What We’re Buying During This Housing Correction

The housing market has been flat or falling for almost three years, and last month we called it what it is: a correction. Not a crash…but a real correction. So what does that actually mean for investors right now? Today, the On the Market crew is taking over to talk through how to approach a correction, what smart investors are doing in this environment, and what WE’RE buying as opportunities start to surface. The market feels “slow,” but compared to the years of easy money, almost anything would. This is the part of the cycle where predictability returns, distress starts to show, and disciplined investors set themselves up to win after the Great Stall. Kathy Fettke shares how her strategy has evolved after 25 years of buying through multiple cycles, why she’s leaning into lower-stress investing, and what still hasn’t changed about finding solid long-term deals. Henry breaks down what a “balanced” market actually looks like, why multiple exit strategies matter more than ever, and the tactics he’s setting up to ensure he always walks away profitable. And Dave explains the deal analysis mindset you need during a correction—and the key market signals worth watching right now. If you’re waiting for perfect timing to invest, this episode might change your mind. This is what we’re looking to buy right now at the end of 2025. In This Episode We Cover What a real correction looks like (sorry, it’s not a crash!) The multiple exit strategies that will save you from a bad deal in 2025 and 2026 How investor psychology shifts during slower, more “normal” markets (don’t be scared!) How we’re actively adjusting our investing strategies—and what we’re buying now The key metrics worth tracking during a housing market correction Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1206 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?

  Hey everyone. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and you found a new property off your Black Friday wishlist. Today, for the BiggerPockets podcast, we are bringing you an episode from our sister podcast, On The Market. You've probably heard me saying for the last several months that we're in a housing market correction. It's not a crash, but it's a different market than we've experienced for the previous few years. And to share some insights about that on this On The Market episode, I talked to Henry Washington and Kathy Fecky about how they're still buying real estate and still making money right now, even if the investing formula is not as easy as it was back in 2021. I hope this episode helps you think of the current housing market as an opportunity instead of just some big risk.

• 0:44Dave Meyer?

  And my conversation with Kathy and Henry will provide you with some inspiration as you plan for 2026. We'll be back with a new episode on Monday. Here's me, Kathy and Henry on On The Market, originally published October 23rd. Last week, I spent an entire episode laying out that I think we are in a market correction. We're not in a crash, but we're in a period where home prices may go down, they may stay stagnant. And I hope that was a helpful conversation for everyone to just have realistic expectations for what to expect over the next couple of years. So today, we're going to shift that conversation from just data and background towards what you can actually do about it. In today's episode, I'm joined by Kathy Fecky and Henry Washington to pressure

• 1:29Dave Meyer?

  test the frameworks and the data that I presented last week. I'd obviously love their opinion, compare notes on what they're seeing in their own analysis of the market, and turn the playbook into practical steps. During this episode, we're going to talk about trends that we're seeing in each of our own markets, how we're adjusting our own investing strategy, and frameworks that you can all apply to your portfolios to make profitable decisions during this market correction. You're listening to On The Market. Let's get into it.

• 2:05Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, I am assuming you guys don't listen to the on the markets episodes when you're not on it. I won't take offense. Last week I did a solo episode, just sort of laying out what I believe to be the reality of the situations that we're in a market correction. Basically, the gist of it is that home prices are up 1% or 2% in real terms. But if you look at it in inflation adjusted terms, prices have been pretty flat or a little bit down for almost three years now. And I actually think that's going to get a little bit more pronounced in the next year or so. I think the market is really slowing down and we might see nominal, non-inflation adjusted home prices

• 2:46Dave Meyer?

  go down 1% or 2%. More in certain markets, we're seeing in Florida, Texas, they're already down more than that. But on a national level, a couple percentage points. Do you agree? Do you think that's crazy? Do you think we're going to see something totally different? Kathy, let's start with you.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I'm so glad because I am the A student on today's episode because I did listen to that show.

• 3:05Dave Meyer?

  Oh, look at you. Henry, did you?

