BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - The 2025 Housing Market is Here! (What to Watch Starting NOW)

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Welcome to the 2025 housing market! It’s a new year, and if you’re ready to invest more, get closer to financial independence, or finally find and buy your first home, we’re here to help.  We���ve got BIG plans for 2025 and are watching some key economic indicators to help us decide what to do next. But we have already zeroed in on a few investments we’re eager to invest in. Curious about where we’re putting our money in 2025? We’ll share exactly where—and why! We’re recapping our 2024 progress and giving you tips on what to buy based on your goals. Some of us are scaling down this year while others are scaling up, but we all have the same advice for someone who wants to get into the real estate investing game. If you follow this simple, repeatable path we’re laying down, you’ll be investing in no time. Don’t let 2025 pass you by! You could regret sitting on the sidelines! Tune in, take notes, and let’s get wealthier together this year!  In This Episode We Cover The easiest way for beginners to start investing in real estate in 2025 Key economic indicators we’re watching during the 2025 housing market  What strategies we’re switching up in 2025—and what won’t work this year How to invest based on your goals and whether you should prioritize active vs. passive income Our 2025 goals: how many properties we’ll buy, flip, or test with new strategies And So Much More! Links The House Flipping Framework  Scaling Smart Start with Strategy Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1064 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

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. We know all of you are probably here looking to start your year, whether real estate investing or personally off right. And today we got a brand new episode for you where we're talking about what to look forward to here in 2025. And from where I sit, where I'm looking at all the data in the day-to-day of real estate investing, I think there is a lot to be excited about for the upcoming year. And in today's episodes, we're going to talk. about specific strategies and some tactics that you can take advantage of as we head into a new year. For this episode, I'm bringing on a couple of my friends, and they are all fellow investors,

James Dainerd, Kathy Fetke, and Henry Washington. You may know them as my co-host from the On the Market podcast, but I thought it would be fun to have them on to hear different perspectives from different successful investors who use different strategies, have different goals, and how each of them are going to approach this upcoming year. Before we get into that conversation, though, I just wanted to quickly give you a bit of a heads-up and overview of some of the next few episodes because we have some super good shows planned for you

that we've been working on for a couple weeks, and I want to let you know what's coming up. On Friday, we're going to spend some time setting the scene for 2025, and I'm going to actually share with you my predictions about what's going to happen in the housing market in the upcoming year, and hopefully that will give you some information so that you can make informed decisions about how to get started this year or how to scale your portfolio.

Then on Monday, I have a really fun show plan for you all. I've been working on this for a while, but I've sort of been taking this sort of long-term view about real estate investing, about financial independence, about where the entire economy and housing market is gone. And I'll just give you a preview that I feel super optimistic and super excited about the prospect of real estate investing going forward. and I'm going to spend the episode on Monday just sharing with you why. We're going to get into some long-term trends. We're going to talk about long-term goals. We're going to talk about the realities on the ground.

But I really hope we just share with you a blueprint or a plan that I think pretty much anyone can follow to pursue financial independence using real estate, starting here in 2025 and going forward. So make sure to tune into that episode. With that, let's bring on James, Henry, and Kathy. Henry, let's start with you. If you're trying to build financial freedom over 10, 15 years for now, what would you concentrate on today here in 2025? As a passive investor? Yeah. Someone who's just, you know, they got a full-time job.

They're trying to move up their retirement, get financial independence 10 years from now. Yeah. A couple of strategies. First thing I would do is start with where I live. So if I could house hack, I would probably do that. It's just the easiest way to get started in your backyard. So using some sort of homeowner occupied loan, like an FHA or a conventional or a VA, and moving into a one to four unit.

And then, you know, obviously there's a lot of factors here. But let's say if it was just me and I was single, I'd definitely be trying to do that. If it was just me and I didn't have any kids with a wife, I would definitely be trying to do that. And if it was me and I had one or two kids, I would definitely be trying to do that. Because all of that, you can still live pretty comfortably. You can go get yourself a three, two, you know, even a four, two, four, three duplex on each side. and live in it. And the amount of money you'd be able to put towards buying your next property by not having to pay your mortgage every month because somebody else is, is so much great.

