BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - How to Make the Most Money Possible from Your Rental Property

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

This is how to make the most money possible from your rental properties without buying another unit. We got into real estate investing to build wealth, not have the biggest portfolio possible. Financial freedom isn’t so freeing when you have a hundred rental units and hundreds of tenants calling. So, can you make more money with fewer rental units? Yes, and today, we’re giving you five ways to do it. Each of these tips will help you increase your cash flow without having to put a down payment on another property. You can raise the value of each rental unit (growing your net worth) and boost rents by hundreds of dollars a month (more cash flow, same property). We’re discussing the amenities that renters will pay more for, the “convenience” factors you can charge for, and the strategies that generate more revenue than long-term rentals. You don’t need a huge real estate portfolio to achieve financial freedom, but you do need an efficient one. Follow any of these five tips, and you could make more with less, reaching your ultimate cash flow goal faster. In This Episode We Cover How to increase the “perceived” value of your rental property with inexpensive upgrades  The amenities that renters will gladly pay more for (and aren’t difficult to add) The “capacity” renovations Henry uses to increase his cash flow by thousands per year  When to switch from a long-term rental to a higher-revenue short or medium-term rental  The “convenience” amenities that take spare space and turn it into extra income  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1184 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

This is how to make the most money from your rental property right now in 2025. Because it's great to scale your portfolio and add more units. But ultimately, you're investing to make more money, not just to have a bigger and bigger door count. The amount of cash flow your portfolio produces is what actually matters. And your current properties might be leaving income on the table. So today we're sharing some ideas you may not have thought about. This is how you add to your cash flow every month with the properties you are

already own. Keep listening if you want to learn how to put more money in your pocket without another tenant or another tax bill to worry about. Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer. I'm a rental property investor and the head of real estate investing here at Bicker Pockets. And with me today on the podcast is my friend Henry Washington. Henry, what's up, ma'am? Hey, what's up, Dave? Glad to be here. Well, I'm excited to have you here today because I think this is a topic near and dear to both of our hearts. Both of us, I think, our careers over the last couple of years have really tried to focus on making the most of the least amount of properties and not trying to just get more and more doors and just trying to

reach your financial goals in the most efficient way possible. And for our audience here today, we're going to share some ideas that Henry and I have, some new strategies, amenities to add investments you can make to increase your cash flow without necessarily the big upfront investment of buying entire new properties or the headache of managing more units. So let's start with the big ones, Henry. Like what do you think is the biggest opportunity for people to add more income or maybe just even produce income more efficiently on their existing portfolio? There are things that may not necessarily increase the value of your property, but can

add value to your bottom line. In other words, there are things that create an emotional responsibility. And when people have an emotional response, they can typically want to pay more because they've emotionally been tied to your property. And then there are actual things that if you do them can produce more income. Do you mean like pay more like in rent? Yes. Right. Like the ways to drive up the rent. Yeah. Right. So when I say that emotional response, what I call it is perceived value. Right. When someone walks into your place, you want them to go, ooh, that's cool. Right. And when they have that emotional response, they may be willing to pay more to live in your unit than to live in some of the the under you that they're seeing that don't elicit an emotional response from them. So that's why we always spend a few hundred extra dollars and we put fancy accent walls into our properties because a lot of rental properties don't have those kind of amenities. People typically only get those kinds of things in homes that they own. But landlords aren't necessarily putting design features into a rental property.

It's typically just let's make it livable and clean and throw somebody in there. And so I like to spend money on fancy geometric design accent walls and backsplashes in kitchen. So you can put some pretty fancy backslashes in the kitchen and not spend a ton of money because typically it's not a ton of square footage. Right. But people see them and they go, oh, wow, I can have these kinds of amenities without having to own a home. And you may be priced 50 bucks a month higher than your competition or than the unit next door. You may be priced 100 bucks a month higher than the unit next door. and you may get that amount of rent just simply because somebody sees something in your unit that

elicits that emotional response from them and makes them want to live there. This one makes a lot of sense to me because I do feel like a lot of rental units you go into are just exactly the same. And as a renter, I've rented for many of the last few years, like you want something that makes it feel like your own, something that makes it feel unique. Before we move on, Henry, let me ask you, what's, what's your? your surprise and delight. Like when you walk into a house, you're like, ooh, I want that. You're saying like a back splash. Is that yours? No, I like cool outdoor spaces, even though I don't spend a ton of

