Scott Trench’s $1,000,000 Bet on Real Estate (Update)

Last year, Scott Trench, former BiggerPockets CEO, made a big bet on real estate—selling $1,000,000 in stocks to buy rentals instead. A year later, he’s on the show, and we’ve got one crucial question to ask him. Was it worth it? The man behind the mustache (yes, he’s still got it!) is joining us today to give a life update and share how his huge financial decision played out. But a lot has changed in the past year, markets aside. Scott stepped down as BiggerPockets CEO and is now fully dedicated to BiggerPockets Money, helping as many people as possible find their own version of financial freedom. We’ll go over his $1,000,000 stock sell-off, how his investments have been performing since then, his 2026 outlook, and why he believes many investors will be proven wrong about the housing market and real estate investments. Scott believes the next three years will be an “absorption” phase for real estate, but what does that mean for your property values, rent prices, and cash flow? And don’t worry, Scott also shares what he’s been doing since stepping away from 100-hour weeks as BiggerPockets CEO. In This Episode We Cover Was selling worth it? The results of Scott’s $1,000,000 bet on rentals Scott’s growing fear about the stock market and AI-led price rallies Scott’s investment portfolio in 2026 and why he still has so much of his net worth in the stock market The “absorption” phase begins, and Scott’s 2026 rent price growth prediction Stocks vs. real estate: Are either truly safe in an economy like this? And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1229 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  Should you invest in real estate or pour your money into the stock market? It's a question you're probably asking yourself right now as you create your financial plans for the year and work on building wealth. So today we're digging into it. Should you put a down payment on that local property or buy more into the S and P 500?

• 0:23Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today's episode is a follow up to one of our most popular shows from a year ago. We've got former BiggerPockets CEO Scott Trench. A year ago on this show, he proclaimed himself a big bear on the stock market and he announced he was selling $1 million from his stock portfolio to reposition that capital into real estate in Denver. Now, a year later, S and P is up. It's up 15% from that conversation and Scott is back and I'll get an update on his life since stepping away as CEO of BiggerPockets, his recent work hosting the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, and then I'll ask him if he has any regrets about that big financial

• 1:07Dave Meyer?

  decision he made last year. But more importantly, I'm also going to get his take on the markets, stock and real estate and more for the rest of 2026. I want to find out, is Scott doubling down on real estate and continuing to sell off equities? Or maybe he's changed his outlook and he's back to stockpiling ETFs for the next 12 months. And I'm curious what he recommends for other investors striving towards the same level of financial freedom that he's achieved himself. So let's find out. Scott Trench, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. It's so good to see you. Thanks for being here.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Good to see you as well, Dave.

• 1:41Dave Meyer?

  It is, it's been a while and I'm sure the audience is eager to hear. For those of you who don't know, Scott graduated successfully financially free now and stepped away as BiggerPockets CEO a couple of months ago. So what, tell us what you've been up to.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been doing a lot of, a lot of lifting weights, a lot of hiking. I got a ski pass for the first time and. Since 2017.

• 2:06Dave Meyer?

  Dude, that is way too long, living in Colorado.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but this year the goal is to go 10 times. So I've got a ski trip planned for two or three weeks from now. And yeah, I've just been hanging out, enjoying, enjoying life and been doing the BiggerPockets Money Podcast and having a blast doing that. It's been really fun.

• 2:24Dave Meyer?

  Nice. What, what's been going on over at Money? What are you guys focusing on these days?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, we're basically, the goal is to build a DIY financial planning toolkit. So I think it's very frustrating that you can't even find like a basic spreadsheet to put in your financial position if you are somewhat sophisticated investor with some kind of complexity. So just like creating, here's a basic personal financial statement. Here's a goal setting template. Here's some calculators that can help you make very basic decisions around there.

• 2:53Dave Meyer?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  And eventually what I'd like to do is I'd like to put out about 25 different financial plans for fake people that others might find familiar.

• 3:03Dave Meyer?

  Oh.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm a real estate investor with a complex portfolio. I'm a broke at 50, trying to catch up to retirement and just kind of like, oh, you should do something different in this situation than over here and provide those kind of templates so people can make their own plans and maybe bring them to an advisor.

• 3:19Dave Meyer?

