Pod Insights BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Where We’d Invest in Real Estate Right Now (9 Markets) About this episode Here’s where we’d invest in real estate right now. The best markets to buy rental properties are often overlooked, affordable cities with strong rents, reasonable home prices, and robust job growth. These markets could not only appreciate steadily, giving you the long-term wealth you’re looking for, but also pocket you some decent cash flow, so you have more passive income to grow your portfolio faster. We’ve got nine expert-chosen markets lined up, and there’s probably more than one with precisely what you’re looking for! These are NOT teeny tiny markets with $50,000 home prices in some town you’ve never heard of. These are real cities, with serious growth potential and millions (if not billions) of dollars being poured into them by local governments. Cities where jobs are growing, populations are rising, and rental demand is strong. If you don’t know where to buy your first or next property, this is the episode to help you whittle down your list. By the time you’re done listening to this, you’ll have at least a few hot real estate markets to start analyzing! In This Episode We Cover The nine best (affordable) real estate markets that we would personally invest in A booming group of “satellite” cities that are already growing very fast The fastest-growing affordable city with a new $3B (yes, billion) investment The Northeast’s sweet spot city with high rents and median home prices One Midwest city investors LOVE to buy in…but is it still worth it? And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1170 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
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dave Meyer? These are the best markets to buy rental properties right now in late 2025. Today, we're telling you where to invest in real estate, whether you live in an expensive area or just looking for a new market with great wealth building potential. This is an absolutely essential decision to get right. So we've looked at all the data and today we're revealing nine of our favorite places in the U.S. to buy properties right now.
0:29 Dave Meyer? Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. And today's show is a absolute fan favorite. Every single time we do it, we get a ton of positive responses. So we're doing it again. We are running this one back and it's a great time to be making this list of best investing markets because if you've been paying attention right now, the entire housing market is changing. Some areas of the country have more properties for sale and sellers that are more motivated to negotiate on prices than they did the last time we talked about this topic, which was back in April. So I'll share a few markets that I really like right now. And I also have our regular guests for this show on today.
1:14 Dave Meyer? We have Ashley Kerr and Henry Washington here to add their favorite markets to the list as well. Ashley, how are you?
1:20 Speaker 01 Thanks so much for having me back, Dave. I always love getting a good homework assignment.
1:24 Dave Meyer? Yeah, we made you do a lot of work for this show. And if anyone hears just some hammering in the background, Ashley is just being a very authentic real estate investor today, podcasting from an active construction site. So please bear with us.
1:38 Speaker 01 My living flip.
1:40 Dave Meyer? These are the realities of being an investor and we're bringing it to you on the BiggerPockets podcast. Henry, how are you doing?
1:46 Henry Washington? I'm doing well, sir. Thank you very much.
1:48 Dave Meyer? Good. Well, I'm glad you're doing well because I'm going to pick on you and make you go first. Before you name your three markets, what is your, what was your philosophy about picking markets? Like, do you have any overarching theory about which markets work in this kind of market we're in right now?
2:03 Henry Washington? My thought process behind selecting these markets were where are some places that are places where maybe people would enjoy living or major metropolitan areas where you can still find affordability, you can still get cash flow, you can still get growth and appreciation. So I tried to mix it up, affordable house pricing, so under the national average. And where rents were strong. And then I did a little, a little deeper digging to figure out which ones of these cities were like investing into the city themselves in terms of jobs, in terms of infrastructure. Cause that shows that, hey, we've got jobs for people. We've got growth for people and we've got affordable housing and great rents, which is what you're looking for.
2:45 Dave Meyer? That's great. So are you saying these are going to be places that are affordable? And the average listener will have heard of this city before?
2:53 Henry Washington? Yes.
2:54 Dave Meyer? Okay.
2:54 Henry Washington? Absolutely.
2:55 Dave Meyer? Maybe just hit us with your first market here.
2:58 Henry Washington? This is a market that I feel like has been like trying to tap me on the shoulder over the past years, either through like people I know that invest there. People love visiting this place. I've never been, but looking at the market dynamics, it looks good. That's Columbia, South Carolina.
