How to Get 10%+ Off Your Next Real Estate Deal Right Now

Imagine getting 10% off your next rental property (on the low end). What about getting a rate in the 3% or 4% range, or putting only 5%-15% down on a property that’s not only affordable but also in the path of progress? As interest rates climb higher and buyers step back, investors have opportunities that haven’t been available in years, and in 2027, these opportunities could get even better. Today, we’re talking with another rental property investing veteran (literally), Zach Lemaster. Zach spent years as an Air Force optometrist, using a 5%-down loan to kickstart his own investing journey. After buying properties every year, even while stationed across the country, Zach realized the massive effect rentals had on his net worth. He tried (and initially failed) at out-of-state investing before developing his own system to buy in the best markets with the best management so he could retire from his 9-5. He did it, and in doing so created Rent to Retirement, one of the nation’s leading turnkey companies. Today, he’s sharing the actual strategy he’s personally using to get 10% (up to 15%) off rental properties, how he scores low (3%-4% range) interest rates, and builds his portfolio, and his customers’ portfolios, with loans as little as 5%-15% down. The deals keep getting better for investors, and these might be some of the best we’ve seen. In This Episode We Cover How Zach replaced his optometrist salary with simple, high-demand rental properties The real estate deals we’re seeing right now that are giving 10%+ discounts Want financial freedom in a decade? Three steps Zach took to get there The wrong way to invest out-of-state (and what to do instead) How to use rental properties to offset some of your income taxes without being a real estate professional (REPS) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1334. 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?

  Is this the best rental property opportunity of 2027? Today, I'm sitting down with another real estate investing veteran, Zach Lemaster. Zach has been purchasing real estate since 2013 and has bought rentals every single year since then. When interest rates were high, he bought. When prices were low, he bought. And everything in between, he bought. Through pure consistency, picking the right markets and learning from many failed management experiences, he replaced the income of his full-time job and started Rent to Retirement, one of the nation's leading turnkey real estate companies. Now, while everyone is waiting for interest rates to drop,

• 0:41Dave Meyer?

  Zach is doing the opposite, consistently unlocking 10% plus discounts on some of the newest rental properties in the country. And that's on the low end of the discounts he's getting. Today, we're getting into why this could be one of the greatest and most heavily discounted rental investing opportunities of 2027, and how anyone can get in on these deals.

• 1:09Dave Meyer?

  Zach Lemaster, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm excited to have you here today, Zach, because Zach, if you guys haven't heard, Zach's been on the show, he's been on the YouTube channel many times. He's the CEO of Rent to Retirement, one of the biggest trusted partners, BiggerPockets, does turnkey rental properties. But we were talking before the show, we've actually never heard your stories, Zach, but you are an active investor yourself. So maybe you could just fill us in a little bit about where were you in life when you got into real estate investing?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited to share. And it's been an evolution and it's still a journey, right? I view real estate investing and in business as a lifelong journey. But like, I think many of the audience, Dave, I started in a career path that had nothing to do with real estate. So my wife and I are both optometrists by education. I was on military scholarship, HPSP, so I was commissioned as a captain in the Air Force. They paid for part of school and then I practiced optometry in the Air Force. This is probably about 15 years ago at this point. And that's where I started investing. With military in general, you get access to VA loans, which are fantastic loans.

• 2:12Dave Meyer?

  Amazing.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a lot of cases you can put no money down, you don't have PMI to pay. I didn't have any money to put down anyways, early in my career, so that, that worked out. But, you know, I read all the books, I was a Bigger, I was a BiggerPockets member and just really liked real estate simply because it was a tangible asset. And candidly, Dave, I didn't understand any other forms of investing, stocks, anything else, right? So, real estate made sense. So I bought my first property, I house hacked it before I knew house hacking, you know, the term even. But bought a duplex with a VA loan, put no money down, lived in half, rented out the other half. Again, this is probably about 15 years ago at this point. I was stationed in North Dakota at the time. The next house I bought was another duplex locally, and I continued to buy locally over the next few years and really just liked real estate. I, you know, learned how to, you know, scale my portfolio through different creative methods.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Because of course, like everyone, I ran out of capital to put down, it's down payments, we all do at some point. And then just continually invested. At some point, Dave, I found that investing locally was maybe not what I wanted to continue to do and started to explore other markets where there was possibly higher returns.

