7 Ways to Lower Rental Property Expenses by Thousands Per Year

This could turn an average real estate deal into a home run, and it’s nothing you can’t do right now. Today, we’re giving you seven tips to save thousands (if not tens of thousands) on your rental property expenses, so you keep more of your cash flow every month. Plus, we’re announcing something new at BiggerPockets—something we specifically negotiated to save you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on every rental you buy. We’ll teach you how to close on your first (or next) rental property with less, get the seller to pay for your reserves or next repair, instantly save $250/year on landlord insurance, do top-tier renovations for budget prices, and save $10,000+ with just two phone calls. Want lower property taxes, too? We’ll show you the completely legal (and surprisingly easy) way to get the city to charge you hundreds of dollars less per year. Get access to all the BiggerPockets Pro discounts by signing up today! In This Episode We Cover The rule of thumb that has saved Dave and Henry $10,000+ during renovations How to immediately get $1,000+ off your closing costs on your next investment property Why you always (especially now) ask sellers for a credit/assist at closing Do not let your general contractor buy the materials (rookie mistake) How Dave gets his property taxes lowered by hundreds of dollars with one phone call And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠ttps://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1247 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?

  These are seven ways to lower your expenses and save money on your rental property. Most investors obsess over finding their next property. They renovate, they increase rents, but they're bleeding thousands of dollars every year on expenses they honestly just don't need to pay. These are things like closing costs, insurance, materials, higher property taxes, software, and more. And these add up to thousands of dollars per property, and almost all of them can be negotiated or reduced. So today, we're breaking down seven ways to cut your expenses and keep more money in your pocket on every single property. Some of these will save you a few hundred dollars, others can save you thousands.

• 0:43Dave Meyer?

  And you don't have to cut corners or downgrade on quality. This is about being smart with your money and being willing to shop around when other investors won't.

• 0:57Dave Meyer?

  What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at BiggerPockets. My co-host, Mr. Henry Washington, is also here with me today. Henry, how you doing?

• 1:07Henry Washington?

  I'm doing great. I've got my Onyx, I mean McDonald's coffee, and I'm doing fantastic.

• 1:12Dave Meyer?

  Onyx is the bougie coffee shop in Henry's town, and he likes to make fun of me and our producer Ian for liking bougie coffee. I'll drink McDonald's coffee, too. I've had tons of it, but like, given the choice, I would have a nicer coffee if I have the option. Well, actually, the discussion of McDonald's coffee is very on topic for today's show because we are talking about some of the ways that you can reduce your expenses, save money, and increase your cash on cash return for every property you buy. And no, I'm not one of those people who's like, oh, if millennials just stopped drinking coffee out, they could buy more rental properties. But we did get on the right topic, talking about saving money on coffee.

• 1:53Henry Washington?

  How very Dave Ramsey of us.

• 1:54Dave Meyer?

  Yes, exactly. But these are actually seven great tips that you can use if you're buying a new deal and even actually if you're already managing a property, these are some ideas that can take a deal that is completely underperforming, isn't up to standard, and turn it into a good one. And we're going to go through these seven topics. And as we do, I'm going to actually share with you some really cool new stuff that BiggerPockets can actually do to help you with this. We just announced this week a few brand new pro perks for the BiggerPockets Pro Membership that can help you save serious, serious money. We're talking reducing your costs on investment properties, on your loans, on your insurance. It's the biggest addition we've made to the Pro

• 2:38Dave Meyer?

  Membership in years. And we'll talk about some of those opportunities that every one of you can utilize as we go through these. But let's just get into this. Our number one is getting closing cost credits and looking for down payment programs. This is one of the most powerful options available to real estate investors that I think, well, all of these are underutilized. I'm going to say this several times today, but I do think this is probably one of the most underutilized programs. People do not negotiate or talk to enough banks. They don't look for state and local programs. But these things can actually save you thousands of dollars on any new acquisition.

• 3:15Henry Washington?

