach up to me all the time and they go, hey, look, my flip's not selling. I'm like, well, what's your average days on market in the area? 50. What do you listed at right now? 32.

Then relax. Chill out. Yeah. Like you just have to build it into that performer, right? And so really you have to dig into the specifics, but the specifics of what you're actually selling. Not all housing's the same. Not all price points are the same. There's different buyer demand in different markets.

And if you really dig into those absorption rates, stays on market, you can be prepared going in. Just avoid the weird. The weird is where you get clipped and you get hung out to dry. I don't know. I feel like I have to defend graveyards. Defend the weird, Kathy. I grew up with a graveyard in our backyard. We would jump the fence.

Let me tell you when you're young and you go in the graveyard. graveyard at night. It's really fun for hide and seek. Oh, you're braver than I am. That creeped me out. And you know, it's so funny because the house I grew up in probably is like a $5 million house with a graveyard in the backyard. So you never know. I did want to clarify one thing from our conversation earlier because I can already see the messaging on the notes on YouTube of, Kathy and Dave don't buy for cash flow. I want to really clarify that that only works in growth markets. You should never buy a house that breaks even in a linear market in a market where prices don't go up very quick because you're just losing money in that scenario. But what Dave

and I were saying is if we're paying attention to where jobs are going, where factories are coming back, where there's reshoring happening, there's trillions of dollars of reshoring happening. If you get and buy real estate in those areas and you break even knowing that there's a very good chance that the values are going to go up. Like we did, again, with our single-family rental fund, we knew that the reshoring was happening with the chip manufacturing in northern Dallas, and we bought little cheap homes around there, which have nearly doubled in just a couple of years because we knew that growth was coming. So only do break even deals in growth markets. I just want to make that clear. Yeah, that's a great point. I think that sort of goes to this recommendation I was

going to make to people in this market. And, you know, I don't, I don't really flip. And so I'm with Kathy on sort of this longer-term approach. To me, I just try and find a total return that makes sense to me. I look at the appreciation. I look at the cash flow and I add it all up. If there's a deal that's not going to appreciate, but it has exceptional cash flow,

I'd consider it. If there is a deal that has only break-even cash flow, I'd consider it, like Kathy said, only if there's exceptional upside for appreciation growth. If you have different goals, you can put yourself on different ends of the spectrum. For me, personally, like where I am in my career, I'll take deals

all over that spectrum. It's just what has the best value. And right now, I'm seeing value at both ends of that spectrum. And so I encourage people to sort of look at it that way. I actually made a calculator. It's called the total return calculator. You can download on Bigger Pockets for free to sort of like look at this thing holistically. It helps you add up your appreciation, your cash flow, your tax benefits, you're paying down of your loan, all those things together. I really recommend people look at that because, as Kathy said, you could just focus on one thing, but personally, I recommend just sort of looking at the total package of benefit that you're getting from any real estate deal. What about you, Henry? What's your advice to

people in this kind of market? This is the time to really pay attention to your fundamentals and stick to your fundamentals. So the first point I'm going to say is you have to master underwriting. And the reason you want to do that is so that you don't end up buying a deal that you can't get out of because if the market's tough, you're going to need to be able to pivot if something goes awry. So being able to purchase something that has two exit strategies is great protection because if one of your exit strategies doesn't work, you're able to do the other. So I really like buying houses right now that I can flip, but if I need to pivot and stick a tenant in it, I can. And it becomes a break even or maybe cash flow even just a smidge. That's fine.

I'm not losing money. I can hold that property until there's a more ideal time to sell. And so that means I need to buy that property at a deep enough discount to be able to stick a tenant in it and then refinance it and not lose my shirt on the refinance. So if I can do that, if I can run the numbers and know if I flip this house, I'll make 20, 30, 40, 50, 50 grand, or I can throw a tenant in it and refinance it and not have to throw a bunch of money at it. and leave it sitting there, minding its own business until it's a better time to sell. That's a pretty safe investment. And then if you can sit there for a year or two, then you'll look like a genius, right? So protect yourself by understanding how to underwrite and understanding what your offer