  I'd love to see them. I absolutely understand this pain point. It is very difficult to find these things. I am pretty good at this stuff and I've struggled even to make my own like financial planning stuff in Excel because it really, it's especially when you're in real estate, it is difficult to build that into, you know, a traditional retirement plan, figure out where you want to allocate resources. So please send them my way once they are done and we'll share them with the audience, of course. But we are here today because I want to understand, I always enjoy sort of just talking to you and about the market and what you're doing and strategy. I think that's something you're always been great at and it's fun to talk to you about. So we're going to get to that. We're

• 4:00Dave Meyer?

  going to hear about Scott's 2026 predictions approach to, to investing, but we got to hold you accountable to your 2025 goals because you were here a year ago doing this. So let's go through your 2025 predictions.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Well, just to kind of start the conversation here, one of the reasons I've gotten into vibe coding is because I'm awful at the prediction.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  So this was a disaster, right? From a prediction standpoint, right? So last year I put together a deck call, I get irrational exuberance 3.0. And I'm like, the stock market, you know, the S and P 500 in particular, is at all time highs or close to all time highs from a Cape or Schiller PE ratio. That's crazy. I don't understand that. I'm not taking a part in that. You know, I was like, gold is surged recently. I don't understand Bitcoin. I'm not taking a part of that. Bonds are too low. Where do you go for all this stuff? And so my move at that time was to sell portions of my stock portfolio and move it into paid off real estate. Because I'm like, I can get a six, seven percent cap rate deal here in Denver, all cash, right now,

• 5:04Speaker 01

  and go with that. And, and so that's what I did. I ended up selling a million dollars of S and P 500 and putting that into a quadplex. I actually sold a little bit more than that and I bought another duplex a few months later. And so that quadplex, I underwrote to a six and a half percent cap rate and I just did my taxes and annualized. It was like almost exactly that, like 6.42% with property management. So I got what I was looking for with that, with that quadplex. The duplex has some work, so I'm finishing up stabilizing that. There's a tenant in place and so I began to work three or four months post-close. So we'll have to come back next year to see what that cap rate ends up being, but it should be higher. Yeah, that was what I did with, with,

• 5:49Speaker 01

  with those funds. And so I got my cap rate and, you know, depending on how, what you want to assume for appreciation on an illiquid asset, some appreciation there. And then I missed out on like the 12% growth from February when I sold to the end of the year. Yeah. Or recorded this in the early January of the S and P 500, plus whatever yield came from it. So that was like a hundred thousand dollar loss on those, on those moves compared to what I would have gotten.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  If I just stayed in the S and P 500.

• 6:19Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Over the course of the year. Now, who knows what the S and P 500 will do this year. Maybe it goes up even more and that move looks even worse. Maybe it immediately crashes.

• 6:28Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  You know, and or, or, or doesn't go anywhere for a while and that that ends up. So, you know, time will tell how that ends up looking. But from year one perspective, doesn't look so good on that front.

• 6:38Dave Meyer?

  Well, I love the honesty, but it's like, you know, you, you're still up. You're just perhaps up on paper as of today, less than it would be. We'll see. No one knows.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:48Dave Meyer?

  But I'm curious, just like from a philosophical perspective, is that something you regret or beat yourself up? Or like, how do you think about that kind of decision?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  No, the first property, every single month, every single month, I'm able to transfer five and a half, 6,000 bucks. You know, some, some months is a little less when, when I have like property taxes or insurance.

• 7:09Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's a reserve in there for CapEx, you know, but, but I'm able to just transfer that and I spend it.

• 7:14Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Pays for my life, right? Second one, you know, I, I get like for the first three or four months it did. And I, I knew I had this, this, this project in there that was, that was all factored into my, my underwriting. So all, once I get that stabilized, that should do the same, a little bit lower, like, uh, like four and a half to 5,000 on that. And that just feels great between those two properties alone, not to mention the rest of my rental portfolio and that still, you know, half of my net worth that is in the stock market in investments that are, that are either the S and P 500 directly or in other, other stock market ownership.

