BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Where We’d Invest in Real Estate in 2026 (If We Could Buy Anywhere)

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

If we could invest in real estate anywhere in the country, where would we put our money? It’s a new year, and markets have already shifted, changing where the best buying opportunities are. So today, Ashley Kehr (from the Real Estate Rookie podcast), Henry, and Dave are back to share their updated 2026 best places to buy rental property list!  These markets span multiple states, but many have affordable home prices (some even below $200K!). But of these top markets, which one would we make the biggest bet on? These markets fly under the radar—we’re not talking about big cities like Miami, Austin, Chicago, or Denver. Many of these may be real estate markets you’ve only heard of once or twice, but once you hear the numbers, you might take a deeper look. If you want cash-flowing cities with landlord-friendly laws, we have them. If you want appreciation potential in affordable pockets of the country, we’ve got that, too. And, if you want to buy a rental in the birthplace of Mountain Dew, you’re in luck. Each of these cities is broken down into metrics that matter most to investors: average home price, rent price, rent-to-price ratio, population growth, job growth, and more. These aren’t just “cheap” markets with low home prices, but “sleeper” cities that only the savviest investors know about. In This Episode We Cover A cash-flowing college town with home prices that are below $200K The hurricane-safe southern city that is growing at lightning speed  An affordable “sleeper” market between two very unaffordable cities Small multifamilies and Mountain Dew: this market has plenty of both  You can buy a home for around $160,000 in this Midwest market with a (surprisingly) large population  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1227 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 early 2026. If your local market is too expensive or you're hunting for a new city with serious profit potential, deciding where to invest is arguably the single biggest choice to make as an investor. So today, we're breaking down exactly where smart real estate investors should be looking for new properties right now. We've crunched the numbers and in this episode we're going to unveil nine prime spots across the country where you should consider buying property today. What's going on, everyone?

I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets. On today's episode, we're giving you our list of best investing markets right now. And this is always one of our most popular episodes of the year. So we're back in January of 2026 with an updated edition. The timing right now really couldn't be better for refreshing our market recommendations because the real estate landscape shifting pretty fast right. now, and investing conditions are really diverging. They're wildly different in different regions of the country. So figuring out the right place to invest is more important than ever. So in today's show,

I'm going to highlight several markets that have caught my attention personally. But on the show, we also have host of the real estate rookie show, Ashley Care, joining us. And of course, we also have Henry here as well to share his picks. Ashley, Henry, good to see you both. Thank you so much for having me. Hey, glad to be here. Thank you. All right. Well, let's just get straight into it. We're each going to cover three different markets. I don't know why this is just the format that we made up last year, and it's been very successful. So three is the magic number. And Henry, I'm going to pick on you. You've got to go first. So name your first market. Which one caught your eye? I choose my markets based on that they have cash flow potential where you could potentially get a deal on the

market. So I'm looking for a solid rent to price ratio. And I'm looking for the median housing price to be in an air quotes affordable range. If I can get a solid rent to price ratio and an affordable home price, that tells me there's probably deal availability on the market should you choose to. Because I want most people to be able to have access to buy deals here. I don't want to just pick markets where you got to go off market. Awesome. All right. So tell us what you found. First market I picked is Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. That's the response I was expecting.

That's what you want. That's what you want. But I choose this market. A, it's a college town. B, it's got a high rent to price ratio. It's got relatively low vacancy for a smallish metropolitan area. And it's a landlord-friendly state. So the median home price.

He wants to take a guess at the median home price in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 175. Yeah. All right. Ashley probably got it. 175? $1. 92,000 median price, but the median rent is guess what?

2,200. Whoa, 1456. Okay. Yeah, there we go. Ashley's just envisioning like paradise. It's like a rental paradise. But I mean, with those numbers, with the median home price at 192, that tells you on the market, you can find homes listed for less than 192. But the median rents about 1,500.

That's cash flow on the market, right? you can probably find a deal listed that will make you some money as it sits. So that's a rent to price ratio of about 0.76 with a vacancy rate at 6%. That's really, really solid. So I like the fundamentals here. Yes, you can buy a deal on the market that probably makes sense. But if you're going to look off market, you can probably find some really great deals and get great year one cash flow, which is hard to do in a lot of markets.