3:13 Dave Meyer? Oh, South Carolina. It's hot right now. Very hot right now.
3:16 Henry Washington? Yeah.
3:17 Dave Meyer? How has it been tapping you on the shoulder? What's it been saying to you?
3:20 Henry Washington? It's been saying that you should come look at real estate here because I have, I know several investors personally who invest in and around the South Carolina area, and they say nothing but great things about it. Every time I talk to you about South Carolina, you say great things about it. And so, and I'm a big North Carolina fan in terms of investing. So, you know, might want to check it out.
3:42 Dave Meyer? All right. Well, tell us a little bit more about the, the details here. Cause you said it was affordable. So what, what's an average price point here?
3:48 Henry Washington? Yeah. So medium price, median price is about 250,000 for a home. Median rent is 1623. And so I think with those numbers, you can potentially get cash flow. Now I'm not saying 1650 a month covers $250,000 mortgage. What I am saying is that with a median price of 250, you can find things that cost less than that, but you've got pretty strong rents at 16, 1600 on a median rent price. So that's a point six, five rent to price, which is pretty solid. Vacancies, less than 10%. Unemployment, less than 4.1%.
4:24 Henry Washington? And it's had positive population growth and positive job growth over the past several years. Another reason it's cool landlord friendly. So you're able to operate as a landlord a little easier in this state than some other states. But other things I like is the median insurance is around three grand and median property tax is less than 1%. So it's pretty solid.
4:48 Dave Meyer? I like that.
4:49 Henry Washington? And you are in a market where people like enjoy to visit, where people enjoy to live. You're around other major metropolitan areas. And so I think this is a nice, solid pick because you can find cash flow if you look hard enough. It's affordable compared to the types of jobs that are there. If you look at the infrastructure, you've got a $50 million downtown revitalization project going on. So the city is investing more in the downtown area, trying to bring that back to life. You've got a 500 acre innovation district being built and it's been supported by the University of South Carolina. So there's
5:31 Henry Washington? a lot of investment going into the community. There are jobs in healthcare, in government, and in technology, all of which are solid sectors to be looking for. Because a lot of the times when you look at job growth, you want to pay attention to the industry those jobs are in because jobs can go away. If technology improves and maybe jobs get shipped overseas, or maybe jobs go away because of AI. So you want to pay attention to the types of jobs because you want jobs that are going to continue to be around. And so I think this is just a solid market.
6:01 Dave Meyer? Ashley, what do you think? Are you buying what Henry's putting down? Or is this just a trash pick?
6:06 Speaker 01 Well, I actually went towards a South Carolina market. I'm headed towards the Carolinas with one of my markets too.
6:13 Dave Meyer? Was it the same one? Or do you have a rival South Carolina market?
6:17 Speaker 01 I have a rival South Carolina market.
6:19 Dave Meyer? Oh, let's hear about that. I was going to go with all three of Henry's.
6:22 Speaker 01 So mine is Greenville.
6:24 Dave Meyer? Oh, okay. Tell us about it. Tell us specifically why it's better than Henry's pick.
6:30 Speaker 01 You know, Henry was very prepared today. He went very in-depth on this. So just based on that he may have a better knowledge, he may be have a better area. But I went with Greenville, South Carolina. And one of the reasons I looked at this was because I was looking for appreciation. So of the three markets, I found two that I want to look for for appreciation, but a little bit of that affordability. So the first one was Greenville. And I also agree, like, I feel like there's a lot of opportunity on the East Coast. As always, I never want to be on the coast because I don't want to have a super high insurance cost. So Greenville is, I feel far enough away where it's
7:14 Speaker 01 not going to be hit with crazy insurance. So steady price growth there. There's been recently, like, 3% to 4% year-over-year. Right now, the median home value is around like 340,000. And for rental demand, it's pretty good. It's around like 1,700 to 1,750, and consistent 2% to 7% annual growth for the rental rate there.
7:39 Dave Meyer? All right. I mean, that also sounds like a great market. But Henry, are you gonna counter Ashley here?