time outdoors. But for me, when I see a cool curated outdoor space, it makes me feel like, okay, this home is bigger than just what's inside the walls. Like, I can actually live in more space. It makes the home feel bigger. Like, I have a patio on my backyard, and I went ahead and I screened it in. and I spend a lot of time in my, you know, air quotes, outdoor living room, which is just a patio with a screened-in wall. It just makes me feel like I have a bigger home because I have this outdoor space. And then I like, you know, I'm fancy. I like, you know, fancy design stuff. It's cool. When I see, you know, marble countertops or quartz countertops, like that stuff's kind of cool. If I was looking at a place to rent and I could get those kind of amenities, I would definitely be willing to

spend more money to rent that space. I'm totally with you. I look at the like little things. Like nothing gets me more hyped about living in a place than like the layout of the kitchen. Like if they have like the nice inserts in the drawers and in the cabinet, so I can, I like to cook. So I get organized that stuff. Like I would pay more for that kind of stuff. But you never see that in a rental property or just little accents in the bathroom. Like those are the kinds of things people really appreciate. And they're not big investments.

Like these are things that you can do with just a couple hundred or couple thousand dollars. And that's the thing I really like about. approach because a lot of times people come to me and they want to scale or they want to figure out how to make more money, but they don't have money for a down payment on the next property. That's a very common situation that pretty much everyone runs into. But these are the kind of upgrades that you can make in real time. Like if you are hopefully earning more than you spend every month in your personal life and you can save two, 300 bucks a month, like you can make one of these improvements a month. Or you could save.

up for three months and make one of these improvements. It's just a way that you can continuously improve the performance of your portfolio while you're figuring out where to buy that next deal. What I would do if I was a listener of this show, what I would do is pull the comps for your rental property in question. In other words, go look at what people who want to rent your unit are also looking at. And I think you're going to find what Dave said earlier. is that they all typically look alike. They all have similar finishes. They have those gray walls with the white trim and the same carpet.

They look lifeless. Yes. They look like no one cares about you, the tenant. They just want a roof over your head. And so then take that and then take our list of things that we're talking about and start pricing them out and seeing what you can do. And I bet you, I bet you can command more rent for your market. Maybe it's $50 a month more, maybe it's $100 a month more.

But I bet... that you could probably spend anywhere between 300 bucks to 5,000 bucks on some of these upgrades and get, you know, 50 to 100 to maybe even $200 more month rent, depending on the market that you're in. And then if you are commanding that higher rent, your upgrades end up paying for themselves after a few months. And that's just increased cash flow in your pocket. There's plenty of little things that you can do to increase the desirability

and give people that emotional reaction. People pay for emotional reactions. Totally. And I think you're like attracting a more discerning tenant, which I like. Pride of ownership, man. Yeah, exactly. Like you want someone who's going to be excited and proud to live in that unit. And I just think a lot of times for me, as a smaller landlord, someone who owns mostly

two to four unit properties, I am always thinking about how do I compete against the bigger landlords, the people who are putting out 200-unit properties or Blackstone or whomever. And this is how you compete, right? Like, they're not going to do this stuff. No one who owns a 200-unit property is going to go in and think about how to add unique characteristics to each of their 200 things. It's not in their business model. They are cookie-cutter.

You, as a small landlord, like, go care about your property and go make these thoughtful upgrades. And it's going to stand out. And honestly, this actually, I think, in a lot of circumstances, can improve your cash flow more than buying another property. And on an efficiency basis, like cash on cash return wise, I think it almost always works better than buying another property. Absolutely. That return on investment is huge. And so when I think about changes you can make that actually do impact the value of the home, right? So not emotional changes, but actual changes you can make. Some of the

things that we've done in the past are including laundry in your units. In other words, there's a lot of units that don't have even have laundry hookups. So you providing laundry hookups is an added amenity, which means you can charge more because somebody doesn't have to go to the laundromat. Or you can actually just provide the washers and dryers themselves, which lessens the expense on the tenant, which means they may pay you more to live there because they know they get a washer and dryer. The caveat with adding washers and dryers is they do add maintenance costs to your ownership. And so I would talk to your property manager or property management company just about the tradeoffs because they're going to have data to be able to tell you