You've got great jobs because the university and healthcare systems are the major employers in the area. Those are solid job options, as well as if you look at what's coming to the area, there's a company called Rouses Markets, which is expanding and entering the city through acquisitions. So we've got more jobs coming in the food space. FedEx is opening a logistics facility in the area. And you've got ongoing reinvestment projects in logistics. tied to those healthcare companies. So the city's investing in the downtown. Companies are investing in the market to make sure that they've got amenities for their

employees. And you've got new employers like FedEx and food companies like Razors coming into the city. So you've got growth. And another reason I chose this is they don't have a ton of new development going on. In other words, they've got about a 50% ratio in terms of new permits coming into the area. so it's not going to be an area that is overbuilt going into the future. So it's just a solid market. Like it's what you'd call like a base hit or a double market.

You've got great jobs. You've got growth in the economy. You've got low vacancy. And you can buy properties that cash flow. Yeah. I mean, it's just solid numbers. They're not the most amazing numbers for a market, but it's affordable and it has good numbers. All right.

I like this one, Henry. Very good. Ashley, what's your first one? Is this the one we're going to hate? It is because I think it was the last episode we recorded where we all screamed out the state we would never invest in. And you guys both said Florida. I know it. Okay.

All right. I already hate it. So this one is Ocala, Florida. It is located in between Tampa and Orlando. And it is home of the World Equestrian Center. Ooh, okay. And one reason I chose is because it's dead. center and hopefully we can get better insurance because it's not on the coast,

better weather. But the big part of picking this one was because of the affordability, the rent prices you can get, but also that there's so much new development going on there, 263 acres of sport complex is being put up. Since 2020, the city population has grew about 10%. it's considered one of the fastest growing metros in the U.S. right now for Marion County, which it's located in. The average home value is about 267,000. Okay. That's pretty good for four. Yeah. And then rent varies. I found two different sources. One said the average rent is around $1,300 per month. Another source on Zillow said $1,700 per month.

Oh, wow. Okay. That's pretty good. I actually think they're a great market. it's in Florida, and this happens to be one of them. Ashley, can you say a little bit more about it being in the center of the state? Because I've been reading a lot about that and why that's so valuable. Well, first of all, you're more protected from hurricanes coming through being in the center than you are on the coast. Insurance, you're going to get better insurance because you're not in a flood zone. And then also, you're located in between two major airports of Florida for easy access. And I did read something, too, where they're trying to get approval to actually build their own airport in there because of just the equestrian world, yeah, that's going on there.

All right. I like that. I actually, I was reading some article, I think it was a redfin. And they were talking about how there's been all these predictions about how there's going to be like climate migration because of, you know, hurricanes or whatever. And what they actually found is that most of the migration due to extreme weather is within the same state, that people aren't saying, like, oh, I'm going to leave Florida and I'm going to move to Minnesota. They're, what they're doing is moving from Cape Coral or Tampa to Ocala. How do you say? I think Ocala. We'll find out in the comment. Orlando. Yeah, yeah, everywhere in the comments will tell me. But or Orlando. So I do think that is a really interesting trend to be able to capitalize. And obviously,

even though Florida is a little bit volatile for my liking, obviously there's a lot of good economic population demographic things going on in Florida. They've been talking about getting rid of property tax. I'm skeptical that that's actually going to happen. But if that actually does happen, that would be pretty crazy. It would probably help the housing market recover there. So I don't truly hate this. I just pretend hate it for the show. They do have a good, like it's a 3.3 ratio for every. one person that leaves Ocala 3.3 people come into it. Wow, that's pretty crazy.

Growth is nuts. And then also 50% of the people rent there too. All right, you might be winning so far, Ashley. That's a lot of good stuff right there. I mean, in between two major metros is awesome. Speaking of two major metros, my first one is also between two major metros and is a pretty solid market in itself. I set out today to try and find some

contrarian ones. Like I wanted to find some in the northeast because people say you can't find cash flow there. I've tried to find some in the West and just completely failed. I couldn't find anything good. But I did find one in the Northeast. It is Hartford, Connecticut. And as Henry said, you know, being between two major metros is great. Hartford, Connecticut is like kind of sandwiched right between New York City and Boston, two of the biggest economic engines in the entire country. and it is way, way, way more affordable. So if you let, you know, New York and Boston, price is easily a million dollars