• 7:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I, I, I think that's the right way to, to look at it because it's obviously, it can be easy and somewhat tempting to say, oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. But I, I made a similar decision. I did not sell nearly as much stock, but I sold some stock at the beginning of last year too. Just because I felt like there was risk and I don't necessarily think the stock market was going to crash. But I think the probability of the crash is going up and I'd rather just take risk off the board. And the way I think about that is like, I'm willing to give up some potential gains to take risk off the board. And sometimes that works out where, yeah, you, you don't realize as many gains as you would have in the stock market. But like a year ago, who knew which way the, the wind was going to blow?

• 8:29Dave Meyer?

  And I think it's a totally rational decision to try and hedge your risk in real estate. I think just more of a sure thing, at least in the last year or so, and I would argue going into this year as well.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I felt and feel way better about it in terms of like, I can, I'm spending that money, right? Like, that's the difference. If I was saying, oh, I'm gonna wait 30 years and just accumulate, then I, you know, then maybe that's different. But I'm, I'm actually spending the cash flows generated by this rental property to fund my lifestyle. That's a major improvement for me in this particular situation, although it clearly has cost me somewhere approaching six figures-ish.

• 9:06Dave Meyer?

  But again, we'll see. I guess that's a good transition to what we're looking forward to in 2026. How are you feeling about the stock market this year?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  One of the things that this year, I'm gonna, with my humble pie, and I'm not gonna be using words like irrational exuberance, 0.0 or anything like that. And I'm not even gonna pretend or like have any input at all on any asset class outside of real estate. I feel like my real estate, my real estate takes over the years have been generally fairly close. I've never been like wildly like crazy in the wrong direction on those in my time at ViggerPockets.

• 9:42Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  So I feel comfortable talking about that. Like, I have no idea what the hell's gonna happen with Bitcoin. I don't know. I don't understand gold and all this stuff, de-dollarization, like if that's gonna continue or just revert wildly. Like, I, I think I could cut up a coin and, and come up with something on those items there. You know, the S and P 500, the same stuff I was talking about last year continues to scare me. Um, you know, and there, it's like, hey, it's trading, it's like a 40 times Cape ratio. Some people don't like Cape. It's at the highest ever price to sales ratio in history. It's trading at a highly elevated price to forward earnings in there, very high trailing earnings. One thing that's, I've been noodling on is AI spend, AI

• 10:28Speaker 01

  capex alone is like 400, 430 billion is where I think they're gonna, it's just gonna shake out in 2025. And it's gonna be 600 billion next year. And what's interesting about that is, I'm sure you noticed this, but I, I use AI all the time now, like.

• 10:41Dave Meyer?

  Of course, yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  And whatever I vibe, I'm switching between these vibe coding apps all the time. It's free or very low cost each time I use it. And every three months, the model I'm using is made obsolete by the, the next one developed by some competitor.

• 10:55Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, what, what's interesting about that is, as I believe that the, the bulk of that is capitalized by these companies. So it's not showing up in your price to earnings report. When you look at global S and P 500 price to earnings for a trailing basis, but it's spend, it's not capital expenditure. It's spend because of how rapidly it becomes obsolete in my view. So I think that's like even like another thing on there that that I'm like, okay, I'm interested in. But at the same time, it truly is making things more productive. It's truly making life easier and faster and making everything easier for me as an individual. So surely that's going to show up on the scoreboard somewhere in profits or earnings

• 11:37Speaker 01

  or revenue or individual income somewhere in the in the world that's going to show up on the scoreboard, making the world a better place or people more productive at least.

• 11:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  But I it's just like, is that all going to translate to corporate profits for these, you know, the mag mag seven or the fangs? I don't know how that that'll that'll play out. So so I only have questions this year and I'm like, I'm sitting very comfortable with my diversified, safe, boring portfolio, you know, large cash position of like two, two and a half years of spending in my paid off rentals. And I'll probably miss out on something, but I just have no idea where it's going to be.

• 12:12Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Where that next piece is going to come from. And I think that there's still plenty of risk on the table. So that's my take this year. And next year, you can, we can count the the next, you know, 200,000 that I miss out on on this particular move.

• 12:25Dave Meyer?

  I'm sort of in a similar headspace as you. That's like, I'm at a point in my career, luckily, where I don't need to maximize profits. And like, part of me just wants to just kind of like protect what I got and goes, keep going, slow and steady. So I'd love to actually talk to you more about portfolio allocation, Scott. This is a super important and tricky question for our audience, but we got to take a quick break. We'll get to that right after this. Running your real estate business doesn't have to feel like juggling five different tools. With ReSimpli, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip chase them instantly for free, and reach out with calls or texts all from one streamlined platform. But the real magic is AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects,

• 13:10Dave Meyer?

