How to Start Investing in Real Estate (From Scratch!) in 2025

This is how to start investing in real estate in 2025 from scratch, even if you don’t have any experience. You could be a brand-new investor or someone returning after years since your last purchase. One thing is clear: 2025 has changed the housing market. We are not in the same scenario as we were in 2020, 2022, or even 2024. Investors have more negotiating power now, and if you’ve decided to get in the game, now is the time to pick up deals. So, if we were starting from scratch in real estate investing, what would we do? Which strategies make the most sense for beginners? How do you find undervalued real estate deals and negotiate with sellers? Plus, should you even be buying now, or should you be waiting for greater price movement? If you want to invest in real estate in 2025, this is the exact place to start. We’ll walk through each step a beginner needs to take, from picking a strategy to finding an agent and lender, how to lock in a lower purchase price on your first investment property, and some deal-finding “hacks” even the most advanced investors rarely know about. In This Episode We Cover How to start investing in real estate in 2025, even if you have no experience Who should you talk to first: the agent, the lender, or somebody else entirely? The best strategies (with the LEAST risk) for beginner real estate investors How to find undervalued real estate deals in this new buyer’s market The single easiest investment strategy for any American to get started And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1151 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?

  This is how I would start building a real estate portfolio from scratch right now in 2025. No matter what you may be hearing about the housing market right now, it's almost always better to start buying real estate now than wait for some better opportunity that may never arrive. So if you're totally new to this real estate game, or even if you've invested before and are thinking about buying again, here's exactly how I'd recommend doing it today.

• 0:33Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. I've been buying rental properties for 15 years and on this podcast I help you achieve financial freedom through real estate. Today, we're going to answer a very simple question. How do you start investing in real estate right now? In some ways, the answer never changes. There are some steps every new investor has to take no matter what's going on, and some strategies that just pretty much always work. But right now is also a very different time in the real estate market than if you were to have started investing three years or five years ago, or even 10 years ago. So today I'm joined by Henry Washington and we're going to provide some tips you absolutely need to keep in mind

• 1:15Dave Meyer?

  to ensure you're getting great value and mitigating risk as you start a portfolio today. Henry, thanks for joining us.

• 1:23Henry Washington?

  Hey, thanks for having me, Dave. I'm excited. I love talking about this topic.

• 1:26Dave Meyer?

  Okay, so Henry, I guess before I ask you how to start, we should probably zoom out and say if you should start. It's a pretty confusing world economy out there. You know, you talk to a lot of new investors, like, do you still advise them to get started now?

• 1:43Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. I think real estate is always going to have a way to pay you. You, as an investor, it's your job to figure out if those ways make sense for you right now. If you're financially ready and able to take advantage of the ways the market's willing to pay you right now, like if it fits your financial goals. You need to first understand what your goals are from a financial perspective. And then you need to look at the broader market and then look at your specific real estate market and figure out if there's a way for real estate to help you get to your goals right now. Like, I think it's pretty generic and irresponsible just to say, yeah, you can invest right now. It'll be perfect for you. Like, everybody's

• 2:25Henry Washington?

  in a different spot financially. But in general, you can invest and make money right now. And if you can find a way to do that, I think you're going to look like a genius in 10 years when things change.

• 2:40Dave Meyer?

  So we sort of talked about this. I was going to ask you what to do first, but I think sort of an analysis of the goals. Sounds like what you would recommend, or is there a different thing people should do first?

• 2:48Henry Washington?

  Now, more so than ever, is the time where you need to have a strategy and then figure out where and how you can implement that strategy. Because if you started buying in 2020, then it didn't matter what you bought. It was going to go up in value. The market was going to pay you regardless of your strategy. And that isn't the case anymore. You can go out, do a deal, and lose a bunch of money if you do a bad deal. And so if you don't know where to start, like, having a strategy that gives you a blueprint to help you get started is big. Because, like I said, everybody's different. You may be ready financially, but the strategy you're thinking about may not make sense for the market you live in, right? You're not going to acquire a bunch of cash flowing assets in LA. You're going

• 3:32Henry Washington?

  to have to get creative to get cash flow in a market like Los Angeles. So knowing what your strategy is will then help you determine where you should invest and how you should invest. So I think definitely, education, strategy, execution.

