BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Where We’d Invest in Real Estate in 2025 (If We Could Buy Anywhere)

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Where would we invest in real estate if we could pick anywhere in the country? Even with many real estate markets stagnating, several markets are still primed for serious growth. Today, Ashley Kehr and Henry Washington join Dave to share the best markets to buy rental properties right now. These markets span coast-to-coast, and we curated a list of nine top markets with the highest potential across the nation. Want an affordable rental property with high rent prices? We’ve got plenty of places on the list. Looking for appreciating cities with super low vacancy so you’re never without renters? There are cities in this episode for you! We’ve even got markets that are great for fix and flips if you’re looking for some quick(er) cash! We broke the country into three zones: East, Central, and West. Each investor chose a market in each region that they would invest in TODAY, explaining why the market works, which strategy performs best there, the average home price, rent price, and economic data that makes it better than other cities in the region. Don’t know where to invest in 2025? After this episode, you’ll have nine great options!  In This Episode We Cover The manufacturing “sleeper” market with high employment and low home prices A “steady” Midwest city with a BIG new investment that could drive up demand  A super affordable Northeast city that is great for house flips (but maybe not for rentals) Looking for appreciation? This area has below-average home prices, but they could rise quickly  The best market for new builds just outside of a major metropolitan area HIGH rental demand here and why Dave regrets not investing in this market  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1115 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

These are the best markets to buy rental properties right now in the middle of 2025. We keep saying it, but the housing market is shifting more and more towards a buyer's market every week. So if you've been sitting on the sidelines because you don't know which city or region across the U.S. is the most profitable for real estate investing, now could be the time to actually make that decision and start putting your money to work. And we've crunched all the data for you. Today, we're going to reveal nine of our favorite markets for investors looking to start or diversify their real estate portfolio. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets.

And today's show, we got for you. It's back by popular demand because a lot of you have been sending us feedback that you want to hear more about the best places to invest, given today's housing market conditions. So today, that's what we're doing. We're sharing some of our favorites once again. And of course, I could not make this particular episode without my favorite. trusty housing market analysts, Ashley Care, co-host of the Real Estate Rookie Podcast,

and Henry Washington co-host of On the Market. Ashley, thanks for coming back and joining us today. Yes, thank you so much for having me. And Henry, good to see you again. Thanks for doing all the homework and being here on time, unlike me. Happy to be here, man. Thanks. The format for today's show is a little bit more of the same, where we're going to share with

you markets that we actually like, but also go into some of the criteria that we use and the thought process behind each decision that we make. And we're sort of spreading it out. Each of us has been tasked with picking our favorite investing market in three regions of the U.S., east, central, and west. So we divided the country pretty roughly, to be honest, into thirds. This was not very scientific. We basically will put a map up on YouTube if you're watching this right now.

But if you're listening, the general idea is the east is every state that touches the Atlantic Ocean. plus we just threw in Vermont and West Virginia for good fun. Our central region is west of that over to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. So like broadly the Midwest and some of the south. And then the west region is everything if you draw a vertical line from North Dakota down to Texas over to the Pacific Ocean. It's about half the country by area, but only about one third of the population. So I'm sure many of you will leave comments about our horrible geography. Totally understood. That is welcomed. But let's just get into these investment markets because that's what's actually important here.

Ashley, you're up first. We're going to start and go east to west. East region, what's the market? I did pick a market that's close to my hometown of Buffalo, New York. And the reason I picked it is because it's been making a lot of headlines lately. And I wanted to dig a little deeper into this. So this is Rochester, New York. So if you haven't seen it in the news yet, they're talking about how this is the, fastest selling market. So I think right now it's averaging properties 13 days on market, which is the best right now in the country. Wow. Okay. So maybe you could tell us why that stat alone is something that got you excited about Rochester. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to actually flip a home or to have it as a rental, but plan to sell it within the next couple of years. So some other things that kind of drew my attention is the affordability. A good