• 3:15Dave Meyer?

  Okay.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  My wife and I started to look at other locations and invested out of state. We had a terrible experience, we lost a lot of money first, on the first few deals, which is, you know, that's a learning experience. But then we refined our process and our system and then really just learned how to identify markets that fit our goals the best, offer the best returns, and aggressively invested out of state. Eventually replaced our active income as optometrist, left the Air Force and started Rent to Retirement. But that was really the foundation in the early stages, is just learning how to invest out of state because that made more sense for us.

• 3:46Dave Meyer?

  You were early on that, like, when were you starting to invest out of state? Do you remember what year it was?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I think our first out-of-state property was probably 2013-ish. We invested in Southside Chicago because the numbers were really good. We invested in Section 8 housing, so low-income housing, that was CHA, Chicago Housing Authority. They call them two flats there, which are basically, you know, duplexes or tri-flats where it's three levels. Did some renovation on the properties. The numbers on paper looked really good, but we really had a challenge with keeping the homes leased, with ongoing maintenance, dealing with the housing authority. So it was just kind of an uphill battle of like continual expenses, death by a thousand paper cuts type of thing.

• 4:26Dave Meyer?

  Looking back on it now, what would you have done differently for your first deal out of state? Because I know there's a lot of people in the BiggerPockets community who want to invest out of state, you know, there's expensive markets, doesn't make sense. You want to look at the Midwest, like, what lessons would you pass on?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot, and I wouldn't actually change anything because that's how we learned. But certainly, we've, we've applied the lessons, both in our personal investing and, and our active business with Rent to Retirement. And that's the foundation of Rent to Retirement, is how to effectively invest out of state. And, you know, we, we lay the groundwork for that for our investors. But we did everything wrong in the book, you know? First of all, we didn't research the market enough to really understand, is this the right place for us? Is this the right place based on our goals? We bought property probably too early, we built a team around the property and we had all, all the contractor issues. I mean, investing out of state is challenging, but, but I always tell people, it's no different than investing locally, actually. There's no, I think, huge benefit to being able to drive by or do things yourself. I think a lot of times it actually puts you at a disadvantage if you feel like

• 5:28Speaker 01

  you're required to do all those things, because that's probably the best, not the best utilization of, of your time. And I, I think really building like the team is the more important thing, focusing on your investing versus being in the weeds with it. But I think, you know, stepping back, being more intentional on like what your goals are, finding a market that fits those goals. I think a lot of people, Dave, try to invest locally too much because that's what feels comfortable to them. When the reality is, it's like, is this even the right market for you? The chances are, there's likely a better market suited for your goals and a market that's going to offer a better return outside of your local area. But a lot of people, they're hesitant to take that first step because it's daunting. And, and as I just mentioned, I had a bad experience, but you know, you learn through that. And I think if you do open your, your mind to investing out of state, like,

• 6:13Speaker 01

  one, I think it's a necessity to diversify your portfolio, but also there's a lot more opportunity. I think it makes you a better investor long-term.

• 6:20Dave Meyer?

  I'm with you on that. I've done both. For the first 10 years of my investing career, I invested locally. I just happened to be in a good market, you know, I was in Denver, starting in 2010, one of the best markets you could have been in, you know, looking back on it now, very fortunate place to be if you want to be a real estate investor. And then 10 years into it, I moved to Europe and everything is long distance to me at this point. So what's the point of only limiting myself to Denver? And when I started to do that, it really sort of like changed my whole investing philosophy. And I realized how much investing locally actually had held me back. And this isn't true of everyone, some people can scale really well in, in locally. But I was just doing everything myself. I was, I didn't have property management software, I was doing that all myself.

• 7:05Dave Meyer?

