Category: Real Estate

Keller Williams Realty, LLC, the world’s largest real estate franchise by agent count, is expanding across Africa. As momentum continues, KW has awarded a new master franchise in Egypt. 

“We’re proud to welcome Egypt into our KW family as we continue to expand our culture of growth and opportunity around the world,” said William E. Soteroff, president of Keller Williams Worldwide (KWW), the international division of KW. 

As of December 31, 2025, KWW, which operates outside of the U.S. and Canada, sold over 84,500 units, up 2.7 percent year-over-year (YOY), representing $20.9 billion in sales volume, up 21.4 percent YOY.

KW awarded its master franchise in Egypt to a strategic partnership between RED, co-founded by Khalid Bahig and Mohamed Banany, and ANCHOR Development & Management, founded by Ahmed Ghoneim.

Bahig, who will serve as chairman and CEO of KW® Egypt, previously held the role of CEO of Coldwell Banker Egypt, where he helped drive a major shift in the Egyptian real estate brokerage market by introducing structured sales frameworks, disciplined processes, and professional buyer handling approaches, setting foundations that many companies later adopted. 

Bahig is currently the co-founder and chairman of RED, one of Egypt’s leading real estate marketplaces serving buyers, developers, and sellers.

“Our vision is to redefine the real estate experience in Egypt through professionalism, innovation, and trust, empowering agents to grow businesses worth owning and helping clients make property decisions with confidence and transparency, supported by KW’s end-to-end technology ecosystem,” said Bahig.

Banany will serve as a board member of KW® Egypt. A former VP of Marketing and Business Development of Coldwell Banker Egypt, he is also the co-founder and managing director of RED, where he has played a pivotal role in shaping one of Egypt’s most influential real estate platforms.

“We see this as a transformational step for the Egyptian real estate market,” said Banany. “By combining RED’s local market expertise with KW’s world-class models, systems, and technology, we are committed to enhancing agent performance, raising service quality, and establishing a more transparent and trusted marketplace for clients and developers alike.”

As the regional operating principal and a board member of KW® Egypt, Ghoneim will lead in collaboration with Bahig and Banany, brokerage professionals known for their deep market expertise, global exposure, and a shared commitment to building a culture of professionalism and education. 

A seasoned entrepreneur, Ghoneim has led numerous large-scale residential developments in Egypt. His 20-plus-year career spans senior roles at top-tier global and regional real estate brands. He is also the founder of ANCHOR Development & Management, an integrated real estate development, sales, and marketing firm.

“Our objective is clear: we aim to establish KW as one of the top real estate companies in Egypt,” said Ghoneim. “We’re not just building a business, we’re creating the ultimate destination for real estate professionals in Egypt.”

“We believe the Egyptian real estate market will remarkably evolve with KW, by being the hub of agents, company leaders, and investors for development and training that drives results,” said Ghoneim.

In Q1 ’26, RED will become the first franchise office in Egypt, serving as the operational launchpad for KW’s expansion in the country and a central hub for agent training, growth, and technology adoption.

Egypt marks the second KW master franchise in Africa. The brand’s other region includes South Africa. 

“Egypt represents one of the most dynamic and high-growth real estate markets in the region, and with this exceptional leadership partnership, we look forward to KW Egypt becoming the standard-bearer for agent success, training, and culture in this important market,” said Soteroff.

Dave:
President Trump just nominated Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as fed chair, the most consequential fed leadership change in over a decade for real estate investors because the direction of the fed and monetary policy in general has massive impacts on the real estate industry. And this announcement has everyone wondering, will a new Fed chair finally bring down mortgage rates and lending costs or is this just another false hope today and on the market? We’re digging into what a new Fed chair means for the real estate investing industry. And I’m telling you now, my take is probably going to surprise you because all the commentary I’ve seen about this so far is missing the critical variable that’s going to tell us where we’re really heading.
Hey everyone, welcome to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer, chief Investment Officer at BiggerPockets. And by the way, if you’re watching this on YouTube and wondering why I’m wearing a full winter coat and outfit right now because my heat went out two days ago and can’t get a tech out here until tomorrow, but the show must go on. So this is the way we’re recording today anyway, you’ve probably heard this news by now, but last week there was a major announcement from the White House President Trump announced his pick to replace Jerome Powell as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. When Powell’s term is up this coming May, Trump has made no secret of his contempt for Powell, who as a reminder, Trump actually appointed himself to the position in 2017. But the two have had major differences of opinion on monetary policy of late and hearing that Trump plans to replace Powell is no big surprise.
In fact, Trump has been publicly floating a bunch of different candidates for the position for months and as of last week we learned his choice will be Kevin Warsh. Warsh will be taking over the Fed at a critical time. Borrowing costs remain high, the labor market is sending mixed signals. The dollar is in decline and inflation is running above target levels and the way which Warsh chooses to prioritize these various issues and the ways in which he steers monetary policy is of course of national importance. But it also has outsized impact on the real estate industry in general because as you know, our industry is heavily dependent on debt and borrowing costs. So in today’s episode we’re going to look at Warsh, who he is, what he stands for, and critically how he’s likely to influence monetary policy as the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
And lemme just tell you right now, this isn’t just about the federal funds rate or whether he cuts rates once or twice next year. We’ve seen for years that’s not necessarily going to move mortgage rates, so we’re going to go beyond just the federal funds rate to understand how Warsh might use some of the Fed’s other tools going forward. And of course, we’re also going to extrapolate as much as we can and discuss how Warsh’s nomination should impact your investing decisions. Here we go. First, we do talk a lot about the Fed on the show, but we should just review what they actually do. The Federal Reserve is the government agency responsible for setting monetary policy in the United States. They set interest rates, they regulate banks. They decide if we’re doing quantitative easing or tightening. That’s basically their job. They are not responsible for what is called fiscal policy, which is how money is spent in the United States.
That power goes to Congress. Now when it comes to the main thing people associate with the Fed, which is setting interest rates, they actually have but one tool they can change the thing called the federal funds rate. It’s a little bit complicated, but it’s basically setting the cost for banks to borrow and lend to one another and it sets the baseline lending rate for most other interest rates in the economy. So it sort of serves as this baseline that every other type of loan, whether it’s mortgages or car loans or credit cards, they’re sort of based on this in one way or another, but they do not directly set any other interest rates. The Federal Reserve does not set mortgage rates. They do not set credit card rates. They set the federal funds rate and then lenders use that to inform their own decisions about how they’re going to set rates.
Now, despite this just being one interest rate, it is a very powerful tool like setting the federal funds rate is a major lever in the economy, but it’s not the only one. And as we’re going to talk about a little later, they also have some other tools that aren’t setting interest rates. These are tools that people often overlook, but I personally believe are probably the most important thing for investors to be thinking about right now. Anyway, for now, what you need to know is the Fed controls the federal funds rate, but it is not actually directly controlled by the Federal Reserve chair. That is not how this works. There are actually 12 voting members on the FOMC, which stands for the Federal Open Markets Committee. This is when they say there’s a fed meeting this month. That is the FOMC meeting. There are 12 voting members, the Fed chair, AKA right now, Jerome Powell, it will be Kevin Warsh starting in May does not unilaterally decide on monetary policy.
There are votes during every FOMC meeting and that is how monetary policy is set. So that for now is basically what you need to know about the Fed. Let’s turn our attention then to why the change. Why is Trump replacing Jerome Powell who he appointed himself back in 2017 with someone else? Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the news, you know that Trump, especially in his second term, has been very critical, very publicly critical of Powell’s performance and some of that, to me at least is fair given the hindsight that we have. I think almost everyone agrees the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long and that was a major factor in the inflation we’ve seen and continue to see. There are other factors, of course, massive stimulus packages, three of them to be exact supply side disruptions during COVID and quantitative easing being other major contributing factors as well.
But you have to think that low interest rates, looking back on it now, definitely played a major role on that. On the other hand, I must say not all of the blame should go on Jerome Powell. In my opinion, he is one of 12 voting members and as the chair, yeah, he’s the face of the decisions of the Fed. But the monetary policy failures of 2021 and 2022 in my opinion should be shared across all the voting members of the FOMC. But anyway, back to today, Trump now feels that Powell is overcorrecting having waited too long to raise rates. Trump and many of his supporters feel that rates should be coming down faster to help stimulate the economy. Trump himself has even gotten so far as to say that he thinks the federal funds rate should be 1%, which would be pretty unheard of outside of extreme economic emergencies like COVID or the great financial crisis.
Just as a benchmark, in normal times the federal funds rate is more likely in the two to 4% range. That’s kind of the sweet spot that keeps the economy humming and doesn’t risk unemployment or recession, but also prevents the economy from overheating and causing inflation. Now, Powell of course, has defended the Fed. He’s saying that they are trying to balance the labor market which would support lower rates with battling inflation, which would say keep rates higher and they’re taking a meeting by meeting data driven approach. Trump, as you know, disagrees and is exercising his right as the president to nominate a new Fed chair in May when Powell’s term expires and he has chosen Kevin Warsh. So who is Kevin Warsh and what does he believe and what does it mean for real estate investors? We’re going to get to that right after this quick break.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer talking about President Trump’s announcement that he’ll be nominating Kevin Warsh for senate confirmation when Jerome Powell’s term expires in May of 2026. So who is this guy? Who is Kevin Warsh? Let’s learn a little bit about him and learn what we can about what might be coming for mortgage rates and for our economy in general. Kevin Warsh comes from a pretty prestigious background. He went to Stanford University and Harvard Law School. He’s had a long career. He’s actually still relatively pretty young, but he’s been in his career in finance for a long time. He worked at Morgan Stanley. He was on the National Economic Council for George W. Bush and he was the youngest ever fed governor at the age of 35 and critically he served as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011. So he was there during the great financial crisis.
He has crisis experience, which to me counts for a lot more recently. He has been working in the private sector and obviously we don’t know what Warsh will do and what his legacy is going to be at the Fed, but in my opinion, he is a qualified candidate to lead the Fed and he has strong credentials. Now, reading his resume is one thing, but you probably all want to know what Warsh actually believes and what he said about the current interest rate environment and the current economy because that’s going to tell us where he might try to steer the Federal Reserve in coming years. And again, just want to caveat, we don’t actually know what’s going on. We don’t know what Warsh wants to do. We don’t know what he’s talked to the president about before his appointment and we don’t know how data and conditions in the market will change between now and May.
It’s February right now. A lot could change in the economy in the next two or three months. But that said, we do know a bit based on his previous statements and there’s a good amount that we can extrapolate. Historically, war has been a pretty hawkish voice in fed circles. You probably hear that term a lot hawkish. That word is used to describe people who favor tighter monetary policy, which is just another finance word for higher interest rates. So warsh historically has favored higher interest rates because he wants to control inflation. He prioritizes that. At the same time, he’s also been a very vocal critic of the fed’s bond buying program known as quantitative easing. He has said that too causes inflation. So from those two statements, you would think he will vote to keep interest rates high. But in recent months, wars has shifted his stance on the economy and monetary policy considerably.
He’s actually started arguing for lower rates, telling Fox News that cutting rates could set the economy up for its next degree of acceleration. His argument goes a little bit like this. He says Inflation isn’t caused by the economy growing too fast. It’s caused by the government spending and printing too much money. He also believes AI driven productivity gains will allow strong growth without undesirable inflation, which could justify lower rates. And to me, at least from an economics theory perspective, those are both reasonable arguments. We don’t know for sure. I mean, I do think that the economy can overheat and cause inflation, but I also think in recent years, government spending and printing has also contributed to inflation. I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think both have contributed to it. I’ve also heard this argument a couple times now that AI driven productivity gains will allow strong growth without inflation, which I think is a credible idea.
We just don’t know, right? All this AI stuff is super TBD, we just don’t know what’s going to happen, but the theory of sound, if there are productivity gains, you can have growth without inflation. I do buy that. We just don’t know how, how big those productivity gains will be and if they’ll actually offset any potential inflation. So in theory can work. Will it work? We don’t know. He does lose me a little bit when he starts talking about mortgage rates. He actually said quote, we can lower interest rates a lot and in doing so get through to your fixed rate mortgages so they’re affordable so we can get the housing market to get going. Again, quote, maybe he’s right, but in recent years we’ve seen that the federal funds rate and mortgage rates have become uncoupled. Sometimes they move together, other times they don’t.
In the last couple of years they have not. Now, I do believe that if they lowered the federal funds rate a lot, if they cut it another full point or two points, we’ll probably see rates come down a little bit. But by how much remains to be seen and very critically, he has said something really important. Wars has also said something other than cutting the federal funds rate something that might actually raise mortgage rates. Yes, raise mortgage rates. I mentioned this earlier, but I want to dig into this a little bit. Warsh has repeatedly criticized something called quantitative easing. You’ve probably heard me talk about this on the show before. Quantitative easing is the fed’s program to buy US treasuries and mortgage backed securities. They go out and rather than other investors buying those treasuries or bundles of mortgages, the Fed actually goes and buys them and they do this by making money out of thin air.
Seriously, that’s actually what they do. They just go out and they buy mortgage backed securities or bonds and they just wire money to the seller that is poof created digitally and magically appears in the seller’s bank account and that money never existed before. That’s actually how quantitative easing works. And Warsh believes this causes inflation and I must say I agree, this is adding to monetary supply and that has a lot of upward pressure on inflation. Now, quantitative easing can work. I actually think if you look at the role it played in the recovery from the great financial crisis, it was really helpful. It was something that we actually needed. The problem is we got addicted to it. We’ve been doing quantitative easing during non-emergency times, and I personally think it’s contributed to a lot of inflation recently and it’s got to be one of the top, maybe one, maybe two major reasons.
Housing affordability is so strained. I mean supply side stuff is the other reason, but supply side stuff, quantitative easing together, keeping mortgage rates artificially low, pumping more money into the economy, major reasons why we have housing affordability problems. So needless to say, I am not a fan of quantitative easing outside of emergency situations, and apparently neither is Warsh. Warsh himself has said he wants to shrink the fed’s balance sheet. They’re currently holding over $6 trillion in assets. That is a lot. And so if he shrinks the balance sheet, this could help fight inflation because actually when they do this, when they shrink the balance sheet instead of being quantitative easing, that is called quantitative tightening. And what they do, this is real. What they do is when they sell that asset and they get the money from the seller into their bank account, they just delete it seriously.
They just get rid of the money, they create it out of thin air and then they get rid of it. It just goes poof into the ether. And this really can help fight inflation because you actually see monetary supply starting to go down. That’s a good thing for inflation, but it also has a direct impact on bond yields and mortgage rates. This could push rates up because we’ve gotten addicted to quantitative easing. A lot of the demand for mortgage backed securities and treasuries over the last couple of years has come from the Federal Reserve. And if so, they’re no longer buying and not are they no longer buying? They’re becoming sellers. There can be a glut of supply coming on the MBS market and the treasuries market, and that can push up rates. So just keep that in mind as we move on as to what this means for real estate investors is that this could be good for inflation, which I should say will be beneficial for mortgage rates in the long run, but in the short run it could have that adverse effect on mortgage rates.
Last thing I’ll say before we move on is I think one question I keep hearing about warsh is has he really had a big change of heart because for years he was very hawkish, he favored tighter monetary policy. Does he really believe that or has he shifted his stance to align himself with the president’s view of what monetary policy should be? It’s an open question. We don’t know. We shall see. We do have to take one more quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about what this all means for real estate investors and how you should be thinking about your own portfolio as we prepare for this major shift in the Federal Reserve.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer. Today we are talking about Kevin Warsh’s nomination as the Fed Chair. Now he does have to be confirmed by the Senate. I should mention that, that President Trump can’t just unilaterally decide this is going to be the Federal Reserve chair. It does need to be confirmed by the Senate. My guess is that Kevin Warsh will be confirmed. He is a qualified candidate. I am sure some people will object, but my guess is he will be confirmed. What then does it mean if Warsh is going to be confirmed? Well, I just want to remind everyone before we get into this is that regardless of what Warsh wants, it’s not really all up to him. As a reminder, he’s just one of the votes. He doesn’t unilaterally decide the federal funds rate or whether we’re going to do quantitative easing or quantitative tightening.
He is one of 12 votes, but obviously the most vocal and public vote and he is the leader. He could start steering the other members of the voting committee towards policies that he’s in favor of. But that said, he is inheriting a very divided F right now. The FOMC is more divided than has been in years. Actually for a long time during COVID, people were voting pretty unanimously. There was rarely dissenters for the overall policy that was being proposed. But over the last couple of cuts, you see it used to be zero dissenters, then it was one, then it was two, now it’s three. You see more and more people diverging on what they think the Fed should be doing. And so worship is going to be coming in with a divided fed. Now as of the last meeting, the projection is just for one more rate cut in 2026, then one in 2027.
As it seems that the majority of voters right now feel that we’re close to what is called the quote neutral rate, you might hear this term thrown out a lot in the financial media right now. Neutral rate is basically where the Fed wants to be. They want to find a federal funds rate where they don’t need to be changing it very much. It’s just what the funds rate should be. It’s something that’s low enough to keep the economy humming and job growth, wage growth, GDP, growth, all that, but also high enough to prevent inflation. So as of now, even with this, I just want to remind everyone not to expect too many rate cuts in the coming year. And also to remind you that frankly for most real estate investors, the people who listen to this podcast, the federal funds rate cuts don’t really mean that much, especially on the residential side of things.
Residential mortgage rates, like I said, they’ve been sort of decoupled, probably not going to do that much either way. I am personally sticking with my mortgage rate predictions that I made at the end of last year in November, and I just don’t think they’re going to move that much this year. I’ve said I think they’re going to remain between five point a five and six point a half percent, probably average somewhere near six 6.1%. Maybe they’re down a little bit lower than 6.1%, but I don’t think they’re going below 5.5% in 2026. I’m sticking with that. Now, the one bright spot here though is the federal funds rate is more closely tied to commercial real estate loans. So if you’re in multifamily or office or retail, that’s good news. You are going to see rates start to come down for commercial loans and that could really help an industry that has frankly crashed in a lot of places and is struggling a lot.
So I am gear most of our episodes here on the market towards the residential market. That’s mostly what the BiggerPockets community is, but many of us, myself included, invest in the commercial real estate market and I just want to call out. That’s good news if the federal funds rate comes down. Now, the only way we really see big changes in residential mortgage rates from the federal funds rate coming down is honestly, I think if they get too aggressive. This is all a game. As you all know, the economy, a lot of it is just confidence and what people believe. And if the Fed loses credibility and people start to believe that wars and the Fed Governors are lowering interest rates quickly for political reasons or to provide short-term bumps to the stock market at the expense of long-term inflation risk, it’s going to have an adverse effect.
This is what we’ve seen the last couple of times when there have been rate cuts. A lot of bond holders think rate cuts are coming too fast. Bond holders, as we talk about on the show all the time, they hate inflation. It is their arch enemy. Inflation is the worst enemy of a bond holder because it devalues the interest payments they get on those bonds over time. And so anytime they are fearful of inflation, they’re going to sell bonds which pushes mortgage rates up. And so if they think, oh no, the Fed is lowering rates too quickly, maybe that will help stuff in the next year, but I’m holding a 10 year bond and inflation’s going to be bad for a lot of those 10 years, they might sell and rates might go back up. So I think that’s the risk. But I don’t think given who war is just given his reputation, maybe he has changed a lot, but given his reputation, I don’t think we’re going to see super aggressive federal funds rate.
But if we do, in my opinion, that’s a red flag. Now, we’ve talked about the federal funds rate, but like I said, I don’t think that’s a huge deal one way or another because it’s not going to impact mortgage rates so much. To me, the big question is what he does or what he tries to do with the balance sheet. Remember that’s whether he decides to do quantitative easing, quantitative tightening or nothing. If war and the Fed reduce the balance sheet, that’s quantitative tightening, remember making that money that they gave out and made out of thin air, it’s just evaporating it, right? It’s good for long-term inflation, but it will put short-term upward pressure on mortgage rates. Now, could that be offset by federal fund rate reductions? Maybe things will stay flat. Of course, it’s going to just depend on how aggressively he tries to reduce the balance sheet if he tries to do it at all.
My guess, and this is just a guess guys, I obviously don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ve been doing research all weekend trying to figure out who this guy is, what he might do my most as an analyst. My job is to figure out what the highest probability thing is, and I have a pretty good track record of it. I’m not always right. And this one is a big question mark, but I’ll just tell you what I think will probably happen is I think he’s going to try and do both. I think he is going to try and steer the Fed as much as he can because remember, he only gets one vote. He’s going to try and lower the federal funds rate. This will probably help the stock market, it will help commercial real estate. But he’s also going to advocate for selling bonds and mortgage backed securities because if he is who he is still and he is fearful inflation and he wants tighter monetary policy, he can potentially lower the federal funds rate that can stimulate the economy, but increases the risk of inflation.
Meanwhile, if he does quantitative tightening at the same time, that offsets some of that inflationary risk and maybe we will get economic stimulus without the fear of inflation. Now, I don’t know. This has never been done before. We have never seen a falling federal funds rate with quantitative tightening at the same time we haven’t. So we don’t know what will happen. But if you watch his interviews, which I have, it does seem like this is kind of where he’s heading, lower the federal funds rate to put downward pressure on mortgages, sell MBS get some upward pressure on mortgage rates. Maybe they offset each other and we have neutral mortgage rates, but we get stimulus for the economy without additional inflationary risk. That seems to be what he believes. We’ll have to see if that actually happens. One more thing I want to mention is quantitative easing.
I actually said in November, I think it’s on the table in 2026 because Trump really wants lower mortgage rates. Now, I stand by the idea that we cannot get significantly lower residential mortgage rates without quantitative easing, at least this year. As I’ve said many times, the federal fund rate doesn’t control mortgage rates. Quantitative easing will lower mortgage rates in the short term. It will probably increase mortgage rates in the long term, which is why I am not in favor of it. But I do still think there’s a chance that this happens, but that probability has probably declined. If we were to believe Warsh and take him at his word last year, I said, I thought there was about a 30% chance that we’ll get quantitative easing this year. I’d say it’s like 10 to 15% now maybe even lower because Warsh seems really against this, and I kind of believe him on that.
He has repeatedly indicated he wants to do the exact opposite quantitative tightening, not quantitative easing, which means higher mortgage rates in the short term, but maybe better for the housing market in the long run because we won’t have that inflationary risk and that reduces the risk that mortgage rates are going to go up in the long term. So that’s where I come out on all this. Obviously, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but this is what we know so far, and I think for you as investors as well as me, what we need to know. Just to summarize this, is Trump has picked a qualified candidate with a strong track record. And what we don’t know what it’ll do. I still think a big reduction in mortgage rates are unlikely. I see a lot of people on social media touting this announcement and saying, mortgage rates are coming down.
War City is going to lower the federal funds rate. Do not buy into that. I still think it is very unlikely mortgage rates come down because without quantitative easing rates are going to stay in the upper fives to mid sixes this year. And the only way we get better affordability is the slow, boring, frustrating way with gradually lower rates flat to correcting real home prices and wage growth for investors. This really just means that you do not want to wait till May thinking there will be lower rates. It is unlikely they will fluctuate. They might go down a little bit. I think they will go down a little bit over the course of the year. But if you’re waiting for Warsh to come in and his first day and thinking, oh, there’s going to be lower mortgage rates that day, I don’t think that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
And if it does, they’ll probably go back up the next week. So the best thing you can do is what we talk about all the time on the show, which is look for deals that work. Now, if rates go down in the future, that’s great, that would be really nice. But there are deals that work now, and you should just spend your time looking for those instead of hoping for something is going to change in the future. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Fed is not coming to save you. You have to go find deals that work in this market. That’s the job, and we’re here to help you do it twice a week on the market. Thank you all so much for listening. Make sure to give us a, like if you’re watching this on YouTube or share it with a friend, if you think it will help them make better investing decisions, it really helps us out a lot. I’m Dave Meyer for BiggerPockets. I’ll see you next time.