if you provide laundry expect XYZ in maintenance a year and then you can do the math to figure if I get more rent but I'm paying more maintenance is it is it a wash or do I actually make more money and then if adding and providing the laundry doesn't work for you you can actually rent washers and dryers to your tenants as well which can produce income for you because you can say no we don't provide the washes and dryers but you can rent them from us and that keeps income coming in also you can charge more rent because you have it. And so it's kind of like getting paid twice on some of those things. Have you ever added storage?

That's something I've thought about because like I've bought properties that have garages or like a garage that's honestly just so crappy that you can't park a car there. But like it's totally fine for storage. But I've recently been thinking about like, you know, you can buy these sheds. Sometimes you could just buy them secondhand like tough sheds and kind of stuff and putting them on your property and renting them out. Have you ever done that? I've never bought storage to rent, but we've rented space that came with the property. So we had a property that had some garages and no one was parking in them. So we would just rent them to the tenants who wanted them for $25 to $50 a month additional.

Yeah, that's what I've done. But I've been just looking at like Facebook marketplace and like you could buy these things for like sometimes $1,500, like nice ones, $2,000. You can rent them for $100 a month. I'm like, I should just do this. all day. And I don't want to make, I don't want to negatively impact my tenants who lives their experience. So you have to like figure out a way to fence it off or, you know, just like making an okay experience. But I'm kind of like, you can just make more money that way. It's a good,

it's a good way to add value. Absolutely, man. Another thing you can do for laundry is, especially if you have a property with four units or more, is if you don't have laundry hookups and you don't want to pay to put laundry hookups in your property, you could create like a laundry space in a basement or garage. And then you can either offer coin operated or you can partner. There's companies who will supply the washers and dryers. They will maintenance the washers and dryers. All that all you have to do is take a split of the profits. So they usually will do like a 6040 or a 50 50 50 depending on the company. They'll provide all the machines. They'll do all the services. You don't really have to do anything except get paid every month. That's like for two to four

unit special, man. Like, you've seen when we were going around the Midwest, a lot of these old buildings, the basements just aren't livable. But like, you know, they're too short or they smell or whatever. And it's like, it's a perfect place to do this kind of thing. And it works in like a lot of buildings, more than you would think, at least in the places I invest that have these older, older style homes. So I think this is a great category for just generally finding ways to increase rent through adding unique amenities. But we have more ways that you can upgrade your existing portfolio. We'll share them with you right after this quick break. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls,

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raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport, while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-hosts with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means

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You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots can creep in. Enreg works exclusively with real estate investors.

They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-Pododpod. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Henry Washington talking about how to make the most of the units that you already have. Before the break, we talked about adding unique amenities that will attract great tenants who are

willing to pay more for those amenities. Next, I want to go to the one I really love and I've been thinking about a lot, which is just adding more capacity. Buying a property that maybe has a basement that's unfinished or there's a split level that you can split into two different units, or there's a single family home that has three bedrooms that you can make into five bedrooms. I think this idea of just taking what you got and making it more efficient for you is one of the best ways you can make money in real estate, regardless of if you're buying a new one or doing this to your existing home. I love this playbook.

This method almost always produces a better cash on cash return than buying a new unit. Now, this method typically is going to cost you some money. So if you're in a boat where you're like, hey, I've got $20,000, $30,000, do I go put it as a down payment on my next property or do I try to increase my ROI in what I currently have? This method is something I'd encourage you to look at and you don't even need that much money. My favorite way to do this is on mostly all of my units that have a single car garage, I convert the single car garage into a bedroom. Townhome styles that have a single car garage, you know, two bedrooms or three bedrooms upstairs with the bathroom and then downstairs is just a living room in a kitchen. All of those that I own, I've converted the single car garages into bedrooms. I just, every time I have a rental property with a single car garage, no one parks a car in it.

It's just always full of stuff. Always. Maybe tell us the numbers. What does it cost you to convert one of those? I've spent as little as five grand and as much as 12 grand to convert a bedroom. That's not bad at all. No. And what do you think it adds to your rent?