  I am famously terrible at maintenance, but I still tried. I would always go something up for like a couple of hours before I hired someone. And it was just a massive waste of time, right? And I did that for 10 years. And looking back on it now, if I really wanted to have the more optimal situation, I would have built the team and outsourced a lot so that I could focus on the stuff I'm good at, which is sort of like portfolio level strategy, that's the stuff I like doing. Again, that's not true from everyone, if you're super handy, if you're flipping, like, that's a totally different story. But for someone like me, I'm totally with you. And I've enjoyed investing out of state because it's a skillset that I feel like I'm good at. So I'm curious, you said that people should really think about their goals when investing out of state.

• 7:50Dave Meyer?

  Like, what type of goals and what type of investor do you think best align with the out-of-state approach?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  You know, let's talk big picture for a second, Dave, because a lot of people that we work with or speak to generally, I mean, they're interested in real estate because they're looking for some level of passive income, to some degree, eventually, right? And, and having some level of like residual income. Now, that varies for every single person, that could be, you know, ultimately retirement and financial freedom for some people. And others, it could be just, you know, supplemental income and diversification in their portfolio. But very seldom do we come across someone that's like, hey, I want to be actively managing my properties, like in the weeds, trading one job for another forever. Generally, I think people think about investing passively over time. And so I encourage people to, to start there, like, keep that in mind, a big picture, and, and actually start your, your goals there.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  So often, we see people that jump into their first flip and it goes terribly wrong. And sure, maybe they learned some lessons, but it drags out and like, you know, that's wasted time. Again, to your point, that's time that could, they could have been better spent building their, their strategy and trying to execute that. But when people are first thinking about real estate investing, do think long-term, big picture. Understand, you know, how much time involved do you, do you want to be? Because real estate investing can be extremely time-involving. Think about your capital position, what is your risk position? Real estate investing, like any investing, can be extremely risky in certain assets. But there's different type of asset classes that are more passive, less risk, you know, diversified type of investing. Think about what your skillset is.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And if you're trying to learn a new skillset, maybe it's best not to do that on your own, but find a mentor or, you know, partner with someone or invest with someone that has a proven track record and learn that. So I mean, these are all really important things for newer investors that are, I think are a necessity for you to think about to, to be successful and not have to spin your wheels and waste all the time that many of us did, that have been very expensive and time-consuming mistakes that we would have been further ahead, right?

• 9:51Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. But you said something really important there, Zach, which is, I think... When people try and answer this question, they sort of look at it in a vacuum. They're like, you know, local is better than out of state. But it really does depend on your goals, as we talked about. But the resources that you have is such an important thing for you to sit down and audit and think through. I have this concept in one of my books, Start with Strategy, where I say like, every deal, every portfolio needs three things. You need skill, you need money, and you need time, right? And so many people just focus on the money part of it. And they don't think about realistically how much time they want to put into something,

• 10:34Dave Meyer?

  or whether or not they have the skill to execute the strategy that they want to pull off. Like, maybe you want to do BRRRR, but you're terrible at managing a renovation, or you're not handy. Maybe you shouldn't do BRRRR. And maybe that means you pick a turnkey kind of rental, which is perfect for you. When I did this, I did this thing called like a time audit. It's just budgeting, basically, for your time. It's simple. I realized how much time I was spending doing property management, something I don't like, I'm not good at. And it's just like not helping me grow my business. And so where you fall in these spectrums should really help you focus where you want to be. If you have a lot of time and you're really handy, go flip a house, like, go for it.

• 11:16Dave Meyer?

  If you aren't handy and you don't have a lot of time, either you need to buy something locally that's fixed up and ready to go, or you need to work with a partner. Both are fine approaches, but it's just being honest with yourself about what you can bring to the table, what you can offer to your portfolio. I think it's just like maybe the most important thing when you're starting out to being successful long-term.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Another common mistake we see with newer investors is that, and we're all guilty of this, but they try to do too much at once, or they try out too many different strategies.

• 11:45Dave Meyer?