Get ready to rumble! There’s an epic fight brewing among real estate portals, with established players facing off against mega-brokerages that are attempting to corner the market and keep exclusive listings for themselves. 

Caught in the tug-of-war are flippers and landlords, wondering where to list their houses and rentals to quickly nab qualified buyers or tenants.

Compass, CoStar, and the New Era of Portal Wars

When it comes down to sheer eyeballs on the screen, Zillow is still the one to beat. However, as HousingWire reports, the recent merger of Compass and Anywhere Real Estate has created one of the largest residential brokerages in the country. Industry analysts say that the firm’s combined scale and emphasis on “exclusive” inventory could reshape the flow of listings across major portals.

Compass’s aim is for consumers to see compass.com as a central destination for listings. As such, the site has been steadily growing a list of private and semiprivate inventory, not available on every rival site.

That move has angered Zillow, which, in April of last year, banned private listings that appeared exclusively on Compass at least 24 hours before they appeared on the MLS. This set off a lawsuit between the brokerage and the listings portal.

It seemed Zillow was getting hit from all sides, because another rival, CoStar, the parent company of Homes.com and Apartments.com, also filed a lawsuit in July claiming that Zillow “stole” and used over 46,000 of its copyrighted property photos to boost its own listings. 

CoStar wasn’t done. The company set out to win over Zillow users by offering to “boost” listings banned by the rival portal.

Google Enters the Fray

As in a scene from Jurassic World Dominion, when a T. Rex is taken out by Gigantosaurus, the same could be playing out in the portal wars. Google has just entered the fray, trialing listings exclusively on its search engine. 

Because of Google’s massive scope, this could prove a major disruptor for Compass, Costar, and Zillow, as viewers will be able to view listings directly on their search engines without having to visit specific websites. It remains to be seen to what extent Google will affect the other listing sites.  

Right now, all the posturing amongst real estate tech’s power players is just that—posturing—because there’s still one clear leader in rental and residential listings: Zillow. However, the race is tightening, and Zillow is not the only option. According to Investopedia’s Best Rental Listing Sites for Landlords and Tenants for 2026, the results were as follows:

According to Investopedia’s analysis, Zillow’s Rental Manager comes out on top due to its large national database, strong site traffic, and integrated features for marketing, tenant screening, and rent collection. Landlords can post a basic rental listing for free in many markets or pay for a premium listing for around $29.99, while renters typically pay a $35 application fee that covers screening reports.

Also included in Zillow’s Rental Manager portal are analytics, pricing guides, tenant screening, a lease builder, online rent collection, and fraud detection systems. There’s also access to professional photography. 

In short, along with a listing on their rental portal, Zillow makes a compelling case for landlords to align with real estate’s online powerhouse.

Zillow’s One-Size-Fits-All Does Not Fit All

However, Zillow’s one-size-fits-all approach does not, in fact, fit all. Investopedia points out that small landlords in smaller markets often have their own methods for highlighting rental listings, and neighborhood-specific categorization is not one of the site’s strengths, especially when tenants are searching by neighborhood or school district.

Hot on Zillow’s tail is its great rival, apartments.com, owned by CoStar, which also owns Homes.com. Investopedia says that the site is best for attracting qualified applicants. It offers many of the same features as Zillow for the same $29.99 price for screening reports and an application, and shows its listings on its own site, as well as Homes.com and ForRent.com.

Social Media: How Smaller Landlords Can Compete

Investopedia’s editors recommend using all four portals together to achieve the best overall reach, with Zillow as the anchor platform. 

For smaller landlords, standing out on these sites means competing with heavyweight rental companies such as AvalonBay, Equity Residential, and Essex Property Trust, which have thousands of apartments. It means being nimble and nuanced, competitively priced, and able to offer concessions. It also means leveraging social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Marketplace.

Property management platform RentRedi suggests highlighting your apartment in its best possible light with professional photography and staging and using engaging captions and hashtags to attract tenants.

Using a more personalized approach to properties on social media, through Instagram Reels and virtual tours, can be a winning strategy for smaller companies. RentRedi also recommends constantly analyzing performance metrics to see which platforms generate the most user engagement.

Final Thoughts: Beware of Scammers

In the rush to rent your vacant apartment, listing on every rental portal and across social media, be careful not to leave yourself exposed to scammers. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), $65 million has been lost to rental-related scams since 2020, with Facebook (51%) the most likely place to get defrauded and Craigslist (16%) second.

Scams can take many forms, and it is usually the potential tenant who gets scammed, not the landlord. However, having your apartment used as bait for a con means you have just lost the chance to get an application from a genuine tenant, and you have unwittingly been involved in defrauding an innocent victim.

Ways to deter this from happening include branding every image with a digital watermark (with a website and phone number) so they cannot be used elsewhere, monitoring other platforms with Rently’s Fake Listing Monitoring, and not posting the full address. Because scamming is so prevalent, listing formal photos on major portals rather than on free social media platforms is prudent.

As rhetoric about incoming Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has investors dreaming about basement-level interest rates, the words of hip-hop legends Public Enemy could be worth remembering: “Don’t believe the hype.”

“We can lower interest rates a lot, and in so doing, get 30-year fixed-rate mortgages so they’re affordable, so we can get the housing market to get going again,” Warsh, a former member of the central bank’s Board of Governors and an outspoken Fed critic, told Fox Business in 2025.

Warsh’s low-interest-rate stance seems to have secured him President Trump’s nomination. “He certainly wants to cut rates, I’ve been watching him for a long time,” President Trump said on Jan 30.