• 3:08Henry Washington?

  I listened to half of the episode. Yes, 100%.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So as I was listening, you know, my thoughts were, yes, it's a correction. And my first thought was, if you're in it for the long game, when I buy property, I'm thinking, you know, long, long, long, long, long term. So it's just part of it. It's a softening. But if you are in the rental business, you don't care because you're not selling. All you care about is are rents going down? That's, that's your income. So where are we there? It depends on your market. Some markets rents have softened, but if you're still collecting rent, you're in good shape.

• 3:46Dave Meyer?

  Yep, absolutely. I totally agree. And we'll get into some of that about what you should be looking for. But Henry, you seeing a correction as well?

• 3:55Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I think we're seeing a correction. Now, again, my market has some insulation, I think, compared to a lot of other markets. But we are absolutely seeing a slowdown. We just hit four months of inventory on the market.

• 4:11Henry Washington?

  And that is about what we need to be considered a balanced market. But because we're so used to listing something and it's selling fairly quickly, even though we're in a very balanced, normal market, it feels like we're not. It feels like we're in a situation that's more dire than that because things are moving slower than we're accustomed to. But if you zoom out, I got in this business in 2017. It was pretty normal to list a property and it sit for 30 to 60 days. And you only get a couple of offers and you have to do some concessions. And then maybe you sell that property for a profit. We were buying properties and getting, you know, a 6%, 6 and a half percent interest rate as a rental property.

• 4:55Henry Washington?

  Like it, this all feels like it did pre pandemic, but the pandemic went so crazy and people made so much money that now what used to be normal feels uncomfortable.

• 5:05Dave Meyer?

  I kind of feel like the problem with real estate right now is not the market, it's expectations. It's just that people are thinking that real estate is supposed to be the way it was during the pandemic. And don't get me wrong, I, I think the market is, there's a lot of challenges with the market right now in, in most places. Like we're not all magically in Henry's Northwest Arkansas bubble. But, uh, you know, I think in most places there are challenges. But I think the biggest challenge is people are thinking that they could make easy money in this industry because there was a period where you could make easy money. But that is the exception to the rule, not the normal thing that happens in real estate. So I think that's sort of why I wanted to have this conversation is just normalizing,

• 5:50Dave Meyer?

  one, the fact that these things happen and that corrections are a normal part of the economic cycle.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:56Dave Meyer?

  And two, that it's normal to invest in this part of the cycle, or at least I think so.

• 6:01Henry Washington?

  Yeah, it is.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I wanted to say is it's like, when you say people are thinking, I think what you mean is newer investors and those newer investors are learning, are they're growing up basically, they're becoming experienced investors because experienced investors aren't thinking that. They're thinking, finally.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Finally, there's a correction where I could get me some good buys out there and I don't have the competition. It we're we've been waiting for this moment. So you all just growing up. Yeah. It's part of that comparing it to the marriage. You had your first little fight and then you get through it and then things are better, right?

• 6:40Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. You learned how to get through the fight.

• 6:43Henry Washington?

  You know, I compare it to something you said in that solo episode. What you said was there is a cycle to market conditions. And so the experienced investors are kind of excited for a period like this because A, we know how to make money through a correction, right? It's just a matter of adjusting what you're willing to buy and adjusting how much risk you're willing to take on, given the more risky environment, but you can still be profitable. But we know on the other side of this correction, if we've bought during the correction,

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:16Henry Washington?