  This is one thing where people don't do enough research because there are tons of different programs out there that are designed to help people with home affordability. But you do have to do the research. Some examples, without getting too specific, there are places where you can get forgivable second mortgages. In other words, they will give you a certain amount of money, maybe $10,000, $15,000 that you can use towards your down payments. That comes as a second mortgage. But if you live in the house for five to 10 years, that loan is forgiven, meaning you just got to use that money for your down payment. You don't have to pay it back. The second mortgage is removed. There are down payment grant programs in some states, and grants is money that you don't have to give back. Grants oftentimes do have pretty strict

• 3:57Henry Washington?

  criteria that you have to meet, but it's worth looking into to see if it fits. Your specific situation, there are closing cost assistance programs, some nonprofits, but there are also company benefits that you may not be aware of. So check with the company that you work for. They may offer some sort of home ownership grants, down payment assistance as part of their benefits package. You know, that little handbook that give you when you first start that you kind of breeze over and you just sign up for your benefits. But check with your company that you work for because you never know what kind of benefits they may have, or check with your HR department and see if they have any resources that may not be tied to your direct employment that you can utilize as well. They tend to be tied into these kinds of information that can help you out.

• 4:38Dave Meyer?

  A hundred percent. I also recommend talking to your agent, talking to property managers. My first deal, I was exposed to a couple of programs that I took advantage of because it was an owner occupied deal. I will say that a lot of these state and local programs are for owner occupied deals. So just keep that in mind. But actually, it's not just governments. Like there are businesses that also offer closing cost credits or down payment programs. And that's actually one of the amazing new features of BiggerPockets Pro. We actually went out and used the massive size of the BiggerPockets community. We have

• 5:18Dave Meyer?

  over three and a half million members. We went out and actually were able to negotiate discounts for BiggerPockets Pro members with two of the biggest lenders in the country, Lending One and Kiavi. So if you're a rental property investor, you want to do buy and hold, you want to go out and use a DSCR loan, great way to buy properties right now, you can actually save a thousand dollars in closing costs per deal with Lending One if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member. So that's great value in itself. BP Pro costs a fraction of that to get it. So if you're going to do one deal a year, that is going to save you a ton of money. And you can actually use that credit towards closing costs twice

• 5:59Dave Meyer?

  per year. So if you do two deals, you use two DSCR loans, you can actually save $2,000 in closing costs. This is kind of a no brainer way to save some money on your next loan. Have a program with Kiavi, who's a lending partner specializing, they do sort of like fix and flips and bridge loans. They're going to give you $1,250 off your closing costs. So these are just examples, like if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, go use these. They're worth way more than it costs to become a BiggerPockets Pro member. But there are also other examples of these kinds of discounts that you can get if you're aligned with the right organizations, if you're in the right communities, like being a BiggerPockets Pro. All right. So that was number one. Henry, what is cost-saving

• 6:44Dave Meyer?

  technique number two?

• 6:46Henry Washington?

  Cost-saving technique number two is again, not something people have probably never heard of, but we are in a market where this is more prevalent and you should be taking advantage of it.

• 6:55Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 6:56Henry Washington?

  It is seller credits. So this is during the negotiation. You can ask for seller credits. Sometimes those credits can come in the form of dollars. Sometimes those credits come in the form of asking the seller to do some work that you would have to pay for once you own the property. We're in a market right now where sellers are much more willing to give a little bit more to the buyers because there's less seller activity in a lot of markets. And so people want to capitalize on the opportunity they have when somebody's interested in their property. You need to take advantage of this and ask for what you want. So when you think about seller credits, yes, you can ask for things to be fixed, but sometimes what we like to do is you can just

• 7:39Henry Washington?

  ask for a discount on the property. Maybe you go through the inspection process and every inspector is going to find things that are air quotes, wrong with the property. That's their job. When you look at these inspection reports, sometimes you don't really care about the things that they say, but don't just take that and say, I'm good with it. You can ask for seller credit. So maybe you say, hey, I have this laundry list of things that my inspector found. How about you give me $5,000 off the purchase price in lieu of repairs. For investors like me who are rehabbing properties, sometimes that's a dream come true because I don't have to go back in and fix anything. I can discount the property. You can get a discounted property and you can choose to fix what you want.