“He will go down as one of the great Fed chairmen, maybe the best. On top of everything else, he is central casting and will never let you down,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Only Modest Cuts Expected

There are, however, a few steps to go before Warsh becomes chair in May, and then more steps are involved in lowering rates based on inflation, the economy, jobs, and the housing market. It seems inevitable that there will be some rate lowering, but how much is unclear.

According to a recent Forbes forecast, based on Fed signaling, rates are unlikely to drop much lower for the remainder of the year, with one or two modest cuts expected. It’s a reminder that, despite the hype around Warsh, he won’t be waving a rate-cut magic wand, ushering in a return of bidding wars and price hikes.

Trump’s Expectations vs. Reality

Trump’s full-court press for lower rates will run up against a few realities that could frustrate the president and drag out meaningful cuts far longer than he hopes. Warsh will not chair a Fed meeting until June, the New York Times notes, adding that any aggressive cut agenda would roll out gradually after that.

“He’s going to try to thread the needle of respecting President Trump’s wishes and at the same time, respecting institutional processes,” Dennis Lockhart, a former coworker with Warsh at the central bank when he served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta between 2007 and 2017, told the Times. “Believe me, that’s going to be quite the tap dance. It’s going to be Fred Astaire as central bank chair.”

Inflation: The Numbers Don’t Lie

The Wall Street Journal reports that Warsh essentially has the same priorities as the outgoing Jerome Powell: easing inflation back down to 2%, while shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet, fielding White House pressure, and preserving the Fed’s credibility. While Warsh will be keen to make a fast and favorable impression by doing what’s hoped for with interest rates, the numbers don’t lie, and he will still have to work within a data-dependent framework.

Reuters echoed that sweeping rate cuts may not be on the agenda as the president hopes, recalling that Powell was the president’s pick in 2017—who then, not even six months later, was called “clueless.” Trump’s insults have only worsened since then. 

Trump himself acknowledged the rapid trajectory from praiseworthy to pariah that his Fed picks seem to engender. “Everyone that I interviewed is great,” he said in Davos last month. “Problem is, they change once they get the job.”

And Warsh will not want to sully his reputation by pandering. “Kevin will only push for large interest rate cuts if he thinks they make sense,” Michael Boskin, who works at the Hoover Institution and formerly worked with the George W. Bush administration, told the New York Times. “He’s going to form his own judgments.”

What This Means for Real Estate Investors

Investors will want to formulate a strategy for the next 12-24 months based on mortgage rates and borrowing costs. There is no crystal ball to predict where rates will be because it depends on so many other variables. However, according to experts interviewed by CBS News, there is a path, albeit tenuous, for rates to fall below 5% by the end of 2026.

For borrowers not keen on a wait-and-see approach, the article suggests considering shorter-term options, such as adjustable-rate mortgages, or using a mortgage broker to access wholesale pricing with an eye toward refinancing later.

The argument for gradual rate cuts for landlords

A gradual rate easing is likely a better scenario than a sudden rate slash, which could signal a homebuying stampede. It’s the same scenario that dominated much of 2025: rates easing and buying increasing in a measured way, as Reuters reported, with more expected for the remainder of the year. It means landlords might be able to lower their interest rates as rates decrease while still having a significant rental pool due to affordability challenges.

How smaller landlords should position themselves now

Investors face three challenges heading into the new year, with interest rate cuts expected but not certain:

1. How to finance existing assets
2. How to underwrite new deals
3. How to manage rents and tenant relationships

Warsh’s indications, according to the Journal, that he wants to “support households and small-medium enterprises,” and ease up on smaller banks, suggests that lending and credit will be accessible, with short-term rates possibly drifting lower while lending criteria remain stringent.

All this means that there will be no silver bullet but instead, by staying in touch with local lenders as rates come down, investors might be able to eke out refinances and new loans that make sense for cash flow and stable acquisitions that will enable borrowers to service and pay down debt and enjoy modest equity gains and the tax advantages of owning real estate, while waiting for more sizable interest rate shifts.

Cash remains king

The primo play for those who can manage it in this market is the all-cash one. Whether that means liquidating existing assets, tapping HELOCs, or partnering with private lenders—before markedly lower interest rates cause prices to skyrocket—securing new assets without leveraging up to the gills is the prudent way to go.

Tenant retention

Retaining tenants is key, no matter the rate cycle. However, if rates do drop closer to 5%, as some people predict, some tenants might be tempted to get on the property ladder as homeowners. Landlords will want to ensure that those seeking highly leveraged loans see the benefits of retaining renters through modest rent increases, prompt and efficient maintenance responses, and flexible renewal terms, until they can save more money.

Final Thoughts

Don’t get too excited by the Warsh hype because nothing is certain. Instead, you can only plan based on what you can see directly in front of you—that means modest changes with interest rates and house prices, making affordability an issue for many tenants. However, positioning yourself ahead of the pack, should rates tumble, ensures you won’t be lost in the shuffle, and will also help safeguard your long-term investing future.

Ashley:
Everyone loves hearing about the deals that worked, the burrs, the home runs, the ones that changed everything, but nobody talks about the deals that quietly drain your bank account.

Tony:
So today we’re doing the opposite. We’re breaking down deals that we actually lost money on, and we’ll walk through what went wrong, the red flags we missed, and what we’ll probably never do again if we were rookie investors.

Ashley:
This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr.

Tony:
And I’m Tony j Robinson. And with that, let’s get into the episode for today.

Ashley:
So Tony, I thought today would be a great episode to talk about a deal I just lost money on, and it’s actually the first deal that I have lost money on. And I say this with some disclaimers, as in I haven’t sold a ton of properties. I’ve only done four flips, I think, and two, or with a super experienced investor. So two, were really only on my own. So I don’t have a larger frame of properties that I’ve sold. So maybe down the road there will be more losses when I actually sell a property, but yesterday I just closed on my first bad deal. So I thought we could use this as a therapeutic session to talk about the emotional damage, the financial damage, and the lessons learned moving forward.

Tony:
Before we jump in, Ash, I just want to frame for the listeners, is a deal automatically a bad deal if you lose money on it? Or is there a scenario where you maybe lose money on a deal but it’s still a good deal? Just like from a theoretic standpoint, like strategic standpoint, do you feel that there’s a scenario where you could lose money on a deal, lose money on a transaction, but in your mind it’d still be qualified as a good deal?

Ashley:
I guess if I got tax benefits from it, maybe if I looked at my tax savings and it kind of actually balanced out even though the deal sold at a loss.

Tony:
And I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer to that, right? It was just as we talk about this, I’m just trying to make sure that our Ricky’s going to it with the right frame of mind. And obviously as host of this podcast, we’re never going to encourage someone to step into a deal where they’re actively losing money. But I think there is one scenario that I can think of, and this is maybe more so specific to my niche, but it can actually probably be applied in maybe a few different scenarios. One scenario is if you buy a short-term rental and your primary goal on that property is not necessarily to generate cashflow or even get the tax benefits, but just to maybe subsidize the cost of owning a vacation rental and a place that you truly like to go. I know folks who want Lakehouse and they grew up on the lake house, their grandparents had a lake house they went through every summer and they spent a lot of time there. And it’s so expensive where maybe it doesn’t make sense. We’re not going to be cashflow positive, but I’m fine contributing a little bit of cash towards this deal because in the grand scheme of things, it’s still cheaper than if I were to continue just to vacation in that market. I’m still getting the benefit of having that. I think about you and the deal you did with your sister or even someone that’s going to be looking like to house hack.

Ashley:
I think that is a great example that you gave. I think I’ve looked at it, I’ve flipped the mindset on that because I did buy a lake house going to rent it out a little bit, but I’m definitely not making money on it. But I looked at it not as this is a deal I’m losing money on, I looked at it as more of this is a property that I am saving money on instead of not renting it out at all. I’m getting into the property for less money because I am able to rent it out. So I guess it’s two different ways of looking at if you’re looking at it from a business standpoint, yeah, it’s not a great deal, but if you’re looking at it on a personal level as in this is offsetting some of my costs, this is a good deal to me compared to a property that I couldn’t rent out at all.

Tony:
And you kind of hit on the second point I was going to make as well is like if you’re doing maybe something that’s similar to a house hack where you’re getting some sort of utility from it, I know a guy who’s actually my trainer for my first fitness competition and he had a house that instead of turning into a rental, he let his aging parents move into it. And again, when you think about investment wise, he’s losing money on this deal, but it’s solving something else for him in the sense that now his parents have a home that they can move into as they get older into age. So I think a lot of it does come down to personal situation and maybe motivations aside from just the cashflow, like you mentioned, tax benefits. I definitely would encourage someone to buy a deal that doesn’t cashflow just to get the tax benefit because in theory you’re going to eat up all of that tax benefit by this negative cashflow, but maybe you’re getting a significantly large tax break by buying this deal and it’s a

Ashley:
Ton of appreciation,

Tony:
Ton of appreciation, but you’re still putting in however much on every single month. It’s a bad deal in a cashflow sense, but from the tax benefit and the appreciation you’re making out significantly more. So I just wanted to ask that question first because I just want to be able to frame what we talk about next from the right perspective. And then I think even above and beyond all of that, Ashley, the idea that especially for Ricky Investors that we should view our first few deals really as education more than anything else, is a hill that I’m willing to on. Because I think even if we lose a little bit of money on our first or our second or some of our first few deals, as long as we learn from those mistakes and we continue to move forward, we are now in a better position to make sure that the next deal does even better and that the deal after that does even better and the deal after that does even better. So it’s the cost of education sometimes to kind of get the school of hard knocks to teach you the right way and wrong way to do things, which will ultimately allow you to be a truly successful real estate investor. So with that out of the way, Ash, let’s get to your deal, right? Drum roll, drum roll cue the scary music. Let’s get into the deal itself. So first tell us what the deal was. What kind of property was this?

Ashley:
So this was 10 acres. It was two different five acre parcels and on the one five acre parcel, it was a house with a small barn. It had been a goat barn, there was a pond, there was a little bunk bed cabin in the back of the acreage. And then this was the real selling point of the house. A real bonus, you don’t see this amenity often, but a double seater outhouse. So it had running water for the sink to wash your hands. It had electric for the lights run to this outhouse, and then it had two seats. So thinking romantic getaway, you want to go side by side with your partner? Hold hands. This was the place I had it, but we just closed on Sorry,

Tony:
Wait, Ash, I was confused when you first said that, but as you continued, it started to make more sense.

Ashley:
Yes, side by side by

Tony:
Side toilet

Ashley:
Holes from the house.

Tony:
That is a different level of commitment that I don’t yet think my wife and I have reached to do to do side-by-side outhouse excursions. So obviously that was a selling point. So that was one of the five acre parcels. What was on the other side?

Ashley:
The other side was just a vacant lot. So this property, I was somewhere, we bought this property, we got it under contract in 2021. So this was Darryl and I were buying this property together in our LLC. This was his second deal I think. And he went with the agent to look at this property, had been listening online for 75,000. It was a hoarder house. So this lady, she was 102, I think some guy came to deliver her wood, her only source of heat was a fireplace. He looked at her living conditions and he called family social services or whatever. They came and basically took her away, removed her from the home and took her somewhere. I dunno, but all of her stuff was left there. I don’t think she had any family or anyone. And somehow an agent was hired by the state to actually sell her house and sell the property. So Daryl actually went and looked at the property and sent me videos, pictures, I mean you could barely walk through this place. And we decided that then there was a lot of people looking at it. So we actually offered 102,000 for the property. It was us and one other buyer that was really competitive offers and we ended up getting the deal, said everything could be left behind, we’d take it as is. So we got it under contract for $102,000.

Tony:
Got it. Now given the condition, I’m assuming traditional financing probably wasn’t an option here. So how did you fund it?

Ashley:
I actually used a line of credit that I had on another property, so I used my line of credit to make a cash offer.

Tony:
Now for Ricky listening, there might have been a few things that you stated that would’ve scared them off Hoarder house, those terms can be scary and usually when there’s so much stuff that you can’t even look around, as you start to remove things, you start to uncover other surprises. But what about this deal made you feel confident that it was worth the north of 100 K that you invested

Ashley:
The land? Our goal of this property was to turn it into a short-term rental and rent out the house and turn the barn into a bunkhouse. It had electric already run to it and was like the barn was actually nicer than the house and it was a 1200 square foot house, but it had three full bathrooms in it, only one bedroom. It was a very weird layout and the outside of the house was, had a lot of stone work, beautiful stone work, and somebody had told us that the lady actually built the house herself and stuff like that, but there was no drywall, there was no flooring. It was all concrete floors and the bathroom walls were put up, but it wasn’t even drywall, there was paneling and stuff. So we ended up getting everything out. We paid a contractor, he did garbage removal, $3,500 to go in and throw everything out.
I am pretty sure he undercharged us and the next jobs we used overcharged us to make up for that one because it would definitely should have cost us a lot more. And then after that was all done, we decided that we would just go and do demo on everything and just get it to zero and start completely fresh. So then we got more dumpsters put about another, I dunno, 2000 into dumpsters and demo removal of toilets, the kitchen cabinets, things like that, and threw all that out. So that was really the only money we put into it besides holding cost of insurance property taxes once in a while while we had it listed for sale, we paid for snow removal. But other than that, we didn’t have a ton of holding costs.

Tony:
So what were some of the red flags then, Ashe, as you guys started the junk removal process that maybe you saw but you’re like, eh, you kind of shr shrugged them off?

Ashley:
I think the hardest part for me when I looked at this property is first of all, I was in a place where I wanted a deal. This was like when the height of properties were and everybody was looking for deals and interest rates were low and things like that. And so I was trying so hard to get a deal locked up that I was more worried about getting a deal locked up than making sure that it was a really, really good deal. The first thing was we shouldn’t have paid that much. I should have spent more time looking at comparables. I mean, it’s hard to say that, oh, this was the height of the market that I should have known I couldn’t sell the property. So one thing that was off was my timeline was, yeah, if I would’ve gotten this ready and I went really, really fast and refinanced it, then yes it probably could have worked out.
But I didn’t account for interest rates going up and for the market changing and things like that. When I took my sweet time and I would have to say this property was a bad deal because of me, the operator of the property, I dragged my feet, other opportunities on other things came up and I took that money for the rehab and you know what that can wait. We don’t have a lot of holding costs on it. I’m just going to go and I’m going to do this other opportunity. Then after a year had gone by, I paid off my line of credit. So after I did a flip, so I used the proceeds from that to pay off my line of credit. So then I had no even payment on it besides the insurance and the property taxes, which was very, very minimal. And so then it just kind of, so this bad deal wasn’t the property itself, it was me as the operator not having a consistent plan in place and kind of sticking to it.