So one strategy is just do that for like two or three years in a row. If you bought a new multifamily using an owner-occupied loan, three years in a row, you're talking, you know, six to ten doors, depending on how many units those properties have. And then you can just let those things sit for 30 years and you will have a heck of a retirement supplement. without having to go do anything crazy that we talk about on this show all the time. You could just literally live in a multifamily for the next three to five years, make that sacrifice. And you could be set once those things are paid off. And honestly, it's not that big of a sacrifice.

It's not that big of a sacrifice. It's really not that big a deal. Yeah. When you could sit at the outside, it is a very small price to pay. When your financial freedom not become a sacrifice. Right, absolutely. You've got to do some sacrificing to get there. Yeah.

What would you do, James? What would be your one thing you would focus on in 2025 if you were just getting started? I mean, I like what Henry said. I mean, just getting in the game. Yeah. If you're brand new, you've got to get in the game. To get in the game, owner-occupied financing, you're getting a cheaper rate. You have less money down.

There's different financing that's available to you. And I think we could see some inflationary period over the next 12, 24 months. And that means housing could also get more expensive. Rents could go up. Rents could go up. There's everything could go up, right? And the last thing you want is to get choked out by expenses every year. And you just can't get savings in, right?

Like where the extra expense just prevents you to save. How you create a savings account is getting in the game. Owner occupied by the property, let appreciation create your new bank for you. Because it's expensive out there right now. And so I do think you should get into it. As an active flipper, though, like I do think, you know, depending on your goals, like if you got to grow cash, you got to look at some more high cash flow operational things. and you can still do that, like owner-occupied, short-term rentals, flipping, mid-term rentals,

those are things that require more work. Yeah. I mean, you can owner-occupied flip, though, too. I mean, that's a great way to get started. It's just to do a live-in flip because then you're not paying the capital gains. If you move into a house and it takes you two years to fix it up and you turn around and sell it, I mean, you could turn around and sell it and make 50, 60, 70 grand tax-free because you lived in it for two out of five years. Like the owner-occupied is an amazing way to get started, passive or active.

I think the live and flip is the most underrated way to get started in real estate. It's sake. The live and flip changed my whole life. Tell us. I mean, we're on what? Property number six? I mean, my wife cut me off now. I think I'm a 50% cut off.

Oh, man, I ran that high rev until the end. And we landed where we needed to land. If I went for number seven, it's not going to be a tax savings. It's going to be half a loss of my wealth. But it's a... There is a breaking point. But just buying, creating that tax free, move in again, move it again. I mean, we talk about sacrifice to live and flip.

The best thing in my opinion is don't be picky about where you're going to live. Buy the best possible deal. It's a two-year thing. You stay there. You sell it. You take that tax. And then we rolled it every time. That tax savings went right into the next property.

Because you create that, you can go buy something that needs more work, right? Because the stuff, you know, when you're an owner-occupied buyer, to do the fix-up work, you've got to come up with your down payment and the cash out of pocket. That makes it just struggle to do this. But by buying it, selling it, get the tax savings every time we were able to sell it, then go buy another property with 10% down, take the remaining savings, put it into our construction, and then improve it again. And by doing that, you know, I mean, we're talking real money. Oh, yeah. Six times at a 500 grand tax-free hit.

Yeah, for people who don't know, you have to live there for two years. You can rent it for three years after you leave. Yeah. And then when you sell it, if you're single, you get $250,000 of the increase in value tax-free. If you're married, you get up to $500,000 tax-free. And it's maybe hard to imagine improving a property that increases in value by $500,000, but it's very doable, especially in high-priced markets like California. And you get residential owner-occupied financing to buy the deal, too.

Yes. You could put less money down. Sometimes you could put five, ten percent. down, you get a lower interest rate. There's so many reasons to do it. It's like for other people, it's a lot of the benefits of house hacking, but it's just a big equity hit instead of sort of like the long-term building. It sort of goes back to what we talk about, passivers active.