  that we're going to see a lot of equity and appreciation and growth on the other side of it. And so it's exciting for people who have that experience because now we're like, we can buy good deals now. We'll make money. We won't make 2022 flip prices if we're flipping a house, but we'll make a decent profit. But if we hold on to things, and even if they're breaking even now, we'll be able to sell those and/or get increased rents later or leverage the increased equity that we're going to get. Like, I'm excited because let's get through the rough part so we can get to the good stuff again.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Totally. One of the things you said in the show, Dave, was affordability. Something has to give. If things become unaffordable, and that's probably the most important metric to ever look at whenever buying. Can people afford what you've got? And if what you've got is something you're trying to sell, you're flipping it, and people can't afford it, you're in trouble. If you're trying to rent it and people can't afford it, you're in trouble. It's always that. And so when interest rates are low, that creates incredible affordability, obviously. And then prices go up. And then when prices go up and then rates go up at the same time, which is what we've seen, affordability is out the window. So something breaks. And whatever that is, everybody's been waiting for the interest rate to break.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Like, please be at that. If we could just get that to come down, then everything will be fine. But because that hasn't happened, something else is going to break, and that's pricing. And so that's what we're seeing. It has to happen. It's what we have been waiting for. It's why we just started our multifamily fund. It's breaking. And, and you can only get great deals when there's a bit of a crisis, right? That's how it works.

• 9:00Henry Washington?

  Amen.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  That's what we're seeing. And it not, it's not as much of a crisis in the single family world. People aren't as much in a hurry to sell. They don't have to in most cases. And when I say they, that's a lumping a lot of people into one category. There are obviously people in crisis because we are seeing the foreclosure rate creep up, but nothing out of hand, nothing abnormal, but more people are in that struggle bus. And again, that means deals. I hate saying that. It's like, oh, I don't want to be a shark and take advantage of people in a difficult situation, but it's, it's during distress that you get the deals, right?

• 9:34Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it's just, it's adapting and taking what the market is giving you. It's not like you are putting those people in distress and they're going to put those properties on the market. And listen, I'm not trying to make real estate investors to sound like angels, but you know, a lot of what happens in a normal correction is investors set the floor for how things can fall. Because a lot of times what happens is normal home buyers get spooked by a correcting market. We saw this in 2008. That was a crash, not a correction. That was a real crash. And homeowners, no one wanted to touch real estate. And actually, if you look at a lot of studies of what happened back then, the academic studies credit institutional investors getting into the single family

• 10:18Dave Meyer?

  space with setting a bottom for that market and allowing prices to bottom and then coming back in. And so I, I think you're right, Kathy. Like investors do play an important part of getting the market back to a normal level because a lot of those distressed sellers aren't going to be able to find homeowner buyers, especially when those homeowner buyers have more options right now and could buy stabilized properties at a discounted rate. And so I just think you're entirely right that different people play different roles. And it's, you know, I'm not wishing for anyone to lose their shirt. I certainly hope. No one gets into distress, but that is sometimes part of this.

• 10:59Dave Meyer?

  But as you also said, it's not even gonna be a big part of this, I don't think, in this correction. You know, you look at distress levels, you know, delinquency levels, like you said, it's just not that high. Which makes it, to me, seem like it's, yeah, we're probably gonna have declining real home prices for a couple, I think, maybe a couple of years even. But to me, that's at least predictable, right? Like, that's, as an investor, the only thing I want is like something that I can predict and can understand and is somewhat stable. Because it's the really big swings that really are worrisome to me or create a lot of uncertainty. If we see a period of time where home prices stay flat, I can invest around that, like, can't you?

• 11:38Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. I mean, that's what you want, right? Is exactly, we haven't had predictability in a long time, right? And so predictability, there's comfort in predictability because you can make more long-term decisions. Or I guess you should say you can make more midterm decisions. Because in the long term, real estate's gonna go up in value, right? If you zoom out long enough. But it's the, it's the short to midterm that can be a little more volatile. And so it can help you have a more well-rounded investing approach, where you buy some deals that are gonna make you money in the short term, you buy some deals that are gonna make you money in the midterm, and you buy some deals that you're gonna hold and keep forever and create that, that true passive generational wealth.

• 12:18Henry Washington?

  Like, you can, you can be a more well-rounded investor when there is predictability.

• 12:25Dave Meyer?