  Oh, boy.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And it's okay, like, look, real estate investing, there's a lot of different ways to make money and create wealth, but you can't do all of them successfully at once. And so I really encourage people when they're first getting started, because you don't know what you don't know. And if you want to reduce your risk and increase your probability of success early on, like, stick to the fundamentals of real estate. That's why we like residential. Now, I personally invest in a lot of industrial and commercial retail and things like that at this point, but we still hold majority of our portfolio in residential real estate, specifically, single-family and small multi, because I think that is the most sustainable asset class, Dave. I don't know if you agree or not, but it's like, people need housing.

• 12:24Dave Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  We have a shortage of housing in a lot of locations, especially affordable housing in different markets. And so that's where the opportunity lies. But like, it's really hard to screw up residential real estate if you're underwriting appropriately, you're buying at a good price, the property cash flows, you got a good market, a good team. And so I really encourage people, like, choose one strategy and just go for that, and stick to the fundamentals, and stop looking for the unicorn deal that's going to be a home run. Because those will come, but only after years of going through the base hits and the repetition.

• 12:54Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  So you really got to just choose a strategy, I think, one isolated strategy, stick to the fundamentals, and then at some point, understand you don't understand everything, and just take action.

• 13:03Dave Meyer?

  All right, everyone, we got to take a quick break, but we're going to have more with Rent to Retirement CEO Zach Lemaster, right after this.

• 13:10Henry 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.

• 13:52Henry 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.

• 14:34Dave 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.

• 15:06Henry Washington?

  Quick word about a new pro perk you'll want to know about. Aven, if you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you're sitting on equity that you're not using. The problem is tapping into that usually means a cash-out refi, a traditional second mortgage, or weeks of paperwork just to get approved. Aven built something different. It's a credit card, but it's backed by your home equity. So you get a lot of the rate benefits of a HELOC with the flexibility of a card you can use anywhere. Rates are typically well below a standard credit card. Approval is fast and mostly online, and you can use it for anything. A renovation, paying down high-interest debt, or just have more breathing room in your budget. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, there's an extra reason to check it out.

• 15:45Henry Washington?

  Get approved for the Aven card, and you'll get a $400 statement credit after spending $400 on your Aven card, enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, NMLS #2042345. Cards issued per 20 license from Visa USA Inc. by Coastal Community Bank. NMLS #462289. Member FDIC, equal housing lender, subject to approval, terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  The action's on the court. And as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 16:41Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here talking to the CEO of Rent to Retirement, Zach LaMaster, about his own personal investing journey and his big-picture strategy for 2026. Let's jump back in.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I'll say the biggest, most impactful thing for us, just my wife and I, in creating financial independence for us and real estate success in general, is that I've invested in real estate every single year since I bought that first property probably 15 years ago. I'm not saying I've made money on all deals, but I've continually invested in any market cycle. And that's really relevant today because, you know, underwriting is harder today, but there's exceptional buying opportunities. So, one, I've continually invested every single year, because that's, again, an educational thing to continue. And we've been, you know, growing our portfolio and trading up, 1031 exchanges, all the things. The second thing we did is we were very intentional, I kind of already alluded to this, but we were very intentional on where we bought. And I think sometimes people overcomplicate it. But at the end of the day, if you buy, if you consistently, so that's the continual investing,

• 17:40Speaker 01

  if you consistently buy good properties in good markets with good teams, like, that is a recipe to success over time. Time is your biggest partner in real estate investing. And that's why you don't look for those home run deals, because if you bought just a handful of typical homes or base hits, like, those will compound over time. So consistently investing in good locations. And then the third piece, candidly, Dave, is just being a creative investor to make deals happen and make the numbers work in a market that is challenging and maximizing your tax benefits. It is so advantageous for investors to take advantage of the tax benefits, things like cost segregation studies, things like 1031 exchanges, opportunity zones. These can catapult your investing huge and take you to the next level. So I just wanted to share that.

• 18:25Dave Meyer?