And I want to point something out because we're all talking about what we would do, but it's not just what we would do, right? This is something that we all either did or actively do. My second deal was a house hack, and it changed. my life. James is selling his last live-in flip right now. Dave, I know you lived in a house hack, and Kathy's living in one right now. This is so powerful that we all do it. We all have different investment strategies, but we all do this one. That has to tell you something. That is so true. It's this idea that, I mean, you know, I know rich dad, poor dad got a lot of people into this

industry, and that's great. But in that book, they talk about how your primary home is not an asset. I think that's a huge mistake. I never bought into that one. Huge mistake. That boils my blood when I hear that. That is the worst piece of advice I've ever heard. Now, it makes sometimes sense to rent over buy. I do think that in certain markets.

Yes. Yeah. Like the tax savings you can save on that. That is absurd. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. I think for some people that mindset shift of like, don't go buy your dream home, that might not be a good investment.

That is true. But if you just blanket right off your primary residence as a way to build wealth, like, that is crazy. That is such a good way to do it. Everyone does it. And I think especially if you're getting started in the next year, like that to me is such a good way to get into the game. And I think getting started for next year, the most important thing for anybody, you have to

know debt. That's the biggest thing. What access to capital you have? So anybody's new, go get prequalified. Yes. The first strategy you're going to do is find out how much money you can get, then create your plan. Everyone skips that. They're like, I want the deal. I'm like, what kind of financing do you get? I'm not sure. I, dude, it's the same thing. People are like, oh, I don't know how much I could lend.

It's like literally there's loan officers, their whole job is to tell you how much money you can borrow. And they'll do it for free. And they're eager to do it. And they'll tell you what you need to do to get there, right? What do you need to work on. That's the easiest thing to do. Thank you for saying that, James. That is such a good point. I think that people get a lot really sort of intimidated by how much mortgage rates have gone and sort of they like think, oh, no, I can't do it or I can't make it work. When they don't actually have an answer to specifically or personally what their situation is going to be, what their interest rates are going to be, what their LTV has to be.

And if you don't know that, you really can't, like you said, start looking at deals because you can't underwrite a deal without knowing what you're paying for your debt unless you're buying for cash, which is not very common. Okay, time for a quick word from our sponsors, but when we come back, we will get into it about some of the realities of the current market. And we'll talk about strategies that do and don't work. So stick around. We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned last month, that's not passive at all. Baselain fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time, and builds the report.

you need for tax season. You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees. It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus. Base lane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. 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.

They're a full-service, turnkey investment company, handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of our down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Running your real estate business doesn't have to feel like juggling five different tools.

and the tools are blades or flaming torches. With ReSimple, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly, for free, and reach out with calls or texts, all from one streamlined platform. The real magic? AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects,

and even grade your conversations so you know where you stand. That means less time on busy work and more time closing deals. Start your free trial and lock in 50% off your first month at ReSimple.com slash bigger pockets.

That's R-E-S-I-P-L-I-com slash bigger pockets. Real estate investors, the April 15th tax deadline is coming fast. If you own rental property and haven't done a cost segregation study yet, you could be handing thousands of dollars to the IRS that you don't have to. These studies let you write off as much as 25% of your building and generate huge tax deductions. Costsegregation.com is an online self-guided software that makes cost segregation fast and affordable. So it finally makes sense for smaller rental properties purchased for as low as $100,000. With pricing under $500 and an average savings of over $25,000, it's just a no-brainer.

What's more, audit support is included by the number one cost segregation company in the U.S., but you must complete it before the tax deadline. Go to costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report. Don't overpay the IRS. Head to costsegregation.com before April 15th. Welcome back, investors. We're here talking about what we're excited about here in 2025. So let's jump back into it. All right. Well, this is great advice so far. But Kathy, I've got to ask you. Now are we taking some of the good ones? We're going to put you at the hot seat for your strategy for getting started in 2025.