• 3:47Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, that education piece is really important, too, because to pick a strategy, you need to know something. You have to have a baseline understanding of all of the different ways that you can pursue real estate investing. For me, yeah, I'm not trying to hawk my book right now, but like the way I think about the strategy is like, it's not just like, I want to buy rentals, short-term rentals, midterm rentals. That's almost like a secondary thing. The most important strategic element to me is like, do you want to go slow and steady? Do you want to go fast and furious? What is it that you're trying to accomplish right now? And if you can answer that, then all that other stuff flows into it pretty easily. Like, slow and steady, you can buy

• 4:32Dave Meyer?

  cash flowing assets right now. You could buy burrs right now that are going to be solid deals today that are going to do great over the long run. Like, that's really easy. You just told me some of your people you work with and mentor are flipping houses successfully. That's just a totally different business. So if you're trying to start right now, don't do the scattershot approach. And I know it's hard because you probably see on social media, you hear people on this podcast who are doing cool stuff, all sorts of very profitable cool stuff. Not everything is for everyone. It's one of the hardest things about real estate, I think, to not get that, you know, shiny object syndrome and to really be disciplined.

• 5:10Dave Meyer?

  But that's the thing in 2025, is discipline, focus, and just honing in on one thing that you could do really well. It's gonna work. Like, you can do that, no doubt. But like, the scattershot thing is not gonna work.

• 5:24Henry Washington?

  There is somebody executing a strategy that you want to do very well in all areas of the country. But is it the right thing for you? Only you can figure that out. And so, a lot of people listening to this who are looking to get started probably have a million questions. And I guarantee you, some of those questions are, should I flip? Or should I buy rentals? Or should I invest in my home market? Or should I look somewhere else where maybe deals look like they're more profitable? Like, all of these things are questions new investors have. But if you really do take the time to figure out what is your strategy? What is it you're trying to accomplish in terms of a monetary goal? Like you said, if you're looking to go fast and use leverage to acquire cash

• 6:05Henry Washington?

  flow, that should guide you to a market where that works for you.

• 6:10Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 6:10Henry Washington?

  Right? And so you won't have to answer the question, should I invest in my backyard? Or should I go somewhere else? You've picked a strategy, and now you can look in your backyard and say, can I do my strategy here? And if the answer is no, well, then there, you've answered your question. You need to look somewhere else.

• 6:23Dave Meyer?

  Exactly. All right, we got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more tips on how to start investing in 2025, right after this. There's a point where basically every investor realizes traditional financing stops scaling with you. At first, it works. You qualify with your income, your job, your tax returns. But as you grow, that model starts to break. Now, it's not really about your personal income. It's about the income from your properties. That's where DSCR lending comes in. And it's why a lot of investors end up working with lenders like Host Financial. Host Financial qualifies deals based on property income, not personal income. So you're not dealing with W2s, or tax returns, or DTI constraints.

• 7:07Dave Meyer?

  And with 80% to 85% LTV, you can stay more flexible as you scale. It's just a different framework, one that tends to align better with how investing actually works. If you're buying rentals, refinancing, or growing your portfolio, go to hostfinancial.com. That's H-O-S-T financial.com and see what you qualify for. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle? Active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand-new construction homes, 10% below market value, in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent-to-retirement does.

• 7:48Dave Meyer?

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• 8:32Dave Meyer?

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• 8:52Henry Washington?

  If you own rental properties, you know, the job does not stop at closing. There's tenant screening, rent collection, maintenance calls, and the paperwork that comes up with all of it. If you're managing more than one to two doors, that workload adds up fast. That's where Mind, BiggerPockets' preferred full-service property management partner, comes in. Mind is built specifically for real estate investors with experienced property management teams, local market expertise, and purpose-built technology. They support leasing, rent collection, maintenance coordination, and reporting. Whether you're managing one rental or scaling towards your 10th, Mind is built to grow with you. It frees up your time to focus on finding your next deal instead of fielding maintenance calls.

• 9:35Henry Washington?

  And it's not just about time. If you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, Mind will save you $500 for every home you onboard, up to $10,000 in your first year. Check mind.co to save time, money, and frustration. That's M Y N D dot C O.

• 9:56Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here with Henry Washington, talking about how to start investing here in 2025. So again, it's going to depend on the individual and the location, but what are the things you see working most commonly right now?

• 10:12Henry Washington?