Tony:
Well, I want to get into the plan and why you didn’t stick to it and what came as you thought about going into the rehab. But first we’re going to take a quick break to hear word from today’s show sponsors. Alright, we are back here with today’s guest, Ashley Care, and Ash just broke down one of the deals or her first deal where she lost money and we’re breaking down. So you talked about how you found the deal, talked about some of your initial assumptions and challenges, but obviously you said you tore it down basically to the studs. So let’s go into the rehab. Obviously this is a really, really big rehab and I know you mentioned before the break that you kind of paused and diverted your attention in your funds elsewhere before coming back to this deal. But once you came back, walk us through the rehab because it was a big job, just what were your thoughts? What was the initial scope that you had kind of put together?

Ashley:
So I took a couple contractors through and they were basically like this is a $200,000 job for us to come in here and do it. And I was thinking a hundred thousand dollars job. So then we started toying with the idea of doing the work ourselves because we have done that on a bunch of different properties and just hiring out what we need to do and things like that. Tony, I never did anything more. The property just closed yesterday, completely tore apart down to the studs. So that was, I guess looking at it, I didn’t estimate my repair costs correctly because if I wanted to have somebody else do the work, that was a $200,000 bill and that was a hundred thousand over what I had estimated on the property. So that right there was my fault for not getting estimates ahead of time with this property. I had to buy it in that market condition with no inspection. There really was no way to get into the property to get contractors in before closing or to have time to do that. It was Darryl saw the property, the offer was written, the offer submitted, and it had to all be done by the end of that day. There wasn’t time to get contractors in and stuff to actually give us an accurate estimate.

Tony:
Ash, did you at any point consider just a full tear down and building something new? Because I mean you had two parcels, so in theory you could have maybe just torn that one down, built something on parcel A, built something on parcel B, and even if maybe you didn’t keep them both as short term, maybe you sell them. Was that ever part of your thought process?

Ashley:
It definitely was something I considered and at that point it was pretty much comparable to, because the actual structure of the house was really solid. So it, I mean it was like all concrete cement. The house itself was really sturdy, so the roof was in great shape, so it didn’t make sense to tear it down. But I definitely did think about building something else on that other parcel. But then again, it went back to the points of I had other opportunities that came up that I could deploy my money towards and I ended up taking those routes. So I guess where it all, it was a year ago, I’ve had this property listed for a year. A year ago, I finally made the decision, I’m not doing anything with this property. I’ve let it sit now for three years. I just need to get rid of it.
I’m already using funds for other opportunities. Why not cash out of this property and take that cash and deploy it into something else that I’m more passionate about. And at this time too, when I bought this property, I was really gung-ho about getting campgrounds and things like that. And this already had the bunkhouse in the back, so that was even part of the bigger vision of how can we create this into maybe even a campground or something like that, glamping or something like this. So I was really shiny object chasing at this time period too. And the lady that owned it, she actually did goat retreats there at one point in time and that’s stay at the bunkhouse. And I didn’t own a goat then, so goats didn’t have any meaning to me, but now I have my own little goat so I understand. But that’s just funny. It kind of came around full circle,

Tony:
Completely different note, but somewhat related. Have you seen the TV show severance?

Ashley:
No, I haven’t.

Tony:
No. Okay. You got to watch severance because there’s a lot of reference to baby goats and that TV show as well, so maybe you’ll enjoy it.

Ashley:
Has there ever been a TV show that you have said you watched that I have watched and vice versa? I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve ever watched this

Tony:
Actually. I think the only one, and I didn’t mention it, but I was surprised that you were watching it was The Wire.

Ashley:
Oh yeah.

Tony:
And I think that’s the only show, but aside from that, no, you have your taste in good television is similar to my tastes in good movies according to you. So we got to swap seats there. But going back to your point Ash about the scope, it is challenging when you’re trying to hustle for a deal and you can’t get inside. So what would your advice be to all of the rookies? I’ve actually never done that. I’ve never purchased a property where I couldn’t get access first. Even when I’m working with wholesalers, one of my conditions is I need to get in before we close. And that’s a big part of the reason why I typically don’t buy properties from wholesalers that have tenants because a lot of times the tenants, they’re not super a minimal to that. So in that situation, what would your advice be to other rookies in terms of how do you make sure that your scope is as close to accurate as possible if you can’t actually get access to the property?

Ashley:
Yeah, the first thing I would say is if you’re a rookie and you don’t have a ton of construction experience, don’t buy it. If this would’ve been my first, second or third deal putting this money into it and then not actually doing the rehab and renovating it and refinancing it and I just let it sit, that would have been detrimental to me of having that property just sitting. And I definitely at that time period, I wouldn’t have been able to pay off the line of credit with cashflow from other houses and things like that or doing a flip. So I would say until you get more experience, don’t take that risk. But one thing that you can do is better pictures, better videos. Like I said, I literally was on FaceTime, got a couple pictures sent to me and analyzed it back of napkin math of like, okay, here’s what I’m thinking we will need to do.
Here’s what it is, and then let’s put the offer in. And I think now I have an actual checklist template to actually fill out more of the rehab because that property would’ve been the only, the third time that I really did a full gut rehab and the other two were $20,000 purchases where it wasn’t a hundred thousand dollars. I’m buying a property yet. So I think that made a big difference, but actually taking the time and getting really good photos and videos so that you can go room by room for each property, write down everything that needs to be done and then put a cost associated with it and do a 20% contingency that you’re going to go 20% over budget or take someone through that, even if it isn’t a contractor, your dad, your friend, whoever that knows something about construction that can point things out to you too.

Tony:
Yeah, I think you agree 1000% on your point of just don’t do the deal if you’re a Ricky investor and you don’t have that experience. That’s where a lot of folks, they end up going into the forums and posting about a deal where they’re super upside down is because they just kind of got in over their head. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast, this concept of comfortable versus growing versus dangerous. And where some rookies get stuck is that they only focus on what’s comfortable for them. And because of that, they find themselves stagnant. And on the opposite end of that spectrum, there are some folks who just jump so far off the deep end that they end up drowning. So we don’t want to go that far either. We want to go just outside of our current skills and abilities, push ourselves just ever so slightly because that’s where we get better. I heard this analogy the other day, Ash, I’ll share it quickly, but it was talking about playing basketball. I love basketball and if I were to play basketball against a bunch of fifth graders, it would pretty quickly get boring because I’m 6 2, 220 pounds. It wouldn’t be much of competition.

Ashley:
Okay, no need, Greg. Tony, we get

Tony:
On the flip side, if I went and I played against a bunch of NBA players who were 6, 8, 6 10, 6, 11, it also wouldn’t be a ton of fun. I would just be getting my butt kicked all the time. But if I went and I played against a bunch of other middle aged 30 year olds, we’re on the same path and we can push each other to get a little bit better. So as you’re thinking about your progress as an entrepreneur and a real estate investor, you want that same thing. Find those deals that push you just outside of your comfort zone so that you can take a baby step towards getting better and not necessarily jumping off the deep end. But I love that. I love that advice, Ash. So that’s the rehab. So you kind of went through this and realized, man, this is going to be way more, and actually one last thing I’ll add to you.
It’s like if you are in a situation where deals kind of moving quickly, a lot of times this is going to be more so if you’re working with a wholesaler, usually on market deals, you have a little bit more time, you can do inspections and all those things, but let’s say you’re working with a wholesaler and you like the deal, everything kind of checks out initially and you don’t want to use this too often because you end up burning that bridge with the wholesaler. But you can say yes, just say yes. Like, Hey, yeah, I’m here for it, I’m down. And then you still have until you give your EMD or whenever your EMD goes hard to back out of that contract. So depending on how you and the wholesaler set it up, sometimes wholesalers want non-refundable on day one. I know a lot of wholesalers who work like that, Hey, the only way you’re locking up this deal is a non-refundable EMD of 25,000 bucks. So don’t do that. But if you can negotiate with that wholesaler to get even 48 hours of due diligence, that’ll give you a lot more runway to make sure the deal can actually work out for yourself.
So actually we talked about the rehab and we see how things kind of went sideways, but you mentioned one of the reasons that you held onto this one for so long was that the holding costs were relatively low. Did it stay that way for the entire duration of you owning this? Or were there any maybe surprise holding costs that made this deal maybe even worse in reality than what you’d originally anticipated?

Ashley:
Yeah, so one thing that we had to do was, I guess when we decided to sell the property and even during the junk removal process is maintain the driveway and the landscaping to actually get to the property. This property was pretty much overgrown. And then once one year had passed, we’d gone through a summer and oh my god, I can’t believe how fast things grew. And we had to go in and just so the driver could get the dumpster as close as possible to the house to clear it out when we’d kind of did the demo on the property. So the snowplowing, when we had it listed on the MLS, we’ve had it listed for a full year. We got it under contract in June, so six months listed. There was sporadic showings throughout there. We ended up getting another offer, got it under contract, then that fell through and then we got this one.
But every time somebody went to the property, so it was listed from November to June, we had to do snow plowing all through the winter. And this property isn’t in a town, it’s kind of a little more remote, it’s a longer driveway. And just getting somebody out there to plow the driveway was difficult. And that was another mistake is not, if I was going to operate this as a short-term rental, I would have to have somebody out there to plow it and not planning that either. As in how easy could I get a plow driver. So that’s something else. Our A-frame property that we bought around the same time, that property also pretty remote, very difficult to get a plow driver to actually go to the property to get that taken care of too. So that would definitely be a big thing that I missed on this.

Tony:
And obviously over the span of 12 months, the markets changed a lot as well. Interest rates have shifted, supply has shifted, demand on the buyer side has shifted. Have any of those changes in the market itself impacted or did any of those changes impact the deal as well?

Ashley:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we bought this property in 2021, held it for three years doing nothing. And then now we listed it in December or November of last year. And I kind of feel like after that, since then the market hasn’t been that hot or that great, and it’s the worst time to probably sell that property. So we listed it at 139,000. Our first offer came in at 125,000. We took it, it fell through during their due diligence period. They backed out and it sat for a while with no showings, nothing. We considered taking it off the market. Then it was in May. We started to, in the spring, we started to pick up more interest and we actually had three people saying they’re going to submit us offers. And so we ended up settling on one for 115,000 and they were doing a 10 31 exchange.
The thing with third deal was that they had to close on the sale of their other property in order to buy this one. They would only submit their offer. They were putting a $5,000 earnest money deposit down, but their attorney was stating that it was a refundable deposit. And so we just went back and forth forever, what’s even the point of it then if it’s going to be refundable. So we still took their offer and we ended up, it took a very long time to close. They did their, so it has a septic in a well. And when the county came to do the septic inspection, they couldn’t find the septic and they have no record of the septic. So there is a possibility the plumbing just runs into the ground and leeches out, which makes me feel even better that I no longer own this property if that’s the case. But so the seller was like, I don’t want this anymore. And so I said, I’ll give you a $20,000 price reduction. That’s probably how much it’s going to cost to do a new septic. And they said, okay. So we went under contract again for 95,000.

Tony:
So give us the final numbers then, Ashley, where did you actually land? Obviously you said you wanted her contract for 90 some odd, you bought it for just over 100. So even just on the sale price and the disposition price you lost, but when you factor in the holding costs and any other due diligence that you did, do you know what your actual total loss was on the deal?

Ashley:
Yeah, so we bought it for 102,000. Our holding costs and the demo, the removal of stuff that was over the course of time, that was about $18,000 that we ended up with the snowplowing, things like that too. And then we sold it for $95,000. So we’re looking at what, 7,000 plus 18,000, about

Tony:
20 5K give or take.

Ashley:
So lost 25,000 on it. And also too, one thing that’s not factored in there is the time, the time for the acquisition, the time that we physically did the demo ourselves. So that wasn’t a cost that associated, we had to rent the dumpers and stuff, but then my time isn’t even calculated in that too.

Tony:
And 25 Ks, that stinks. I’ve shared so many times on the podcast, especially if you’ve been around for a while, that the second real estate deal that we bought my house in Shreveport, Louisiana with issues around flood insurance and we had to fix part of the foundation, we ended up losing about 30 grand on that went over the course of about a year as well. Between listing, you had to write a

Ashley:
Check, I think, right?

Tony:
We had to literally write a check act closing. So we literally had to write a check at closing, which made it tough. But it as part of the game is that as you go through this, not every deal is going to be the best deal. And again, to that point we try and learn and identify what went wrong so we can make those adjustments moving forward. So on that point, Ash, I would love to maybe get more for both of us on deals where we’ve lost money, like hey, what are some of those lessons that we’ve learned and how are we applying that to our portfolio moving forward? Obviously a lot of this conversation was about your deal, but I’ve had my share of deals that haven’t worked out the way that I want them to as well. In fact, I’ve got a flip that I’m sitting on right now that I’ve been sitting on for just over a year where we’re trying to find some creative ways to disposition that deal as well.
So anyway, we’ve had our fair shares of ups and downs, so let’s get into what we’re learning and what we’re doing differently based on those failures right after. We’re from today’s show sponsors. Alright, so we’re back and we are deep in the depths of Ashley’s despair on the deal that she lost money on. And we want to talk more so about what are you doing differently? And even for me, what am I doing differently in my portfolio based on what we’ve learned? So I think my first question, Ashley, is do you have any new non-negotiables after going through this that you’re applying to any future deals?

Ashley:
100%. So my first big mistake that I called myself out on is I was a long-term rental buy and hold investor. And then I decided I wanted to make the pivot into more of a, and it wasn’t even clear, a clear strategy, it was camping, glamping cabins. I wanted to make the pivot to that. I was looking at campgrounds, underwriting campgrounds to do a syndication. I got three properties that were lands with cabins under contract within a three month period. So what I did wrong was I didn’t test out this new strategy, this new path for me with one property. Instead I jumped the gun and I got three under contract at once. And the other two great, I love them. They’re wonderful properties, they make me money. I don’t want to sell them, I want to keep them. But three was too much. I took on too much at once and I should have tested that strategy with just one property. Got it start to operating and then moved on to more.