rent-to-price ratio at 0.77%. One thing that I was actually really surprised about this as the insurance costs were actually lower than the national average compared to a lot of the other markets at 2,100. So it was mid to low range of what other markets were spending for insurance costs. Then also just a lot going on. There was 335 million in new capital investments last year. So I really think this would be a good market for flipping. New York State is not landlord friendly. And it was estimated that over the next year, we could see a 9% increase in the sales price on properties. All right. Well, I'm surprised just flipping, though. I guess what makes you think it wouldn't be good for holding rentals, just a landlord friendliness? Because a rent-a-price ratio as high as you just listed is definitely one of the better ones, especially for a major city in the country. it does indicate there is possible cash flow in Rochester. Yeah, I would say the biggest downside is that it's not landlord friendly,

but also another pro if you did want to do a rental here, is that the five-year rent increase was 49%, which I thought that was actually really good, too. So it could do both flipping or long-term buy and home. I like this market for a lot of the reasons that you said, but especially for beginner investors, because your entry price points are typically going to be low. There's lots of opportunity because there are a lot of older homes in this region of the country.

So that indicates that there's opportunity to buy distressed properties. And as a rookie investor, chances are you're going to screw something up. And so if you screw something up too bad, this is a great place where you have multiple exits. Like if you can't sell it or you go over budget, you can always throw a tenant in it and probably rent it and protect yourself. And so I think it's a nice safe market if you're going to get started investing. And it's not a super popular market.

So there's probably less competition. You can probably buy deals right off the MLS. I think it's a pretty safe market to start in. Ashley, I feel like you brought this city up because it's my greatest shame and missed opportunity in Rochester. I actually went to college there, lived there for a while, and missed this by a thousand miles that Rochester was going to be a recent. popular place for real estate and investment. When I was there, it was honestly a pretty depressed

city. Housing prices were super cheap. Unemployment was really high, but it is really turned around a lot. And although I'm very happy for the city of that, it was something I actually thought about for a while and decided not to pull the trigger on, although it would have been a great decision for me. So don't follow in my footsteps and perhaps consider Rochester more seriously than I did. All right, that's our first market. Thank you, Ashley. Henry, tell us about, Your pick on the East Coast. My pick on the East Coast is one of my favorite cities just in the country in general. That's Durham Chapel Hill in North Carolina.

Oh, nice. I've always enjoyed the time I spent in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina area. But before we get into that, I want to talk about the way I kind of narrow down my selections, regardless of region. What I was looking for, first and foremost, was I wanted all the markets where the median home price is under the national average, meaning I can buy a house. for less than the national average in the country. And at the same time, I wanted all the markets where the median rent was within 10% or above the national average. So I want to be able to buy under the average, but rent at or above the average.

I like that criteria. That's a good one. What I'm looking for with this is opportunities to buy properties that cash flow, even in the current economy. But I'm also looking for equity and appreciation. So once I had that list, some of the additional criteria that I look for is I want markets where unemployment is low, where the five-year price growth is high, and where vacancy is the lowest. Also, I'm looking for population growth to be positive over the last five years. I want it to show a history of people wanting to move there and not just a blip on the radar.

And I'm also looking for job growth over that same time period. So if I'm seeing purchase prices under the national average, rents at or above the national average, plus people moving there consistently over the last five years and jobs growing over the last five years, that for me is a formula for where you're going to be able to get cash flow, but also some appreciation over time. Because I want markets where you get both. Cash flow protects you now, pays you now, but wealth is built through equity and appreciation. So if you can get both, you're building a pretty safe portfolio. So that's kind of how I was looking at narrowing down my list. And you could still buy that affordably in Raleigh Durham. I feel like you hear that as like one of those markets that's just grown like crazy

over the last few years. Yeah. Median home price, Raleigh Durham is 383,400, which is under the national average, not super low, but medium rent price is 1870. So what that tells me is if I do the work to find good deals, I can probably find deals that cash flow. Will I be able to find them on the market? Probably not, but that's typically not how I invest anyway.

So based on what I know about how I invest, these metrics tell me, if I do the work, I can probably find deals that cash flow. Five-year job growth is 8%. Unemployment rate is only 3.3%. Vacancy rate, 0.08%. What? Seriously? Yeah, man. Yeah.