  For most people, they're not sitting on a giant bucket of money. And so I would say you want to limit your risk when you're just getting started, because when you're just getting started, what you're really doing is you're learning a lot. And so I would say you want to start small and you want to start with something that you can pivot in the event something goes wrong. So outside of house hacking, which we can talk about later on in the show, because I think that's a great strategy to get started, but we've kind of beat that to death across multiple shows.

• 10:40Dave Meyer?

  You can't have a getting started show without some mention of house hacking. We will not make the whole show about that, but we will mention it.

• 10:46Henry Washington?

  We'll mention it, but let's put it aside for now. Without house hacking, if you are going to get started, I think you should start with a single-family home or a duplex, something that's on a small scale, because worst-case scenario, if you screw that up...

• 11:04Henry Washington?

  You'll have multiple exits. You can rent it out and maybe you'll be able to break even. If you can't rent it out, you should be able to sell it and somebody will want to buy that product from you. Or if you get stuck having to hold on to it, like the expenses that come along with you owning that single family home, if things go wrong, they're not going to be as catastrophic as if you buy a multifamily and things start to go wrong, right? It's not going to, it's not going to put you into bankruptcy or it shouldn't. So I would look at starting with something like a single family or a small multifamily that you can buy add value to and either rent it out or sell it. And then I would make sure that that single family or small multifamily would appeal to somebody in the first time home buyer class because that's where the most buyers are.

• 11:49Henry Washington?

  And so that way, if you get into it and you decide, hey, this isn't for me, or I bought a bad deal, you can probably get out from underneath it and either lose a little bit of money or break even. Or if you were planning to flip it, maybe you can pivot and put a tenant in it and still break even, like you're leveraging your risk, like people aren't, you're not going to die if you, if you do a bad single family.

• 12:10Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:11Henry Washington?

  And in this market, you're going to make mistakes. And so let's limit those mistakes. Let's start with a single family or a small duplex or, or duplex and let's bump our head on a deal that if we have to pivot, we're going to be okay.

• 12:25Dave Meyer?

  Totally. This is probably just good advice for investing in anything right now. Generally speaking, when there is as much uncertainty as there is in the market right now, my philosophy is like, I'd rather miss on a huge upswing than expose myself to downside risk. That's just the way I think about it. And I know other people think about that differently. And like the FOMO of missing out on like some amazing deal is too much for them to handle. I'm sort of the opposite. I'm like, I could live with not the optimal, perfect returns.

• 12:59Henry Washington?

  Can you give us an example of like what that kind of looks like? What do you mean by that?

• 13:02Dave Meyer?

  Okay. So here, here's a good example. You could buy a highly distressed asset right now, right? Even if it's a single family or a duplex, right? You could buy something that has, I'll use an extreme example. Structural issues, right? Like, you know, it's got a foundation problem or there's some lean on it. You know, there's like something hairy about it.

• 13:21Henry Washington?

  Right.

• 13:22Dave Meyer?

  The upside on those deals can be huge, right? Cause you're buying them at a fraction of what the actual value probably is, but you have to go through the headache of doing it. And let's just say that gets us a, I don't know, 20% per year for five years. I'd rather, right now, take one that I know is gonna get me 10% a year. Right now, like, I know it for sure, very little risk. The only risk in that deal is opportunity risk. Like, I might not get 20%. But for me in 2025, like, that's how I think about investing because I just, there's just so much crazy stuff going on. It's very hard to get a read, but there are so many ways to invest in real estate where it's like, just take the layup. Like, and I'm just gonna take the layup, you know? I don't need something extra risky, at least for me.

• 14:07Henry Washington?

  I agree with you. I think, I mean, I'm doing that within my own portfolio, where previously I might be willing to buy a luxury flip project because I can get it, you know, for 350,000, put 150,000 in it and sell it for, you know, 650, 700, 750,000. Like, those projects exist here, right? And the upside's massive. I'm probably gonna pass on that deal now and stick to projects where I'm in that first time home buyer and I'm doing cosmetic rehabs because I know those are gonna sell. I am so confident and I may only make 20, 30, 40 grand on that flip versus 200 grand on the luxury flip, but I'm gonna take these small base hits because in the event something goes wrong,

• 14:52Henry Washington?

  I can pivot and I can rent that thing if I need to. If you can't execute on your luxury flip, even though the upside's big, you're sitting on huge holding costs for long periods of time and your profit gets eaten away. You can't throw a tenant in it. You can't make it a short-term rental out here in cash flow. So you're kinda just screwed. So I get what you're saying.