7:45 Henry Washington? Well, yeah. So I think the thing that makes my South Carolina market better than Ashley's South Carolina market is because people have heard of my city. Yeah, people have heard of Columbia, South Carolina. So there's that. But in general, South Carolina as a whole is just a good state, especially when it comes to jobs. Because as I was doing the research, they're in the middle of a hiring boom right now. And they added almost 9,000 new jobs in July alone in the state of South Carolina. So just a strong state in terms of affordability.
8:24 Henry Washington? And in terms of potential for cash flow mixed with potential for equity. Like people keep saying you have to pick one or the other. There are markets like this where you can get both.
8:33 Speaker 01 And I think there's a lot of different industries coming in or already there that it's not relying on just one manufacturer or industry.
8:41 Dave Meyer? All right. These both seem like really good markets. I like it. I just think South Carolina generally is going with a lot of trends. People seem to want to find. And there's a lot of demand in markets where it is relatively affordable. There's great jobs, but also I think the high quality of life thing that both of you. Highlighted about these two markets are really bode well for future growth and a lot of the investment you're talking about. All right. Well, since each of you have gone, I will just go and throw in one of my markets and Ashley, I promise we will give you a opportunity to explain your philosophy. But my philosophy for the three markets that I picked were all one, trying to protect against downside risk. We're in a weird market right now where certain markets are going to decline. Some are going to grow.
9:23 Dave Meyer? And so I really wanted to find places that have good, long-term potential, but are not at risk of any sort of significant declines. I also want to be able to find on-market cash flow. That is something that is important to me as an investor, and that's why I'm recommending it to you. And therefore my number one market that I am recommending is Des Moines, Iowa. I know, not something that we talk about a lot on this show, but did you guys know that Des Moines is actually the fastest growing metro area in terms of population in the Midwest? Which does not mean it's fast as growing as like places, some places in Texas or Florida, but I love the Midwest from housing market fundamentals. And it is the fastest growing population in the Midwest. So that's something I really like.
10:08 Dave Meyer? The other thing that I like is I think like Henry is kind of cute that your market had like, you know, $50 million investment. And it's really nice, but in Des Moines, there was a $3 billion, for those who are keeping score, which I clearly am, that is 60 times more than Henry's market. Investment in the downtown area.
10:28 Speaker 01 One of the markets I picked has a billion dollar investment and I thought it was going to blow everyone else away, but that's double mining.
10:35 Henry Washington? What kind of buildings are you building in downtown Des Moines, Iowa?
10:39 Dave Meyer? I honestly have no idea, but I will say that between that and the 6% population growth just since 2020, which is a lot, that might not sound like a lot, but populations don't generally grow all that much. So that one is really good. And then the other thing that I like about Des Moines, which is going to be a little bit controversial, is that prices are somewhat flat. Now, we're in this weird market where you kind of have to decide as an investor, like, do you want to invest in the markets that are still growing? Or are you trying to find the markets that have good fundamentals, but have a little bit softer pricing? And for me, because I just love hedging everything, a flat market is basically right in the middle of that. Like, I don't feel like it's growing at an unsustainable
11:23 Dave Meyer? rate, but with inventory going up and relatively flat prices, that means you're probably going to be able to negotiate in a market that has a lot of good stuff going on long-term. And that means I'm probably going to be able to get some better deals, which is why I like Des Moines.
11:35 Henry Washington? You know, every time I talk to somebody that is an investor that lives in or around Des Moines, they, they always speak so highly of it. I, I know absolutely nothing about Des Moines, but it sounds like it's going to be the Dubai of the Midwest if they're spending $3 billion on downtown. That's intense.
11:54 Dave Meyer? All right. So we've each given you our cities so far. We have two cities in South Carolina. Henry bringing us Columbia, Ashley bringing us Greenville, I added Des Moines. We got to take a quick break, but we have six more markets for you right after this. This week's bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund. Invest in private market real estate with the Fundrise Flagship Fund. Check out fundrise.com/pockets to learn more.