That might be the lowest vacancy rate I've ever. So basically what they're saying is if it's available for rent, it's getting rented. And with a median rent price that high, that means if you make your property desirable, you're going to get it rented and you're probably going to get good rents. Obviously, there's multiple colleges in this area. So a lot of that is probably college students renting places. But I like this market for that reason. Again, not going to find properties on the market, but if you can do the work, if you're into buying off market properties, this is a place where you can probably buy value. All right. Great. I like it. Very good criteria there. And definitely one of the more stable markets. We'll see what happens with the national housing market, but long term, it just seems like a great market that's going to continue to keep growing. I think what people miss about this market is there are a lot of colleges there because their top employers are Duke Healthcare and UNC Chapel Hill. But the third top employer is IBM. It's a big tech market as well. And so a lot of these people are graduating and going to work for tech in that area, which is great for your properties and rentals as well.

All right. Great. Well, we've heard Ashley's Eastern Market with Rochester. Henry's at Raleigh-Durham North Carolina, and we'll move on to mine. I think for all of mine, you've probably, you may have heard of these places, but I doubt you've heard any of them mentioned as investing places. I was just trying to pick obscure places that might light a fire or spark some ideas for people who haven't thought of these markets before. And so what I'm looking for, similar to what Ashley and Henry mentioned, but my main two criteria here are affordability and job growth. To me, those are like the best long-term predictors of stability in the housing market and long-term growth. And I also personally don't buy deals that don't cash flow within

the first year. Like I'm willing to do a little bit of a rehab, but I need them to get up to that cash flow positive in the first year. And where I came up with was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Have you guys been there? Know anything about it? I've not. I've been there. I guess it's actually not that far from me, right, Ashley? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Harrisburg has this, like, surprisingly great economy that I really didn't know about. Like, their unemployment rate is 2.9% well below the national average. There's a lot of government jobs there because it's actually the state capital. I was kind of surprised I bad at geography.

Did not know that before this. I always figured like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, maybe. Nope, it is Harrisburg. But there's also just a really diversified economy there. And the job growth is just going really, really well there, particularly for a place that isn't as sexy as Raleigh Durham or is not making any Zillow's top list for, you know, hottest markets like Rochester. This is just one of those, you know, solid towns where as a rental property investor, I think you can build a really strong, solid career. It might not

have the equity growth that Henry was mentioning. But housing prices have still gone up a lot. They've gone up 38% in the last five years. They're forecast to go up between four and six percent in the next year, which is above the national average. So I think, there's a lot to like about a city like this. And actually, Henry, you made me think of something because for me, as someone who invests out of state for rental property investing, like, I do think I looked around just on the bigger pocket steel finder a little bit before this. Like, you can find cash flowing deals on the market. So I think that's another criteria for people who are more on the passive side of the spectrum like me. That's something I tend to like.

I like to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, a little bit less competitive marketplace. and a place like Harrisburg offers that for me. And don't forget, it's also located near Hershey Park. So when you go to visit your property as a tax right off, you can go to Hershey Park. Awesome. All right. Well, those are Eastern markets. Just as a recap, they're Rochester, New York, Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, and

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. When we come back, we will move on to the central market. Stick with us. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites.

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We've moved on from the eastern market now to the central region, which again, we roughly just included Midwest down to where Henry lives in Arkansas, but not including Texas, Oklahoma. That all goes into the West Coast. So, Henry, let's start with you. Where did you pick in your home region? In my home region, I did not pick my home region because, A, you wouldn't allow it. But it did show up in my search criteria. That's just how amazing of a market is. But with this selection, I chose Knoxville, Tennessee. I like Knoxville, Tennessee for a couple of reasons.

A, Nashville has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the country for some time now, and it's continuing to grow and expand. And Knoxville, Tennessee is obviously in that same area of the country. median home price there, 351,000, almost 352,000. You're not going to get that in Nashville, Tennessee. The median rent, though, is guess. Somebody take a guess. What you think the median rent is? 1750.

Ashley? $1,400. $2,100. What? Very serious. Yes, sir. Why? Knoxville, Tennessee, it's got a good economy.