Where I've done it most recently, it adds to $300 a month in rent. So you're making, let's just call your average price nine grand on something like this. And you're, yeah, and you're making three and a half grand. So that's a three-year payoff on that investment. That's like that's got 30% cash on cash return. Like that's incredible. That's a really good investment for anyone to make. And people always say, especially when I like post about this on Instagram, they're like,

well, I like a garage. So I wouldn't rent there. Perfect. then don't. But most people don't use the garage. Even though they say they want one, they don't use it to park a car and it literally just store stuff. So like in somebody, for somebody like you, Dave, if you've got one, you could convert the single car garage to a bedroom, increase your rent, and then go get that storage shed, put it in the back. Oh, I like this idea. And then they could put their stuff in the storage stand and pay you extra for the storage. Combo. I think the other thing in addition to doing this

It's like, I've been looking at this here in Seattle because there's a lot of split levels where they have a walk off and separate entrances. And just turning it into two units. You could basically have two, a thousand to 1400 square foot units instead of one, 2,800 square foot unit, which is just kind of the trend in a city like Seattle. I know in some markets, people really want like the big homes, but like in a city, like most people are accustomed to living in 1,1, 1,400, 1,400 square feet. and you can just add capacity, and there's already a driveway that fits all these people. You need to do like the hookup, like you said. You need to put some laundry in there. You need to add a kitchen, of course.

But like that can like potentially make something in a city like Seattle or expensive market, actually cash flow, whereas if you just bought as a single family, there's no way. I've talked to other investors who do that specifically as a strategy, just converting the basement to a living unit. And now you essentially sit in on a duplex. And you can also do strategies where you take that, that three-bed, two-bath, single-family home. That's a split where the primary bedrooms one side of the house and then the two or three other bedrooms and the bathroom are on the other. There are people who have split that into two units because your primary bedroom, essentially, if you put a kitchenette in it, can be like a studio unit.

And then the other three bedrooms, the kitchen and the bathroom are its own home. there. If you're in a place like Seattle or a more expensive, more metropolitan area, properties where you can do that make more sense than in a place like where I live. But that's an option given your demographic. Yeah. I'd just like to put some numbers behind it. Like these these houses are still expensive. But, you know, if you bought a house that was, let's just say, $500,000, $600,000, you'd probably get $3,500,000 in rent, something like that. But If you've spent another 50 grand between the two units, you're probably getting $5,500 in rent. So if you just think about the efficiency of your capital, it just makes the money go a whole lot further.

So I really like that. And I'm starting to underwrite it. I need to learn more about this. But I'm thinking about doing an ADU development, parceling off an ADU. I'm excited about it because in Seattle and a lot more and more cities around the country are allowing you to do this, not just to build an ADU. but you I think the critical difference is parceling it off so you can sell it. Or you can sell the main house and hold on to the ADU or you can sell both of them. But dude, in Seattle, there are like 1,200 square foot ADUs in the neighborhood I live in.

They sell for 750. It's insane. You can build them for 350. Obviously, there's holding costs and all sorts of other soft costs. But like, dude, it's unbelievable what they'll sell for. So it's very attractive. I'm not saying this works everywhere, but more and more cities are allowing this. And you have to have the right lot for it.

Like you have to have alley access or you need to have a corner lot to make it a good experience. But if you own a property that has the potential to do this and you have the right kind of property, the return can be insane. Like it is really worth looking into. I literally have a spreadsheet that I built several months back when we initially started talking about ADUs on the show of all of my properties that have ADUs. potential in the size of the lot or the zoning. And then I'm doing my new construction single family homes this year to kind of give me that build experience because I want to eventually put ADUs on these properties. I just want to make sure that I understand more about how to develop something from the ground up before I go do that on my existing properties. But I'm ready. I'm locked and

loaded. All right. We've talked about how to add value through adding amenities, how to add capacity, whether it's in adding additional bedrooms or adding entire new units onto a property that you already own. But we have some more management strategies that you can use to increase your cash flow. We'll share those with you right after this break. 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 pick 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 have to.