• 15:10Dave Meyer?

  Absolutely. Yeah. And I think this is sort of my advice, especially for new people. If you don't make the optimal amount of money on that first deal, that is a very small problem relative to losing it on the first deal, right?

• 15:23Henry Washington?

  Right.

• 15:23Dave Meyer?

  So the whole Thing is just to make sure that you learn as much as possible, preserve capital and earn a solid return. If you can do that and get to your second deal, you're gonna be successful. Like that, that is probably 70% of like your success over time as an investor is like getting from zero to one and then one to two.

• 15:45Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. And especially now. And if you can do it in this market, you're going to be knocking it out of the park as the market starts to shift at some point more into the favor of an investor.

• 15:54Dave Meyer?

  All right. I want to talk to you a little bit more about tactics because you are way better than me at this stuff. How do you go about finding a good deal in a different market than we've seen in the last five years? Like it used to be super hard to even go view a property and have time to make a decision on it. Things are changing in most markets right now. So how, how do you think people should think about going about identifying a deal?

• 16:19Henry Washington?

  I think people who have been in the space for a few years at least probably need to adjust their expectations because there's still a divide between what buyers think the market is doing and what sellers think the market is doing. So sellers are still wanting prices that maybe aren't relevant yet in a lot of cases. And so if you've been in the game for a while, I think you need to adjust your expectations, meaning you can still get deals at prices that you want, but the amount of offers that you have to make in order to get a deal has increased than it was a few years ago. So if you're used to making 10 offers and getting two yeses, that's probably not the case anymore. You may have to make 20 to 30 offers to get two yeses. So volume has increased.

• 17:04Henry Washington?

  And if you're new and you haven't been in the game, that's good because you're now setting your, your baseline with what the market conditions are now. But it also should give you an idea of how much time or effort it's going to take you to get a deal. And so as you're picking your strategy, you just need to understand like, what's the volume of offers I need to make? And then how much time or money is it going to cost me to make those offers? Now, there are some factors because of this market that are playing in investors' favors. And that is that there's an increase in inventory, which means there's more opportunities to buy properties. There's more sellers that want to sell and less buyers that want to buy those properties on the open market. And so there's opportunities for new investors to go out there and make offers on

• 17:48Henry Washington?

  properties that are on the market. And there's a higher likelihood of finding a deal on the market now than there was a year or two ago because of the inventory increase. If somebody's listing their property, they want to sell. And you, as an investor, can now go out and say, well, I, I want to make offers and I want to make offers at less than what there is being asked, or maybe I want to offer it what's being asked, but get some contingencies or things that you want the seller to go ahead and pay for. And so that, again, doesn't mean you're going to get a steal of a deal right off the bat on the MLS. No, but there's opportunity for you to go out there and make offers on deals on the market, which hasn't always been as prevalent in the past.

• 18:32Dave Meyer?

  Totally. I don't think we're like going back to this era where everything's going to sell under asking. Actually, we're just seeing like a total split in the market where some things are just sitting and some things are selling for over asking.

• 18:46Henry Washington?

  Yeah, it's so weird.

• 18:48Dave Meyer?

  It's so weird. It's a lot about marketing right now. It's, I think a lot about the seller's mindset when they go into this, if they're going to try and stick to stubbornly something, or they price it aggressively. And I, when I talk to agents who list properties, they're saying the same exact thing, too. Like, the stuff that sell, like, is good, is going quick, but there's also just things that either the selling, listing agent messes up, or the seller's too aggressive, and it winds up getting a little stale. And real estate investors, we kind of like stale. Stale's good. Like, I'll take stale. And so I think it's a good time, if you're, if you're willing to be diligent, like, if you're going to hunt, like, there

• 19:31Dave Meyer?

  is absolutely good stuff right now. I think it's really important to be patient in this kind of market, because a buyer's market, it has risk, but the benefit is you can be patient, and you need to be patient, and you need to work down negotiations and sellers. Like, that's the way you win in this kind of market.

• 19:50Henry Washington?

  Absolutely.

• 19:51Dave Meyer?

  So, tell me a little bit about that, Henry. Like, when you're making offers on market, what if a seller says no, and it sits on the market? How do you, like, actually go about doing this? Like, when do you go back? How often? How do you follow up? How do you try and use your leverage in a, you know, respectful, good way to build a relationship?