• 8:17Dave Meyer?

  Henry, what is the psychological thing about this? Because I think a lot of people out there are probably saying, why can't I just pay less for the property? But sometimes I just find that, you know, sellers want their number. And for some reason, you know, you pay them 300 grand, they're willing to give you five grand in seller credits, but they wouldn't take $295. It's literally the same, but like, is that just me or does that happen to you too?

• 8:44Henry Washington?

  No, that happens all the time. There's a, there's a psychological piece to it for sure. You want to hit your number because it makes your ROI look good, but net, net at the end of the day, I'm concerned about what am I walking away with? So in my opinion, it truly doesn't matter to me how it happens. We have given seller credits to the buyer on probably my last five flip sales. We have in some instances, based on what they're asking for, have raised the purchase price to then allow them to take a seller credit, which is a net no difference in my opinion, but I got my butt kicked on a recent sale where I gave a ton of seller credits just because I was ready to move on from that property. And so yeah, use the market in your favor right now.

• 9:25Henry Washington?

  You should be asking for some sort of seller credits on every single deal because the market is giving you the opportunity to do that. And people are much more likely to hear that and seasoned investors like myself, we're expecting it.

• 9:37Dave Meyer?

  Totally.

• 9:38Henry Washington?

  So if it's expected, just ask for it and you can probably get some sort of a discount off of the price or get maybe a big ticket item that you were concerned with covered through that transaction.

• 9:49Dave Meyer?

  Or a rate buy down. That's common seller credit now too. People are buying down points for people's mortgages is another really good thing. Super valuable. I will say, you know, as a seller, I think it's kind of a funny thing, but from a buyer's perspective, a lot of time getting a cash credit is really advantageous because you can finance the purchase price. So like, let's just say you're buying a property for 400,000. If you just buy it for 400 grand, no seller credits, any reserves that you need or cash to renovate the property, typically you're going to have to come out of pocket for that. But maybe you have some leverage and instead of negotiating down to 390, you keep that property contract at 400 grand and get the 10 grand in cash credits.

• 10:33Dave Meyer?

  That means, yeah, you're still paying the same price, but you're financing usually 80% of that. And the seller is giving you 10 grand that you can then use as your, either your cash reserves or to finance some of your renovations. And yet you're going to have to pay that back over time. But oftentimes that's a drop in the bucket in terms of your monthly payment and it gives you cash upfront, which is super valuable.

• 10:56Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. All right, Dave, what is the third option for saving money when buying a property?

• 11:01Dave Meyer?

  Shop around for insurance.

• 11:05Henry Washington?

  Man, people don't do this.

• 11:06Dave Meyer?

  I'm gonna be honest, I used to not do this at all, but in today's day and age, I think it is probably the fastest rising expense for almost every landlord. Like taxes are going up, but insurance premiums, I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's, they're up like 40 plus percent since 2020. It's crazy.

• 11:21Henry Washington?

  Insurance premiums are going up and in 2025, we did an analysis of our expenses on our entire portfolio and insurance was among the top expense that we have in our entire business. So we actually went shopping at a portfolio level for a lot of properties to make sure we were getting the best rate. But this is something I've always done because it is such a high expense, but it's also an important expense. You don't think about it until you need it and then you panic when you need it and hope you've got the right coverage.

• 11:49Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 11:49Henry Washington?

  So not only do you need to be shopping for the best rate, you need to be shopping for the best rate for the appropriate amount of coverage for your portfolio. If you have a big portfolio, use your size to your advantage, try to negotiate discounts. Also, don't just shop directly with certain insurance providers. Also throw in a couple of insurance brokerages into your search because brokerages go out and search multiple insurance providers, some you may not even know exist or think about. And that's going to give you a total picture of what your insurance options are so you can select the best option.

• 12:20Dave Meyer?