Yeah, the first thing is to give yourself an audit. You know, look at where you are in life. Are you just starting out? Are you looking for a career? Then you really into real estate, then make real estate your career. That, like I said, there's, so many ways to make it your career, and any one of them is going to give you the information you need to be better at it. Like I said, if you just get a job as a property manager, think of all the things you're going to learn. If you become a real estate agent, think of all the things you're going to learn, a title agent, whatever. There are so many jobs in real estate construction that would help you if you're just starting out. And if you're just starting out on any career and you're not making a lot of money, then you know, you might be able to do a few flips and

replace your income. So it just depends. Do an audit. And let's say you already have a career and you have money. You like your career. Then you just want to invest. Like we talked about passive investing, then you need to really set aside, like really study. That would be the next thing. Study how to do it because I'll give my niece who I adore. I use her as an example. She's a real estate agent, does amazing, really successful real estate agent. And she said to me, the other day, I was making so much money and I spent it all. Why didn't somebody just tell me to invest? And I looked at her and said, do you even know who your auntie is? You never lose it to your answer.

I'm not a freaking book on the topic, okay? Like, okay, don't blame anyone but yourself for not setting aside some money to invest. She's like, I would probably be retired now. If you're making money, you've got to at least put 10% aside to invest in whatever you're investing in. So one of the hardest things when you make money is that half of it, you get to this point in life where you're like, oh my gosh, I make all this money now. And then you go, I pay so much in tax. I don't even take that money home. I work so hard for it. So understanding the tax benefits, too, of investing, a doctor came over to our house the other day who lives nearby,

and I just assumed he made a bunch of money. But he has so many expenses that, you know, it's kind of hard to keep up and save. But his wife is a stay-at-home mom. And what I tried to explain to him is if you make your wife sort of the real estate investor and she takes care of all the investments and manages your future portfolio, you're going to get so many tax benefits. It's going to help you get there faster. So that, you know, if you're, if you have money already, then your next step is to learn to just study like, like crazy, to understand the opportunities that are there for you. Great. Yeah, I love it. Absolutely, self-educating. Learn this business that you want to get into. So many people want to go and rush to the fun part, which is buying deals or selling deals is even more fun because that's when you get the money. But, you know, learning is going to set you up to have many acquisitions, many dispositions over the course of your career. Yes. All right. Well, I have two quick pieces of advice for people who want to get started. Number one is practice. We talked about learning and educating yourself, but actually put those things.

into practice, and specifically talking about analyzing deals. Go out there and just start looking at as many deals as you can. Do what James said. Go talk to a loan officer. Do your life audit. Figure that stuff out. And then just get some practice in. Like everything you do, you have to do it poorly for a little while. And you're going to get better at it. And luckily, analyzing real estate deals, it's not actually really that hard. But if you learn how to do it, if you do it 20 times, if you do it 50 times, when you're actually ready to go buy the deal, you're going to feel really confident in your numbers. It's going to help you actually pull the trigger. So that's my number one advice. If you're sitting here in January 2025, do everything we said,

and then just go practice. Learn how to analyze deals. You're going to get good at it pretty quickly, I promise you. A second thing I would say is don't sleep on out-of-state investing. I know this is controversial, but I actually think that in this sort of like new era of real estate investing where things are a little bit more expensive, that looking to affordable markets is a great way to get started. Yeah, if you're in an expensive market, look at a live and flip. We just talked about how great it is. Look at owner-occupied strategies. But if you want to be super passive, if you just want to pay a property manager to do stuff, I do this. Look at out-of-state markets where you can buy duplexes for $250,000 or $300,000 or $400,000, and get some cash flow. And is it going to retire you this

year, no, it is not probably going to retire you this year. But if you project out rent growth for 10 years, you're going to be sitting pretty. And so just have that patience. Think about looking elsewhere. If you don't live in one of these markets, that's affordable. So those are my two pieces of advice. I just want to make a comment on what you said, Dave, because I think there's still so much confusion about active versus passive. So people need quick money, right? They need money today to live on. They need cash flow today to cover their costs and to have extra to be able to invest. And then you have passive, which is not necessarily going to provide you anything today, but it will. It's for the future.