• 20:09Henry Washington?

  Yeah. So what we're doing currently is I have an email drip campaign essentially set up through my real estate agent, which is set based on my buy box. And that buy box will say, I'm looking for homes in these parts of town with these features, you know, three beds, two baths, whatever that is for you, right? And then the trigger, if they're in my buy box and once they hit 45 days on market, then they get into my email drip campaign. And so we then literally, I literally have a formula that we run to make an offer on all of these properties. So my agent will just do the formula and say, okay, this is the price we would offer on this.

• 20:49Henry Washington?

  And he submits those offers, right? And so I'll just get, you know, offers in my email box and then I'll sign those offers and we'll send them out. So we're making these offers pretty much cold. Once they get on our email list. From there, the sellers either are going to decline that offer or they're going to counter that offer or they're going to accept that offer. The majority of them get declined, but as long as it's still within my criteria, it's going to stay on my list. And so every week thereafter, my agent can then follow up and say, hey, we made an offer on XYZ. So you haven't had an offer yet. Don't forget my seller's willing to offer XYZ, right? Or if you want to counter our offer, we can talk about it. So it's just following up every week with the properties that are still on that list that haven't sold yet.

• 21:34Henry Washington?

  And hoping you get a conversation with somebody. I mean, that's all shopping for deals is. Whether you're looking on the market or off the market, it's you trying to get on the phone or to have a conversation with a seller about selling their property. That's all that's happening. So it's just a follow up every week as long as they're on that email campaign.

• 21:54Dave Meyer?

  All right. I want to talk about who you need involved to get started right now, but we do need to take another quick break. We'll get to that right after this.

• 22:05Dave Meyer?

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• 22:47Dave Meyer?

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• 23:32Dave Meyer?

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• 25:43Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Here with Henry Washington, talking about how you can go get started investing right now in 2025. We've already talked about strategy, about deal finding. I sort of skipped over the like, who you need part, because you mentioned your real estate agent. So let's just talk about team and order of operations. This is a question I get so much, like, who do you talk to first? Do you find a deal? Find an agent? Do you talk to a lender? How do you approach it?

• 26:12Henry Washington?

  You know, it's interesting. Before I answer the question, I'd love for everybody listening, if you're listening on YouTube or anywhere where you can actually go and leave a comment, leave a comment and let me know who you think should be the first person you put on your team. Cause this answer varies so much from people, even experienced investors will answer the question differently.

• 26:30Dave Meyer?

  I've changed my opinion about this recently. I'm guessing you're gonna say agent.

• 26:35Henry Washington?

  Yes, I'm gonna say agent.

• 26:36Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 26:36Henry Washington?

  Okay.

• 26:37Dave Meyer?

  All right.

• 26:37Henry Washington?

  And so I would say for most people who are going to be getting into this business, who you're just looking to do a few deals over the course of a year or two, an investor friendly agent is probably the most important person on your team. Now, if you're somebody who's looking to build this house flipping empire and you're gonna be trying to flip, you know, a hundred houses a year nationwide, right? Like these people who are starting these companies, then an investor friendly agent's not the first person you need on your team. You probably need someone to help you with acquisitions. And that's a whole different.

• 27:11Dave Meyer?

  Like off market.

• 27:11Henry Washington?

  Like off market. Yeah.

• 27:12Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Henry Washington?

  But, but if you're just the normal person like me who just does this business, only wants to do some, some deals in your own backyard, or just a few deals for yourself, then an investor friendly agent, if you are not already licensed, is your most important person on your team. And the reason I say that is because the most important data point that you need for your deal is your after repair value. It's the price or value of that home after it's fixed up. You've got to be able to comp properties accurately. And you've always needed to be able to comp properties accurately, but the market is less forgiving now. And that number is, is more dynamic now than it's ever been. You can buy a property now with an ARV of 320, and in six months, once you're done with the rehab, that could

• 27:56Henry Washington?

  have come down 20 grand, right? You just, it's, it's dynamic now. And so you want to make sure that you are either great at comping, or that you have somebody on your team who's really good at comping, because you're making your offers based off of this ARV. And if you overpay, and then the market shifts downward, you could be in a bad situation.

• 28:15Dave Meyer?

  That's a bad spot.

• 28:16Henry Washington?