They are spending a lot of money in the local economy. So Covenant Health is the biggest employer in the area. and they are spending $114 million on a Covenant Health Park, which is a stadium that they're building down there, a sports stadium. They've got a federal grant 42.6 for city connectivity improvements. So they're improving their downtown area, building sidewalks, bridges, streets, plus the tech sector has a huge expansion going on down there. So they're spending a lot of money. Companies are spending money. Infrastructure is getting better.

Like I said, I was only picking markets that have positive job growth and positive population growth. And so this is a way for you to not spend as much as you would in a Nashville, but get rents similar to a Nashville, which means you've got more cash flow opportunities. Plus, a lot of people who are moving to Tennessee may not want to move all the way and get the hustle and bustle of Nashville. And so people are picking Knoxville, Tennessee. There's, like I said, because there are lots of jobs, because there's population growth. Vacancy rate is 10%, which is pretty good. It is also a college town as well because that is where the University of Tennessee is, and that is the second largest employer in the area.

This is also the closest airport if you're going to Pigeon Forge, correct? Oh, that's a good one. So like if you fly in, you stay the night because maybe it's a little bit cheaper, so maybe even Airbnb would work and then you drive out. I'm just trying to name attractions of why we should buy a market so we can go visit them. Yes. Well, somebody research the pizza and the wings, please. Let us know in the comments of the video where we should get pizza and wings in Knoxville, Tennessee.

All right. Well, I feel like this is a theme, honestly. I see a lot these days when I'm picking markets that meet a lot of the criteria is college towns. Like, they tend to perform well. Rochester, Raleigh Durham, both college towns. I guess Harrisburg, I don't think has any notably big colleges. but Knoxville obviously does, and some of the other ones we're going to talk about, I think, do as well. So that is something to keep an eye.

And it really does tend to stabilize an economy, right? Colleges, they don't have these swings when the economy goes down. You know, they still have a lot of students coming in. It's a very stable economic provider, as is health care, which you also mentioned. And I want people to realize, too, that, like, college town doesn't mean you have to buy properties and rent to college students. No. Right.

College town is stability because. there are companies, universities, restaurants, sports teams who are way better at analyzing markets than the three of us. And they've all done this and have chosen these markets, right, for particular reasons. And so, like, we're leveraging that to help us choose where we should invest. Like, it's a college town for a reason. There's a lot of jobs and employment for a reason. And if you can leverage some of that, the analysis of some of these super smart people who they've hired to do all this research, then you can buy, properties. Like, I live in it. Technically, I rent in a college town. You know, Fayetteville, Arkansas is where the

University of Arkansas is. But I'd argue to say that, like, I don't know, less than 5% of my tenants are college students. Well, yeah, it's like companies move to college towns because there's a steady streamline of talent for, you know, people to hire. There's a good labor force. So yeah, it just makes a lot of sense. I was actually reading an article this morning on Bigger Pockets. It was written by Austin Wolf and it was talking about the top three cash flowing markets for 2025. And one of them was Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And it said the reason was it's a college town and just the university is having such a growth in student population that it's creating a demand for rentals. With that segue, I will just go to my central market because it's also in Alabama.

But I feel like Tuscaloosa gets a lot of love and Huntsville gets a lot of love. But there are a lot of other good markets in Alabama. And so what I picked was Montgomery, Alabama. I think this gets overlooked a lot. But one of the things I really liked here is that it was the number one city in Alabama for capital investment. And it's the number two in the state for job creation. And there are other good cities. But like, I was kind of surprised to see that because it's not as hyped up as a lot of the other markets in Alabama. It also has a great unemployment rate at 3.8%. And one of the things that I think is particularly interesting is we don't know exactly what's going to go on with tariffs, but a lot has been made about,

potentially our companies reinvesting into the United States. And Montgomery has had this longstanding relationship with Hyundai for 20 years. And they've sort of indicated that they're going to start ramping up production there or that they're going to continue to invest. There's also a major Air Force base in the area. So that provides a lot of stability to the general economy there. And so I think this is just another example of one of these very affordable cities. The median home price in Montgomery is under 200,000.