to buy something in one of those cities. But if you look at Hartford, Connecticut, the median sale price, 320,000. So for the Northeast, that is pretty good. And you're still, you're getting rent at about 2,000. So you might be able to get some, like, right off the back cash flow. I'm guessing you're probably going to have to do some value out,

which is totally fine. I mean, for me, at that price point, you hopefully have a little bit of money to be able to invest in that. And it has a really good solid economy. It's one of the insurance capitals of the entire country. A lot of businesses that have satellite offices from New York or Boston do it there. A lot of people who potentially have hybrid work situations and don't want to live only have to go once or two days a week into Boston and New York can live in Connecticut. That's what Connecticut is booming right now. And so it's great. It's a pretty recession-proof economy.

The Northeast typically is a pretty stable economy because there's so many big companies there. And it's affordable. So I really like it. It has some of the highest appreciation rates in the country right now. And it's just totally underbuilt like a lot of the Northeast. There's just not a lot of development going on. And so you probably have some legs behind you on that. So I really like everything that I'm seeing in Hartford, Connecticut right now. I mean, I'm going to use my official slash unofficial powers in this episode to go ahead and deem you the round one winner because Connecticut is such a sleeper market. Right. You are so many New Yorkers live in Connecticut and commute. What I like about Connecticut is the density of small multifamily.

Like I just love small multifamily in general. And like that's a, you know, those 20 units and under, like there's a ton of them, tons of them. And you can get great deals on them. Rents are amazing. Like, it's just a sleeper market in turn. If you like small multifamily, man, you can do great out there. And I just really like it. How are the tenant landlord laws in Connecticut? It is not as landlord friendly as the South, but is not as tenant friendly as New York by any stretch. So I'd say it's somewhere in the middle in terms of that.

Which I'm okay with. I'm okay with middle. If I can make it work in New York, Connecticut. Right. For sure. Right. Yeah. Like, you're only going up, fashion.

from where you are. All right, well, let's take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll do round two with our best markets to invest in 2026. Running your real estate business doesn't have to feel like juggling five different tools. With ReSimpley, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly, for free, and reach out with calls or texts all from one streamlined platform. And 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 reSimply.com slash bigger pockets. That's RASIMPLI.com slash bigger pockets. What if I told you you could forget everything you know about investment property loans? Because host financial is rewriting the rulebook, tossing out those pesky DTI restrictions. They focus on your property's income potential. No tax returns or personal income statements needed. Simple, efficient, and tailored for investors like you.

Imagine a lender that sees the gold mine in your property, not just the numbers on your paycheck. That's the host financial difference. And they're approved in 47 different states, so your next big deal could be just around the corner. Ready to unlock your property's true potential? Visit hostfinancial.com. Don't let old school lending hold you back another day. That's hostfinancial.com. 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 bucks 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

10% off your first report. Don't overpay the IRS. Head to costsegregation.com before April 15th. 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. Baselaine 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 reports 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. Baselane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. 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 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 less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of, 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. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. We're going through our favorite markets to invest in 2026. Henry, you went first last time,

so I'm going to go back to picking on Ashley. Ashley, what's your round two pick? So this one, I went for a short-term rental market, and I ended up picking Fredericksburg Texas. So the reason I chose this one is because it's close to Austin in San Antonio and it just has a lot going on, a lot of festivals, wineries, culinary tourism. Oh, it's got a cool downtown. I'm looking at it right now. It is a little bit more expensive than the usual markets I pick. So the median home value is 514,000. Oh, okay. The long term rent isn't that great, but for short term, rent. The average nightly rate was $254 per night, 48% occupancy, and the annual revenue per listing averaged around like $45,000 to $50,000 a year. Wow. So a big part of this one was really just like the draw to it. As an investor, I don't want to invest in a short-term rental in a big city where there's a lot of major hotels, things like this. In Fredericksburg, there's just starting to be

development of bigger hotels, like the Waldorf Astoria is starting to develop a hotel there. So kind of like doing the Starbucks model of following where they're going. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's a really good idea. It looks very cool. I'm just looking at some pictures right now. It just looks like a fun place to go. So is this like the kind of town, though, where you could rent this out and make money

long term if you needed to, or you sort of going all in on short-term rentals here? Yeah, long-term rentals. you're only seeing like $1,200 a month. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So you've got to be an experienced operator in this because this is just, this sounds risky to me.