  Totally. I, I think shopping at a portfolio level is excellent advice. I did that recently and it, it does make a significant difference in terms of the price and it's just headache. Like I love sending one check per year, you know, to, to one provider. And it's just like you talk to someone about renewals. It's not that big of a deal. I love that. But I think you're right. Like I've learned painfully at times to make sure that you really have landlord specific insurance. Like I, I think business interruption insurance is probably the most underrated part of getting that. Like if your house becomes unlivable, if you have business interruption insurance, you get paid, you get your rent, you know, like that's really valuable. And you know, it's usually a couple hundred bucks a year to get that. But for me, I find that kind of stuff that is designed

• 13:05Dave Meyer?

  for landlords to be super important when shopping for insurance.

• 13:10Henry Washington?

  One of the things I shop for to protect yourself, I like what you said about business interruption insurance. That's one I actually wrote down because I don't have that, but I shop for umbrella policies. So I have an umbrella policy that covers me above and beyond what my normal policy would cover. You'll start to notice as you shop for insurance that you're only going to have so much coverage in terms of a dollar amount. And so if you have a bigger problem than your coverage has, that comes out of your pocket unless you have something like an umbrella policy, which kicks in after you exceed what's in your insurance coverage for that property.

• 13:42Dave Meyer?

  Dude, and another thing that you, people should be looking for is look at the replacement value that you're getting quoted for your properties because I have been noticing some of them are insane, like so low. They're low balling you to the point where if you had to rebuild your property, you would not be able to do it without coming out of pocket for, in the case of the one I'm thinking of, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so like you need to be super careful about that stuff. And because construction costs have really changed a lot. And so you need to make sure that like you're, you're actually going to be able to get the kind of claim that you need. Shopping for insurance, great way to save money. And if you want to, and you are a BiggerPockets pro, you can actually save

• 14:22Dave Meyer?

  up to $250 per year from Steadily. This is another deal that we just negotiated with Steadily. If you don't know them, they specialize in landlord insurance. I actually use them for a lot of my rental properties. They're offering $5 off landlord insurance premiums if you are a BiggerPockets pro. So you could get 5% off your insurance premium. That could be hundreds of dollars depending on what you're insuring. I need to just say legally that these discounts may vary. They're not available in all states or cover all risk. So make sure to read all the fine print, but it is a great way to save money on a type of insurance policy that is designed for our community. All right. So those are

• 15:04Dave Meyer?

  our first three ways to save money right now. Closing cost credits, down payment programs, seller credits, and then shopping around for insurance. We have to take a quick break, but when we get back, we have four more ways that pretty much everyone listening to this can use to save money right now. We'll be right back.

• 15:22Henry Washington?

  Running a real estate business does not have to feel like juggling five different tools. With ReSimply, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly for free, and reach out with calls or texts, all from one streamlined platform. The real magic? AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects, and even grade your conversations so you know where you stand. That means less time on busy work and more time closing deals. Start your free trial and lock in 50% off your first month at resimply.com/biggerpockets. That's R-E-S-I-M-P-L-I.com/biggerpockets.

• 16:01Dave Meyer?

  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.

• 16:34Henry 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. Rent2Retirement 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 Rent2Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties, you set up an Airbnb listing, and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent2Retirement 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.

• 17:16Henry 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.

• 17:58Dave 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.

• 18:40Speaker 02

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• 19:13Henry Washington?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Dave Meyer talking about ways you can save money on your next investment property. And I'm jumping right into number four with one of my favorites, which is getting creative with saving on materials costs. This is something where you can save a ton of money as a property investor. Because a lot of times what investors do, especially new investors, is they hire a general contractor. They get a labor and materials bid and then they just pay the contractor to go out and find all the supplies and do all the work. And you can lose thousands of dollars that you just end up paying to a general contractor. When if you're only buying one property, you can source a lot of your materials on your own.

• 19:59Henry Washington?

  The amount of amazing things I've found in places like Amazon for finishes, Facebook Marketplace for furniture, if you're doing a furnished rental, there are huge discounts. And one of my secret sauces is when you're shopping for things like flooring, like tile, like carpet. A lot of these big box stores are just buying these things from warehouses. You can also go to these warehouses and get the same products for a little bit cheaper. And trust me, if you're saving 50 cents a square foot on flooring for an entire house, that's thousands of dollars on renovations and that can go directly back in your pocket.

• 20:40Dave Meyer?