It's $185,000. But the median rent is $1,400. So, like, you're not quite at the 1% rule, but I bet you could go on bigger deals right now and find a cash-howing property today in a market that is a lot of capital investment and job growth. Like, to me, that's just kind of a no-brainer. Alabama's such a sleeper state for real estate investing. Like, people don't realize how many high-level aerospace tech jobs, engineering jobs are out there. Yes, there's a lot of manufacturers. but lots of high income earners have to live there.

And lots of government jobs, which means lots of government contracts, which means they can also be good sleeper markets for midterm rentals. Is Alabama a landlord-friendly state? Absolutely. It is. Yeah, it is. One thing I was actually curious about, because a lot of stuff that going on on the Gulf Coast is you're seeing insurance costs

really go up. And so I was curious and looked into this. And the median insurance cost in Montgomery is $3,800, which is a lot of, which is a lot. I mean, that's more than I pay in most places, but it's definitely less than Louisiana. But to offset that, their property tax rate is 0.28%. And just for reference, the average in the country is about 1%. So it's about a quarter of the average in states like Texas, it's over 2%. So like, you really have this big wild swing, but Alabama has extremely low property taxes. So that's just another thing that can help offset those higher than average insurance costs when you're trying

to calculate your cash flow. All right. Well, those are the first two. But Ashley, we haven't heard from you on the Central Region just yet, right? Okay. So I picked Fort Wayne, Indiana. I almost picked that. Popular city. College town, right? Yeah. I just think, like, everything is steady. None of the data was detrimental, but none of it was also, like, super great. Like, wow, this is a great unemployment rate. Like, it's super low. There was, I just felt like everything was really steady. So that's what I liked about this market.

Also super affordable. The median housing was 247 house price. Wow. The median rent was 1600. I just thought everything was just kind of middle of the road. What's going on in Fort Wade? I said Codgetown, but I think that's actually wrong. Like, what, what's going on there?

Is there like a Hershey Park? Is there good pizza? It's a strong manufacturing base. Okay. But it does have like some growth in the technology sectors too. So I just like the numbers on it that it was very conservative. It seemed less risky, I would say. Okay.

I like that. I think, yeah, generally speaking, like the Midwest, that whole area, a lot of Ohio, a lot of Indiana offers that, I think. But some have gotten really expensive. So, you know, Indianapolis is a great market too, but it's really gotten a lot more competitive. it's well known, same with places like Columbus. Google announced a big $2 billion data center there.

Okay. Actually, we're going to have a speaker at BPCon that invests in Fort Wayne. Sarah King, she's going to be one of the speakers at BPCon this year in Las Vegas, and she invests there. That was one of the reasons the market stood out to me, too, is because she's always sharing her experience. And even though she does well there, doesn't mean that I would or it's the right market for you too.

but it's always a good starting point to look where others are investing and then look at the data and see if it would actually work out for you. All right. Those are our central markets, Knoxville, Fort Wayne, and Montgomery. And if you're thinking those aren't all central, you're probably right, but we're just doing the best that we can out here. Ashley mentioned BPCon, which actually lies in our Western region this year. It is in Las Vegas. I'm curious if either of you pick that, but we'll see after this break. But if you want to hear Sarah King speaking at BPCon or Ashley. Henry or myself speaking at BPCon, plus meeting thousands of like-minded investors. There are still tickets available, so go to biggerpockets.com slash conference to get yours today.

We'll be right back. Did you know your house gets bored when you 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

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Head to Costegregation.com before April 15th. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Ashley and Henry, and we're picking our top favorite markets. We've gone from the east to the central to the west coast. Ashley, tell us where you picked on the western half of the United States, but again, that's just one third of the country in terms of population. This one is way out of touch for me that this is an expensive market. But I saw some opportunity here.

So I picked Colorado Springs. And it's more expensive with the median price around $485,000. Oh, okay. But what stood out to me is that they are having a housing shortage. So by 2028, they need to fulfill 28,000 to 39,000 housing units. in order to meet just the current demand for housing. And then also just a lot of job opportunity with the U.S. Space Command is putting headquarters there, which will create around like 600 jobs, a microchip technology company,

700 jobs, and then a solar panel manufacturing. That was like a little less than 400 jobs. There were some numbers, too, that kind of stood out with me with this housing shortage, is that the five-year rent growth is supposed to be 49% projected. Yeah. And then just the five-year job growth of 10% too. And then 5% for household growth. So I see a lot of opportunity and appreciation in this market.