It's like investing in the stock market. You're not getting cash flow from that, but you're looking at your future. So these two things get confused a lot, and it's really important to identify which one it is. Are you actively trying to make money to pay your bills, or are you buying something for 10, 20 years from now. And as soon as you can get really clear on that strategy, then you'll know what to do. You know, because with a new investor, it's like, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to make money today? Because there's lots of ways to make money in real estate. You can be a real estate agent. You could be a loan broker. You could, you know, be a property manager. If you wanted to just get in and

learn the business, you could be a flipper. You, you know, that's going to, that's another step of being complicated. You're going to need to borrow money. Let's say, I just did a coaching call with somebody we all know. And he was like, I want to make money from flipping. And then he realized, I don't really like it. And I'm like, well, you know what? You're really good at what you do. Once you do the thing you do for the money to make today and use that money to invest for the long term, right? Yeah, a total percent. I think you just broke James's heart when someone said that he didn't like flipping. But it's just not for everybody. No, it is not. It is not fair way. I totally agree. And I think it's this funny thing because, yeah, Kathy, you said it very well. In my book, and Jay Scott came up

with this, but he calls like one half of it like transactional income. You need to trade your time for money to live off of, right? Like that's your transactional income side. Then you have your passive income side to, you know, build long-term wealth, create a basically some annuities so that when you retire, you have that cash flow coming in every single month. But they're not the same thing. You can choose, you have the option to do both of them in real estate. Like Kathy just said, you can get your transactional short-term income from real estate, but you don't have to. That is an optional piece.

Like Henry and James have both chosen to do that. I choose not to do that. I do kind of work in real estate, but I actually work for a software and media company. I've had doctors who make a million dollars a year want to be flipping. It's like, dude, what are you doing? You spent 10 years trying to be a doctor. unless you hate it. Yeah, right.

You know, why would you want your new active income to be a totally different business? I don't know. No, I agree. And I think the distinction is it's not trivial. It's actually quite important because what happens when you confuse these two types of income, it can be a little bit paralyzing, I think. When you get into real estate or you want to get into real estate and you're looking at deals today and say, hey, I'm only going to get, you know, a break-even cash flow or a little bit better than break-even

cash flow. Like, that's not 1% rule. That's not a 10% cash on cash return. Well, if you're not using this money to fuel your immediate term needs, then who cares? You should be buying assets that are going to perform over the lifetime of your portfolio, which could be 10 years. It could be 20 years. It could be 30 years. But that confusion, I think, prevents so many people from getting in, I personally bought a bunch of deals last year because I'm investing for 10 or 20 years from now, and it's pretty easy for me to identify assets that I think are going to be great 20 years from now. If I was trying to replace my income next year, it would get a whole lot more complicated, and I would have to do a whole bunch of extra work that, frankly, right now I'm not willing to do.

So forever and listening, as we're starting a new year, think about these things and what you're trying to accomplish. And that really sort of sets the framework for you to build a buybox and to develop a strategy as we had into 2025. Well, and I think it's important too, active versus passive. Like Kathy said, over five years they did well. That's the point of holding properties. It's that long-term appreciation. But then think about how you want to be an active or passive investor.

You can be passive and still not have to wait five years. True. You could do hard money loans instead. There's so many different ways. Like you don't have to be a flipper to get involved in flipping. You can be the lender for flipping and make 10 to 12% on your money and one to two points on that loan. You can also invest with the flipper or you can invest in development. You can invest with someone like Kathy who does bigger transactions that puts a deal together where you can make that higher return.

It's just about picking the asset class. But really it's also about what's your risk tolerance. That's the biggest thing people need to think about is the more money you try to make over 12 months, the higher risk is going to be. 100% five-year hold is going to be more stable. You're protecting your investment. And if you want to do hard money loans, it's a little bit riskier. You want to flip a house, it's going to be riskier. Developing is going to be riskier, but you got to make that choice yourself. And that's why it's really important for people to write down on a piece of paper where they want to be in 12 months, three years and five years. Based on where you want to be, choose your risk. Well, that's a good question. What are your goals for this year? Henry, I'll start with you. Man, my goals for this year are I kind of keep the same business goals each year. I like the Make money. Right. I like the level of business that I'm at. So my goals for next year are we want to flip 20 properties. This year we did 18 when I totaled it up last week. Nice, dude. So we did 18 in 2024. We want to do 20 to 25 in 2025. In terms of rental properties, we're scaling back. I've grown my portfolio to point that I'm comfortable with. I'm going to continue to buy, but I will only buy properties