  Where do you see the biggest savings? What, what kind of finishes, what are the most important things to shop around on?

• 20:45Henry Washington?

  The biggest savings I get are on luxury vinyl plank flooring and on carpet. I get carpet at a great discount.

• 20:53Dave Meyer?

  How much?

• 20:54Henry Washington?

  So when I carpet a house, I'm typically only carpeting bedrooms and I'm only doing that on flips. Guess what it cost me to carpet a three bedroom house total?

• 21:02Dave Meyer?

  How big is the house?

• 21:04Henry Washington?

  Call it a 1800 square foot house, but you're doing three bedrooms.

• 21:07Dave Meyer?

  Just the bedrooms, like 400 square feet, I'm going to guess like three bucks a foot. Just normally I would guess like four, four and a half, but since you're bragging about it, I'm going to say three bucks a foot. So 1,200 bucks?

• 21:18Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I'm paying less than a thousand dollars on that. So if you look at it for every house that I do, that's saving me three to 500 bucks, depending on the square footage.

• 21:26Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Henry Washington?

  Doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're doing multiple houses, that adds up. And even if it's just one house, three to 500 bucks, why not?

• 21:34Dave Meyer?

  Dude, totally. And it's like each of these things we're talking about today aren't going to be amazing things. But if you get 2,000 bucks off closing costs, if you get $5,000 in seller credits, you get 250 bucks off your insurance, 500 on your carpet. You're talking about eight, $10,000 on a single deal here just from doing a little bit of legwork. It's not even that much stuff. And we're just talking about saving maybe five figures on some of these deals.

• 22:01Henry Washington?

  And when I walk properties that other investors have rehabbed. I often see everybody has the same light fixtures and finishes from like Lowe's or Home Depot. And so I started pricing those against places like Amazon or other big box warehouses. And I'm saving anywhere between 5% and 20%, depending on what kind of light fixtures. And then my property looks different than everybody else that's out there because most people are just walking into Lowe's and Home Depot.

• 22:33Dave Meyer?

  You just see the same backsplash, the same pendant lights, it's the same countertops every time and not, they're usually pretty nice. Like there's a reason people choose them, but I do think it goes a really long way, even if they're slightly different just to stand out. And if you could do that and save money, that's just like a double win.

• 22:50Henry Washington?

  Yeah, that's another big savings point too, as you talked about countertops. Man, getting countertops directly from a countertop supplier will save you a ton of money than going to a third party, a ton.

• 23:01Dave Meyer?

  I will also say, this isn't always the easiest thing to do, but if you're plugged in with other investors, you can also trade. Like there are some times I know people are getting rid of cabinets that you need to do.

• 23:11Henry Washington?

  That's fair.

• 23:11Dave Meyer?

  I once, I once traded a guy, a working hot tub, I got the working hot tub for carpet that I was going to throw in a dumpster. Like you never know what people want. Like this guy wanted to get rid of his hot tub because some insurance thing. And I just traded it to him and it was great. And I've done that with cabinets as well. I've been getting rid of cabinets and gotten fixtures in exchange. People might want, if you're cleaning out a house and you have working appliances, trade it to someone or sell it to someone. And reuse that money to go buy something else. I see a lot of people just trashing out things that they can actually resell.

• 23:47Henry Washington?

  That's a great point. You just jogged my memory. I bought cabinets at a secondhand store once because somebody was rehabbing their house. They had perfectly good solid wood cabinets. They got rid of them to a secondhand store. I picked them up and installed them and they looked fantastic and they were better quality than me going to get something from Lowe's. That's like half part of a board now.

• 24:06Dave Meyer?

  A hundred percent. Like I'm redoing my kitchen in my primary. I'm going to go buy nice appliances, right? But I have perfectly good appliances. They're just white and I want stainless steel ones and I can sell them or I can trade them to any, like these would be great in any rental property. So like figure out a way or trade it to, your contractors might buy these kinds of things. Like they, they might be interested. I've sold tons of stuff to contractors in the past. Like these are great ways to just make money off of the stuff that literally would go in the trash.

• 24:33Henry Washington?