prices need to be on these properties and then go make the offers. It's so interesting. Basically, all of our advice here is we're saying that it's kind of a buyer's market and that there's opportunity, but all of the advice was actually to be careful and actually to lower your risk, which is super important, right? Because that's kind of the definition of a buyer's market, right? Is that you're trying to get ahead of a trend because that's the best opportunity is once everyone on social media or in the news is saying it's great to buy real estate, it might be, but you've already missed the actual best time to buy real estate, which is during

the transitionary time. And I actually think we might be in that transitionary time. but transitionary times carry risk. So I think it's interesting that all four of us basically said, there are opportunities don't sit on the sidelines, go look for things, but also try to find ways to take risk off the table because there is that risk, but there are ways to mitigate the risk and still set yourself up for some of those long-term gains. The one thing I'd like to say, too, like in these transitionary markets, is just looking at those data points is so important.

So I know when to take on the risk and when not to. I'm taking on risk when I know I'm timing it well, and it's going right into the sweet spot of the market. I will actually buy more aggressively that way. So there's one I just bought where I bought, and it's below my expected return. But I can turn this house in four weeks, get it to market very quickly. And then every comp that I have all sold for 10% over the list. There's a heavy, heavy buyer demand, even though if you go in that same market and the price is a little bit more expensive, then there's less buyer demand. they're selling under list.

And so just depending on what the data says, adjust your risk tolerance, up or down. Use data and use math, not averages. James, you are speaking my language. Data and math gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling when we're talking about real estate. That was actually the second part of my answer. A, you need to know how to underwrite.

B, you need to pay attention to the metrics in your market. Because you're going to see all these national headlines and they're going to sound scary, but what's happening in your market? Some of the metrics I like to pay attention to are list price to sale price ratio. I want to look at that month over month. That's basically saying are things selling close to the price point they're getting listed at? So around here, things are selling at about 97, 98% list price to sale price ratio, meaning that they're only, they're selling at maybe one to two percent less than they're listed for, right?

So that's a good sign. That's saying that things are selling and they're, are priced pretty correctly. And that's like normal, just forever in reference, like in a historical context, that's normally what a housing market does. If you're starting to see that number tick downward and things are selling for a lot less than they're getting listed for, that's an indicator that you need to pay attention to. It could be because housing prices are dropping or it could be because sellers still think that they can get something that they can't right now. The other thing that I like to look at obviously is median days on market. So eliminating

those outliers just to give myself an understanding of how long do I need to budget to hold a property for. So understanding what your median days on market is for a property, again, we'll help you not to panic when it's been 45 days and your house hasn't sold, but your median days on market is 55 days, right? It's not time to panic yet. And the other thing that I like to pay attention to is to understand how many homes do you need in your market to satisfy the demand in your market. Now, that's something you're going to have to go and talk to a savvy real estate agent about. I know in my market, we need somewhere close to 4,500 homes on the market for it to satisfy the demand. And we're at half that right now. So that tells me that it's still a

good time to be selling property because there's technically more demand than supply. Yeah. And my final thoughts would be, be careful who you listen to. So this is just a little mini plug for bigger pockets because there isn't really a forum like this where where investors speak freely and you can ask questions and get answers from experienced investors versus a reporter who had 10 minutes to work on a story they really don't have any experience, you know, talking about. So no offense to reporters, I was one for years. But we had to report on things I didn't understand and you had to do it quickly. So try to limit the amount of information you get from those kinds of sites and go to real estate investor specific sites to get the real data and information.

That's great advice. Well, Kathy, thank you for the plug. We appreciate it. That's a reason why you listen to this podcast or the podcast we're all on on the market as well. And yeah, obviously there's other good news sources out there too. Bigger Pockets is unique. But I think Kathy's right, especially when you hear about housing news, a lot of its first time home buyer oriented or it's very regional or it's very national and doesn't actually apply to your region. So just make sure to be very specific in your research and your analysis and not sort of just take the headlines for face value. I think that's great advice, Kathy. All right. Well, thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I guess this is kind of like a crossover with on the market.

But we appreciate you all listening for Bigger Pockets. I'm Dave Meyer. There are James Dainert, Kathy Fecky, Henry Washington. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent to retirement does.

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