that are no brainers to buy in terms of location and cash flow, cash flow in year one and two, or I will only buy when my accountant says you need to buy X amount more so that you don't have to pay taxes on the income you've made everywhere else. So that's what's going to determine what I'd buy. Yeah, because we were just talking about active versus passive. And like we were sort of saying you could still buy, at least I do, buy long term rentals for the long term, but you're saying you're slowing down. But you're in a unique position because you use your real estate as your short-term income as well. So, like, how are you making that decision about what rentals to do and sort of focusing some of your portfolio and growth on long-term and some of

it on short-term? Like, how do you think that through and set those goals for the year? What I choose to keep and monetize as a rental versus flipping really has a lot to do with how I find deals because I'm marketing for deals off market consistently, I am truly keeping the ones that make the most financial sense and that I like the most. And so I've got about nine active projects going on right now and one of those, only one of those I will keep as a rental. But the one I'm keeping as a rental is in an area that does really well with short-term rentals. I'm buying it at a price point that I could rent it out at a long-term rental and it will cash flow very well. I paid $45,000 for for it and it's worth $2.75 all fixed up.

Pretty good spread. And so I can rent that thing for $1,800 bucks a month, long term, and make money. It's in a market where it would do well as a short-term rental, so that will maximize the cash flow, or I could turn around and flip it. And so the reason I like keeping that one as a rental is A because of the price point that allows me to monetize it multiple ways. So if something goes bad with plan A, I've got a plan B and plan C. The second reason I'm keeping that one as a rental is because I can monetize it as a short-term rental and I bought it so well.

So I can get maximum cash flow because I bought it so well. And I would much rather keep that asset because I can get maximum cash flow versus just selling it and taking the money and turning it into another property. And the third reason is just lifestyle in general. I would like to have a property. It's right by a lake. And I can use it when I want to and take my kids there. And so that's kind of the benefit of marketing and finding your own deal. and then you can understand what are your criteria for wanting to keep a property and you can

keep the ones that makes the most sense to you. Like you could buy these same nine properties and you might not keep this one. It just may be different for you. So it's just about understanding what you want in terms of a return and then what are your exits and then choosing the one that makes the most sense for your business and your family. All right. We've got to take one more quick break, but stick with us. We'll be right back. When I bought my first rental, I thought collecting rent would be the hard part. Nope. The admin crushed me. Every night was receipts, tax forms, and checking who was late on rent. I kept

thinking, if this is one unit, how do people run 10? Baselane changed that. It's BiggerPockets official banking platform that handles expense tracking, financial reporting, rent collection, and even tenant screening, all in one place. It's the system I wish I had from day one. Sign up today at baselane.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100

bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. 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. What if your CRM actually did the hard work for you? I know, crazy. ReSimply lets you pull seller lists, skip trace them at no cost, and contact your leads by caller text without bouncing

between apps. Then it's AI agents takeover. Answering calls, following up automatically, even grading your conversations, so you can focus on the deals that matter. Everything's under one roof designed to simplify your day and scale your business. Start your free trial today and lock in 50% off your first month at resimply.com slash bigger pockets. That's R-E-S-I-M-P-L-I-com slash bigger pockets. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead. Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses.

And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. And they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. All right, James, what are your goals for 2025? The 2025, actually, one of my biggest goals is to get my passive flipping business going in Arizona. Oh, cool. You know, we landed here. I'm an operator up in Seattle. I don't want to operate in two states. I will maybe on a very small scale, but it's more about just meeting, building that network,

and providing funding and financing so I can get this steam rolling. down in the desert. So I'm going to be wet and dry. Those are the two spots that'll be in just for everyone to know is like James been an operator in Seattle runs a big flipping rental business does everything there. But you move to Arizona. And so what you're basically, you're saying like, you don't want to start a whole operation where you're doing the actual flips yourself in Arizona, but you want to sort of build a more passive business where you live outside of Phoenix, right? Or in Phoenix. Yeah. And it's, the reason I want to do it more passive is I'm a firm believer if you're doing something well and it's working, don't just forget about it because I see this