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• 13:31Dave Meyer?

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• 14:03Henry Washington?

  Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of. Normally, if you want to write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year. No furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year.

• 14:45Henry Washington?

  And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly minimum to meet. That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentive, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777.

• 15:27Dave Meyer?

  I just booked a backpacking trip through Olympic National Park. Two nights out on the trail, no cell service, nothing to do but eat trail mix and stare at mountains I'll never get tired of. That's the whole appeal. But while I'm off grid, my place doesn't need to sit empty. I can list my space on Airbnb and make a little extra income while I'm away. And with Airbnb's co-host network, I could partner with a vetted local co-host to help take care of the details, from guest communications to onsite support, so I can fully unplug and enjoy my time out in the backcountry. If you've got upcoming travel plans, you can find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.

• 16:09Speaker 03

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• 16:42Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Scott Trench, talking about his takes on 2026. We talked a little bit about 2025. Scott, you sort of hit on, you know, we've sort of been circling around this idea of like portfolio allocation, how much money you put where. And this is a tough question for people. You alluded to this when you're talking about sort of financial planning. How do you think about allocating capital? And maybe you're willing to share some of how your portfolio is allocated, at least in percentage points right now.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, my portfolio is very straightforward. About 40, 45% is in real estate equity.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Here in Denver, Colorado, in multifamily properties that I own and I have a property manager, but could operate here. And that's, that's what I know. Kind of like digging my heels in for a slog on that front for a little bit, but it's, you know, with the, with the low leverage, I'm generating pretty good cash flow from that. Almost entirely alone funds my lifestyle. And then the other 55% of my wealth is spread across various retirement accounts, free tax retirement accounts, like my 401ks or equivalents, post-tax, like the Roth, my HSAs, my after-tax brokerage accounts. And that position has a, includes a two and

• 18:01Speaker 01

  a half year cash reserve and then is allocated into fairly aggressive stock investments. Generally speaking, my new investments, my new, the new cash that I put into it, when I do have cash inflows, is tend to go into value stocks right now. Particularly, like I like these low, relatively low fee actively managed value funds from Avantis, both domestic, international and emerging market.

• 18:28Dave Meyer?

  Why such a big cash position?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Several reasons. One is I'm a real estate investor. Two is I'm no longer the CEO of a big company, so I don't have that, this large income coming in. And then third, I wrote a book called Set for Life, and I think it would be particularly embarrassing to go bankrupt after having authored such a book. So I keep a particularly large cash position, even if it is a drag on my overall portfolio returns.

• 18:49Dave Meyer?

  See, people don't talk about the unexpected, the hidden consequences of being an author or a public person. You have to, you have to hedge against going bankrupt. Everyone needs to, but you need to do it a little bit more. It's pretty funny. All right. Well, cool. Thank you for sharing that. Cause I, I think, you know, sometimes I talk to real estate investors on this show, like, you know, Henry, James, Dana, people you know as well, like they're a hundred percent in real estate and you clearly believe in real estate. So why so much in the stock market then?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Well, I'm, I'm 35. But I won, right? I'm very lucky. I got what I wanted out of my financial portfolio. I do what I want with my day at this point. And so, you know, I just want to maintain that that position on an indefinite basis and be able to harvest my portfolio. I'm a little bit even more conservative probably than this like three and a half, like three and a half, 3.75% safe withdrawal rate for my portfolio. So it's that diversification across these different stock portfolios to make sure that the growth is there long term to sustain that position.

• 19:55Dave Meyer?