  All right, we gotta take a quick break, but more with me, Kathy and Henry, right after this. Summer bookings sound great until someone slips by the pool, gets hurt on your dock, or damages your property during a long holiday weekend. A lot of short-term rental investors don't realize their standard policy may leave gaps when it comes to short-term rental activity. That's why investors use Steadily. They offer landlord insurance built for real estate investors, including short-term rentals. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, you'll also get 5% off your landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to learn more.

• 13:02Henry 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.

• 13:44Henry 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 incentives, 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.

• 14:26Dave 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.

• 15:08Speaker 03

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• 15:37Dave Meyer?

  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.

• 15:52Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to On The Market. I'm here with Kathy and Henry talking about how we're adjusting our own investing strategies during the market correction. Let's jump back in. I like what you said there because I set my own goals. Like I have long-term goals, you know, what I'm trying to get to financial freedom. That's like a 10, 15-year goal for me. And then I have a three-year goal and then like a one-year goal. And I find the three years the hardest right now. It's really hard to figure out where we're going to be three years from now, or it has been. But I actually think it's getting more clear personally that we're going to be in this correction. Rates are not going to come down very much. Prices are going to be pretty flat. There's always these black swan events. Things could happen with the Trump shakes up the Fed. If we have a massive job loss recession, you know, of course, those things could change that.

• 16:37Dave Meyer?

  But as of right now, it just seems like we're going to get back to pretty flat and boring. And I can plan around that.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  You called it in your amazing keynote at BPCon, Dave. I loved it.

• 16:50Dave Meyer?

  Thank you.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you gave these four different scenarios of what could happen, but you also gave this example of in, what was it, 2010?

• 16:58Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. 2010. It was like my first deal. Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  It was scary. People, everyone's like, oh, I wish I could have bought in 2010. But if you were there in 2010, it was terrifying. The world was falling apart. We didn't know if we'd be the United States of America. We were stocking food. And so to go out and buy real estate took a lot of nerve, but you did it and you didn't know if prices were going to continue to go down. And in fact, they did. But you bought that four-plex. Based on fundamentals, like wherever the market goes, it doesn't matter. This fits what I'm trying to do. Over time, it's going to work out. It turns out, prices went down for a few years. You weren't selling, didn't matter. And then, whoa, prices took off and unbeknownst to you, you made a crap ton of money.

• 17:42Dave Meyer?

  That's right. Exactly, yeah. There's obviously a lot of difference in 2008, right? You know, prices are not going to get that cheap again. I, I think that might be a once in a lifetime kind of thing for the value that we got. But I don't know if you guys follow Bill McBride. He's a, a housing analyst, but he put together this, this chart that just shows real housing prices, which is inflation adjusted housing prices over the long term in the U.S. And what it shows is that the housing prices in, in terms of beating inflation, it's actually like, you know, you have like seven years of flat and then it kind of goes up. And then you have seven years of flat and then you have these periods of amazing returns. And this actually goes back in time. In the nineties, it was pretty flat. Then you had the bubble. Obviously, that wasn't great.

• 18:26Dave Meyer?

  You know, we saw actually for many years after the crash, it was flat. Then it went up. We're three years into flat again. I don't know when it's going to go up again, right? I don't know when real home prices are going to go up, but I want to get into the market so that I don't miss it. Because if you miss that, then you're waiting another seven years, right?

• 18:44Henry Washington?

  Yes.

• 18:44Dave Meyer?

  And so the whole, my whole game right now is like, how do I find deals that make money today? There are deals that make money today, but I don't care if my prices go up or down 2% next year. Cause what I'm in it for is that next bump. I'm waiting, I'm just going to buy stuff. And then if it's two years from now, it's four years from now, it's five years from now. Sure, I'd love it to come sooner, but I don't really care. I'm just like trying to buy things that make money now and then get in for that next bump. And even if the next bump is 10 years from now, I'm still making money now. So it's fine. Like that, that to me is like the psychology I'm approaching this with. How are you sort of, Henry, changed your mindset, given where we are right now?

• 19:26Henry Washington?