In some cases, investors even receive 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, and there are interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've been trusted partners with BiggerPockets for over a decade, and if you want to learn more, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement. Did you know your house gets bored when you live? leave. I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late-night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle.

Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taken care of, and your place is in good hands.

You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance

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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 here with Henry, talking about how to add value to your existing portfolio. We've gone over adding units, adding capacity, adding amenities, all of those can just be extremely good uses of your money, a lot of times more efficient investments than buying new units.

But Henry, I wanted to talk to you about some management strategies to increase your cash flow. To me, these are sort of just different ways that you can operate your property. And I know you've looked into some of these. I know you've done some of these. So I'm curious, what are your opinions right now in the given market on short-term rentals, on mid-term rentals, rent by the room, maybe even assisted living? Like, do you think these are good ways people can optimize their portfolio? Yeah, absolutely.

But they're all going to be very market-specific. And so, like, you really have to understand your market. And then what's the demand for that strategy? It used to be that, like, four or five years ago, you could just be like, you know what, I'll make more money on Airbnb, throw some IKEA furniture in it. And then, yeah, you would make more money. Yeah. But it's not like that anymore with short-term rentals.

And it's not like that even with midterm rentals as much anymore because there is more supply for it. So you really have to understand, does your market have the demand that's going to allow for that to financially make sense for you? And what I mean by that is I think in most markets you could probably convert your single family to a long term rental to a Airbnb and it may make a little bit more money. but a little bit more money might not make the cash on cash return worth it. So my general rule of thumb, at a minimum, it's got to make me two and a half times what I would make as a long-term rental for it to make sense. Because when you convert from a long-term rental to a short-term rental, not only do you have the expense of furnishing it,

but you take on additional monthly expenses because now you've got to buy supplies, you've got to pay for internet access, you've got to pay for streaming services, You got to pay for lawn care because my long-term rentals, my tenants pay for the lawn care. And so you have additional expenses. And there's additional work and you want to be compensated for the additional work. So if it's not going to make me at a minimum two and a half times per month, then I'm probably not going to do it. And so definitely have to understand do you have the demand. What really works in short-term rentals right now is providing really cool experiences and amenities for the bigger Airbnbs.

But there is a market for the smaller, just corporate user Airbnb that it doesn't have to have all kinds of crazy amenities. It doesn't have to be some million dollar mansion in Scottsdale, Arizona that has a pickleball court. You can be a normal property, but you have to know if your market has the demand for that. So like as an example, I have two, three, four properties that we do Airbnb out of, but we only do it in one. particular city within northwest Arkansas because that one particular city has the most demand for those types of units. I could try to do it in some of these other cities in northwest Arkansas, but the demand isn't as high and I don't know that I'll get the return. But in this one particular city, I know that they get lots of tourism. I know that there are not enough hotels to support the amount of tourists and corporate people that come into town. And so that helps me have some level of comfortability that there's not going to be regular. in that city because they need the tourism dollars and don't have enough places for people to stay. And so, like, because I have that level of understanding of this market, I know I can get the return that makes sense. And so that's why I only do it in those markets. And then I have a couple

of midterm rentals that are in a city just south of that where the research has shown me that the midterm does better there than either the short term or long term. So it's very strategic. You can't just go and say, I'll make more money as a short-term or mid-term, throw furniture in it, and hope for the best, because you can end up actually getting a negative return on your investment if you're not doing the proper research. And I agree. I actually, I've never been particularly crazy about any of these options because I feel like they're fads. You know, it's like they get popular as investors, they get popular for demand, and then they wax and wane. And that's just different than the long-term rental markets different than house flipping. Those have just long-term fundamentals that don't go anywhere.

And that doesn't mean you can't make more money that way. It just means you have to be willing to adapt and react basically continuously. For as long as you have that, you actually need to just be willing to change and learn and operate based on what's going on in the market. And that's okay. Like there are a lot of people who rush it at this. Like it's just not me personally. It's not something I'm going to do. And I actually, you know, I was having a conversation with someone the other day. They were asking, you know, like, should I be a short-term rental investor? Should I be a mid-term rental investor? And I was like, I have never thought of myself as any of those things.