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15:26 Dave Meyer? Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Ashley and Henry talking about our favorite markets in late 2025. Ashley, let's go to you for your second market. And, you know, we skipped ahead before, so I didn't get to hear about your philosophy for picking these markets. Maybe tell us how you picked these three and then tell us what your second market is.
15:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I really went for appreciation, but slow and steady appreciation, almost kind of like what you said, Dave, where it's not super drastic because like Austin, Texas scares me as in prices went crazy, there was so much growth there and now it's just completely, not completely, but it's tanked a bit there. And so I don't want that to happen. So I'm looking for more consistent growth, but cash flow, I do agree, is very, very hard to find in many areas. So for me, I'm looking for a little bit of cash flow, but more for appreciation. And I also want an area that's, like Henry pointed out, no one's ever heard of the town
16:24 Speaker 01 that I picked, and to somewhere where it is not as obvious of a place. So, I mean, if I named off all of the towns that my properties are in, nobody would hear of them because it's not even, I have two in the city of Buffalo, the rest are in all these other smaller neighborhoods. I root for the rural towns for where the cash flow, the opportunity and the appreciation is. So I did go with for my next market is McKinney, Texas, which is outside of Dallas and it is more well-known. It is. It's a very, actually a prominent neighborhood. But what I'm looking at is the rural areas outside of McKinney.
17:02 Speaker 01 Because McKinney is where it's getting this 1.5 billion dollar like development of like a plaza and all this stuff coming in to that town. So I looked at the outskirts, the neighboring areas up there.
17:16 Dave Meyer? I'm looking up the map here because I've heard of McKinney, but I didn't know exactly where it is. It's not that far outside of Dallas, right? Like this is still within the Dallas metro area. So it's not like you're going completely rural, right?
17:30 Speaker 01 So some of the ones that I looked at that are like neighborhoods of this are Princeton, Texas, Little Elm, Texas, and Levon, Texas. Someone's going to say I'm saying that wrong, but yeah, like Princeton, Texas is one of the fastest growing cities in the US with 30% annual population growth since 2023. The population, it doubled from 17,000 to 37,000. And the same with Little Elm, Texas. It went from 26,000 in 2010 to 46,000. Little Elm also has a lake there too. So there's lakefront property, different, you know, things like that.
18:09 Speaker 01 So I do like the ability to do different strategies in the market. So if long-term isn't working to switch to short-term.
18:17 Dave Meyer? I like it. This reminds me a lot of our, all of our mutual friend Kathy Fecky, who has been investing in North Dallas for a very long time. So I feel like I've just been indoctrinated into believing that North Dallas is a good place to invest. And now that you are bringing this one, I'm doubly intrigued.
18:34 Speaker 01 Well, anything that Kathy does that just, you know, puts that golden seal on it. So.
18:39 Dave Meyer? Well, I'm buying it. I like the idea of this. I generally, I like the idea of like, it's not even like a secondary city, but it's like, almost like satellite neighborhoods to big cities. A lot of times you're just able to find, if you can really understand the market and study it, you're able to find. Areas that are in the path of progress, even in a city that's already relatively expensive like Dallas. Dallas on a national basis, actually, for a big city is not that expensive, but like you can find some markets like this that have the potential to reach maybe the median of the whole metro area but aren't yet there. And if it has strong population growth and strong demand, like there's a pretty good chance that that's going to happen.
19:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think part of it is like you want good quality tenants. Like I started out buying $20,000 duplexes that just were low, you know, income areas. They were low quality tenants didn't take care of the place. You know, I spent so much time, you know, dealing with headaches and things like that. And I ended up selling all of those properties, but it was a really big lesson that it's worth it to pay more for a property, maybe have less cash flow, but not have to deal with those kind of headaches that come with some of those $20,000 properties. So I like the idea of a higher end city, but finding the people that can't afford to actually live in the city, but want that same good
20:02 Speaker 01 quality of life. And they'll move outside it just a little bit. And I want to be like that person that's providing that quality housing for somebody who, you know, can't afford to live in the city.
20:14 Dave Meyer? Awesome. Great pick. Thank you, Ashley. All right, Henry, what's your second market?