  Yeah, it is all about having multiple exit strategies for deals. And one being short term and one being more midterm or long term. And if you can buy things that have multiple exit strategies, then that allows you to stay profitable. I'll give you an example. We just closed on a house. We paid a hundred and two thousand dollars. It's a four bedroom, three bathroom, but it's not in a neighborhood where it's going to sell for, you know, four hundred thousand dollars for a home being that size. The ARV on this property is somewhere around two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Okay? Now I bought it as a flip, right? The goal is to spend about fifty to seventy thousand dollars on the renovation

• 20:08Henry Washington?

  and then sell that property for two hundred and fifty to two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Now there's some caveats. There's some problems with the neighbors in this area that could affect my sale price. So there's some problems that could cause me not to sell this property for what I'm hoping to sell this property for. But at the end of the day, I bought a property worth two hundred and seventy thousand dollars for a hundred thousand dollars.

• 20:33Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, who cares what the markets?

• 20:35Henry Washington?

  Who cares? Because if I try to sell it and I don't get what I want, I can throw a tenant in it and I can rent it for eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars a month.

• 20:45Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 20:46Henry Washington?

  And it'll cash flow at that price. And I can just make money as a rental and I can keep it as a rental for a long time. Or I can keep it as a rental until the market tells me it's a better time to sell it and I can make my profitability later. So I can make cash flow now, sell later, I can make cash flow forever. I can not make any cash flow and sell it for a profit. Even if I have to sell it for two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, I'll still make money. Right? Like it's, it's about finding deals that make sense with multiple exit strategies. And then you can choose how you're going to make money on it. The way to mitigate the risk is you've got to pay the appropriate price to weather the storm.

• 21:27Dave Meyer?

  That's just fundamentals, right? Like that's just what we're talking about, right? It's just like, yeah.

• 21:31Henry Washington?

  It's just called real estate investing. Yes.

• 21:33Dave Meyer?

  I know. But I think it's important for people to remember that buying quality assets at a good price in a good location is just still the game. Like that is, it's just it, right? It's like whether you're flipping or rental or short-term rental, whatever it is, that's.

• 21:54Dave Meyer?

  Still works. The price you're willing to pay has changed.

• 21:59Henry Washington?

  Yes.

• 21:59Dave Meyer?

  Because there is more risk and you have to be more disciplined about what you're willing to pay. If you were buying in 2022, if you overpaid by 10 grand, like who cared? It didn't matter. Now it matters. So pay less.

• 22:12Henry Washington?

  There was a time I would have paid 150 for this thing, right? Because I knew I could profit on it later, but that time has passed. And you know, it's interesting. My, my realtor called me not long after I bought the property and he was like, buddy, I'm worried about this one. And I said, well, what are you worried about? He was like, I'm just worried that it won't sell for what we want. And I was like, yeah, but I mean, I could rent it for 18 to 2000. And he was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's, yeah, you can do that. Right? You're just fine.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  The thing that always is, uh, I'm in awe for those of you who flip. Is that you have to be good on the buy side and the sale side. And that's a lot of pressure and you have to do that in, we're talking months. And most of the time, the market's not going to shift that much in three to six months, but it can. And that's why the flipping world terrifies me because, you know, as buy and hold, you really only have to be great on the buy side for the most part. Like right now, it's not the best time to sell. It's just, it's just not, not everywhere. But, but I'll tell you what, probably what you've got to be better at right now than anything is pricing right. And is selling it right because it's a buyer's market, buyer has the power, seller does not.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  So if you think you can get last year's price and act like a staunch. I don't know, like this is my price. I put all this money in it and you're trying to, that you think you can get what you got two years ago. You're going to be sitting and that's the death of a sale. We have somebody who put their house on the market next door and I'm mad because they went like, okay, granted I am where I am, but they, millions over. They're actually what it should be.

• 23:48Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  All the agents are like idiots. See, like no one. Is is buying it. It's not, it's just gonna sit there and that's not great for me. But yeah, so right now you better be darn good at listing.