  When you put it that way, like, real estate really is an almost stupidly simple business. You know, like, we try and congratulate ourselves on being like geniuses, but like you said, like, buy a good asset in a good location and wait. That's really the business. It really isn't that complicated, not even just for the last 10 years or low-interest rate, or for centuries. This has been a thing that works. And so I really like the dollar-cost averaging approach. Like you said, if you guys haven't heard that term, it's borrowing it from the stock market. But the idea is you buy assets in any market cycle consistently. Sometimes you'll pay a little more, sometimes you'll get a great deal. But if you can just attach your long-term performance to the long-term performance of the housing market,

• 19:10Dave Meyer?

  you're going to be good. Same idea with the stock market, right? Like, the stock market has historically just gone up for generations, same thing with the housing market. So you don't need to be smarter than the housing market. You just kind of have to hitch your wagon to something that is already doing well. The trick is to just get in there and hitch your wagon. Zach, you mentioned like it's hard to underwrite, which is true. So like, what is your big picture strategy or what you're going out and looking for, what you're trying to acquire?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of people have pulled back, Dave, because of, you know, possibly limited inventory, market uncertainty, you know, still interest rates that I think we should now just call normal interest rates. But I think in times like this, actually make you a better investor because you have to truly go out and hunt for deals and, and find creative ways to make deals happen. Investing when there is historically low interest rates that we're never going to see again, that was easy. You could buy pretty much anything and it would cash flow decently and, and, you know, things appreciated. But right now, like this is the time when you have to be a true real estate investor. And that means underwriting a lot of deals, making a ton of offers, exploring markets outside of your local market.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  One of your previous questions I didn't answer is like, who's, who's the right person for out of state investing? Candidly, I think it'd be everybody at some point and should be because you would need to diversify. And I think it's worth exploring, but really the people that like, if your local market is too expensive and you're beating your head against the wall and haven't taken action because it's too expensive, it's too regulated, it's too taxed, whatever the case is, look at other markets. If you're a busy professional and like, you don't want to manage the property anyways, there's no ad, you know, advantage for you to invest locally. Then maybe you should start looking elsewhere and find a place that attaches your, your goals, right? But today's market, you have to be creative to underwrite deals. Unless you want to put, you know, 30, 40, 50% down to make things cash flow, you can still get very good deals. Where we see the best opportunity, and this is just our own experience internally, is working with new construction.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  We do a lot of build to rent turnkey homes. And what we know, um, working with some of the largest national builders and local builders is that they are highly incentivized to get stuff off their books. Especially this time of year before their, um, some of their fiscal years end in October, some in the calendar year. To give a practical example, we're seeing upwards of 20% in some cases, 15 to 20% that the builder is reducing home prices by, they're offering incentives as cash back to people and incentives to buy rates down. Like that is, that is exceptional. So you could actually in theory, still get a three or 4% interest rate. You're going to pay a ton of points. That doesn't mean you're necessarily going to pay it, the builder will pay it for you.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  But the point is, is you just have to search harder for deals and find creative ways to make them make sense. And that I think is where you really hone your skills as an investor, whether it's creative financing, better deal negotiation, because you have the ability, this is a buyer's market, you can negotiate and you should. You just have to work a little bit harder, Dave, but this is where the, this is where the best deals are actually bought. Before we get back into seller's market and you ride that appreciation wave when everyone else is jumping in and there's competition, right?

• 22:17Dave Meyer?

  I really love that Warren Buffett quote, be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. And listen, it's not the same as it was in 2010, but in some ways it reminds me of that time. Because everyone who's starting now is like, oh, it must've been so easy in 2010. No one was buying real estate in 2010. That's why in retrospect, it was easy if you were buying because no one else was doing it. Everyone else was afraid to do it. And again, prices were way cheaper then, it was a different kind of environment. But I do think it's the same kind of thing. Like the people who figure out how to make it work are going to get the full benefit of the upswing.

• 22:57Dave Meyer?