Tony:
I agree with that of you said testing. And I think that’s a big lesson that we learned in our portfolio as well, or as we built our portfolio. So Chase Sharifa, who was a guest on the podcast, he and his wife April have a really successful short-term rental here in SoCal and they’ve built a few others in different parts of the country, but t and I are partnering together to build a short-term rental from the ground up. And the goal is to sell it as a turnkey short-term rental. And the reason that we’re doing that, there’s two reasons that we’re doing that. Number one, we want to test the partnership and we found, or I felt the best way to do that was not to test it in a way that we’re going to be holding this asset forever, but if we can make it more of a transactional thing where it’s one and done that makes it easier for us.
And then number two, it gives us the ability to test out this concept of building really cool short-term rentals together as well. And we had a call earlier this week and he had this piece of land that was basically we could build four different cabins on it at one time. And my immediate gut reaction was four is way too much for us to take on as one deal. Can we find even if the land is maybe more expensive, can we find maybe a smaller parcel where we can just build one and make sure that it works out that way? So the test first kind of non-negotiable is something that’s really big for us as well. And I think the other thing too, Ash that I’ve learned is we built our portfolio that’s like a non-negotiable now as well is diversification within our portfolio. And I think one of the things that we’ve done that have presented some challenges as we’ve scaled, which sounds somewhat counterintuitive, but because we went really deep specifically in Josh Tree, we weren’t really deep into one market.
There were definitely a lot of economies of scale that came with that. We have cleaners that work specifically for us and there’s a lot of economies of scale that come with that. Managing these properties. We have a lot of vendors that can service the same properties. From a management perspective, it’s definitely easier to have a big portfolio in the same city. But I think the challenging part was we bought, we’ve got quite a few tiny homes in that market and the builder that we were buying these from, not only did we buy a good number from this builder, but he went on to continue to build those even after we stopped buying. And he kind of flooded the market with this same, literally the exact same product. And that’s made it challenging for us to find ways to continue to differentiate our units from some of the other ones that he’s built.
And there’s only so much you can do with 300 square feet. So even just trying to find ways to differentiate, it’s become a bit of a challenge as well. I think for us, one of the big things that we learned is we’ve got to find ways to differentiate it. Even if we want to go into the same market, we’ve got to make sure that there’s differentiation within the portfolio of what are we actually offering to folks and we don’t have too much cannibalism going on, not only within our own portfolio, but across the market in general. So that’s one big or two big non-negotiables for me. What else, Ash, what other maybe big key takeaways came from this deal?

Ashley:
I think having a plan in place for the capital needed and really sticking to the plan. So I had capital set aside for the rehab of this property, but I chose to deploy it into another property instead. And I think a lesson learned was that if I’m taking on a project, I need to actually tackle it and take it on and get it done and not let it sit. And I think I got too comfortable with, this isn’t a lot over four years, the 25,000, it’s spread out. The insurance was like, what, a hundred dollars a month? It doesn’t seem like a lot as you’re going day by day. And it seems little compared to like, okay, now I need to really spend a lot of time to get contractor bids, to find more capital to do all these things. And I think it really did show me that I’m a lazy investor that and I need to lean more into that, that I shouldn’t be taking on three full rehabs at once.
I don’t have the work ethic for that, first of all. And I’m even saying me doing the work, I’m just saying even hiring, managing the contractors, all of that stuff that I am more of a small but mighty as Chad Carson would say, investor. And so I think it also taught me a lot about myself. So going into deals I am more aware of what do I actually want to do with this deal and am I going to do it? Am I not going to do it? Am I going to dread it? Am I not going to like it? And yeah, go from there. So I know right now I cannot tackle three big rehabs at once, one or two is my max.

Tony:
While you were talking, I was doing some marketing research for you to see if the Lazy Investor Instagram handle was available, but unfortunately it’s already taken. But I do like that angle, the lazy investor. I agree with you on that piece too, Ash. But I think one other one that I think is important because you mentioned this is the time component. That’s not something that we typically quantify as the time that we put into a deal, but it is very much a real cost because if you have time going into deal A by default, that means you do not have that time to invest into deal B or opportunity C or project D. So understanding not only I think the profit and loss potential on a deal, but also the time involvement that is required on that deal. And I’ve talked to enough investors who, especially on the active income side like flippers and wholesalers who generate lots of active income, but they do not enjoy it because of how much time it takes for them to achieve that active income. And you’ve got to make sure that as you’re evaluating the ecls, that’s one of the pieces you take into account as well.

Ashley:
I think the last thing that I would add is this also change my buy box too, as I’m definitely more clear instead of just, especially with this, my buy box for long-term rentals, very cut and dry to the point very specific, but since this was a new strategy at the time, looking at cabins with land, my buy box was not clear. It was like, oh, this is a cool property, it has acreage and it’s a cabin. And I think that was another lesson learned as if I’m going to pip it into a new strategy, I need to really define my buy box before actually going into it.

Tony:
Well Ash, I appreciate you using today’s episode as a quasi therapy session and letting all of the Ricky listeners kind of peek behind the curtain for when things go wrong. And believe me guys, when my next deal closes this flip that I’ve been sitting on and we lose money, we’ll do another episode just like this about my lessons learned and what I do differently as well. But we just feel that it’s important to obviously talk about the good things that come along with real estate investing, but to also highlight that there are challenges, there are obstacles and things don’t always go according to plan, but as long as you adjust, as long as you learn, as long as you keep moving forward, that’s how you ultimately make progress over the long time horizon.

Ashley:
Yeah, and I think just showing that us as investors, we have flaws and we don’t always follow everything that we should be doing or doing anything correctly. I think you definitely learn that about me in this episode that I still make a lot of mistakes and I still don’t do everything the correct exact way. And then some deals that’s worked out great, and in this case that has not worked out great taking this risk. So hope you guys learned some lessons so that you don’t have to recreate the wheel and you can learn from me and hopefully very, very, very soon you can learn from Tony because we’re all going to cross our fingers at his. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I’m Ashley, he’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

Henry:
Financing real estate deals can be one of the biggest barriers to entry when investing. It’s also one of the reasons investors stop scaling before they ever get to financial freedom, and you’ve probably already heard of all the big ones. We all know conventional loans, FHA, loans lines of credit, but what we’re going to share today are five loans you’ve probably never heard of. In fact, these have flown under the radar so well that we didn’t even learn about them until we were years into real estate investing. We’re talking about things like zero down payment loans with no closing costs, 5% interest rates and no credit check or a loan. You don’t even need to go to a bank to get. If you’ve heard of all five of these, you’re probably an expert investor, but if you’re struggling to scale or you need a hand buying your first property, you cannot miss this episode. We’re breaking down all five options so you can decide what makes the most sense for your financial situation. What’s going on everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets podcast, and I’ve got my other co-host, Dave Meyer here with me today. We’re talking about financing options You might not know about this isn’t FHA loans and HELOCs. We have five ways to finance deals that often go under the radar. So let’s jump into the first one. NAL Loans.

Dave:
I got to be honest, man, I didn’t know what this is when we were creating this show and honestly there’s a whole chapter in one of my books where I just list out every kind of loan and I didn’t know about this one. This is genuinely a cool under the radar, really awesome, powerful type of loan that everyone should know about. Now that I know what it’s

Henry:
Absolutely. So I did know about this one and it is a phenomenal loan option for people. So NAONE stands for the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America and it’s a nonprofit and they specialize in helping people who are either in underserved communities or who may not traditionally qualify in terms of credit score or financial situation to purchase a home. And this program provides them the opportunity to do that. And with this loan you can typically get financed, you can get a lower interest rate, so lower than the prime rate, sometimes substantially lower than the prime interest rate.

Dave:
Yeah, the rates for this right now are 4.75 to 5.25, 4.75 outside of COVID. That’s the best mortgage rate you can get. Basically,

Henry:
It’s a cheat code with the terms because yes, the interest rates are great, but you also don’t have to bring a down payment and you don’t have to pay the closing costs. It’s kind of insane.

Dave:
Unreal. It’s crazy. There are other programs out there for lower income Americans like FHA is the most common one, but FHA has PMI, if you’ve heard of this is private mortgage insurance. Basically if you bring less than 20% down on an FHA loan, they hit you with a fee. So your mortgage payment, even if you get a slightly lower mortgage rate, is usually higher than it would be. So it does have benefits. FHA loan is a good product and we talk about it a lot on this show, but this doesn’t have PMI, so you are truly getting that 4.75 or 5% mortgage rate that you wouldn’t be able to get pretty much anywhere else in the market right now. And this is designed to help people who come from a lower or moderate income background. So this isn’t just, there are ways for rich people to get lower mortgage rates, but this is actually a way for people who are just starting their journey for wealth and financial freedom to get that lower mortgage rate.

Henry:
And I know everybody’s listening like, man, this sounds too good to be true. Why doesn’t everyone do it? And there is some caveats. One of the caveats is it takes a long time to get financed. On average, you should assume it’s going to take you anywhere between six months to a year to close your property,

Dave:
But you know what will take longer? Saving up for a down payment and repairing your credit, that’s going to take a lot longer. Fair, and you still won’t get four point a half percent. Exactly. Yeah, you’re still going to get paid 7%. So yeah, I love that.

Henry:
There’s a lot of hurdles to go through with this loan. Obviously one of the main things is you have to sign up to take a workshop to start your process and they only do the workshops at certain times and in certain places, and so you’re kind of at their behest when you get started and then it is going to require a lot of paperwork. A lot of your financials you’re going to have to provide, and I know you have to do this with normal loans, but it can seem or be a little excessive, but if you can get past all of the red tape, you truly can get an amazing loan product. And one of the best parts about this is you can buy multifamily with it up to four units. Matter of fact, they encourage you to buy multifamily with it.

Dave:
I am hesitant to say there is one loan product that’s right for everyone, but if you qualify folks who have more than a hundred percent of the median income for their area face different requirements. But if you fall below the median income in your area, you should absolutely go check this out. And I know people are like, I don’t want to go do training, but it’s probably a good thing, right? They’re probably going to teach you how to be a good landlord, how to make sure that you service this loan, how to make sure you meet all the requirements and get through the underwriting as quick as possible because I’m guessing if you don’t really pay attention, it’s more like one year rather than six months, and that can make a big difference as well. I love this idea of this loan and I was about to ask you who should apply for this, but I’m kind of like anyone who meets the qualifications that I should apply for it.

Henry:
Goodness, I’d do it. I’d do it if I could to get a loan.

Dave:
See, totally one question. Do you know can you move out and keep the loan or do you have to refinance it if you move out?

Henry:
I believe you have to refinance it if you move out. It’s meant for owner occupants, but man, what an amazing opportunity to get into a property, especially if you get into a property and you get yourself a little bit of discount, now you’re walking into a little bit of equity, you’ve got a 4% interest rate. They’ll allow you to qualify for more home if you’re going to buy multifamily because they consider the income the other units produce as more income for you. Oh, that great. So you can buy a more expensive property and then house act that property, and then they’re going to train you, like you said, to help you make sure that you have all of the tools necessary to maintain this loan. It’s a phenomenal product.

Dave:
It seems like they’ve created a really good loan for folks who are on the lower to moderate end of the income spectrum and allow them to get into homeownership. I love it. It’s a NCA loan. Do you know where people go to apply for this?

Henry:
Yeah, you just go to their website, believe it’s nca.com, aca.com, and that’s where you can register and get more information. I also believe they have NACA sponsors or counselors all over the country, so you can potentially reach out to one of them and chat with them first about what all the requirements are going to be so that you can be better prepared for the process. But this is a no brainer to me if you are looking to buy a home anytime soon.

Dave:
Alright, well let’s move on to our second under the radar financing strategy, which is USDA loans. That’s right. The US Department of Agriculture helps people get mortgages. These are the same people who grade your stakes as either prime or whatever else. They grade your stakes as these people are also giving out mortgages. Now, USDA, as you might imagine, US Department of Agriculture, these are mortgages that have to be located in a designated rural area, so these are not in cities, but if you’re thinking, oh, that means that I’m not going to be able to use this. 97% of the US landmass is designated as one of these areas. So this is like most of the country, not by population, but by landmass. And there are a lot of suburban type areas that are within 15, 30, 45 minutes of major cities that actually qualify for this. The other requirements are income related, so similar to the NAPAL loans, most of these income restricted types of loans are based on the median income and for USDA loans you have to have 115% or less of the median income.
So you can make 15% essentially higher than the median income in your area, but no more than that. To qualify for this, and this too, like your NACA loan does have to be your primary residence. You have to live in it. It can’t be your lake house, it can’t be your hunting cabin. That sounds nice. You have to actually live in this property. But if you do, the benefits are that you get a hundred percent financing. You could have zero money down to go out and buy a primary residence or a house hack just like the knack alone, and you can get below market rates. Right now it’s not as low as the NACA loans, but it’s about 5.6%, which in my mind, fantastic interest rate if you could get a 5.6%. That’s the difference between some deals cash flowing and not cash flowing. And honestly, if you’re doing a house hack, you don’t need a cashflow, but it’s just going to keep more money in your pocket every single month so you have that benefit.
The other benefit and why, if you can use this over an FHA loan, I usually recommend it is that there is PMI that private mortgage insurance we were talking about, but it’s lower so you don’t have to pay as much as an FHA loan and the underwriting is pretty flexible, so it’s not going to be, I mean all underwriting’s annoying. Let’s be honest. You’re applying for a mortgage and it’s not A-D-S-E-R loan. You’re probably going to be a little bit annoyed by it, but this is slightly less annoying than other types of mortgages. So even though there are requirements, again, this is one that’s just absolutely worth it.

Henry:
I feel like this one’s under the radar along with RD loans. So the rule development loans, because most people don’t take the time to just figure out if the property they’re considering buying could fit as a rule development or A-U-S-D-A loan, just do a little bit of research. There are so many more homes in your market that would probably qualify this than you would ever think of

Dave:
A hundred percent.

Henry:
So if you’re looking into buying a home and it’s not in a direct giant metropolis, you should look into it and see if it qualifies. And B, if you are a flipper or you’re selling a property, make sure that you go figure this out so that you can advertise to your buyers that it will qualify for A-U-S-D-A or rule development loan so that you can get more buyers that want to buy your property. Very smart. And what I like about this one is you don’t need the highest credit score to qualify like six 20 to six 40 I think is the

Dave:
Minimum

Henry:
That they’re looking for. And that’s pretty good to get a zero down payment loan.

Dave:
I love it.

Henry:
Do the research. It doesn’t take long for you to go figure out if this will qualify. You can literally ask a question and find out if Europe property you’re looking for qualifies for this.

Dave:
Some of the people who have been most successful in this era of real estate that we’re in right now have been small town investors.
And I’m not talking about how I make fun of Henry for being in Arkansas. That’s not a small town that’s like a major city. You’re talking about like 20,000, 50,000 people. Those places have cash flowing deals, they just do and they qualify for these kinds of loans. So this could be a really good strategy for people who live in those areas. I wouldn’t recommend just going out and picking a random small town, but if you’re from a small town, if you’re from a place where you can qualify for these kinds of loans, it’s such a good way to start your career. And unlike the one benefit this has over the knack alone is that you can keep the loan after 12 months. It’s like an FHA loan where you can actually move out and go buy something else and keep that mortgage. This is such a good way to start a real estate investing portfolio.

Henry:
Yeah, I think this is great because if you use A-U-S-D-A loan to buy a property, you live in it for a year, you can then go and use an FHA loan for the next property. You do have to live in it, but it’s a great way to slowly build a real estate portfolio by living in it without having to spend a ton of money, 0% down on your frozen loan, three and a half percent down on the second FHA loan. I mean, that’s pretty incredible.