I mean, I'm not going to lie. This would be a, for short-term rental, this would work. Long-term rental, no. So you're, you're, this is a play where you're really going to make a high-quality short-term rental experience. You're kind of like making a destination property. Yes. Yes.

All right. Well, I don't know. Ashley, this one's a little risky for me, to be honest. But I'm not a short-term rental expert, so I might not know. But I would go visit Fredericksburg. It looks pretty fun. We'll have to ask Garrett on bigger stays for his opinion. Yeah, we'll have to ask Gary about this one.

Because he's from Texas, too. Oh, he is. Yeah, we'll have to ask them about it. All right, I'll go second on this one. And mine, now I'm going down to the southeast with both of you as well. I'm going to Knoxville, Tennessee. I really do. I like this market a lot.

So we're seeing prices about 300 grand, which is pretty good, pretty affordable compared to everywhere else. Rents pretty solid at about $1,800. So, I mean, you're not getting amazing cash flow right away, but you probably still can. But there's just so much to like about the economy. And I actually did a little bit of extra research here because I just wanted to give people an example. When you just look up the rent-to-price ratio of an average city, like this one comes in at 0.6. Not terrible. There's like value you can make that work. Probably not going to work for everything. But I specifically started digging into it because I was curious per Henry's comment about like, are there small multis? That's what I like to buy in Knoxville because I don't even know what kind of housing stock there is. And there are. And when you actually look at the rent to price ratio for small multifamilies, it goes up to 0.75, which doesn't sound like a huge difference, but that's a big difference. That's the difference between probably getting year one cash flow and not getting year one cash.

So I really like to see that. It has a really strong population growth at 1.1%. You have the University of Tennessee as their largest employer. Other largest employer, top five, Dollywood, which I've never been to, but I want to go to. So that was exciting. Unemployment rate at 3.1%. Rent is still good. And fun fact, it's the birthplace of Mountain Dew, which I also enjoy.

So there you go. What I like about this market is you can do a little bit of everything. I think you can find deals at work if you're willing to put in the work in a market like this to college town, which means there's going to be growth and jobs. It is not far from Asheville, North Carolina, which is a good real estate market in itself. It's not far from Pigeon Forge, which is a great short-term rental market if you wanted to get into short-term rentals. I just think it's got a variety of entry points, which is solid. It's just a great solid market. I think it has a lot of upside, too.

Like, it's solid today. and might become a growth market in the future. And so to me, that's like kind of the perfect experience, like very low risk, high upside, affordable entry point unlike in Knoxville. Henry, you got to go. What's your second round pick? Look, man, I'm telling you, I like old boring real estate. So I didn't pick exciting markets.

I just pick markets with solid numbers. Second pick, Morgan Town, West Virginia. I just saw West Virginia on a list of like top 10 states of where people are leaving. Yeah, it's a sad situation. Their economy is really rough. Here's why I picked it. Median home price, 237,000. Median rent, about 1552. So that's a 0.65% rent to price ratio. It's got 6% vacancy, unemployment's at 4.4%, but one year job growth around 2%. Five year job growth, around 2%. Okay. So growth in jobs, small growth. And I know you said people are leaving, but I believe there's like a one or two percent growth in population. But I think this is because it is a college town,

right? It's the University of West Virginia, which is a big 12 school. This is a big school, big basketball school, right? So lots of people end up coming to this metropolitan area. Now, do they stay here after they leave college? That's a different thing. I want to just say, like, I think people look at state level population a little too much. Like, I invest in Michigan. It's a state that has very bad population numbers. But they're very good population numbers in certain cities. And I don't really care what's going on in the state as a whole because a lot of people might be just moving from within the state to the one or two cities that have good job growth and good economic prospects. And so I just think population is really much more important on a local level.