  So having that person on your team who has access to the MLS, who can help you comp your properties, and not just having access makes them good at comping, they also need to be, they need to understand how to comp properties. Not every agent's good at comping properties.

• 28:29Dave Meyer?

  That's a very good point.

• 28:30Henry Washington?

  And so I think that that's probably the most important person on your team. Everybody else, if you don't get the best, you still might be okay. Like if you don't find the best title agent, you can still get your deal closed. If you don't find the best contractor, you can probably still get your property renovated. It may cost you a little more.

• 28:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, you're probably right for the long term.

• 28:48Henry Washington?

  Yes, for the long term.

• 28:50Dave Meyer?

  Okay, I wonder if getting a property manager for a buy and hold investor, property manager, a good one. You want to get a good one, but I'm going to change my answer again for how I feel about this. And it's going to be total cop out, just hedge. But like if you can identify what your biggest problem or your biggest hurdle is, go after that. Because I used to say agent all the time because people want to look at deals. Then I started feeling like that maybe that doesn't help because you're just looking at deals and you're not actually moving forward to like executing on those deals. And a lot of people I think get really hung up on like, I can't afford real estate. And then they go and talk to a lender and they're like, oh, wait, actually I can.

• 29:37Dave Meyer?

  That happens. I mean, I talk to people like that every single week. And I think, so that's why I started recommending lenders. But I think it's just different for different people. Some people get hung up on the money. Some people get hung up on the deal. So just try and think about mentally, what is preventing you from buying a deal? Is it finance? Is it the numbers? Because if it's the numbers and you don't think you find a good deal, go talk to a good agent. A good agent will help you maybe confirm that you're right, that there are no good deals. Or they will show you where to find deals or what neighborhoods or what asset class or what price point to be looking at to, to find those good deals. But I'd also say, just do both. This is, I'm talking like maybe an hour of your time.

• 30:21Dave Meyer?

  Like you can do both. We have tools on BiggerPockets that will match you with agents and lenders. Get on the phone with them, talk to them for 30 minutes each and you'll, you will learn more in that one hour than you will in years of just like sort of being in your own head about whether to do this or not. So I, I highly recommend just doing both of these things. That was a total cop out, but that's, that's the case.

• 30:46Henry Washington?

  I'll allow it.

• 30:47Dave Meyer?

  So I think this has all been really good advice. I want to sort of get a little bit more nitty gritty though. Like are there any like specific things you look for in deals right now? Like property characteristics, price points, or like just any little hacks that people getting started in 2025 should be thinking about?

• 31:06Henry Washington?

  Yeah. So if you're looking off market, or even if you want to look on market, what you need to do is to limit your competition, right? So there are lots of investors out there and people are looking, but I always say the easier it is to find a deal, the less likely that that deal is actually going to be a deal because the easier it is, the more investor eyeballs have probably been on it, which means it's either going to get purchased fast or it's going to get bid up to a price point that makes it more expensive. So if you can find a way to look for deals that is maybe off the beaten path or requires a little more work than others are willing to put in, then you limit the amount of competition that's out there. And if you're new, you don't want to compete with people who have been

• 31:51Henry Washington?

  doing this for years and have big marketing budgets and know exactly what to say to sellers and know how to negotiate. And it's just going to put you at a disadvantage.

• 31:59Dave Meyer?

  That's right.

• 31:59Henry Washington?

  And so learn a lot about deal finding and then try to pick some sort of strategy that requires a little more effort than normal. Here's a couple of examples. Probate leads. A lot of investors don't like working probate leads because probates can be painful. There might be multiple family members who have to agree to sell this property for whatever price you're going to offer and it might take a long time. So more of a pain in the butt. Kind of a lead, which means less people chase them, which may be a benefit for you. And you can pull a probate list fairly easily in most states. Or think about, most people understand that investors like myself send direct mail.

• 32:41Henry Washington?