Maybe some overflow from the Denver area into Colorado Springs. But just the demand for housing needed and just what the expected increase in the value of those properties. is going to be. This is a great way of looking at potential markets because at the end of the day, it really does come down to supply and demand. And oftentimes when we talk about things like job growth or population growth or household growth, what we're really trying to predict is demand. And, you know, unless you're someone like me who looks at permit data all the time, it's a little bit harder to look to forecast supply. But a lot of cities put out these housing analyses. There's a couple in the Midwest that I've been reading about where they're,

They just do a very detailed analysis, knowing everything they know about their own city and being like, we need X number of new houses. And oftentimes the cities put these out because it's kind of like a call for alarm. Like there's just not enough housing. Obviously, you know, personally, I feel like I hope they produce more housing. But as an investor, you can, one, be a part of that if you want to up zone things. Or you can just, you know, be someone who's able to provide high quality housing to tenants in these places where they might not be able to afford. to buy a single family home normally. So I think that's a great one. Colorado Springs, Ashley, you're just beating me up. That's another one that got away from me. Because I always thought, like, oh, spillover from Denver. It's a great place. I actually drove down there a few times and looked at properties,

but never pulled the trigger. But it's been growing crazy for like 10 years. And it sounds like it probably will keep going. Yeah, I think, like, you look at people bought in Denver, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. Like, they probably have a nice chunk of equity in their property from appreciation. and, you know, the similar circumstance could happen in Colorado Springs. So you got to get in now. I've just heard that's a beautiful place, Colorado Springs.

Yeah, Pike Place, Garden of the Gods. Henry's a great golf course there at the Broadmoor. You should go play. Say less. There we go. There's our attraction. I don't know if you play golf, actually, but you're invited. I pup, puff.

Okay, perfect. All right. Well, great pick. I mean, I know from personal experience, a lot. Really, like, high quality of life there, too. It's just, it's like a nice place. All right, moving on. Henry, what is your Western market region?

Well, you're going to get comments about this because it technically doesn't seem like it's in the West. It's in Texas. But Kathy Fedke would be proud of me because I picked Sherman Denison, Texas. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. Neither heard I until I did this research. But it is about an hour north of Dallas. So not too far from major metro, Dallas, Texas, but median home price.

What do you think it is? 225. 250. Nailed it. 251. Median home price in Sherman, Dennis, and Texas, nailed it. Median rent, 1572. What I like about this is the cost of housing relative to the distance from Dallas, Texas, the major metro. If you know anything about Dallas, it's just been growing like crazy, and it's been expanding. And so people who were early to the Dallas boom are now. like, get me out of here. All these California and New York folks are moving to Dallas, and they're moving toward the outskirts, right? And so you've got growth in these areas just outside of Dallas, but you also got affordability. They have 3,700 housing units under

construction. They are planning 8,000 more. So they are growing like crazy out there, which I like to see. Top Employers, Tyson Foods, which is a top employer in one of my markets. So we know they're doing well. But I really like this in terms of like your ability to buy a property brand new and keep it as a rental property. Man, you really do sound like Kathy Fecky. I know, right? Right? I mean, 251 median home price. You can probably go out here and get yourself a $200,000 new construction home, rent that thing out, and break even or cash flow a little bit. But you've got no maintenance or CAPEX expenditures for your first five to 10 years because it's brand new construction. There are tons of money being poured into that area. Preston Harbor, $6 billion $3,100

acre development going on there. Texas Instruments is opening a manufacturing plant that's under development right now out there. So you're going to have jobs. It's going to keep growing. Dallas is expanding. That's going to keep growing. So I just thought this was a pretty cool way to get into the game with maybe something new and not having to do value add. I like that. It's a really good strategy. I just Google it because I didn't, I obviously am terrible at geography and I needed to see you on a map where this was.