Dave:
It’s a great, great product that I think most people are missing. How do people do this? I just don’t even know how you contact the USDA.

Henry:
So if you go to the USDA website, I believe they have an eligibility map, so that will help you be able to at least spot check and see if your property is in an area that would qualify. Or you can just search for USDA approved lenders. So search like USDA approved lenders in x, Y, Z, city and state and you should get a list or just call your local credit unions or local regional banks and see if they have somebody in-house who can help you with A-U-S-D-A loan. That’s where I would start.

Dave:
So these are two incredible programs that you should be checking out, but maybe you’re feeling nostalgic for the COVID era interest rates two, three, 4% like everyone really misses right now. After this quick break, we’re going to share two different strategies for you where you can get those mortgages back. Stick with us.

Henry:
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The seller becomes the bank. So this works in situations where you’re buying a property from a seller and that seller owns the property free and clear. And since the seller doesn’t have a loan against the property, technically you can make your loan payments to the seller. So it’s like buying a property in installments directly from the seller. Why is this important? There are a lot of sellers, especially as we get more and more into the silver tsunami where the baby boomers are looking to exit the market, sell off some of their real estate. Well, they have a lot of paid off real estate and if they’re an existing landlord, they already understand the value of getting monthly income, and so a lot of them would like to continue to get monthly income. What they’re tired of is dealing with tenants and toilets. Another reason why sellers would do this is because it allows them to defer taxes. They don’t have to pay a big capital gains hit because they didn’t sell their property outright. They only have to pay taxes on the income they’re making each month, so it slows down the tax burden and kind of spreads it out over time for them.

Dave:
I just love the flexibility of seller financing. It’s just basically like you two people talk to each other, you figure out what works for you.

Henry:
Absolutely.

Dave:
You just kind of can discuss with the person, what should your down payment be? What should your interest rate be? What is the term of the loan, what’s the amortization of the loan? It’s just up to you if you like negotiating or problem solving. If you have the idea of finding mutual benefit, this can be a great option for you and you could really cater it to your specific needs. Some people will use it when they’re like, I have a great credit score but I don’t have a down payment. Or some people are like, I have a down payment, but this deal doesn’t work at conventional mortgage rates, so I need a lower mortgage rate. And you can sort of work with the seller to figure out what makes the deal pencil.

Henry:
What I love about this is you can absolutely get a low interest rate if that’s what you and the seller negotiate. You can get no interest rate if that’s what you and the seller negotiate. So as an investor you can specifically target this. So even if you’re buying homes on the market, you can have your agent help you filter out homes that they think the mortgage is free and clear based on the history. That is something your agent can actually look up on the MLS and then help filter that out for you so that your targeting homes, that would make sense for an owner finance offer. And if you’re buying off market, you can specifically pull lists and just filter out everybody that doesn’t have a hundred percent equity in their home. So now you’ve got a targeted list of deals that may have owner financing potential. What I think about with seller financing is what’s it called? Seller financing. And that means to me, when I’m going to negotiate seller financing, I need to figure out what are the needs of the seller and then I can turn the levers that the seller wants in their favor and then I can turn the other levers in my favor.
And so if I have a seller who’s selling a property and that seller says, Hey, I got to get my price. I’m not selling this thing for anything less than $300,000 and I need $1,500 a month, well then I can go put 300,000 and $1,500 a month in an amortization schedule and then I can turn the other levers in my favor, and so I can maybe buy a property with no down payment and I can buy a property on a 10 year mortgage
In order to help him heat his sell price of $300,000 and a $1,500 monthly payment. And so it’s mutually beneficial, but I think a lot of people look at seller financing in the wrong way. They want to approach it as a, what do I need? But if you approach it and figure out what, because the seller’s only going to care about a couple of things, some sellers are like, I need a chunk of money. And I say, okay, well I can give you a down payment as long as I’m paying no interest or a very low interest rate. And so it is a true negotiation, but you work it out in a win-win situation. If they want all the levers flipped in their favor, then you probably need to go get a traditional mortgage. But if you can 50 50 it and they get some wins and you get some wins, you can get yourself a sweet deal with some sweet terms.

Dave:
The other thing I want to call out about seller financing is unlike NACA and the USDA loans, this doesn’t need to be owner occupied. This is not a house hacking only strategy. This is a way you can build your portfolio indefinitely. Like we were saying, there’s unlimited really options for how you’d use these kinds of loans. So I think seller financing good for everyone. It’s just finding them. That’s hard. You have to be diligent about pursuing them. You have to follow Henry’s advice about deal finding and marketing yourself. If you really into do that, this is a great option for anyone.

Henry:
Absolutely.

Dave:
Alright, that was our third strategy that you are probably not thinking about in 2026. Moving on to our fourth is assumable mortgages. Now, we’ve talked a lot about, this has been in the news a lot recently because there is announcement about the idea of portable mortgages. That is not what we’re talking about here. A portable mortgage is the idea that you have a house, you already own it, you take your mortgage and you bring it with you to the next house. This is kind of the exact opposite of that, whereas the mortgage stays with the house even when the seller leaves. So if you as a buyer approach someone who has an assumable mortgage and they bought their home with a 3% mortgage rate, you can just take over that loan from that, you can assume the mortgage from them. Now, there are a lot of caveats about this and there are different qualifications, but if you can pull this off, this is an unbelievable option because there are people out there with 3% and 4%.
There might even be people out there with 2% mortgage rates that if you can get your Henry asked one, if you can get your hands on that, go get your hands on it. That is unbelievable opportunity. Now, the requirements are that this is also another owner occupied strategy. You do need to actually go live in these house and the type of loan when it was created really matters. It can’t just be you went out to Wells Fargo with Chase and got a mortgage, they’re probably not going to make that loan. Assumable. Most conventional mortgages have what’s called the due on sale clause, which means when you sell it, you got to pay back your mortgage. But if you have an FHA loan or a VA loan, if you’re current or former military member or those USDA loans that I was talking about before, these are all typically assumable mortgages. So if you’re looking at house hack or buy a primary residence right now, honestly, this is great for if you want to do a live and flip too, this is a great way to go do that as well. So I just love the idea of consumable mortgages, kind of similar to seller finance where you have to go hunt them, right? They’re not just out there for any property you want to go buy, but if you’re willing to do the work, it’s amazing.

Henry:
I mean, I think it’s a fantastic strategy. Again, the hard part is finding people willing to do it. There are plenty of them out there, but it’s going to take you some work to do some digging to find the people who would be willing to do that. But yes, you can assume a mortgage, sometimes you got to take some cash out of your pocket, pay the seller some cash and then take over their mortgage. I’ve heard of people doing this without having to pay a ton of cash to walk into it. It just depends on what situation that seller is in and that will determine how willing they may be to hear an offer where you would be assuming their mortgage. But the situations do happen.

Dave:
The big caveat with these kinds of mortgages is that you have to pay the seller full price, right? So
Just for example, if they bought their home at $300,000, maybe they put 20% down, they’ve paid it down, now their mortgage is just $200,000, great. You’re assuming a $200,000 loan hopefully at a really low mortgage rate, good for you. But maybe over their time, if they bought it during COVID, now that property’s worth, let’s just say $500,000. Someone’s got to pay that extra $200,000 between what they bought it for and what you are buying it for. And so you either need to bring that money to the table or you have to go out and get a secondary mortgage. Often even if you get a secondary mortgage that’s still cheaper with the blended rate than going out and getting a conventional mortgage. But they’re not just selling you their mortgage, they’re selling you the house at current market rate, and you have to sort of make good on that gap in equity. So how do you find people like this? I mean, I assume some people are smart like you and are marketing it if they have an assumable mortgage, but are there other strategies for finding them?

Henry:
If you’re looking on the market, the best way is to again, have your agent help you filter out the homes that are financed with one of these types of loans. That is information you can get access to typically on the MLS. Or if you don’t, then you can sometimes look in the county records to find out who the mortgage holder is. But there are options. So you need to find out, first of all, if the loan used to buy it is a type of loan that’s assumable. And then if you’re shopping on the market, really the only way to figure out if it’s possible is to make an offer. And so it’s just going to take some communication between your agent and the seller’s agent because that’s the true magic. You have to make sure that your agent understands this method and can explain it to another agent clearly so that they can explain the value in it to their client. That’s where a lot of the gaps fall apart. And so make sure your agent is educated and make sure you’re able to have your agent talk to the other agent in the language that’s important to them, understanding that, hey, they’re not taking a loss here. They’re still getting their price, you’re still getting your commission. We’re actually probably going to be able to get the deal done a whole lot faster because of this situation. Absolutely.

Dave:
So we got four fantastic options for financing properties, even in a higher interest rate market like we’re in today, but we have even more for you, including loans that are specifically designed for us. They’re designed for small investors. We’ll share that strategy right after this quick break.

Henry:
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We have been talking about lesser known financing options, and now we’re about to dive into a very specific financing option that’s made for people like us, the entrepreneurs of the world. So this option is called the Non QM loan, which stands for Non-Qualified Mortgage. Some people also call him bank statement loans. These loans are designed specifically to help the entrepreneur and not just a real estate entrepreneur, but if you think about the person who’s a hairdresser or the person who owns their own tax consulting company, these people struggle sometimes to qualify to buy a home because banks truly value W2 income well over entrepreneurship income, and sometimes you can make a lot of money as an entrepreneur and still not be able to qualify to purchase a home.

Dave:
It’s a really just annoying limitation of conventional mortgages. I just feel bad. There are so many people, even real estate agents, you’re in real estate. You probably, even if you’ve been doing it for years and you make a good amount of money, you’re still limited by these rules that are annoying. They annoy me.

Henry:
It baffles me. When I left my job, I left my job before my wife left hers, and I remember I was speaking to one of my banks and I told them that I was leaving my job and they said, oh no. And I said, yeah, but I make six times in income what I make in my salary as an entrepreneur. And they were like, yeah, but does your wife still have a job? And I’m like, she makes a fraction of what I make now as a salary job. And they said, long as she’s still got a job, you’re good. Right? It’s mind blowing. But if you’re in that boat, we get it. This is a great option for you. Because what they do, they don’t use your W2 to qualify you. They actually will use your bank statements. So they’ll have you send them your bank statements and they’re going to your income and the frequency of your income based on the deposits that have come into your account. And that way, if you are an entrepreneur and you are making money, this type of loan will allow you to qualify because they’re going to consider those deposits as your income and that will help you qualify to purchase a home.

Dave:
Love this approach. This really just opens up a lot of options for people, but there’s many types of non QM loans. So what are some of the variants people should think about

Henry:
In general with non QM loans? I would expect to pay a higher interest rate than Prime, somewhere between one to 3% higher than prime based on how risky your profile is as a buyer. So it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Yes, there’s going to be some caveats here, but it does give you an option or a pathway into ownership that you may be blocked from.

Dave:
No one’s giving this away for free, right? Lenders are not in the business of lending to be kind to you. No one’s like, oh, I just want to earn less money than I could. But a lot of them say, Hey, there’s a whole business of lending to people who don’t qualify under these very strict rules for conforming mortgages. And I am willing to lend to them, but because they do not, I can’t sell these mortgages as mortgage backed security. Some non qms you can, but because or because they don’t have a W2 job, it’s riskier. And any lender will tell you that the higher the risk of the borrower, the higher the interest rate they need to charge to compensate for that. So you just need to think about that. Any situation, unless it’s like NACA where it’s backed by a nonprofit where they’re not trying to make money or USDA where it’s a government sponsored thing where these are not for-profit institutions.
Anytime you’re dealing with a for-profit institution, if you are looking to make a lower down payment, if you are looking to step outside their comfort zone, their little box that they like to lend in, they might do it, but they’re going to charge you more. Absolutely. And that’s okay. That’s just their business. And it makes sense honestly, if you think about it from their perspective. So you just need to decide if you are willing to do that and or just only find deals that work with those higher rates. That’s just how it’s got to be. And I think everyone’s coming around to those terms right now. Sellers are getting a little bit, are understanding this, and so there are absolutely deals that make sense with these higher rates. And it’s not like they’re 9%, it’s a little bit higher, like Henry said, 1% higher perhaps, or maybe a larger down payment, or there might be other terms in there like prepayment penalties that you really need to look out for because these are ways that lenders are trying to mitigate that

Henry:
Risk. You’re absolutely right, and I think managing your expectations when going into a loan like this is important. And so some of the things to expect, like we were talking about are interest rates being higher than the prime rate. Even if you have a good credit score, expect to pay a point at higher than what’s than prime expect to pay anywhere between 10 to 25% down on average. Could be more depending on the situation, the type of property you’re buying. These are 30 year amortization loans, so that’s a good thing. If you’re looking for more cashflow, there are some interest only options available depending on what you’re doing with the property. So you could be paying interest only so those could come into play. If this isn’t a property you plan on holding for a long period of time, that may end up saving you some money. They don’t have PMI, so that’s positive. That might save you a little bit to offset some of the additional expenses. And the approvals are typically faster than a conventional mortgage or like A-D-S-E-R. It moves a little quicker. So there’s for sure,

Dave:
And there are tons of banks that do this. This isn’t, you have to go hunting for them. If you go to BiggerPockets, there are lenders out there who do these kinds of loans. If you go to networking events, you can definitely meet lenders who do these types of things. It’s a lot of local institutions, smaller banks. So you could just probably Google too, where can I get A-D-S-C-R loan in my area? So check that out.

Henry:
Alright, well hopefully that was extremely helpful for you. Those where five financing strategies that are lesser known that you can be using to help you learn how to invest in real estate. As always, thank you so much for listening, Dave, thank you for all your input and we’ll see everybody on the next episode. I.

Dave:
Monthly rentals have moved from a niche to a meaningful slice of the housing economy and there is finally a dataset that shows how and where it’s growing. I’m Dave Meyer and today I’m joined by Furnish Finders Jeff Hurst to unpack their new monthly rentals report with Air DNA. We’re going to start by talking about what this report is, how it’s built, because it’s pretty cool. It’s the first of its kind where we’re actually getting some new insights and data about the really profitable midterm rental market. Then we’re going to dig into specifics like where demand is rising, which markets lead and the playbook for investors who want to get into this segment. We’ll cover what you need to know and how to act on it. This is on the market. Let’s get into it. Jeff, welcome to On the Market. Thanks for being here.

Jeff:
So glad to be here again and excited to be talking to everybody.

Dave:
Yeah, we had a super popular show last year with Jeff, but for those of you who haven’t listened, Jeff, maybe you can just reintroduce yourself.