  Right. And when you send direct mail, you're reaching out to a list of people and saying, hey, I might be interested in buying your house. Well, every time you send direct mail, you're always going to end up with a percentage of your list that comes back as return to sender. So the owner of that property didn't actually receive that piece of mail. It went out, it was undeliverable, it got sent back to you. Every single investor who sends mail has a list of return to senders. Cause what we do typically is we go back into our CRM and we mark all those and get them off of our list. So we don't waste money sending mail to people who aren't getting them again. And so if you're a new investor, you could go talk to people like myself and say, hey,

• 33:25Henry Washington?

  could I pay you a hundred bucks for you to give me your return to sender list? And you could take that return to sender list and you can do the manual work of searching for the owner of that property and finding the right address. Or you can pay somebody like on Fiverr or Upwork to go do this work for you. You pay them $4 an hour for a couple of days worth of work and they'll manually go do all that work for you and then return you a list with deliverable addresses to the right owner. And now you might be calling or sending mail to somebody who's never received a piece of mail to buy their property. And so you've limited your competition by doing the extra work that a lot of people won't do. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying, like, if you can think more niche about how to get in contact with sellers.

• 34:09Henry Washington?

  So if you're going to do this on the market, you can still think niche, but you have less indicators in order to help you do that. Typically, the indicator is going to be long days on market or expired listings. But you can take those expired listings and long days on market and then search through the metadata for keywords that might indicate some levels of distress. And that may help you narrow down your list to people who may be more likely to want to accept an offer at lower than what they were asking for. It takes extra work and it's a pain in the butt, but that's why it helps you in this market.

• 34:46Dave Meyer?

  I think it's such a good point. Yeah, for for new investors, like people, I guess, think not to find a niche because they're like, I don't know enough. But I actually, I think you're right, like limiting the competition makes a lot of sense. I've selected markets even because I want to be a big fish in a small pond. I would rather be in an area, even if the fundamentals are, they're still good. I would never invest in a market that has bad fundamentals. But like, you know, I I use Charlotte as an example. Everyone wants to invest in Charlotte because it's awesome. But like hedge funds are investing in Charlotte. People who have lived there for 30 years and who have invested there for 30 years are investing there.

• 35:26Dave Meyer?

  So one of the things I've tried to use is my advantage is going in a market where I have less competition. And I think Henry's right, if even within a market, pick a niche that has less competition. Find something that's going to allow you to have some advantage over the thousands of other people who are looking to buy real estate deals, you know, like there are a lot of people who want to invest in real estate. That doesn't mean you can't. We see on BiggerPockets, tens of thousands of people all the time doing this successfully. But it's because they know exactly what they want to buy. And a lot of times it's because they are willing to do a little bit more work. That's going to get you a better return. You can still go buy, you know, a plain sort of boring duplex in a lot of markets.

• 36:10Dave Meyer?

  You're just going to get a lower return because there's more competition. That's just how investments work. They're efficient markets. The more demand there is, the lower the return of there is going to be. So you find something that's less demand that you are interested in. You're going to get at least the better potential for return. So I I like that a lot. The other thing I would add, just as a tip for this kind of market is, in my experience, the last couple of months and from talking to tons of people, things that are at or below the median home price are selling pretty quickly still. Like that is still doing well. So if you're, especially if you're flipping, or if you're just trying to find something that has low risk of price declines, the median price for your area below is probably a pretty safe bet.

• 36:53Dave Meyer?

  Like those kinds of properties, we do have an affordability challenge in this country in almost every market. And so if you're buying below the median home price, there's going to be demand for that property, both in terms of purchase and also in terms of rent. I think that's another thing people overlook is like if you find. A rental property that the average person in your market can easily afford, and it's a great property, you're not going to have vacancy. And vacancy is the killer of all deals. So you need to like, that's a great thing that you can do in today's market. It's like, find that price point where like, you know that no matter what happens with the economy, people are going to want this apartment to live here, or you could resell them. That's another thing that can work really well right now.

• 37:38Henry Washington?

  And, and one more real quick tip for those looking on the MLS, most of the deals that you buy on the MLS, you're going to pay a higher price point for than if you just go direct to seller. Right? So giving yourself the opportunity to make the current home that you're making an offer on more valuable than it already is without spending a ton of money, can help you make offers that might make sense to that seller. Look for homes that have bigger square footage than the bedroom and bathroom count would make you feel like it should have. In other words, if you see a two-bed, one-bath, 2,000 square foot house, to me, that says, there's a lot of square footage in this house

• 38:20Henry Washington?

  that I can use to turn into more bedrooms and more bathrooms. And if you turn them into more bedrooms and more bathrooms, then you increase the value of the property. Or look for properties where there are rooms that are not heated and cooled, but are under the current roof, meaning you don't have to do a build-out addition to add square footage. So if there's a sunroom, that could be a great way for you to add 200, 300 square feet by making that sunroom heated and cooled square footage. And now you've increased the ARV of that property. Garages that you can convert into living space. We just did this. We just bought a house that was a three-bed, one-bath, and we turned it into a four-bed, two-bath by converting the garage.