happen all the time. They're like, oh, I want to go do this now. I want to go do this now. But then they leave this thing that was a good income producing system behind. And so Seattle's busy for us. It is my backyard. I know it like the back of my hand. This is where I will always invest. As I made that plan, I'm like, I don't have time to operate both. So how do I do that? It is I got to partner up with operators down to Arizona. I'm still going to do what we do in Seattle. And my other goal is to also pick up some rental properties in Arizona because I'm a backyard investor. I've only bought rental properties in Washington State. And now I can diversify a little bit.

Different type of market, different type of politics. I'm going to pick up some rental units there. And I'm going to focus on it smaller stuff. I like two to ten because we buy a lot of 20 to 50 units in Seattle. I like to hedge against whatever our partnerships doing because it balances out my portfolio. So if we're buying 30 to 50, I'm going to buy smaller personally. And as a partnership, if we go to smaller, I'm going to buy bigger. And that way it balances me out as an investor.

But I'm really excited to kind of get this going down in Arizona and just to pick up some more rentals. I totally agree. I think, I mean, well, I'll get to my goals later. But I actually think this year is a good year to buy rental properties. I know the cash flow is not as good as it once was in year one. But I think there is a lot of long-term trends that are pointing towards rental properties being a great business as they've always been. And I don't think they're going to get any cheaper. So I agree with you that rental properties are probably a good one. Kathy, what are your goals?

You're observing, but I know you're observing the market, but I'm sure you have some goals as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, we're sticking with what we know, which is rental property, finding the hottest markets, helping other investors invest in those markets that we've been doing for 20 years regardless of what's going on. And any time I veered from that. I kind of got myself in trouble. So just like James just said, like, we're sticking with what we know, which is getting ahead of the path of progress, getting in front of where the growth is, and buying rental properties in those areas. So more of that. But also, there was the IMN single family rental conference just recently. I know Henry was there. One of the slides that they showed was this demand for build to rent still, with 2025, 2026 being probably the highest demand.

and yet the lowest inventory for it because so many builders have kind of gotten wiped out with the higher interest rates. But with our team and the bank relationships that we have, we're able to make the numbers work. So more syndications. We have one right now in San Antonio. We plan on doing another one in the Dallas area. So we expect to do a few more build to rent syndications. And also, like I said, really keeping an eye on commercial real estate, multifamily, possibly industrial, as those loans come do and we're able to negotiate some really good prices. In the building side of our business, it's always only worked out when we could get the deal really cheap, just like, you know, it's real estate.

So when you find a distressed landowner or builder and you can kind of save them from the problem that they're having, you can make the numbers work. And that's what we've been doing for 15 years and I think we'll have a lot of opportunity in 2025. Awesome. Well, good luck. I agree with all those points. It sounds like a very good goals.

And then personally, yeah, for sure, more rentals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act kind of gets renewed where you get the 100% bonus depreciation, I think I'll be getting some short-term rentals as well because those tax write-off are insane. And I think there's a very good chance that's going to happen. Yeah.

Well, I'm thinking about my goals and I'm basically ignoring all of your advice where you're saying, stick with what you know, because as you might know, I am partnering with. with James and we're flipping a house and I am doing something I know literally nothing about. I have never flipped a house. But luckily James is teaching me. So I feel like this is a good opportunity. So that is my one goal is to successfully complete my first flip with James. It really all depends on James. I'm not doing anything. So hopefully my goal is that just James continues to be good at what he does. Man, I would move to Seattle just to have that opportunity. That's awesome. Yeah. A demo just started day. We are rolling.

I like it. That's awesome. Well, my other goals are sort of just to your point, Kathy, James, all of you have been saying this is just sort of sticking with my long-term strategy, which is just continuing to acquire rental properties. I'm hopefully going to buy, you know, five, eight more units somewhere in the Midwest. I like to do one multifamily syndication a year. That's sort of something I've been doing for the last few years because if you're in that business, you know, they usually have a five, seven-year hold.