A lot of the numbers are. Yeah, I mean, yeah. That's true. Pretty much everyone. But look at the employers. That's why I like it. So the University of West Virginia, about 7,600 employees. That's big. West Virginia Medical, about 7,000 people employed there. And then Monday Health, which is about 3,000 people. So heavily invested in health care, but typically a lot of college towns who have medical schools, that's what they have in that area. And then Kroger is another big employer in the food space there. So solid jobs, solid schools. solid health care, downtown revitalization projects going on. I always like to look at like, are people, like, is the city itself spending money making the place better? Because if the city's not doing that, then it's probably not a place where people want to live. But the city itself is

spending money. They're developing a rail transit system to connect people outside of downtown to the downtown area. And then the University of West Virginia is putting a lot of money into expanding its facilities in that area. So the businesses that are there are spending money and staying there and the city is spending money trying to make the area better. It's a big school, big 12 school. And you've got solid numbers at $237,000 with $1,500 of rent. So you can find deals maybe on the market that makes sense. But if you're willing to put in a little work, you can probably find really great deal. So just a boring fundamental market is West Virginia of the sexiest state in the world? No, but we're not looking to invest in sexy places. We're

looking to invest in places and make money. I don't know much about West Virginia personally, but I think it goes along with, you know, some of my beliefs about the Midwest that affordability is going to drive performance for a lot of places. You know, you see some negative things about the West Virginia economy, so that would be my major thing. But if job growth is happening in Morgantown in particular, that would alleviate. Job growth and population growth. Yeah, I mean, That's true. If you have both of those things, then maybe Morgantown is one of the areas in West Virginia. That is grown. So I like it. It's very affordable. Good place to get into the market. Probably going to get good renters. So I like it. All right. Let's take a quick break. But when we come back, we will do around three of our best places to invest in 2026 discussion. 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 $100 bonus.

Baselane is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. 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 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. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to

keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on Bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like same-day ACH, international wires, card or check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill.

bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. All right, rental property investors, listen up. Our friends at Dominion Financial already have some of the best DSCR rates in the industry. Now they're the fastest, too. They just launched 10-day DSCR closing. That's right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with the DSCR price beat guarantee. That means faster closing, the best terms, zero guesswork, that's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Ashley Care

and Henry Washington talking about our favorite places to invest in 2026. And I am going with a place that I have actually long thought about investing. And I've been looking at deals here for like four or five years and have never pulled the trigger. It is Kansas City, Missouri. Oh, man. I like Kansas City a lot because it is like if you look at the geographic center of the country, it's like plop in the middle. And it's like the major intersection of highways and railroads, which makes it one of the logistics capitals of the country just for infrastructure and logistics, which is a really recession-proof thing. And I really just like those kinds of like solid blue-collar kind of jobs that get a lot of investment from the government, that get a lot

of investment from the states. You get a lot of colleges there. There's just all sorts of stuff going on in Kansas City, but it's still super cheap. The median home price is 280. Rents around 1,500. So cash flow is possible. But the things that I really like about it is just the straight-up affordability. The home price to income ratio is 2.3, which is really low. The country as a is about 4.4. So just you can buy a lot of house with your income there. And I think that bodes well for housing demand. It's also one of the few cities in the country still that is not rent burdened. If you haven't heard that term economists budgeting personal finance experts say that if you spend more than 30% of your income on rent, you are rent burdened. And like most

cities in the country, like the average person is rent burdened, not in Kansas City, which makes me feel like I'm going to be able to, I would be able to find tenants who can pay. You know, I'm not going to have problems collecting rent. And it means that there is potential for rent to grow in the future. Both are good things. There are a lot of investments going in the area. Panasonic just put in a battery plant. Garmin is expanding in the area. And perhaps more important than everything, Kansas City has more barbecue restaurants per capital than any other city in the world. This is true. And I'm going to get a lot of hate for this. I like Kansas City barbecue. I'm a big fan of Kansas City style barbecue and I want to go eat there. And Henry, you and I talk about this all

the time. I like to invest places I like to go eat. And so Kansas City is very high on that list. Kansas City barbecue is delicious. Kansas City is kind of a conundrum. It's interesting because a lot of the development on the Kansas side is fairly new. Like that's where they have a, I think they have a NASCAR track that's on the Kansas side. I believe that MLS team, the soccer team has a big stadium that's on the Kansas side. And like lots of new stores and infrastructure. So lots of restaurants, outlet malls, the casino, I believe is on the Kansas side. So investor heavy market.