  Like if you're trying to design the best time to buy real estate, it's before things recovered. And I just notice it in the markets where I invest, inventory is getting so much better. Like good assets are coming for sale. And to Zach's point, it's really just a measure of creativity. Maybe we can dive into some of the creative ways that you're making deals work. You mentioned seller finance or creative finance, you mentioned rate buy downs, new construction. What are maybe some areas of the country and some of the tactics you've used successfully? And if you have any examples of deals, that would be awesome.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Where we see the best opportunity right now, Dave, is, is still the Sun Belt. I think that's been a trend that's been continuing. Uh, we do a little bit in the Midwest where, you know, I have more affordable housing, that's more of a cash flow play. So again, we have a diversified portfolio, but about 80% of what we do is Southeast, new construction homes. Um, in, in growth markets, these are areas in Alabama, Georgia, North, and sometimes South Carolina, Florida, Texas. This is one of the biggest lessons I've learned over time, Dave, is that we bought so many houses and we did the renovations and like that, we're just older homes. And you know, while we got good price points on them, they were older homes and they came with a lot of maintenance issues. And at some point, even if we're getting great deals on them, I'm like, I just don't want to deal with the noise.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Even if we have property management, I just want consistency and I want things to be easy. You, you, you get that over time. You're hungry when you're just starting out and you're trying to make every deal work and be scrappy. Over time, you want simplicity and consistency. And so I just, you know, that's, that's the thing is we, we started to focus on new construction because you have builder warranties on everything. Everything's new, attracts better quality tenants, you have longer term tenants. But there are builders out there and I mentioned the numbers already. So this is one, it's just negotiating deals. You should be able to go to, um, any builder that has, you know, an established presence in an area and negotiate at least 10% with them, and that could come in different forms of, of incentives. But if you're not getting at least 10% right now, and this is on single family, small, multi in Southeast,

• 24:58Speaker 01

  then, then there's better opportunity to look at. Of course, being in better neighborhoods, I think is, is essential. Cause I guarantee you, we work with national builders that have inventory in all markets, 10% is baseline. Okay. Builders are going to hate me for saying this.

• 25:13Dave Meyer?

  Whoa.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  You know, a $300,000 property, that's, that's $30,000. That is real numbers today that people should be expecting. If you're not getting that, I would question, you know, there are some markets that are more competitive. We're not talking about luxury houses, you know, we're talking about your bread and butter, you know, sub 500K homes, three, 250 to 500K, single family in A or B markets throughout the Southeast. So that's, that's one tangible item.

• 25:37Dave Meyer?

  So the 10% that you're getting a discount, is that coming in an actual top line price reduction? Or you're getting that through concessions?

• 25:45Speaker 01

  So it could be a price reduction. Some builders get to just give it back to you as cash back.

• 25:49Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Um, and that could come in different forms depending, you know, some lenders have a limitation of 2% of closing and they'll do the rest of the 8% as like management credit later. You can get creative with that. Sometimes it's a, it's a rate buy down where like I said, you could, you could get into the threes on a 30 year fixed loan.

• 26:04Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  But it's going to cost you a lot of money. And again, I don't think that's the best utilization. The most opportunity I think is where the builders let you choose. And those, they are out there, we work with many of them, they let you choose how to use that. So you can craft a deal that makes sense for you. And just to finalize on that point, Dave, that is not normal.

• 26:21Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Right? That is not, that is something where you have a builder that needs to get things off their books. They're willing to take a loss on it. Doesn't mean the market's depressed and it's not a good investment market. It's just catering to their business model.

• 26:33Dave Meyer?

  Yes. What these builders are doing is they're building at mass scale and they can't sit on their inventory for long term. It doesn't work for their balance sheets. Whereas if you're buying from either a previous landlord, someone who lives in the home, like sometimes, actually quite often, they're like, oh, I don't get my price, I'll just wait six months, you know, like it's fine. Builders who have sometimes thousands of homes on their books, they need to start moving them. The, the pace at which they can move them is crucially important to their business. And you can be the beneficiary of that right now. Cause if you look at, you know, days on market for existing homes, I think it's like 45 days on average now. I think for new construction, I think it's almost six months, it might be more, something like that. I, I don't know the stat off the top of my head, but it's super high.

• 27:18Dave Meyer?

  And so like you really, really have the lever in that situation. And to Zach's point, that's where you get creative. Because not every builder is willing to do a rate buy down. Not everyone's willing to offer, give you cash back. But like, if you're creative about how you approach your partnership and you're working with them, like usually you can extract a lot of concessions and a lot of values on it. This has been a consistent thing I've heard from people like you Zach, who work with both, you know, Main Street and Wall Street investors is all of them are saying this, like go talk to builders right now. We gotta take one more quick break, everyone, but we'll be back with Zach right after this. Stick with us.