I think of myself as like a residential rental property investor. I buy houses that are in good locations that are going to have great demand. And if I decide that I'm going to operate it as a short-term rental or, a midterm rental for some period of time. Like, that's okay. That's like a strategy that I'm willing to work on. But I personally am not someone who's going to go out and buy a property just to make it a short-term rental or just to make it a mid-term rental.

You say this all the time about having multiple exit strategies. I don't even think it's about exit. I think it's like multiple operating strategies. And I think these are ways to manage your property. It's not like a way to define yourself as an investor. of all of these things, I actually like rent by the room the most based on the current market conditions. I'm not saying this is good, but rent is super expensive. I think more people are going to be interested in these co-living models.

And if you were willing to take on the operational burden, and it is an operational burden, you can definitely make more money. I think that one actually makes sense right now. I like the co-living model. Again, all of these guys, you've got to do your research. search and see if it makes sense before you start taking living rooms and turning them into bedrooms and trying to rent by the room because you need to understand what's the what is the average rent by the room price in your market because in some markets like I was doing the math for one of my students the other day and it was like they would get 150 bucks a room per week and they had four

rooms and by the time you added that up it wasn't much different than what it could get as just a long-term tenant right and I was like yes this doesn't make sense right right. Right. And so you really have to know, is there, is there a demand for it in your market? This typically works better in larger cities where people need to get to work and there's great public transportation. Because typically the people who are doing this probably don't have a car or have limited access to a vehicle. Like where I live, I couldn't do this strategy. No, it wouldn't work for you. So please do your research is the point that I'm making.

Because you can't just do some of these things and hope they make money because somebody else and some of the other cities doing it and they're making a killing. Certain markets this could work for. And yeah, like you said, it's usually dense areas or, you know, college, university towns like this is a great method there. But again, I wouldn't buy a house and then cut it up into more bedrooms. Like that's, see, this is what I sort of mean by like, I'm just a rental property investor and I'll change the operating.

I'm not going to buy a house and change the layout to have not. nine bedrooms and three bathrooms. Like that might work for me for a year or two. And then the market shifts and people don't want this anymore. And then you're stuck with the weirdest house on the block. And you're not going to be able to rent it. You're not going to be able to sell it. If I buy a house, that's a great long-term rental. And then it happens to be something that I could rent by the room relatively easily, then I would consider it. But personally, I'm not, I'm not going to change the layout of the house for something like that. You just have to do your research and going and buying a property that only works as a short-term rental or only works as a mid-term rental or only works as a rent-by-the-room model may help you in the short run, but in the long run, you could get hurt tremendously if things change.

Oh, for sure. Like, a lot of the regulation isn't in your control. So you could literally go from making money to losing a lot of money overnight because someone behind a desk somewhere, they didn't want you to do that anymore. I think we should get out of here, unless you have any last thoughts on optimizing your portfolio right now. No, the last thing I'd say is if you own that four unit or more,

you really want to think outside of just what you can do to your unit, and you want to think about like, what can I do for the complex as a whole that provides convenience for your tenants that they would be willing to pay a little extra for. So in other words, you might not get more rent per unit, because you've added the amenity, but that amenity itself could make you money, which increases your net operating income, which increases the value of your property. So think about things like, remember when we were in Chicago and we were meeting with Andre

and he created a room where his tenants could go and relax and where they could do, like, work out. He had a couple like little workout machines in there, right? A massage chair. A massage chair, right? So if you charge, you know, 25, 10 bucks, 25 bucks a month per tenant for access, to that, right? It's cheaper than the gym membership. It's something that they can use, but it increases your net operating income. If you could add a vending machine with things that are

convenience, it doesn't always have to be snacks. It can be laundry detergent and dryer sheets, things that they may not want to go get in their car, lose their parking spot to go to the store to get. And then the money that that that vending machine makes increases your net operating income, which increases the value. So think about what amenities can I add where people would pay for those amenities for the convenience of them that wouldn't cost me a ton of money, and then that increases the value of your property as a whole. Well, that's what we got for you all today. Remember, optimizing your portfolio can be as good or better than acquiring new properties, and it's really just all about how you can pursue your financial goals as efficiently as possible.

Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. He's Henry Washington. We'll see you next time. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure 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 Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media.

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