So lots of competition. Yeah, that's true. I think that's, that is a good point. But again, lots of small multifamily. It's a market where you can get lots of small, but also lots of older buildings, older homes. So you got to deal with the. problems that come with those things. But I like the market. Yeah. Do you guys have a preference as far as which side of the city you'd rather invest in? Most people invest in the Missouri side, because that's

where most of the housing is. There's not a ton of housing on the Kansas side. Okay. All right. So that's my first one. Henry, what's your round three pick? Round three. My round three pick is one that I didn't really know going into this, but it is Peoria, Illinois. Oh, yeah. This is like on the top of like every list right now. So I picked Peoria, Illinois because again, the pricing and fundamentals are ridiculous. What do you think the median house price is in Peoria, Illinois? 220. 180. 167. Whoa. Wow. Okay. Yeah. 167 with a median rent of about 1260. So just under 1,300 for median rent. So again, 0.75 rent to price ratio. Vacancies high, though, 12% vacancy. So That means people have options.

So you got to make sure your rentals on par. One year job growth, 1%, five year job growth about 2%. But the reason I added this to my list was I wanted something that had a little bit bigger of a metropolitan area compared to my other two. Population of about 400,000. So 398,000. The city of Peoria itself is 110,000. But the metropolitan area puts you at about 400,000, which for that price point is pretty unusual. to be able to have a because that lets you know that there's people people are living there

population is you know average population growth average job growth which is solid yeah the top employers in the area again health care OSF health care 14,000 regional employees like it's healthcare's massive there then Caterpillar the heavy equipment brand 12,000 employees oh okay that's a that's big so you've got jobs in heavy machinery you've got jobs in health care. You've got them spending money again on revitalizing the downtown area. I mean, Illinois, as we showed on the Cashflow Roadshow, is just a great market where you can buy cash flow. And this is no exception to that. If you don't want to be in the hustle and bustle of Chicago, then you can still find great numbers in a place where you've still got a decent size metropolitan area.

You've got lots of small multifamily options there. I mean, at those numbers, you can absolutely buy something on the market that makes sense. And so if a big city like Chicago scares you, even though it cash flows, then you can go out to a less industrial city. And you can still find great numbers. So there's markets all over the country in these little pockets where if you look at the fundamentals, the fundamentals make sense. Are they the sexiest places in the world? No, they're not the sexiest places in the world. but some of these numbers are pretty sexy.

Honestly, like, there's so many times we have people come on the show. And they're operating in their hometown. And maybe if you live in a big city or you've never been to these towns, they seem kind of random. But, like, there's absolutely great fundamentals. And they're easy to get to know. And there's less competition, to Henry's point earlier. There's a lot to really like. I hear these people just investing in their hometown cities of 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, people

doing great, doing fantastic. Sometimes I'm just jealous. I'm like, man, that's just like a manageable market. with low competition, like you could probably do really, really well there. So I like these kind of markets, especially if you just commit to it and just like, I'm going to learn this market like the back of my hand. You're probably going to do very well. Yeah, I mean, that's what you have to do.

Right. Like I see all the comments on posts. It's like, oh, you could buy, you could buy cheap houses, but nobody wants to live there. Look, guys, you're not going to find a major metro with super cheap houses that nobody's ever heard of that you're going to be able to buy a house. house and make a ton of cash for. Like, you've got to look at some of these ancillary markets that are closer to some of these big cities, which you've got some examples of in this show. Like, this is what you want to do. Yes, there are sub-200,000 homes in America. And there are markets where those

homes exist and you can make money. So what we're trying to do is show you where you can go and find some of these amazing fundamentals. Like I said, they're not going to be the sexiest places in the world, but we don't need the place to be sexy. We just need the cash flow to be sexy. All right. Well, I like it. It's another good choice. Ashley, round us off.

What's your third round pick? My last one is Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I almost did this one. It's a good market. This metro population, 684,000, the median home value, 250K to 280. The typical rent for a single-family home, is around 1,600 per month. The vacancy rate is 9%, 2% employment growth. This stood out to me here in the last five years, there's been $2.6 billion in investment in the area, making 6,600 new jobs.