  Almost every great hookup I've found in parts and materials, almost all of them have come from contractors telling me about these locations or about these people.

• 24:41Dave Meyer?

  Like contractors with flooring, right? Like oftentimes they'll know a project where they bought too much and maybe you only need 500 square feet of flooring and you could just go buy it from some person who doesn't even want it. These are like absolute ways to do this. So these are great, great ways. I just think you gotta get creative. Like most people do this kind of comparison shopping in their own life, right? If you were furnishing your own home, you'd probably be doing these kinds of things. Do the same thing with your rental property. Do the same thing with your flip. If you spend a little bit of time on it, easy hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a deal.

• 25:15Henry Washington?

  Couldn't agree more. Do a little bit of research, save yourself potentially a lot of money. And speaking of saving a lot of money, what do you have for number five, Dave?

• 25:23Dave Meyer?

  Number five is similar. We're staying in the same theme of shopping around here, but this is getting multiple bids, not just when you're doing a renovation, but on every single time you talk to a contractor. I don't know about you, but I noticed the variance, the difference between the high-end quotes and low-end quotes that I get right now are absolutely insane. I am scraping asbestos. I got one quote, 4,500 bucks. Guess what the next quote was?

• 25:54Henry Washington?

  What, six grand?

• 25:55Dave Meyer?

  $23,000. No joke. They're not even, not even fucking around. This is real, these are real people putting things on paper. $23,000 to scrape 809 square feet. Are you kidding me? But like, that's an extreme example, honestly. But, you know, I got two HVAC quotes the other day. One was 33,000, the other was 17,000. It's literally double. Like, people are just throwing stuff out there. So I don't care if you've worked with someone for years. Get multiple quotes on every single project.

• 26:31Henry Washington?

  This is just a smart thing to do. One of the things I've learned as a seasoned investor is that contractors don't always bid a job as if they want to win the job.

• 26:43Dave Meyer?

  Oh, so true.

• 26:44Henry Washington?

  Sometimes they bid the job because they don't want it. And if they're gonna do it, they want to get paid a lot of money for it.

• 26:53Dave Meyer?

  A ridiculous price, yeah.

• 26:54Henry Washington?

  And that's because some contractors are just like other business owners. They have different superpowers. So you may have a contractor that has guys that do the kind of work that you need done. They do it fast. They do it efficiently and they get the materials cheap. They may give you a very good bid versus the very next contractor does not have the same connections or the same people to do that job as effectively. And you're gonna get a much higher price because it's gonna be much more of a pain for that contractor to get the job done. So they're gonna price it astronomically. It doesn't mean that the contractor's a jerk. It just means they're built different than the other contractors. And you'll never know those things unless you get multiple bids.

• 27:38Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, this, one of the things I've learned from our mutual friend, James Danard, is that a lot of this also just depends on how busy they are. Like, someone might have a bunch of other projects, and so to take the time away from their other projects, they might need a charge, it's fair, three grand more, because they're like, I have other stuff going on. Meanwhile, you catch a company who's between jobs, they might be willing to lower their costs to fill a spot in their schedule. That doesn't mean they're bad people. It's just, this is supply and demand, right? Like, their, their supply and demand waivers over time, and you need to just be constantly in tune with what's going on. This can save you so, I mean, this might be the biggest one of all of the ones that we've been talking about. It can just save you tens of thousands of dollars on a project.

• 28:21Henry Washington?

  And I know a lot of people just generically say you never use the lowest bid. I would say you need to be careful when using the lowest bid, but you gotta compare that to your other bids. Because when you just, the example that you used, why would you pay? An extra $15,000 just because it wasn't your lowest bid. Like get multiple bids so you can have a good apples to apples comparison because they're not all bidding with the same things in mind. Each business is different. And also, a lot of contractors become contractors because they were great at turning wrenches. And that got them a lot of business. It doesn't necessarily mean they're a great business person. So they're not thinking all of the times like a business person who's trying to write up a bid

• 29:06Henry Washington?

  in order to win the job. They're just thinking, how am I going to survive this weekend? What's my most important thing to do? And they're focused on that more so than making sure you get the best bid. So you gotta get multiple bids to protect yourself.