• 24:01Dave Meyer?

  To me, just talking to a lot of flippers and starting to dip my toe into it a little bit, at least in Seattle and other markets I'm in, it feels like we're still at the sort of tail end of what feels like the riskiest part of the market, which is the transition from sort of a growing market to a correcting one, where you're still buying at higher prices. And then by the time you go to sell, things have sort of flattened out. Even in a market like the one I believe we're going into, which is going to be maybe negative, that even I think is less risky because you know that going into, again, it's the predictability. And you know, you're gonna buy even more disciplined, expecting or assuming that prices are gonna go

• 24:46Dave Meyer?

  down two to three percent by the time you sell them. But it was sort of like, over the last year, it's kind of been this time where like, okay, sellers were still had a lot of power. By the time you go to sell, you've kind of lost your power as a seller. And that's, I think, the riskiest part as as anyone is trying to sell property, right?

• 25:03Henry Washington?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's all just healthy. I think there are ways to make money in this business right now. And I think there are very risky things to do. And as you can tell in this episode, like, risk is determined by who you are, where you are, and what your strategy is. You know, Kathy sees as what I'm doing as risky, and that's fair. It is risky for her. And I see what I'm doing is is far less risky because I am buying as a landlord. I am buying as a hold because that's what my strategy is gonna be if it doesn't sell for what I need it to sell.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  You've got options.

• 25:38Henry Washington?

  So my risk is, can I afford to have multiple rentals come on at the same time, right? If I can't sell anything, right? Can I afford to keep them all as rentals, right? You just, that's where you get in over your head because it does cost money to operate those properties as rental properties.

• 25:53Dave Meyer?

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• 27:22Dave Meyer?

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• 30:10Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to On The Market. Let's jump into our conversation about how to adjust your strategy and your investing decisions during a market correction with me, Henry and Kathy. Kathy, how are you changing your strategy? What's your philosophical change to your approach?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  You know, what we've been doing for 20, over 20, oh my gosh, 25 years. Anyway, what we've been doing is the same. Like, nothing has changed. And when I was telling your story for you about how you bought that property in 2010, you bought it right. You bought it like, not even, it's like, fine. Like, it wasn't this deal of the century in it, but it fit your strategy. When I bought in Dallas, Texas, because I knew what was happening there, and I know some of you listening were not even born yet, but it was 2005 when we started buying, and we bought stupid good deals, which were not good deals. They were like $140,000 homes in Rockwall, Texas, that to me, as a Californian, was like-

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Free. It was almost free. Cost of a car, you know. It was, yeah, the cost of a garage here, right? But in Texas, it was retail. And Texans would just look down their nose at me and laugh, like, oh, this out of state. It doesn't know what she ain't doing. She negotiated a $5,000 discount. You know, but they were new. They were easy to manage. And it made sense for me. Guess what? They're like $300,000, $400,000 today, if not more. But guess who sold them? Didn't hold, because during that time, nothing kind of happened. And we got out of those properties right before they took off in price. So we didn't get that bonus that you got, Dave.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Then I didn't stick with my plan, which was to hold them to forever. I started to listen to these people saying, oh, nothing's ever going to happen in Texas. It's just there's too much land, prices will never go up. So part of it is sticking with your strategy, too, like, knowing- Absolutely.

• 32:11Dave Meyer?

  Which is hard.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:13Dave Meyer?

  It is hard. I mean, I'm a tinkerer, and you shouldn't be. I'm always like, trying to like, think of ways to do it. It's hard to like, just hold on to things when you have to be patient. But that is the game. Like, getting, getting- Control of your own emotions in that way is like a big part of being a buy and hold investor, I think.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so coming back to what have I changed as far as our fundamental business of buy and hold, single family and strong growth markets that are landlord friendly, where the average person can afford your rent. I love that philosophy. It's like if we just focus on the average price and the average person who can afford that, average means the most. The most people in that area can afford what you have to offer. That has worked for us for 25 years and I think it's going to continue for the next 25 years. So zero has changed with what we do and what we teach other people to do. From a, on the syndication side, which is more advanced, I guess you could say,

• 33:16Speaker 01

  for the past decade or 15 years, we've been doing subdivisions, which take five to 10 years to get up and running. And if you think, Henry, that, you know, you gotta guess what's happening in the market in three to six months.