• 39:05Henry Washington?

  And that added about 300 square feet to the house, which allowed us to sell it for 240 instead of 220, which we underwrote it at. So that way, you can then go and make an offer around what the current value of the home is, and then add square footage, which increases your ARV, and then you can turn a profit that way.

• 39:25Dave Meyer?

  Honestly, Henry, can't believe it. We got through, we've been recording for like 45 minutes and we haven't even talked about house hacking as a way to get started. I think this is our record.

• 39:33Henry Washington?

  That's our normal cop.

• 39:34Dave Meyer?

  For BiggerPockets Podcast, because house hacking does rock. It's such a good idea. So I guess, give me one minute on house hacking as a, as a potential idea to get started. Maybe you don't think so. We did, we just never got to it organically, but like, what do you got?

• 39:49Henry Washington?

  It's the best idea to get started. I mean,

• 39:53Henry Washington?

  it's, it just feels like a cop out answer because we talk about it all the time, but we talk about it all the time because it works and it's good. Right? So being able to buy a property, use a low down payment loan like an FHA because you're going to live in it, or like a conventional loan. And you can put three and a half to 5% down and then you can live in the property and rent out the other unit or other units. And those units produce enough income to help you cover the mortgage or the majority of the mortgage, freeing up cash for you to save up to invest. It gives you an idea of if this is even something that's for you because you're taking much lower risk by house hacking than you are by going out and spending 20%

• 40:36Henry Washington?

  to go and buy a rental property that you may hate owning, right? So.

• 40:40Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:41Henry Washington?

  It's extremely low risk. There's great loan products out there to help you get into these things. Even if you need to do renovations, there's products for that too, that still require you not to have much money down. And that's what we said at the beginning of the episode, right? Like if you can get into this game and buy a low risk investment, that's still potentially is going to produce income for you, that that's the way you should think about this first.

• 41:02Dave Meyer?

  Absolutely. If you want more information about house hacking, it just makes sense. We talk about it a lot on the show. You can check out other episodes or everything on biggerpockets.com. I've also just become an official shill for live and flips, even though I haven't even completed one yet, but I ran the numbers on one and man, it's a good idea. If you want to get started and you were willing to do a live and flip. The potential financial returns on a live and flip are huge and it's tax free. So it's, it's a great other option. So let's just bucket it by saying owner occupied strategies still rock. Don't overthink it. If you're just like, should I do one of these two? And you're on the fence, it's probably a good idea for you. So that's a really good way to do it. We spent a lot of time talking about tactics, but man, that's a great strategy.

• 41:47Henry Washington?

  I love it. And don't pigeonhole yourself into like buying a duplex and renting one unit out. You can do a live and flip. You can rent out one of the rooms in your house on Airbnb. You can rent out a pool and on apps like Swimply, you can rent out garage space.

• 42:03Dave Meyer?

  Yes. That's a fun word to say.

• 42:05Henry Washington?

  You can rent out garage space and you, and let other people use your garage as their storage. Like there's tons of ways to monetize your, your personal residence.

• 42:12Dave Meyer?

  All right, well, Henry, thank you so much and thank you all so much for listening. Hopefully you're all seeing that, yeah, we're acknowledging everyone that there are challenges in this market. But I would challenge you all to say, what else are you going to do with your time and money? And if there is a better way to use your time and money to advance your financial future.

• 42:31Henry Washington?

  Go do it.

• 42:32Dave Meyer?

  Go do that. Don't invest in real estate, like just go do that. I still believe real estate is the best way for most people, not everyone, but for the majority of people. I still think it's the best way to pursue financial freedom. That's why I get on the show and ramble about it five days a week. But if you find something else that works for you, go for it. But I really encourage you not to get caught up in the hype about, is it good? Is it bad? The question is today and always is, is this the best thing for me and my time and my money? And if the answer is yes, hopefully the stuff Henry and I provided to you and shared with you today are avenues you can pursue to use real estate in that effort. So Henry, thanks for being here, man.

• 43:14Henry Washington?

  Thanks for having me, Dave. Appreciate it.

• 43:15Dave Meyer?

  And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We'll see you next time.

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