• 29:18Dave Meyer?

  A hundred percent. I know it's annoying. Like it is annoying. You usually have to drive back and forth to a property, show people around, depending on the project. Get three bids per project. That's what I would say. Three bids per trade, per project, minimum. And if you don't like them, keep going. Just keep going.

• 29:34Henry Washington?

  One trick of the trade I learned to help you with the time management on this is to write up high level scopes of work. They don't have to be super detailed. Just line item, maybe room by room at a very high level of what the work is that needs to be done. And if you send that out with your request for the bid, it helps the contractor understand what's the size of the prize before they go out there.

• 29:58Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 29:59Henry Washington?

  That way, if they're too busy and they can't get to it, or if they're like, hey, I don't know that this job is worth my time. They can give you that information upfront and save you the headache of having to go out there and wait for bids to turn around. So the scope of work hack has saved me a ton of time and honestly saved the contractors a ton of time as well.

• 30:15Dave Meyer?

  All right. So that's our number five tip for saving money in today's market. But we have two more for you when we get back from this quick break. For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple. But honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI agent helps with SEO, website copy and email marketing after launch.

• 30:58Dave Meyer?

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• 31:41Dave Meyer?

  I don't even care. This is the trip I look forward to all year. But here's the part I actually appreciate. The practical side of my brain kicking in is that my place doesn't have to just sit there empty the whole time I'm away. I can list my space on Airbnb and bring in a little extra income while I'm out getting humbled on a mountain. And with the Co-host Network, I'm not the one handling all of it. You can partner with a vetted local co-host who can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even handle the styling. So I get to fully focus on my trip and my place is still working for me the whole time. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host. Investing in real estate has always been smart,

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• 34:33Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Henry and I are here going through seven top ways to save money in 2026. Henry, what's number six?

• 34:42Henry Washington?

  Number six is cost-effective systems. Look, if you're going to operate property, you're going to need systems. There are tons of different software systems that do tons of different things. They all have different pricing models. And so you need to pay attention to what you're paying. It's like those commercials where somebody asks you, how many streaming services are you paying for? And they're like three and it's like 33, right?

• 35:07Dave Meyer?

  I hate when people ask me that question because I know that I'm like, my wife and I are both paying for the same ones like seven times.

• 35:14Henry Washington?

  Yes, I'm scared to look at how many streaming services I pay for, but we often do look at our bank account to determine like what different software systems that we're paying for. And then we try to either consolidate those into one system or determine if we truly still need them. I think a lot of investors waste a lot of money paying for subscriptions for things they don't use anymore. That service had a need at one point, you stopped using that product or service and didn't even realize you're still paying for it. But one thing I've found most recently is now that AI has become more prevalent and software tools have become more and more advanced. There are tools now that are more effectively priced than two to three years ago when I started paying for systems.

• 35:56Henry Washington?

  And in 2025, there was one tool and specifically that we purchased and it literally replaced about five different subscription services. And saved me a ton of money and it was so nice to be able to email and cancel those subscriptions. So I know this one seems a little pain in the butt slash convoluted, but I promise you, you are throwing money away on systems that you're not using anymore.

• 36:19Dave Meyer?

  I think there are just ways to save money now. Software is definitely one of them because if you're a self-managing landlord, if you're a real estate investor, you're gonna need software platforms. Like there's a ton of different options out there and you're gonna need to find good ones. This is something that we have always been helping people with at BiggerPockets. If you're a pro member, we have been negotiating software discounts for people for a long time. You can get free access to rent-ready, $350 value, you can get free access to baseline, that's $240. But whatever it is, shop around, find good systems that you feel like are sustainable for you, where you're not spending a ton of money and eating up your cash flow because frankly, you don't need to, so you shouldn't be spending money on that.

• 37:01Henry Washington?

  One of the things that I do to help with this is I have a spreadsheet that I literally add every product or service that I use onto this spreadsheet. And then that way, when I review it once a year or once every six months, I can see, oh gosh, I haven't used that in ages and I can go and cancel it. So every time I add a new one, it goes onto this spreadsheet. It's the way I track, I mean, honestly, it's a bad idea, but it is also the way I track, like the logins and passwords for all these things. But doing that keeps, it keeps the visibility.