Jeff:
Absolutely. So I’m Jeff Hurst. I’m the CEO at Furnished Finder. We are a monthly furnished rental platform. The platform’s been around about 10 years. I’ve been here about two years when we partially bought out the founders with some private equity and I have been upgrading the software, upgrading the team and helping ’em provide a better experience. Before that, I spent over a decade as the president of vrbo, the chief strategy officer of HomeAway, and also the Chief Operating Officer at Expedia Group. So most of my career is short-term rentals and along with that I’m a real estate investor and so I own three short-term rentals. Previously self-managed, one of them for about a decade, and now they are all property managed, so I’ve got one on the beach, one on a lake, and a working ranch, which has been a different type of adventure.

Dave:
Well, that’s great. I mean, I feel like that’s everyone’s dream life, right? It is like you have a collection of short-term rentals, hopefully making you a little bit of money, at least. Hopefully we’ll get everyone on who’s listening to this to that 0.1 day. That’s our collective goal here, but we’re here today to talk a little bit more about longer term rentals, so not necessarily short-term rentals, but Furnish Finder work together with Air DNA to put together a report on monthly rentals. Can you just tell us a little bit about the scope and methodology of this report you put together?

Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, for those who don’t know Air DNA, they’re without question kind of the gold standard of reporting on short-term rentals. And so for over a decade they’ve been tracking Airbnb, vrbo, booking.com. They’re constantly updating their data sets, and so I’ve known the team there for a long time from my life in short-term rentals, and I had reached out to Jamie Lane there to see about collaborating on, Hey, listen, we’ve got kind of different data sets and I think this thing’s bigger than a lot of people and my old orbit short-term rentals think it is, and so I’d love to get together and just see what we learn. As it turns out, they had already been looking at upgrading their data products, which they’ve now done to be better at understanding when 28 days or longer and when it’s not.
It’s tricky with the way they’ve built their platform, but they’ve done a great job doing that. Furnish Finder is a classified site, so we don’t have great booking data, but we have a ton of signal on where tenants are trying to go, where landlords are adding inventory and then the characteristics of what’s in demand and not. So we thought it was a great compliment, and so it kind of came about as just an idea and we were like, Hey, let’s all peek under the hood and look at each other’s data and see what the story says. And for us, it was really exciting because it was confirmatory of a lot of us kind of staking our next careers on this opportunity of that. It’s says monthly furnish rentals are growing really fast and there’s a ton of demand for ’em. Interestingly, it says it’s very different than what most short-term rental demand is. It’s not leisure based, and so it does shine a light on this thing’s growing a lot faster than short-term. It’s adding more inventory and it’s a different type of asset class.

Dave:
What are some of the differences between the short-term and midterm rental industries?

Jeff:
You start with, it’s obvious the difference is one’s for 30 days or more, but when we look overall, so one key difference, smaller footprint, and so 70% of the inventory on furnish finders two bedrooms are smaller. When you extend that to apartments.com and Zillow, totally the same trend, smaller footprint where it is way less likely to be in a leisure destination in general, think about it as being around universities, hospitals, and commuter corridors, and that’s because the tenant types the largest is commuting for work. That could be skilled trade, but it’s also a lot of professional services. Second largest is healthcare, which is how Furnish Finder built its name. The third largest and fastest growing is relocating families. I think that’s the most interesting for investors because it really opens up where the category can go because of those things. It’s overwhelmingly unlike suburbs, small towns, it’s in major urban areas, but it’s not in the downtown corridor.
What’s exciting about that is the assets tend to be less expensive than short-term rental. For the price of a short-term rental, you might be able to buy a duplex or a quadplex and have a different type of key strategy. It’s probably typically a better cash on cash return because the entry price is lower and the cost to outfit these is way lower. Think like $7 a square foot. I was talking to Garrett at BiggerPockets routinely, a short-term rental might be more like 30 to $50 a square foot because you are investing in wow amenities because you’re trying to really help somebody have a great weekend. We’re trying to help somebody get through a tough time or maybe have a comfortable place to sleep while they’re on a work assignment.
So those are the key differences. The thing that I think surprises a lot of people, the average length of stay on furnished finders over three months and over a third of the tenants extend, and so you’re talking about doing three turns a year and if you’re doing it well, the occupancy is actually a lot higher than a short-term rental. You might only have a few days between turns, like 90% plus, and so it’s very different, but people who are great at short-term rentals can be excellent at midterm rentals because it’s actually easier. You’ve just got to do a different type of asset hunting.

Dave:
It seems easier from a property management perspective and from a design perspective as well. Totally is what you’re saying. I was kind of curious about that. If people spend as much effort into a medium term rental or there’s no ROI on that

Jeff:
They don’t, you think about when you’re designing for a short-term rental, you have to think about who’s coming, where are they coming from and what’s the wow amenity? Is it pickleball? Is it that we’re going to do foosball and ping pong? Are we going to have some sort of different visual aesthetic or fire pit? Everybody knows how to sleep comfortably. It’s like, can I stock a kitchen with basics? Can I get a reasonably good couch in TV and can I have a quiet place to sleep comfortably? You don’t need to have a designer. You need to be pragmatic and you need to know how to do these things efficiently and you need to be really good at locating where are people going to need this type of inventory?

Dave:
Totally. Yeah. Just to my own experience with midterm rentals, I moved to the Seattle area about a year ago, didn’t know where we wanted to live, stayed in a midterm rental in one area for two or three months, figured out we wanted to live on the other side of the city, moved to that area, stayed in a midterm rental for two or three months while we did some house hunting and ultimately found the place and we wanted somewhere comfortable. We wanted parking, we wanted proximity to the grocery store, stuff that you look for more in a traditional long-term rental as a tenant. Whereas yeah, if I’m taking a short-term rental, I’m like, give me a golf simulator and a view of the mountains and I’ll be pretty happy, but it’s not what I’m

Jeff:
Expecting. Interestingly, the midterm use case, because it’s not long-term, it curb appeal matters a little less. Like you don’t care as much that there’s wow curb appeal that there’s a fantastic, you need maybe a lawn for pets, but you may not need the perfect manicured front lawn and stuff like that because it’s really transitional and you need it to be comfortable. And so that gives you a different type of flexibility. Also, like what you’re describing I’d say is our fastest growing use case, we call it try before you buy, and it’s people who aren’t sure where they want to be in a new town, but it’s also people who might be priced out and so they can’t afford to make a mistake with the way housing inventory and affordability is right now,
And so they’re going to be really picky about what they buy after they figure out where they’re going to buy, and that might mean they’re in these for six to 12 months and furniture’s a bad investment, and so they’re also want to be sure they buy furniture for the place they’re going to be in for a long time and aren’t moving it and moving it. And so it’s an interesting dynamic and I’ve found it to be my kind of eat crow moment is at vrbo. I often thought that Chesky at Airbnb was kind of like, I didn’t believe his story about how people were going to live and increasing like, okay, I get it. People are going to live more flexibly. And what’s shocked me is it’s both ends of the generational curve. Yes, it’s younger people, but it’s absolutely boomers in late Gen X

Speaker 3:
Really,

Jeff:
My mom lives two to three months a year in Maine. She’s not. It’s because she’s crazy wealthy and has another home. She travels with a friend, people are grandparent traveling instead of living in the guest room of their kids, they’re getting a house nearby that’s a duplex and they can walk to their kid’s house but have the grandkids at their duplex. And there’s a lot of these use cases because of the generational wealth transfer and housing where I think the older generation’s actually catching up or exceeding this idea of flexible living.

Dave:
That makes sense. I guess now millennials are mostly, at least those who can afford it, trying to settle down into a home and are less having kids, they’re a little less transient, traveling less probably than these other generations, so that makes sense. Alright everyone, we got to take a quick break, but we’ll have more with Jeff Hurst from Furnish Finder right after this. Welcome back to On The Market, I’m Dave Meyer. Let’s jump back into my conversation with CEO of Furnish Finder, Jeff Hurst. So you mentioned earlier, generally it sounds like the industry, the category as a whole is growing. Is that both on the supply and the demand side?

Jeff:
It is. So in the report, air DNA has got a better view of demand, so they estimate that there’s over 6 billion of transactions on the short-term platform that are 28 days and longer. So that’s big. We have seen from 2019 to 2025, the furnish fly through platforms gone from 20,000 listings to over 300,000. Oh

Speaker 3:
My gosh.

Jeff:
So 15 times more inventory. We think we’re probably the biggest site for monthly furnished inventory just period. So like Zillow has about 50,000 monthly furnished apartments.com, about a hundred thousand. There’s not a great number out there for Airbnb. We estimate it to be about 150,000, but then of course they’ve got millions of homes that could be rented for 30 days plus, but they’ve got a three day minimum or a one day minimum. So it’s explosive growth. It used to mainly be healthcare and some niche use cases. Think about what trucks are at an extended stay America and increasingly it’s way beyond that. And that was the other interesting confirming stat, 40% of all new hotel starts are extended stay.

Speaker 3:
Really

Jeff:
The big institutional money is going into extended stay and you see that with new strategies of higher end extended stay, but it becomes, again, to your point of commercial or long-term real estate, a little bit easier to go hunt because you just look where the hotels are, who’s great at asset identification, Hilton and Marriott, they don’t screw it up a whole lot. And so if you go figure out where they are and have a duplex nearby, then your equation becomes, okay, well the Hilton extended stay property is going to be $3,000 a month. I can deliver twice the square footage and a private space for $2,000 a month. Are people going to choose that? Yeah, if they know they’re going to choose it. It feels like short-term rental in 2010, it’s just way better. It hasn’t gotten as complicated yet.

Dave:
Where’s demand for monthly stays coming from? Where are you taking it from? Right. I guess hotels is one part, but is it also, I mean long-term rentals too, it sounds

Jeff:
Like? For sure. Yeah, I mean it’s part of the long-term rental platform. I think that when you look at the big macro trends declining home ownership increasing, they’re not really caring whether you’re renting in a 12 month lease or a three month lease that renews four times, you’re just a renter.
And so the macro trend of more people renting probably plays into it the most. I do think there’s hotel share steel, but I don’t think it’s zero sum. I think the hotels realize there’s so much excess demand that they’re building supply and we’re helping augment the need for more supply. If you’re a landlord, you’re probably advertising on Furnish Finder a little over half or exclusive to Furnish Finder. You’re likely also on Airbnb or maybe also on Zillow, and it’s got more of a hustle dynamic. You’re more likely to also be telling your neighbors, you’ve got a space in the neighborhood for if somebody gets divorced or the roof catches on fire or whatever. That part’s unique of that. It’s a little bit more cottage industry that way and a lot of it is more referral or local relationships. And the asset class is unique that way because a lot of neighborhoods and even municipalities have banned short-term rentals, but this actually feels like a neighborhood asset.
You’re excited if somebody like you is moving to a neighborhood in Seattle and has a chance to live for three months and be sure they can buy something in the neighborhood, become a part of the community. You’re not excited if a family gets divorced. But it is nice that the husband and wife can both stay in the same neighborhood and have kids close to each other and maintain family consistency. And then if somebody’s plumbing burst or roof catches on fire or just wants to remodel, it’s great that your friends get to stay in the neighborhood. It just feels like an asset

Dave:
A hundred percent. I think I probably, I was on Furnish Finder the other day because starting to remodel in the next couple of months thinking about where I’m going to

Jeff:
Stay, it’s going to be over budget. So you’re looking for a way to save some money too. Yeah, exactly.

Dave:
So talk to me a little bit about, we see demand seems to be going up, supply is certainly going up. One of the knocks or the question marks about short-term rentals recently has been about oversupply. Do you have concerns about that? And I’m sure it varies market to market, but do you have concerns about oversaturation in the midterm market as well?

Jeff:
No, nowhere near what I did with short term.

Dave:
Really

Jeff:
Short term obviously went through a fantastic boom period. I think the dynamic at play there is there’s a lot of what I’d call irrational buyers. It’s very often almost like the middle class version of buying a sports team. There may be someone out there who’s willing to buy it with no intention of making money. It’s not an investment, it’s actually that they just want it for usage. And so the dynamics of who’s buying those are different. It went through a boom, but the boom was very consolidated and Gulf Coast and lakes, rivers, mountains, so there’s oversupply in a small number of places. What do you have everywhere? But there under supply everywhere there’s a housing shortage and in most places it’s a pretty durable housing shortage. And so I think the estimate is we’re over 10 million units of housing short. And so when you think about where midterm rentals plays, it actually plays way more in the suburbs and in places where there aren’t any short-term rentals than it does in the places where there’s saturation. And so it’s more likely to be where there’s a new community coming up where there’s a new nearby or where there’s a new hotel, then it is where there’s a new Ritz Carlton or a new resort property

Dave:
And how can people measure or get a sense of where there’s good supply and demand dynamics. Obviously you mentioned one tip of following the hotels, which is a great tip, but are there any other ones you recommend?

Jeff:
Yeah, so there’s a tool on furnish finder called Market Insights. You can reach it from the homepage, you can put in any city in the US and it’ll tell you how many visitors have seen that map grid. So how many people are searching the area where your property could show up, it’ll show you how much inventory is there and it’ll show you by price point, bedroom type. What’s the distribution?
This is, I’d say it’s a solid B product we’ve built now, but there’s some real improvements we need to make. And so my advice to people would be check it out now, but check back on it every month because I think there’s going to be some things that we’re doing that help make it more powerful, like moving it to zip code search. We’re going to do some things that better represent that. If you’re looking at Austin and part of the map might show a smaller town outside of Austin, we may not be accurately showing you the exact demand for that small town. And so we’ve got to help better calibrate the way that works, but start on furnish finder. Second thing, use a site like Air DNA, because short term is a good indicator. And then the third thing is use the OTAs to your advantage. Go to a booking.com or an Expedia and look at where the extended stay properties. And you’re kind of think about this triangle where you’ve got furnish finder Airbnb and an OTA and you’re trying to figure out, okay, well where do things line up to where I’m getting a little bit of everything in that triangle and then you’re into something that’s pretty special.

Dave:
And then tell me a little bit more about what assets people are buying. You said it’s different, it doesn’t have to have this wow factor. Is there some sort of sweet spot that you find has a lot of demand but is also reasonable from an expense perspective?