20:19 Henry Washington? My second market is Cincinnati, Ohio.
20:22 Dave Meyer? Oh, okay. It's been a very popular market the last couple of years.
20:26 Henry Washington? The numbers are strong. I can see why. Median price on a home, 272,000.
20:31 Dave Meyer? Nice.
20:32 Henry Washington? I mean, for a major metro, that's, that's awesome. But median rent, what do you think the median rent is?
20:38 Dave Meyer? 1500?
20:39 Speaker 01 1500.
20:40 Henry Washington? Almost 1900, 1868. The numbers are nuts, man. So that's a 0.69% rental price, which is amazing. Vacancy?
20:51 Henry Washington? Seven percent like that's really good.
20:54 Dave Meyer? Yeah.
20:55 Henry Washington? Uh, unemployment, four point nine percent.
20:58 Dave Meyer? That's interesting. I would have guessed higher than.
21:00 Henry Washington? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can see why people are choosing to invest here. If you're just looking at your numbers and you want a city that you've heard of, you want city infrastructure, city jobs like I can see why it makes a lot of sense. Uh, cause you can like, if I see it, I see two seventy two on the median price with eighteen hundred on the rent. Like I already know there's cash flow on the market. I already know there's absolutely cash flow. If I go direct to seller and to be able to find that without having to go super rule is pretty cool for people. So if you're considering a market and you don't want to be out in the outskirts and you want to be where people are gonna live, like this is a, it's a, it's a heavy contender. Five year price growth approximately
21:43 Henry Washington? fifty six percent landlord friendly, which is what we're looking for. Property taxes at two point five or twenty six hundred dollars at the median and property taxes again at about that one percent, which is fairly reasonable.
21:57 Dave Meyer? Yeah. One percent is the average nationally.
21:59 Henry Washington? Yeah. The numbers are strong and usually you don't see numbers this strong in major metropolitan areas. So I just think that I couldn't, I couldn't overlook it again this time.
22:11 Dave Meyer? Well, I would say it's a good market, except that mine is better.
22:16 Henry Washington? Well, well, let me, let me throw this number out here. I'm going to try to redeem myself. So as I dug a little deeper into what's going on in Cincinnati and are people enjoying that place? Cincinnati's spending eight hundred million on their downtown overhaul.
22:33 Dave Meyer? All right.
22:33 Henry Washington? So I mean, better than fifty, not two billion. So it is not the Dubai of the Midwest. It's more like the, I don't know. Uh, what do you call it? Maybe like the New York city of the Midwest.
22:47 Dave Meyer? Okay.
22:47 Henry Washington? It's eight hundred million and they're doing big upgrades, spending four hundred and seventy million on renovating the stadium where the Cincinnati Bengals play because the Bengals have agreed to stay through twenty thirty six in Cincinnati. And so that's a good sign for tourism and all of the things that come with having an NFL team in the area. So they're spending money. They've got jobs. They've got job growth. They've got. Population growth, they've got affordability and they've got great rents with good cash flow. Yes, I mean, it's a colder market. You've got to deal with that.
23:28 Henry Washington? But if you can get past some of those things, especially if you live near or around the Midwest already, and you're looking to get started, you don't have to pick some rural town you've never heard of to be able to afford cash flow. You can get it in a place like Cincinnati.
23:43 Dave Meyer? That's pretty good. Now, so I like Cincinnati and the reason I was joking that it's a good market, except mine was better, is because I was actually deciding between Cincinnati and a city that has a lot of the same fundamentals, but is just over the border in Kentucky. I picked Louisville, Kentucky, which I only recently learned are close to each other because my geography is absolutely terrible, but they're actually very close to each other and they're very similar on paper. And I think for many of the same reasons that Henry just shared for liking Cincinnati, like this is a large metro area. It has slightly worse cash flow prospects versus Cincinnati, but it's a little bit cheaper. It has a little bit better unemployment rate, but we're just splitting hairs here.