And I see why you like it, Henry, because it seems to be surrounded by casinos. Another place we're into visit. Telling my secrets. Going with Ashley's theory of why you want to pick these places. But there seemed to be several casinos in the area and maybe a good. reason for Henry to go visit his potential rentals frequently. Yes, you can follow my investing advice. Please do not follow my gambling advice. All right. Well, I like that. That is a really good strategy. And I think, you know, I guess outside of maybe Raleigh, Durham, a lot of the ones that we're picking

here today are sort of these like secondary and tertiary cities. Not that they're, you know, Ratchez is a big city. Colorado Springs is a big city. But Harrisburg actually is a way bigger population than I thought it, like 600,000 people. But, you know, Just like not the most obvious places and sort of going to some of these places that probably haven't seen all of their growth yet. You know, they're still growing and there's still this potential in these cities. So this could be a really good example of another one, even though I'd never heard of this place before.

Well, Dave, I think too, when you look at these secondary markets, you're getting more accurate data because most of them are smaller. We're like, when you go to these big cities and you look at the overall number, like it drastically changes from neighborhood to neighborhood. So like, especially as a new investor, it's actually easier to analyze these smaller markets because the information is more concise. I completely agree. I for a while thought about investing in San Antonio.

It's just so big and it's like so sprawling. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. As an out-of-state investor, it was just too hard and wound up choosing some smaller Midwest markets where I could just go and I can drive around them in an hour. You know, and like I can get a sense. of it in a different way. It really does make a big difference. Well, the next time we do this, then we have to do small hometown little markets. Okay. I like that. Yeah, like no bigger than 100,000 people or something like that. It could be fun. All right. Well, I'll give you my last

market, which is actually the smallest market that I picked, at least for this episode. But I picked Twin Falls, Idaho. Because Idaho is sort of how I was thinking about Pennsylvania and Alabama, which all states that are growing a lot. But I was looking just for, you know, a secondary tertiary market. Everyone knows Boise has been growing like crazy. But Twin Falls, it has a lot to like. It's affordable at $358,000.

The population is $100,000, so it's not tiny. Super low vacancy rate at 5%. It's not 0.8%, Henry. Sorry, but 5% vacancy rate is still really good. The median rent is over $2,200. So there's solid rent. growth here. And meanwhile, everything, sort of like what you were saying about Fort Wayne, Ashley, there's like no red flags. Like it's landlord friendly, insurance is pretty low,

property taxes are low, you know, incomes are growing, jobs are going there in droves, you know, like there's a lot of stuff to like here. And I just, again, think that similar to what you said, Ashley, like a lot of the spillover from Denver went to Colorado Springs. Boise's growing so much. I wonder if that impact will sort of happen to sort of sort of other markets in Idaho, which is why the appreciation hasn't been crazy there over the last couple of years. But I just wonder if it's one of those markets that we will see sustained growth over the next couple of years. And again, it's a place I don't think most people have been to or have heard of, which is what I was looking for today. And no major attraction.

They have waterfalls, I think. Okay. It sounds like they have two waterfalls. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think just what we need from everybody is if you could give us the best pizza place and the best wing place in each city we mentioned in the comments of these videos, that would be super helpful for research purposes. Well, this was a lot of fun. And I think, again, the idea here is maybe one of these nine markets appeals to you. Feel free to go check them out. But the idea here is to share with you some of the thought process, some of the fundamentals that you could be looking for in your own search for markets or, as Ashley pointed out, in your search for neighborhoods within a market,

these fundamentals don't just apply in a state level or a metro level, but also on a neighborhood by neighborhood level as well. Henry, thanks so much for being here. We always appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Ashley, thank you for coming over from the rookie show. We are always happy to have you here. Yes, thanks so much. And for all of you, if you do want to do this research yourself, you can download the spreadsheet that Ashley, Henry, and I have been using for free at biggerpockets.com slash resources. We'll put a link to that below, but it's a super helpful thing that sort of conglomerates all of this data into one place, makes it easy for you to start identifying metro areas you might be interested in investing in. Thank you all so much for listening and

watching this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you next time. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calicoe content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best

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