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• 32:53Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back. Let's jump back into my conversation with rent-to-retirement CEO, Zach LaMaster.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  So the first thing I think that is an actionable item for people in today's market to be successful is just like, look for creative deals. I shared one example. That's not the only, but there's certainly, there's a lot of opportunity in new construction, being able to buy below price points that in a different market cycle, you would not be able to get. So the second thing, Dave, I think that's really relevant today is, is taking advantage of the tax benefits. You know, I think a lot of newer investors, they, they hyper-focus on like cash flow early on. And that's because it's tangible. It's real. It's easy to calculate.

• 33:29Dave Meyer?

  For sure.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, if I had, you know, 20 rentals, 10K a month, that's, you know, 120K a year that I could, you know, off to the races there if they're using that calculation for cash flow. What I found in my experience investing, I'm curious of yours as well, but is actually wealth is built and multiplied quicker with all the other things outside of cash flow, things like using leverage appropriately, appreciation.

• 33:53Dave Meyer?

  That's right.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Using the tax benefits today, which is still relevant to investors because of how the tax code is written today, that is very advantageous. I mentioned 1031 exchanges previously. That's a huge benefit where you can perpetually, you know, if you're doing accelerated depreciation, things like that, like perpetually delay taxes to be paid and pass it on to your, you know, it's generations at a step-up basis. So that's some generational wealth planning, another benefit to real estate. But we do cost segregation studies, which you accelerate the depreciation on every single property that we buy. I think this is, this is like one of the most highly discussed topics on, on bigger pockets, I believe, because people are just so confused by it, but interested in doing it. For example, a

• 34:36Speaker 01

  lot of the short-term stuff that we do both for our investors as a business, but also personally, is going through, instead of doing real estate professional status, I am a real estate professional based on our business, but a lot of people qualify through doing a short-term loophole.

• 34:48Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  But they believe that they have to have 500 hours or 100-hour minimum test. The reality is, is actually, look up the substantially all test under the IRS code. I think it's 1.4695A2. Don't quote me on that, Dave.

• 35:05Dave Meyer?

  Don't quote me on this incredibly specific number that I'm quoting. Just Google it. People will find it.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yes, substantially all test. You can qualify, for example, this is an action item. Like you can qualify your, as a short-term, if you're renting out your property, if you're doing all the work, you're not hiring out, you know, management, cleaning, anything, if you're doing all the work, there is no hours to meet on that. If you're, you know, you, you don't have to qualify as a real estate professional. You can take your accelerated depreciation, which we run at 30% on a 300K property, that's $90,000 that you can take against your active income. People don't know that. If you make $100,000 or less, you can take, you don't even have to be a real estate professional, short-term rental. You can take depreciation and offset up to $25,000 against your income, and you don't have to. So those are just a couple of examples on the tax side that I think are really important

• 35:54Speaker 01

  for people to, to understand, because a lot of people don't understand it, and then they, they miss out, or they do it improperly. The third thing, Dave, I think is, is relevant today is just financing options. You know, obviously, interest rates are elevated, but DSCR loans and some different type of creative loan structures have become very attractive, even some ARMs, which were like almost taboo to talk about historically.

• 36:16Dave Meyer?

  I know. I've been using them.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Well, they make sense right now, because you can always refinance properties in the future. But if there's a really attractive arm on a five or seven or 10-year term, like those are attractive loans, if it allows you to cash flow better. So understand those. There's some loans where you don't have to put 20% down on a single family. You can do 5, 10, 15%, not have, not have private mortgage insurance. Those are with local credit unions. So I'll stop there. I could go on and on, but hopefully those are some concrete things.

• 36:42Dave Meyer?