24:28 Dave Meyer? The one thing I will say about Louisville, though, that sort of like tipped me towards that over Cincinnati is that it's just growing really quickly. Like home prices are still up five or six percent every, like the last couple of years, and they've continued to do that. Plus, there's this stat that I was looking up that I, I think is kind of important. Louisville contributes 40% of the state's GDP, which means that a lot of the state investment and infrastructure goes into Louisville, which I like. It just means that they're going to continue investing there. Plus, also, if you ever go out with me, you know, I like drinking bourbon, so I'm partial to Louisville and Kentucky in general. So I just picked it over Cincinnati for that reason. So I won't dwell on that because I think Henry did a great job explaining a pretty similar market, a lot of the same things to like.
25:12 Dave Meyer? Those were each of our second picks. Just as a reminder, we have McKinney, Texas coming from Ashley. We have Cincinnati from Henry and I brought Louisville, Kentucky. We've got three more right after this break.
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28:24 Dave Meyer? Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Henry and Ashley talking about our favorite markets for 2025 second half. Henry, you went first, first round, Ashley, then you went second. So I guess I will go first in our third round and I'm going to bring a little bit different kind of market. I decided to mix it up because I do talk a lot about the Midwest, but I am bringing one in the Northeast. It is Hartford, Connecticut. And I know a lot of people are probably thinking that's a relatively expensive market and it is, but I want to just frame this as sort of relative affordability because Hartford's median home price is about the same as the national average. It's like 420,000. But when you think about the affordability compared to the big cities around it, which
29:09 Dave Meyer? the two big cities around it are Boston and New York, two of the least affordable cities in the entire country. This is a city that's right in between those two massive economic engines and is relatively way, way, way more affordable than those other markets. And so you see a lot of people from the New York metro area, from the Boston metro area moving. To Connecticut in general and Hartford has just seen prices going up. It has seen rents going up and I think it's going to continue to be a pretty strong market going forward, even though it doesn't fit the normal criteria that I use to pick markets on this show. What do you guys think? We never talk about the Northeast. Are you guys interested in something like this?
29:53 Henry Washington? So one of the things I love about Connecticut in general is there's a lot of cash flow out there. I mean, I've got a buddy who's been on this show that he actually lives in New York, but invests in Connecticut because the cash flow numbers are so good. And sometimes I've seen the returns or he's told me about the returns he's getting in terms of purchase price to what he's actually renting these units for. And it had me looking out at that market because there's great cash flow out there.
30:20 Dave Meyer? All right. So that was my final market for today's show, but we have two more from Ashley and Henry. Henry, let's hear your last market.
30:26 Henry Washington? All right. My last market is probably the least recognizable city of the three that I chose, but most people will have heard of this market.
30:37 Henry Washington? I chose it because of its proximity to more recognizable cities. And it's in one of my favorite states for investing, which is North Carolina. So I chose Greensboro, North Carolina. Some of the numbers that Greensboro has are 251,000 for the median price, which is fantastic. And then you've got a 1600 median rent, which is very good.
30:59 Dave Meyer? Wow.
31:00 Henry Washington? In terms of being able to get to some cash flow, especially cash flow on the market. It is landlord friendly. Insurance is pretty normal, similar to the other markets we talked about. Property tax is also very similar at that 1%. But what I really like about this market is its proximity to markets like Raleigh, North Carolina, or Charlotte, which are very popular markets. And because they're popular markets, pricing has gone up in those markets. So those markets are substantially more expensive. And because they're getting more expensive, people are now moving out of those areas, like the people who have been in those areas for a longer period of time, and are moving towards more of this market like Greensboro. And so what I like about that is when I dug into what types of jobs
31:45 Henry Washington? and what types of money is being spent on infrastructure around the area, you've got a company called Jet Zero Aerospace, not to be confused with a Jet 2 Holiday, which is a whole different.
32:00 Dave Meyer? I wouldn't have confused those. I haven't heard of either of those.
32:04 Henry Washington? That's that's because you don't spend your time on social media like I do. But everybody else knows nothing beats a Jet 2 holiday. So Jet Zero Aerospace has a mega mega project. They're spending $4.7 billion.