And right now in the pipeline, there's 11 billion in planned development that would lead to 18,000 potential jobs. So the major kind of industries, the employers here are, there's a Wake Forest has a big healthcare system, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. Of course, the university, there's a 330 acre innovation quarter. And then a lot of corporate manufacturing. The Haynes brand is there. And then some government services in there too. I really like Winston-Salem. I almost pick this city as well. I I just, I like everything going on in North Carolina, to be honest. I just think it's a really solid state. There's so much to like about the economy, population growth, just everything going on there.

Low property taxes. Land-friendly. Low corporate taxes, so a lot of businesses are moving there. Like, there's just a lot to like in North Carolina. And Winston-Stalham is still relatively affordable compared to like Raleigh-Durlum, which has exploded over the last couple of years. Charlotte's gotten, it's still relatively expensive for how big, of an economy it is. But Winston-Salem, Greensboro, which is close, you know, like they're both

a little bit more affordable. So I'm all in on this place. I love this one, actually. Well, that's what I was going to say is, is you've got that sister city of Greensboro, which is about a similar size to Winston Salem and only about 30 minutes away, which in the grand scheme of driving is like the same city. So you really get like a two-for-one with this market. All right. Well, very good. I'm not going to argue with this. I'm going to, I don't know. Are we picking winners? Ashley, you win this round. I'm just going to keep doing the same strategy piggyback off of another great one. We did another time. I like it.

Well, I don't think we awarded anyone a winner for the second one. So Henry, we'll award you that winner. So we each win one and we all feel good about ourselves. And we'll come back to do this again later this year when we do it because I'm joking. But I do, I really think this is valuable because, one, these are good markets. If you want to consider for yourself, if you're investing out of state or you're just trying to learn how to research markets, hopefully you see the thought process here. You know, there's a lot of things that Ashley, Henry and I are talking about, whether it's economic growth, population growth. But ultimately, it really comes down to your own strategy.

Like Ashley picked a place in Florida that I wouldn't choose, but is great for certain people. You know, like Henry picked Morgantstown, West Virginia. I probably wouldn't invest there. It probably works really well for certain people. whereas I'm sure Ashley and Henry probably wouldn't invest in some of the markets that I picked. And so the key thing here is to learn the variables and the data that you should be thinking about because then going out to get it is pretty easy. You can look this stuff up on Zillow or Redfin or chat GPT. It's just learning the process of thinking about which markets to invest in.

That's why we do these episodes, not because we want you to pick one of these nine markets in particular, but just so you can see how to think through these questions. We're not trying to tell you where to invest, but Dave, come on. People want to know if we had to pick one of these nine. Oh, that's a fun one. What's the one we would pick? What's the grand winner that we would choose to invest in? I'd hands down know which one I would choose.

All right, go. I'd choose Connecticut. I think I'm going with Illinois. Henry's going with Hartford. Ashley's going with Illinois. It's funny, we're all picking other people. Actually, I think I'd go with Knoxville, Tennessee, I think, is the one I would pick. Why Knoxville for you?

I think I said it earlier. I just like that it's solid right now, but I think it has long-term upside. There's a lot of markets in Tennessee that have gotten like too expensive and overgrown. And I think Knoxville has some potential to run still. I like that it's a state with no income tax. I like that there's a big university there. So I think there's just a lot to like there. I like Connecticut for the density that's always going to be growth.

People are always going to live in this area because of the pricing of New York City, because of the pricing of Boston. And because those markets are so amazing, there's always going to be jobs in those markets. So a market like this is always going to see people living there. They're always going to have jobs. And you can get great small multifamilies. So I would be looking for that four to 10 unit property in this market that doesn't need

a ton of work that can make some cash flow now, but be a cash flow monster in the future. Well, let us know in the comments which of the nine that you would pick or if you think that there's something way better and we miss the obvious one, let us know in the comments as well. And we will be back with another one of these episodes in a couple of months because we love doing this one. It's a lot of fun, even though it takes a lot of work and research for each of us. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. Ashley, thank you for letting us borrow you from the Real Estate Rookie Show.

We appreciate you being here. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I always love a good homework assignment. And thank you, Henry, for joining us as well. Thank you, sir. And that's what we got for you today on 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 Calicoke 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 judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know just in case.

Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.