You know, I've been doing this for five years now. So hopefully they'll start to sell, maybe not this year, but. in a couple of years. They'll start to sell and pay off, and that will become a more predictable source of income and liquidity for me. And then my other goal is to help people, real estate investors, recognize the opportunities that are here in 2025. I don't know if you guys see this, but I feel like there's a lot of negative sentiment about real estate investing industry right now. And I get it. It is a very different world than where we were a couple of years ago. But from where I sit, and I have spent a lot of weeks doing this over the last few weeks, just like looking at different asset classes, looking at the future of real estate.

Like, I still think real estate fundamentals are great. I still think that the future is very bright. And I don't personally see any other asset class that can offer the same potential to build financial freedom as real estate. And as we were saying, it doesn't take two years. It doesn't take four years unless you're starting with millions of dollars. But if you want to put 10 years into this business, like, I still think you can get financial freedom just as well as you've always been able to. I just think people have these expectations that are sort of left over from this Goldilocks period of a few years ago that are unrealistic.

And so my hope, like on a personal level outside of my own portfolio is to help people see that there's just huge opportunity here to get started in real estate, to build your portfolio, even if you have it. And I'm excited for it because I, really believe it. And hopefully you guys can help me, help me work on that one goal. I'm all in for that. Absolutely. All right. One last thing before we get out of here. James, what's one thing outside of real estate that you're excited for in 2025? Like investing wise? No. No. Just in general? Outside of real estate events. He's like, cannot compute. It must make money. People have a lot of hobbies. And I always say my

hobby is getting a deal done. That's like what I love doing. But, you know, for 2025, one of my goals is to get a little bit more passive and to spend a little bit more time helping coaching. Okay. You didn't answer the question. That's nothing to do with real estate. We're skipping you. No coaching my son on his baseball team. Oh, coaching. There we go. No real estate coaching. Baseball sports. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Real like coaching. We got them. Okay. What about you, Kathy? What's something you're like you forward to? That's awesome. My daughter is really into. charity and she put she did this volunteer thing in Denver and rich went and we we won you know an auction we paid for it but a trip to Nepal so yeah yeah with the people who put on the

foundation so part of it is going to the orphanage there and seeing what we donated to and the other is like Nepal so that's exciting so cool that's awesome all right see james there's a good that outside. Let's take off. What about you, Henry? The thing I'm most looking forward to is in 2025, I celebrate 10 years married to Jessica.

And so that actually happens next month. And we're going to take a cruise out of the country and just hang out with each other. And I'm super excited about that. But two things I'm excited about that are slightly related, that are pretty much related to real estate is one, BPCon. 2025 is going to be insane. I cannot wait for that.

Can't wait. Las Vegas. If you guys don't know, Henry and I are planning to go for three weeks to Las Vegas. Oh, my God. It's going to be insane. And then the other thing I'm super excited about in 2025 is buying a deal with you. A lake effect cash flow.

Yeah, buying a Lake Effect cash flow deal with Dave this year. Yeah. Going to the Midwest. Going to the Midwest and eating sandwiches and buying Lake Effect cash flow deal. So I'm super excited about those things. Well, I am too. But you kind of cheated. You talked about real estate stuff. But I like it. That's good.

I'm excited for those two things. This is going to be very fun. All right. Well, my personal thing is, if you guys don't know, I've lived in Europe for five years. I just moved back to the United States. And I'm excited to be back in the States, to see my friends and my family, and to be closer to

all of you. And just continue doing it. Everything's good. I'm excited. All right, well, thank you all so much for joining us for this episode. This was a lot of fun. I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's, a wonderful holiday season, and as excited as we all are about investing, building our portfolios, moving towards financial independence here in 2025. If you are on the train, which I hope you are, make sure to check out on the market, make sure to check out the Bigger Pockets podcast. Make sure to check out all of the assets that we have here at Bigger Pockets. They all exist for you to help you achieve financial freedom through real estate.

So come back to the podcast and join us every week as we all work together to achieve our financial goals. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and we'll see you soon. 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. They're a full service, turnkey investment company, handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with Bigger Pockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more.