32:19 Dave Meyer? There we go.
32:20 Henry Washington? On the Triad International Airport and they're building an aircraft manufacturing and R and D center. That's supposed to bring 14,500 jobs to the area. So if you're looking for a place that has proximity to major metros, similar to the market you just talked about. But has potential for growth coming in the future with these large investments. This is a place where you can go, you can buy a property now affordably that cash flows now in the market. And then you can get some appreciation when this, when these jobs start to come. When people are trying to live closer to this hub where this 14,000 jobs are going to come from. And then you'll get the appreciation on the upside.
33:05 Henry Washington? You can now go to this market. You can buy now and it makes money now. And even if these jobs don't come, your property is still going to make money. And then you can get the appreciation as the infrastructure starts to come in as they develop this airport. Plus there's other companies that are also building and expanding in and around this region. And so like, I think that this market of my three has the best potential for growth in terms of your investment growing. You can get cash flow now. You can buy a property that you can flip now. But if you can buy something that cash flows now and hold on to it, you have some potential upside in the future.
33:45 Henry Washington? And even if that upside doesn't come to fruition, you've still got solid market dynamics in terms of steady population growth and steady job growth and steady home value increase.
33:57 Dave Meyer? So I love it.
33:57 Henry Washington? If I were to pick one of the three markets that I that I brought today and I had to buy a property in one of those three markets. This is the one I would choose.
34:05 Dave Meyer? All right. Ashley, hard act to follow. You gotta go last though. So let's see what you got.
34:11 Speaker 01 Well, this one, this one I left up to the people. I put it out there and I said. What market do you want me to analyze? I put it out on my Instagram, the little question box, and I let people drop in all these markets. And there was like 50 responses, okay? Everybody said different markets, except for three people. Three people said Toledo, Ohio. So that's what I went with. My last one is Toledo, Ohio. I knew nothing about this market, except it's in Ohio. It's the fourth largest city in Ohio. And it's a landlord friendly state. So those are the things that I knew about it. And these are the things that I learned about it.
34:55 Speaker 01 Also, it is only having like a $53 million downtown development coming in. So very, very, very small compared to the other ones we have discussed. So basically, what I've learned is it's more definitely a cash flow play than it is appreciation. So median home price is 188,000. The rent 1,400. So the rent to price ratio is 0.75%.
35:22 Dave Meyer? Yeah.
35:22 Speaker 01 The vacancy rate is 8%. Unemployment rate 6.7%. The population is a little over half a million. But other than that, like, there's not a lot of population growth, not a lot of appreciation growth. Not even really rent growth really happening in this, this city.
35:43 Dave Meyer? Okay. So you're not, are you standing by this one after you've done your research?
35:48 Speaker 01 I think this goes along with my, how I started out. I went for cheaper areas, cheaper markets, cheaper, you know, rent. And I'm going to stay away from this market.
36:01 Dave Meyer? Yeah, I'm kind of with you.
36:03 Speaker 01 When I first started investing, I was all cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. And I'm like, this is how I'm going to get financial freedom is living off my cash flow. As time has gone on, and I've seen all this equity build up in my properties. I was like, wow, this is the real wealth, not the $250 in cash flow for getting up to, you know, 50 units. Like, oh, okay, it's the equity that sit in those properties over time. So. I don't see a ton of appreciation. I do like the cash flow, so maybe it's a great starting point for someone as to getting started in real estate. And then 1031 exchange that property into a different market at some point.
36:44 Speaker 01 But I'm going to say for me, it's a no, because there is very, very little appreciation. Unless you're planning to just hold this property for 20 to 30 years. Then you're going to build equity in that. Your mortgage is going to be paid off. So if you really want to long-term play, then yeah, this could work for you.
37:03 Henry Washington? This one would be a no for me as well. But here's why and what would make it a yes for me. It's, it's a no for me because of the job growth and population growth situation. Like that, what I'm seeing from the numbers you gave me is that people aren't steadily moving there. And there maybe isn't jobs for those people if they do move there. And what I'm looking for when I'm picking a market to invest out of state is I want to pick a place where people are moving there because they want to live there. And when they get there, there's good jobs for them. Because that lets me know that if I spend some money now, that that's a good investment for the future. Because history has shown me that the population has been growing and that the jobs have been growing.