• 37:35Dave Meyer?

  You're gonna get hacked tomorrow after this podcast comes out.

• 37:38Henry Washington?

  I know, I know. I mean, that doesn't exist to anybody. But no, in all seriousness, having the spreadsheet, which I track where all my software tools are, make sure that I don't have an excuse not to be paying for things that we're not using anymore.

• 37:52Dave Meyer?

  It took me like nine years before I started doing this, but it is a great option. All right, Henry, what is our last way of saving money? Number seven here, what do you got?

• 38:01Henry Washington?

  This is actually something that I learned from a business partner of mine. It's just not something I had thought about before or I didn't know that you could do. And it's just something I learned from hanging out with other investors, but it is contesting your property taxes.

• 38:15Dave Meyer?

  Yep, I love doing this. It's a subjective thing.

• 38:18Henry Washington?

  It's so subjective.

• 38:19Dave Meyer?

  They make it up.

• 38:20Henry Washington?

  When you buy a property, especially if you're an investor and you're going to improve that property, at some point, the city comes around and goes, hey, that property is cooler than it used to be, which means you should pay us more in taxes.

• 38:32Dave Meyer?

  Give us more money.

• 38:33Henry Washington?

  And then all of a sudden you get a new assessment and your tax bill's gone up by a few hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, sometimes a couple thousand bucks, depending on where you live. Like this can drastically affect your cash flow, but you can just call the city and say, I don't like that.

• 38:50Dave Meyer?

  Every city like has a process for doing this. It's not just like to call. Stan down at the market like online. I've always, I just do it online.

• 38:59Henry Washington?

  You can do it online in some places. Here, most of the time you have to make a phone call, but every time I've done that, almost every time, I think there's been one time we've called and said, "Hey, I think that's a little too high," that they were like, "Nah, it's good." Every other time, they're like, "Yeah, we'll take a look at it," and then they come down.

• 39:15Dave Meyer?

  I am batting 1,000, 1,000 in the city of Denver. Every time I've contested my property taxes and I sell them what I think it's worth, they split the difference. 100% of the time, down to the dollar, they say 700, I say 500, it's 600. That's exactly what happens every time. Why not do that? It takes four minutes. It's amazing.

• 39:33Henry Washington?

  Just do it. Worst case scenario, they say no. Best case scenario, you save yourself a few hundred to a thousand bucks or so. Like just-

• 39:41Dave Meyer?

  It's unbelievable.

• 39:42Henry Washington?

  Do it. It's just people at the city office, they're making their best guess. And if you call them with actual data, a lot of the times they're like, "Yeah, no, that's good. I'm fine with that."

• 39:51Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. I think this is true for all these things. Like, all of these things, you don't know if they're going to save you a ton of money for each deal. But if you go through these seven steps for each deal that you have, or each deal that you're going to acquire, I promise you, you're saving a thousand bucks. You're saving 2,000 bucks. You're saving 3,000 bucks on every single deal. That adds up so much. That's more money for your next down payment. That's more money in your reserves. That's more money you can put into a renovation. That's more money you can go and go out and have a nice dinner. Whatever you want. These are amazing ways to save money and boost your cash flow. And they're things that literally everyone can do for every single project.

• 40:28Henry Washington?

  Yes, exactly. And if you go back in this episode and you listen to number three through number seven, all of those are things that you can do with existing properties you own right now. So you don't have to be buying a new one to start taking advantage of some of these benefits.

• 40:42Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, that's what we got for you all today. If you want to take advantage of all of the amazing discounts that you get as a BiggerPockets Pro member, go to biggerpockets.com/pro. Check out all the money-saving tools that we have there. On top of the calculators, the rent estimators, all of the other stuff that you get for being a part of the BiggerPockets Pro community. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Henry? Oh, he's dancing. He's looking good. All right. He's ready to get out of here. I hope you all enjoy this episode as much as we did making it. We'll see you all next time.