• 33:32Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Try guessing five to 10 years. You have no idea.

• 33:35Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  And it's so much riskier and so much harder. And we've done, we've knocked them out of the park and some have been the struggle bus for years. So I would say in the syndication side, we are going back to what I know, what I love, which is acquiring things that cash flow. You know, whether it's apartments, whether it's single family homes, so that you can just sit and hold them if your original plan didn't go. But if you've got raw land and you sit and hold it, that's expensive. And there's no income coming in and you got all the overhead and you gotta put in the roads and the sewers and the utilities. And then nobody wants to buy what you got because all of a sudden you timed it on a down market.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  So what we're changing is I'm getting older. I don't need any more stress. We're just gonna do what's tried and true. Buy and hold, rental income, improve it as you go. Easy stuff.

• 34:28Dave Meyer?

  I love it. I completely agree. I think cash flow is the number one thing to be looking for right now. I've never bought a non-cash flowing deal, but I know during the pandemic, it got popular to invest for appreciation. You just say like, oh, it's, you know, you should buy something, even if it's negative cash flow, it's going to go up. And people made a lot of money doing that, but that was very unique and I do not recommend doing that anymore. As I was saying, my whole philosophy is like, wait, make money now and wait until the next pop. And, and it's honestly, the pop is not even the main thing. Like if you buy a good deal right now, that's still going to be a better use of your money than almost anything else you could do. If you buy real estate right now, even in a correcting market, it should do better than the stock market.

• 35:13Dave Meyer?

  So like, to me, there's, that's kind of a no brainer. And then if another pop happens, that's great. But the only way you can survive, or the only way you know you can survive to the next pop, or to time your exit from that property optimally, is if you have cash flow, because otherwise you might, you know, when Kathy was saying, it's get, get tempted to sell if nothing's happening and you're not cash flowing. That's very tempting to sell. But if you're sitting there collecting cash on cash return, that's better than anywhere else you could put your money. It's pretty easy to sit on those properties because you're like, I can't do anything else better. I'm just going to keep doing it and treat it sort of like an index fund. Just kind of set it and forget it.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  My properties were cash flowing just fine. I was just like greedy. I'm like, I want to do better somewhere else. And then boom, market takes off.

• 35:59Dave Meyer?

  That's the hard part of, of being in this industry, right? It's like you're seeing what everyone else is doing. So you start thinking like, oh, maybe I should do that. But like, in reality, you should just not.

• 36:10Henry Washington?

  Trust yourself.

• 36:11Dave Meyer?

  Exactly.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Which brings me to another asset class, which is the short-term rentals that we just started during COVID, because my goodness, what a boom. We just were like, hey, let's just see if this works and. They were rented nonstop. They were rented same day. I had to have house cleaners there between eleven and three every day, you know, every day. It was just constant. Like, wow, this is a cool business. And no, it's not. I don't want to say it's not, but it has slowed down dramatically, dramatically.

• 36:37Dave Meyer?

  Mine too.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  So that's another one where I was sort of just dabbling. It was easy. Money just came in. Sometimes I think I just used like old furniture I had. My daughter walked in, she goes, Mom, this is ugly. Like, get nice stuff in here. We would just use like garage sale stuff. So if you're, if you're noticing that with your short-term rentals is no longer the time again, just to be lazy about it. You have to be very, very good at it.

• 37:04Dave Meyer?

  But yeah, so I think, you know, cash flow, these are good advice. The last thing I, I, I talked about this at BPCon, I said before, but like, I just think the other thing in a correction is to, like, we always say underwrite conservatively. I'm like, underwriting scared. I'm like, you know, no price, no rent growth for two years.