37:47 Henry Washington? And I'm not saying that that has to be the dynamic in every market you invest in. And so what would make this a market that I would consider is if I was researching that city and I was seeing that, okay, maybe they inked a deal. Like Dave and I just did the Cashflow Roadshow and we went through Kenosha and Racine, which are small towns a lot of people maybe have never heard of. And they don't have a ton of appreciation and they don't necessarily have a lot of population growth. But what they do have is they just inked a deal with Microsoft. And we drove by and saw where they were building this massive, what looks like to be a data center. And so we know that jobs are coming in the future. And if jobs are coming in the future, that could be an attractant for people to want to live
38:32 Henry Washington? or move near that area. And so that would show me that, okay, there may not be positive population growth over the past five years or positive job growth over the past five years. But because these companies are spending a massive amount of money in that area, that there could potentially be upside for that in the future. And we know that that deal is inked and we know that they've broken ground. Uh, because we saw those things for ourselves. So if I saw something like that where there was investment in this community for the future, then maybe I'd consider it. But not having something inked where there's companies coming to the area to bring jobs, where the city's not spending a ton of money, there's no population growth really, and there's no job growth, then you're just literally investing for pure cash flow
39:16 Henry Washington? right now. And I'm not saying investing for pure cash flow is bad. I'm just saying that that's the only benefit you're going to get outside of the tax benefits. And I want to get paid as many ways as my real estate will pay me. So I want the appreciation, I want the tax benefits, I want the depreciation, I want the cash flow, and I want the equity. I want it all, baby.
39:37 Dave Meyer? I know, you're a greedy man, and I like it in this way.
39:42 Dave Meyer? No, that that makes total sense. I just think you could like, you could probably make money. I think you can make money in any market, but just when you're looking at on paper, you could probably do better. Like a lot of the ones, I think the eight markets that we shared before this one offer stronger fundamentals. Doesn't mean you can't make money there. I think for me, I I invest in some places for cash flow, but I need the rents to be going up. And that's, that's to me, the thing you said, Ashley, about this market that makes it not interesting to me. It's like, it's not appreciating and rents aren't going up. It's like, what are you, what are you doing there? I mean, I think like
40:15 Speaker 01 Cause your property taxes, your insurance
40:17 Dave Meyer? Everything else going up. Exactly. Yeah. So like, you're probably going to be losing money to inflation at that point. Like, it's just not, to me, that's not worth it. If you were buying in a market like the one Henry talked about in North Carolina, like where rents could go up and it can be like, it's a solid cash flow market and it can turn into a great cash flowing deal, like I would invest in that, even if the appreciation is not amazing. To me, it's like a spectrum, right? Like if one of the two has to be growing, either property values have to be growing or rents have to be growing a lot. But if you have zero, neither of them growing, it's just not very exciting. All right. Well, sorry, Instagram. We don't like your pick.
40:53 Speaker 01 I was just gonna say, if there is something we're missing here about Toledo, Ohio, and you're watching on YouTube, please put it into the comments and enlighten us as to why we should invest there.
41:03 Dave Meyer? All right. Well, thank you both for bringing these markets. Hopefully you all learned something, not just about some potential markets that you can invest in, but just the way that we think about evaluating markets, whether you're looking at a neighborhood within your market, or actually looking to identify new markets out of state, which I think more and more people are going to be doing while we're in this interesting market that we're in, while some markets are not doing great, some have great opportunities. And for a lot of investors, I do think it makes sense to at least explore whether you can get better returns investing out of state than you can in the markets that you're looking at. I do a little bit of both, and I think it's a great way to diversify your portfolio. And hopefully this episode will help you figure out if it's good for your portfolio as well. Henry, thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much, sir. And Ashley, thank you as well. We appreciate it.
41:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, and thank you for having me.
41:49 Dave Meyer? And thank you all for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We'll see you next time.
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