  You're right. It's just, this is the job of an investor today. You know, this is the job, is go out there and figure out a way to make deals work, because that's what the market is giving you. Sometimes the market gives you great cash flow. Sometimes it gives you cheap prices. Right now, it's giving you negotiation leverage. That's the tool that you have. And whether that's talking to different banks, talking to new construction, talking to different sellers, if you can just be patient and disciplined and know what you want, you can go out there and find it. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to put in that effort, or to find partners who are putting in that effort and to work with them. It just works. You know, I think that residential opportunities are there.

• 37:24Dave Meyer?

  We didn't even get into this. I think multifamilies, you know, opportunities are really starting to come. So I'm more bullish on acquisitions now than I've been in several years, I would, I would say. Because I'm a long-term investor. I'm someone who's trying to hold on to this for 20 years for now.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Being long-term is, is going to, I think, give you a different underwriting perspective that where you get into trouble or where I think it causes a lot of additional stress is putting yourself in a position where you have to sell a property.

• 37:54Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Within a certain period of time, right? If, and that is flipping, that's true. That is a higher risk type of thing. But if you underwrite properties with a long-term mindset, I mean, it's very rudimentary. And we talked about it at the beginning, but that's, that's what you have to have that mindset, right? Because time will, you know, cure all wounds. And it's like we said, it's really hard to screw things up long-term. If you're buying a good locations.

• 38:16Dave Meyer?

  Well, Zach, this is awesome. Thanks for being here. It was really cool. Learning a little bit about your history. I've known you for a while. I did not know about your origin story as an investor. And really good insights on the market today. I think as Zach has shown everyone, there's great stuff that you can be doing in this market. Zach, obviously in addition to just being an investor yourself, you were CEO of Rent to Retirement. So like, what deals are you doing right now outside of your personal investing with Rent to Retirement? That might be interesting to our community.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  We dive deep into what we, we spend some time talking about, Dave, with the new construction stuff. So we partner with these national builders across the country where actually, and this is, this is relevant today because there's been some political pressure and change on institutional buyers being able to come in and buy. So that's, that's something we haven't talked about, but like, there's more regulation on institutions coming in. These are the REITs and Blackstones, like coming in and buying large groups of homes. That also has contributed to builders being willing to get more properties off their books because they're selling less to institutional buyers, which provides an opportunity for the individual investor. But that's what our company does is we go to these builders and we do build some homes ourselves as well. And manage those for investors across the country in some of the best markets.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  But we're also going to these builders and we're buying and negotiating large groups of homes at institutional type of discounts, Dave, that then we're passing on to the individual investor. Make, making institutional buying opportunities available to the individual investor that they wouldn't otherwise have opportunity to because they're not buying in volume. It's economies of scale. And our average, I know we talked about 10%, but our average that we're seeing when we're talking about groups of homes is 13 to 15%. I mean, think about that. If you put 20% down on a single-family home in a new construction, A-class market, and you're getting 13 to 15% possibly is cash back, like your ROI is going to skyrocket. It allows you to buy more real estate, you know, so that what we talked about is exactly what we're doing, both personally and professionally.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  And yeah, I think there's a huge, that's where the best opportunity is currently.

• 40:17Dave Meyer?

  That's super cool because as we talked about, even if you're an experienced investor, working with builders is just different. As you know, I was kind of talking about it earlier, like you have to understand their business model and negotiate. But it sounds like if, if people are interested in new construction, want someone to do that for you. Check out Rent to Retirement. Zach works. Should they find you?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  They can just, yeah, Rent to Retirement, that's rentto retirement.com. We got our own podcast YouTube. We put out a ton of stuff. We've had Dave on our podcast a few times. His brain, but yeah, put out a lot of content, guys. We're passionate about this. Like I said, I, I do full-time real estate and we started this business because we love real estate. It's allowed our family to build a life we wouldn't otherwise be able to. And we're passionate about helping other people accomplish the same thing.

• 41:01Dave Meyer?

  Awesome. Well, Zach, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and what you're up to. It's super helpful for me and for the community. Great to have you here and I'm excited to see you at BPCon. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  We'll see you soon. Thanks, Dave.

• 41:13Dave Meyer?

  And thank you all so much for listening and watching this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm Dave Meyer and I'll see you all next time.

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