  Well, good for you and congratulations. It's an incredible place to be, being able to say that you've won at 35, I think is the dream for pretty much everyone. So let's turn our attention to real estate because obviously we all want to hear your take on real estate right now. You alluded to a slog. So what are you, what are you seeing in the market right now?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  For real estate, I'm going to just dive in there. And I think that the word I'm going to use to describe what's going to take place over the next three years is absorption. That's, that's it. That's the theme I've got here. And I think that that is really going to be the main driver of what happens in the real estate market across the nation. Now, you know, every region is different, but I think in, in most regions around the country, on average, you saw rents not go up very much, maybe decline a little bit. And that's really a problem for real estate investors who are really betting on inflation implicitly on housing costs as part of the core thesis behind the investment. And the reason you didn't see that, we've talked about this for years, is the onslaught of multifamily supply.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  We're specifically talking about the residential market right now and the historic deliveries in 2024 and in the first half of 2025. So we talked, we've talked about that for years and those abated, right? And the second half of 2025 and now heading into 2026, we're going to see relatively low net new deliveries of multifamily across the nation. And what is going to happen, I think in 2026 is that vacancy rate is just going to come creeping down, right? It's going to go, it's going to come down maybe 200, 300 basis points in some of these markets, like a Denver, right? And what that's going to do is that's going to drive rent growth. Two years ago, I would have said rent growth was going to be very high in Denver in 2026. And the reason I'm going to say it's going to be more muted absorption this year is because

• 21:39Speaker 01

  the demand side of the equation has changed in a lot of these places with a lot, lot, lot less movement. And I think a big part of that is the huge change in immigration policy in this country.

• 21:48Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And for the record, I think it's a good thing to have the border under control in there. You know, we won't get into more politics than that. But just that alone is stopping, you know, several hundred thousand net new illegal immigrant arrivals on a monthly basis. Right? On top of that, you have deportations. I really don't know what source to believe on deportation data at this point. I think it's actually wild, wild how hard it is to get believable data on that, on that point. And these are either voluntary or involuntary. But no matter how you slice it, you're getting close to about half a percent or maybe even a little bit more than that in terms of population differences nationally versus what you would have forecast two years ago, if you just expected this, those numbers to continue.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  So there's other forces at play with that. But I think that alone is actually going to have a fairly reasonable impact on and slowing absorption rates over what you might have otherwise thought was going to happen into, into at, at this point, zero all vacancy and it's going to compound each year. Um, so I think, I think you're going to see that rent growth that I, I thought were going to, was going to be really high in 2026, 2027 and 2028, two years ago. I think you're going to see it much more muted. I think you're going to see, you know, something in the, the three to 4% range for rent growth, uh, in 2026. And then you're going to see something a little bit higher than that in 2027 and higher yet again in 2028. So it's still going to be strong rent growth, but it's not going to be, I, I was putting up some big, big forecast numbers. Like I thought we were going to be bumping double digits in 2027 for rent growth, at least in some markets. And I

• 23:16Speaker 01

  think that that, that number needs to be tempered now because the demand side is just a little lower. Rent growth is coming, but it's not going to be the party that in rent growth that I think landlords were thinking was going to happen two or three years ago, based on this delivery curve on the supply side.

• 23:31Dave Meyer?

  I'm a little more pessimistic than you are, to be honest. Like on a national basis, I think it's going to stay close to flat, maybe one to 2%.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  No way.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  No, no, you're gonna see, because you're gonna see, you're gonna see net absorption.

• 23:45Dave Meyer?

  I'm just worried about household formation. I, I just think the demand side, I, maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I worry about how stretched people are. Like, the rent burden numbers are really high. The wage growth numbers are starting to come down. The unemployment rate for young people is really high. So, I, obviously, it will be market to market, but on a national basis, I think, if I had to bet, I'd say it's between zero and two, not up to four. But we'll come back next year. Hold this to this.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I, I'll, I'll go a little bit more optimistic than that. I'd say it's gonna be in the three to four range.

• 24:19Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  3.0% to 4.5%, somewhere in that range.

• 24:22Dave Meyer?

  Well, I started around BPCon last year, calling this, like, era that we're in, like, the great stall. It just feels like everything is stuck, right? And, like, prices are kind of flat, rent's kind of flat. Like, what, what do you think this means, one, for prices, and then, perhaps more importantly, strategically, for our audience? Like, what do you do about this?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I don't know, from a pricing, pricing is so difficult for me, because, you know, I look at the Denver total pricing, and, and I, I would've said, I would've said, there's no way I'm not coming on this podcast here in January 2025, not under contract on my next rental property, just deploying another, another round of that, of that liquidity that I have. And I look around the market in the last three months, two months, and I don't see, I don't see very many deals to buy, compared to what I saw in June and January, February last year. This is small multifamily in Denver, so it's a subsector of that. But I'm like, I'm like, why is it actually harder for me to buy an unlevered property right now at a great deal or price point than it was this time last year?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  I would've expected either the mark, you know, either that rent growth to start propelling, and that's why I'm finding that, that, that challenge, or I'd have expected the prices to continue going down, and I'm, I'm buying that whole curve down, uh, on a pricing perspective. So, that didn't happen either, from a pricing perspective. I'm not seeing the, the prices go down. I'm just seeing stuff not, not really sell. A lot of people put something on the market and then take it down. But I, I think that, that's the, that's the real problem here, is nobody really needs to sell.