• 37:20Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Dave Meyer?

  Why not? If it works like that, I'll be happy no matter what happens. You know, I'd rather do it that way than try and force something to work. So that's my last piece of advice.

• 37:31Henry Washington?

  Yeah, no, underwrite scared is kind of a perfect way to put it. You know, I just made an offer on a property. And so on paper, the deal kind of made sense. They were asking ninety-five thousand for a two-bed, one-bath that I could turn into a three-bed, two-bath, and then I could sell it for about two-hundred-ten to two-twenty after about what I was estimating, about a fifty-thousand-dollar rehab. That's a solid base hit of a deal. But I don't want to underwrite for a base hit now. Like, I kind of want to underwrite for a grand slam. And if I get a base hit, that's cool.

• 38:08Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Henry Washington?

  So, yeah. I sent someone out there to look at the property. We kind of estimated the rehab at about sixty-five thousand. And I was like, you know what? I mean, unless I'm gonna make fifty grand on this, because it's just a little bit further away than I want it to be. Like, I don't know that I want to do it. And so, you know, I made my offer at around fifty-five, which I knew wouldn't get accepted. Could I make money at eighty-five? I mean, probably a little bit. But I don't want to get myself into a position in this market. Where my back's against the wall and if I don't hurry up and sell it for the price that I thought I could sell it for, then I won't make any money. You know, I don't want to make five grand and put in all that work and be stressed out. I want to underwrite

• 38:52Henry Washington?

  it to make 50 and if I get that deal, cool, I'll go make somewhere between 30 and 50 rather than underwrite it to make 30 and then be sweating bullets hoping that I make 30 and then end up making like five to 10 after a whole lot of stress. Like that's just the market we're in is different now. And so, you know, talking to the wholesaler who had the deal, you know, I tried to explain that to him and he didn't like my offer and that's fine. And he was like, I can get somebody that's going to come pay me 85 to 95. Great. Go sell it to them for that. And so it's tough, like, because as an investor, it's hard to look at a deal and walk away and go, you know, am I walking away from 30 grand?

• 39:32Henry Washington?

  Yeah, maybe. But you also may be walking away from a $10,000 loss that you should, you know, if you don't play your cards right. So, you know, I'm kind of underwriting to shoot for the moon and if I hit the stars, that's great. And yeah, that could mean I'm walking away from some deals where I'm leaving 10, 20, 30 grand on the table, but that's okay. That's okay in this market.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Henry, it's time to share. You can just share it with someone. Let someone else have that.

• 39:57Henry Washington?

  Let someone else go take that risk. I also like sleeping at night when I buy deals. Like, I don't want to be super stressed out.

• 40:04Dave Meyer?

  Totally. All right. Well, that is great advice. Thank you guys so much. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate it. To try and just make sense of what's going on and show that experienced investors are still buying. They're just thinking about ways that they're adjusting their strategies, not being as aggressive, I think, sort of going back to fundamentals. And that's okay. It was okay to be aggressive during the last couple of years. It made sense to be aggressive during the last couple of years. Now it makes sense to be a little bit more conservative in your underwriting, a little bit more conservative with strategies, and really just sticking with things that you know are going to work and not speculating. I think that's one of the main things, one of the main takeaways from this conversation that we're seeing here. And giving yourself optionality was another big one. Henry hit on.

• 40:48Dave Meyer?

  That I think makes a lot of sense here. So, Henry, Kathy, thank you guys so much for being here. Kathy, I know after a day of partying, this was a big ask for you. So, we appreciate you rolling out of bed to get here.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  It was two nights ago. I'm OK. I'm OK now.

• 41:02Dave Meyer?

  OK, good. All right. And Henry, thanks for being here as always. Thank you, sir. And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On the Market. I'm Dave Meyer. We'll see you next time.

• 41:11Speaker 03

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