• 25:52Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Um, and that may not be the case for a long time.

• 25:55Dave Meyer?

  Well, especially in residential, right? Because people have fixed rate debt, so they're just gonna hold on.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a third of properties are on free and clear, right? Or some, some, some crazy number like that?

• 26:02Dave Meyer?

  Forty, yeah, it's, it's crazy, yeah. It's, uh, but I, I think, I guess the only... Forcing function could be if rents keep not going up, but you know, taxes are going up, insurances are going up, maintenance and repairs. So your margins could get compressed, even though things are kind of stable from a price perspective. And so that might be an impetus for some people to sell.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, like there should be, in theory, reasons to sell, right? People move, people get divorced, people die, people get sick, people, you know, have, have problems at their properties or whatever. But I mean, it just doesn't seem to be happening yet. So I think that's going to be a challenge here. I don't really know what to make of it.

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• 30:53Dave Meyer?

  So you're actively looking, it sounds like, but just not finding the right deals?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:00Dave Meyer?

  And to you, a good deal, you're buying for cash. So you're looking for a 6.5% cap rate. That's like, I mean, it's a good cap rate in Denver, but is that sort of your buy box?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Last year, my moves were really made because I'm leaving my position here. I need income or I want more income to make sure that I feel really good about defending my day-to-day lifestyle. Now it's more like, okay, I'm actually chasing yield if I do this. And I'm just not finding the opportunity that I would have, I would have guessed would be here at this point.

• 31:28Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I still look at the Denver market. I'm willing to buy. I haven't bought something in Denver since 2018 and it doesn't look that good to me, to be honest. But other parts of the country, I do feel like we're getting more inventory. Like when I look at properties in the Midwest, it's starting to open up for the first time in two or three years. I was looking at properties in the Northeast and the Southeast. Like it really, I think, is just market to market specific, which is how real estate is supposed to be. But it makes it kind of hard, right? Especially for newer investors. Like what do you recommend to people? Like, do you wait? Do you just like set a strict buy box and be patient? Like what, what's your advice?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I think that the core challenge right now for folks that are not buying all cash is negative leverage, right? And so when you have, when you're, when you're buying even a six cap, using 6.5% debt fixed for 30 years, that is a really, that's a pretty all-in bet on appreciation and on rent growth, right? You're here. And so I think that's the challenge is you really have got to wait. You've really got to hunt for that, those deals that don't have that negative leverage, if you're going to use that, or you've got to force value. The opportunities are probably still there for very creative and very ambitious folks who are willing to kind of rent by the room, do short-term rental work, or find, you know, live in that property where they're sharing, where they're sharing with roommates, or find that assumable mortgage.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  But I think you've got to have a really great deal, great financing, or one of these other cash flow strategies to really get the same advantage, the relative advantage, out of house hacking that I got with a simple duplex purchase.

• 33:04Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, there was a time for most of the 2010s where if someone asked me where to get started, I'd just say house hacking, no doubt, like, no questions asked. But there's some limitations to it now, especially in really expensive markets, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco. Renting is better. Even house hacking, I think you and I, you and I collaborated on a house hacking calculator once, and, or buying and renting and stuff, and I've, I've put it in and, you know, renting is cheaper in a lot of places. I would, for certain people, recommend renting and making sure you still invest that money into something like either in an index fund or into a cash flowing rental somewhere else. But yeah, I don't, I don't think it is as simple as it used to be, but in a lot of

• 33:49Dave Meyer?

  less expensive markets, it does, I think, still makes sense. It might not be as good, but as I've talked about a lot on the show, I think trying to compare your returns now to 2014 doesn't really make sense. What makes sense is, is this the best use of my time and money today? And for some people, that is still true, but again, in those expensive markets, that might not be true anymore.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, this brings us in a circle, wonderful circle, to two things. So you say renting is better, and they're not building new housing. So is rent going to really go down? Like, that's like core to that thesis of like, rent should grow over the next three years in particular. And then the second thing, I think, the other question I think that someone, you know, I'd be asking myself is, Man, like, I believe in index fund investing. I believe in buying US stocks and holding on for the long term. And I also believe that price does matter at some point.

• 34:43Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  And price in terms of stocks is not just the absolute price, or whether it's an all time high, who cares if it's an all time high, it's the ratio, the amount of income you're buying per dollar that you invest. And, and right now, you're paying as much as you've ever paid for that, you know, in, in, in US history, other than, you know, a, a point in time around 1999 or 2000. And that, that's, I think, the other challenge to this is, what are your alternatives in terms of building wealth? And I think that that's what's confusing me and you, it sounded like last year, you know, and, and worries me to a certain degree, and, and maybe worries other people who listen to this. And that's the challenge investors have to figure out. For me, the, the answer has been diversification, and that's maybe sleep better at night, but it certainly didn't put more points on the board in 2025.

• 35:27Dave Meyer?

  I think diversification is the only way to go in this kind of economy. No one knows. It is as hard to predict or to guess what's going to happen, probably as it's ever been. Maybe people always say that, but it does feel that way, that a lot of the rules are different now, or there's a lot of variables we haven't had to contend with in the past. And so it just feels super confusing. So I, I, I get it. But I, I find myself gravitating, I've always gravitated towards real estate, but you know, when I think about what I'm doing in 2026, it just feels less volatile to me. Like I, if I can find a good deal, I feel pretty good about buying that and that it's going to be good.

• 36:07Dave Meyer?

  Finding a deal is hard, but I don't have the same level of like nervousness about it that I do with the stock market where I'm like, it's totally out of my control. Like there are forces of AI that I really don't understand. But like real estate, it's like, finding a deal is harder than it used to be. But when you find one, like, I feel pretty good that I can operate that and that my performance is going to be what I expect it to be. Sounds like you hit yours on the head as well. And that's sort of what gives me comfort about real estate in this kind of a climate.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, again, I sleep better at night with it, but I'm not putting more points on the board. So I don't know what that looks like. I think that this year it's kind of like irrationally confused, maybe.

• 36:47Dave Meyer?

  Or rationally confused. Maybe it is rational just to be confused right now.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  But yeah, I'm not confident there's going to be very large price changes on a national basis.

• 36:57Dave Meyer?

  Nope.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  For housing in this country in terms of the the asset value.

• 37:02Dave Meyer?

  I agree.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  I I do believe I'm a little bit more bullish on rent growth than you because of the very low supply that we're expecting in 2026. You know, interest rates are anybody's guess. So on the supply side, low, demand side, still low, but not as low as the supply side. I think you're going to see rent growth. And then I think interest rates are the wild card. I do, you know, maybe a new a new Fed chair comes in and lowers rates, or maybe they lower rates and we still can't lower interest rates because other things increase treasury yields for various reasons. So I don't know what's going to happen on that front. And then I, you know, I think I think that the the stock market, it sounds like price to earnings and price to sales and none of those things matter anymore because AI is just going to come in and and blow things up so far and so high that none of the old rules matter and it just goes to

• 37:47Speaker 01

  the moon.

• 37:48Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  On stocks.

• 37:49Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you, Scott, for being here. It's always fun catching up with you. Congrats on the family and everything seems to be going well. And we'd love to see all the progress that you're making over at Money when you're ready to share with us.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Just go over go over there anytime at biggerpocketsmoney.com and check it out. And Dave, congratulations. Another great year with BiggerPockets and, you know, more more booming business for you in your real estate portfolio.

• 38:14Dave Meyer?

  Well, thank you. Thank you. And we'll we'll definitely have you back on soon, Scott. Thanks for being here.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's talk. Let's talk about how wrong I am with that rent forecast.

• 38:22Dave Meyer?

  We'll see which one is right. We might both be totally wrong. Well, thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. He's Scott Trench. We'll see you next time.

• 39:04Speaker 05

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