Jeff:
Yeah, I mean I think what I’d start with is lemme just kind of describe the continuum. And so first of all, of our over 300,000 listings, 60,000 are rooms.
And that’s a very new product for me because at VRBO we didn’t do rooms. And so I’m kind like I’m learning about it also. It’s growing fast and it’s a really interesting strategy and I think of our partners. I think pad split’s a really interesting partner to learn more about, but, and how you rent out a room is a great strategy because America actually doesn’t have a room shortage. We have a housing shortage. My mom lives in a three bedroom home and she’s one person. There’s a lot of people like that. And increasingly as they think about are you willing to rent out a room or are you willing to add an A DU to a property, there’s kind of a starting place there. The second stop on the continuum would be there’s a ton of studio apartments and one bedrooms, apartments, condos, duplexes. But the important thing there is, unlike short-term rental, it is actually viable to where you can get into this and more of an arbitrage model.
And so you can take out a two or three year lease and most buildings and landlords are amenable to, Hey, I’m going to have four tenants in here over the course of the year as opposed to I’m going to have 54 tenants in it over here over the course of the year. And so there are people who kind of dip their toe in the water with arbitrage and then the majority is a single family and it’s two bedroom or smaller. I think the sweet spot is one bedroom with a bonus room so that you have the opportunity to play in housing a family of three or four or having a slightly bigger place for a couple or somebody who wants some office space while they’re there. That’s probably the sweet spot. The inventory class in general is moving to larger footprints because of the family dynamic, but it’s more like three bedroom is the larger part. There’s nothing here exciting for your five bedroom, your six bedroom, you’re like some of the most successful STR formats are those like sleeps 23, put four families here and you’ll save the cost of eight hotel rooms. That’s my lake house.

Speaker 3:
That’s

Jeff:
Not part of the situation here. I think it’ll cap out around three or four rooms unless, and then the co-living strategy can allow you to yield a lot more if you’ve got five different tenants and a five bedroom house and are treating it more like a monthly product. And so it’s very flexible. And I think what’s interesting as an investor, it’s a lot easier to invest in what you just kind of think about, oh, I can put one of these within half an hour of my house. Where could I look within half an hour of my house? And then self-managing is way more of an opportunity than short term. It is closer to your primary residence and you’re only dealing with it three or four times a year.

Dave:
And I imagine that it’s also a little more flexible, not just on size, but in type of asset. Just hearing you talk, Jeff, it makes me feel like you could potentially buy attached homes, condos or town homes, whereas I think for short-term rentals, in my experience, most people want to buy single family dwellings just to stand out a little bit. But I don’t know, in my experience as a midterm renter, I don’t really care. I just want a comfortable place, like

Jeff:
You said. Yeah. Is it as private as a hotel room? That’s kind of the bar. And so an A DU or an attached property for sure. Yeah. I think some of the people that have had the most financial success play in that duplex quadplex space
Because you can own the dirt. You do have more flexibility. And I think some of the best investors in the category underwrite it as like, okay, my worst case scenario is this is a successful long-term property. What does that return profile look like? Okay, well what if I can then do 40% better than that as a midterm rental? What does that return profile look like? And that kind of establishes your range and that midterm range can get really exciting and start to kick off cash really quick. Basically, what’s the return on furniture? And furniture usually pays itself back in six months on our platform because it’s five to $7 a square foot and then you’re just making more money forever the depreciation lifecycle of furniture in a mid terminal, maybe three or four years. So you’ve got three years of extra cash before you have to refresh.

Dave:
Let’s talk a little bit more about the economics here because in my mind there’s sort of this continuum where it’s like long-term rentals least amount of management on a day-to-day basis usually, but the lowest cashflow potential, if you break it down by how much revenue you’re bringing in per night, that’s going to be the lowest then in my mind, correct me if I’m wrong, midterm sits in the middle where it’s a little bit more work. You have maybe three tenants, like you said in a year instead of one, you have to furnish it. There’s maybe some more maintenance and costs there, but the daily rate you can get is higher. And then short-term rentals are sort of the highest revenue potential, but also the biggest management burden. Is that the right way to think about it?

Jeff:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, I’d say a pretty average short-term rental is probably doing something like $2,000 a week in rent. An average monthly rental is doing more like $2,000 a month in rent, and then your long-term rental is probably more like $1,500 or 1700 when you adjust for four. And so we look at furnished as your premium’s probably 30 to 50% increase in monthly rent over long-term, and you’re paying for furniture and you’re paying for flexibility to break the lease sooner, but it’s all almost a fully occupied short-term rental. Well, if you could get a fully occupied short-term rental, it wins it’s way more money. And the only other difference I’d add to it is management fees are actually pretty notably

Speaker 3:
Different

Jeff:
Because of the extra turns, the extra standard of care management fees for a short-term rental, I think minimum are going to be 20 to 25%. And when you add in lodging taxes and all that sort of stuff, it can be like 40 to 50% of what the tenant pays in a short term actually doesn’t go to the owner in a long term. It’s more like 10 to 15%, and in midterm it’s more like 15%. You can kind of get it closer to 10, but you’re way more likely to be able to self-manage it and save all that money. And so you end up with more independent landlords kind of self-managing who are really about profit percentage maximization in midterm. I think.

Dave:
And I think it’s really important for everyone listening to just think about, there’s sort of a positive efficiency here where short-term rentals, yes, I think everyone agrees most revenue potential, but the expenses scale with that revenue a bit. And what Jeff is saying here is that the expenses with midterm rentals aren’t necessarily proportionate to how much more revenue can make. So your margin can actually increase definitely over long-term rentals, but potentially you could get a similar profit margin in some respects as a short-term rental. We do have to take a quick break, but we’re going to be right back with Jeff after this quick word from our sponsors. Welcome back to On the Market. Let’s jump back into my conversation with Jeff Hurst. Jeff, do you have any data on just the average occupancy? I totally get the potential is really high, but if you’re not booking these things out, potential means nothing.

Jeff:
I don’t have great data on it because we’re a classified site,

Dave:
And

Jeff:
So we do surveys on it. The surveys would tell you that the people who are good at it are 90% plus. When you’re full-time strategy and you’re treating this a second job, not just a puzzle, but you’re out talking to insurance companies and really marketing you can be 90% plus.

Dave:
Whoa.

Jeff:
Yeah, man, you’re talking about eight vacant days a year.

Dave:
Wow.

Jeff:
And it is skewed a ton of these end up with a tenant who rents for three months and is there for two years, and then you’re at the higher rent for two years just rolling it over and rolling it over and rolling it over because they got comfortable and they can afford it and it works fine and they don’t want to change it. And so that skews the numbers a little bit. My hunch is more of the average occupancy probably feels more like 75, 80% that there is a little bit more churn because we’re in a lot of locations where I think there is seasonality. That’s something to consider. There’s basically, there’s two pure strategies here. One is I’m a midterm rental only. I’m out there trying to hustle. And the big difference you’ve got to think about is your calendar’s no longer a game of Tetris. You’re going to get the next midterm rental booking and then that’s it. And then when they give you notice, they’re moving out, you’re going to go get the next midterm booking, but there’s no forward calendar. You don’t have a booking six months out in a weekend here in July 4th, and all these things that you’re balancing, you’re just taking a booking at a time. Whereas the hybrid model would be like, I’m actually kind of willing to take a midterm booking or maybe seasonally, that’s my preference, but I’m a short-term rental.
I’m actually always going to book July 4th at max. I’m always going to book Labor Day at max. And if I’m in Michigan, yeah, that’d be great if I got a 90 day rental in the winter, but I’m also maybe not going to turn down a Christmas booking because that might be a great booking for me. And so you’re playing a different game there. The book to Stay Windows, interestingly, almost 30% of bookings for 30 day plus days happen within a week. So the book to stay window is actually shorter than short term.

Speaker 3:
Really.

Jeff:
And you think about it and it’s like, oh, well, if I’m a healthcare worker or a business worker, a lot of times you find out two to three weeks out there, Hey, you’re going to Akron, get ready, go figure it out. And so there is some of that. Or if your pipes burst and a freeze, you need a place tomorrow. And so it’s intuitive, but it surprises people just because you’re going support for 90 days and you’re figuring out on five days notice, a lot of the time

Dave:
You’re not planning it like a vacation.

Jeff:
Yeah. No one wants to screw up spring break, they plan it six months in advance at vrbo. It’s like, what do you do when you finish New Year’s? Do you plan spring break?

Dave:
One thing, Jeff, I’m curious if you can give some advice to our audience here is I buy rental properties and every time I walk into one these days, they’re like, it could be a midterm rental. And I’m like, yeah, sure it could. But I don’t know if that means it should be a midterm rental. So do you have maybe thoughts on what you should talk to your agent about if you want to look for these or if someone’s telling you you should make this a midterm rental. How do you gut check if that’s really the best strategy for the given asset?

Jeff:
Yeah, a very cheap way to gut check it, especially once you own the place, say, a common scenario for us is people get married and they’re trying to figure out what’s to do with the other house. Do they turn it into a long-term rental? Do they sell it? Do they make it a midterm rental? And so lemme take that use case and then I’ll get to your how do you decide what to buy And that use case, my biggest advice is one, if it’s already furnished, furnished finds $200 a year, just buy it and see what happens. Go put up an advertisement, and if no one’s bit in a month, then it’s probably not your right strategy. If you’ve got an unfurnished place, put it up unfurnished finder, unfurnished with a picture that says, I’m going to furnish it for the first tenant, and you’ve got an $8,000 budget to pick out what you want.

Dave:
Whoa.

Jeff:
And so then you may end up with like, oh, well, I actually do want three twin beds in my two bedroom because I’m a single mom who’s going to be with three kids. This is huge. Now I can get three twin beds in there. That’s great. And then you end up not having to invest in the furniture until you have the tenant. And the tenant actually often likes it because all the stuff’s new and they get to have some input into what you put there.

Dave:
Wow.

Jeff:
Now, if you’re earlier funnel, I’m looking for an investment property and thinking about buying, the first thing is you go back to that first principles conversation. We had Airbnb, furnish finder, OTAs calibrate on what have the realtor explain why they say that. But if they’re not calibrating with one of those three data sets, there’s not another data set out there except they want to tell you that or someone else told them that.
But I’d say you’re still in a very safe space with a thesis of if that investment works as a long term, it’s all upside. You can’t say the same about, well, hey, this investment as a short term is supposed to do $110,000 a year. Well, the midterms probably not going to do $110,000 a year. And so if you underwrite as a short term and end up in a midterm, you may end up underwater. And we do see a lot of that with regulatory pressure. Somebody comes in and they’re like, I can’t rent this out for less than 30 days in most major cities. Now what do I do? I’ll make it a midterm. Great, you’re going to have some bookings, but it’s actually not going to be as much money as you had thought you were going to make as a short term. And there’s some fundamental disconnect there, which is a little bit of a market clearing problem.

Dave:
Jeff, this has been super helpful and I think our audience is going to really be interested in this. Any last pieces of advice for people who are interested in the midterm rental market?

Jeff:
I think all investing, find something that you feel like you’ve got a personal attachment to and something you’re curious about. And then just get started. So what does your neighborhood need? What do people in your area need? And start there. It’s way more approachable than, I had a great trip to Telluride. I wonder what it would be like to try and buy something in Telluride and find out who else lives there.

Speaker 3:
It’s

Jeff:
Actually pretty hard compared to, I know a traveling nurse nearby. I wonder where she stays and what she does, and can I provide that service better? So just start really first principles and then use data from Air DNA or Furnish Finder and otherwise, and go see if it works. But you can do this in a way that’s not a financial future risking type of model. Like start with a room, start with an adu, start with something small, and go try and make your first $500. And I hope it turns into 5,000 and 50,000 in financial independence.

Dave:
Yeah, I love that. I mean, that’s a really cool approach because in real estate, you don’t often get to do that. A lot of times you have to take a really big bite before a big

Jeff:
Swing.

Dave:
Yeah. And this is an opportunity where you can learn a little bit and maybe take a page out of the tech approach and just be a little bit more iterative about how you’re going to build and learn and go and improve all the time. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it. A link to the report will be in the notes. You should check that out if you want to learn more. There’s all sorts of great information maps about where demand is growing, all sorts of good stuff. So check that out. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On The Market. We’ll see you next time.

The TL;DR: SocialMediaCon, Keller Williams’ first-ever social media conference for real estate professionals, takes place Sunday, February 22, in Atlanta, Georgia, and live online. Co-hosted by Gary Keller, Jason Abrams, and Ryan Leak, the event is open to all real estate professionals and features renowned speakers and social media experts Gary Vaynerchuk, Donald Miller, Chelsea Peitz, and Giselle Ugarte. The conference offers a comprehensive approach to social media, covering mindset, messaging, systems, on-camera confidence, and the role of AI in building a strong business and brand.

As a real estate agent, online visibility is crucial for attracting clients, building trust, and showcasing your expertise. Showing up on social channels with consistency strengthens your brand and creates a launchpad for leads, referrals, and overall business growth.

But knowing you should be showing up on social is different than actually doing it. And whether you’re a recognized influencer or you’re new to the social scene, the dynamic nature of social media means there’s a constant need to stay informed about the social strategies that make the most of your time and energy. Algorithms shift. Platforms evolve. Attention gets harder to earn. That’s why Keller Williams put social media front and center at Family Reunion 2026. 

This February, SocialMediaCon opens the first full day of FR26 in Atlanta, Georgia. Co-hosted by KW founder Gary Keller and executive coach Ryan Leak, the event marks KW’s first-ever conference focused on social media. SocialMediaCon features the leading voice on attention, culture, and modern brand building, Gary Vaynerchuk, StoryBrand AI founder Donald Miller, content and strategy expert Chelsea Peitz, and executive performance coach and leadership advisor Giselle Ugarte.

While many KW-hosted events are exclusive to KW® agents, SocialMediaCon is open to all real estate professionals, everywhere. The event gets underway on Sunday, Feb. 22, at 7:45 a.m. ET. In-person admission is included in an FR26 General Admission Pass, while live, online access is available as part of the FR26 Digital Experience.

Learn the Secrets, Strategies, and Systems Used by Top Creators

Alongside Gary Keller, KWRI Head of Industry and Learning Jason Abrams was one of the masterminds behind SocialMediaCon. When asked why he and Gary turned their attention to social media, and why now, Jason said the answer is simple: If you’re building a real estate business, social media isn’t optional anymore; it’s foundational to trust, visibility, and relevance.

But, Jason says, there’s a serious problem when it comes to social media education. Most available training focuses on singular trends and content tips for specific platforms, rather than comprehensive strategies for long-term success.

SocialMediaCon was created to solve that problem. Unlike other one-off training events, SMC offers a comprehensive approach, covering mindset, messaging, and systems, in addition to current tools that work across platforms.

“This isn’t platform-specific training,” Jason says. “It’s behavioral, psychological, and strategic — designed to last beyond the next algorithm update.”

SocialMediaCon Speakers: Leaders Shaping Social Media and Branding

Joy Powell, KW’s manager of industry and learning, says the selection of speakers for SocialMediaCon was highly intentional. While the speakers are well known (Gary Vee has more than 45 million followers across social media channels), they weren’t chosen just for their renown. Instead, they were selected for the way their expertise ladders together. Each speaker offers a distinct and complementary point of focus, addressing culture and attention, trust and leadership, content systems, on-camera confidence, and clarity in brand messaging.

“There’s no overlap. No fluff. Every session has its place,” Joy explains.

No one knows social media better than SocialMediaCon headliner Gary Vaynerchuk. A serial entrepreneur, CEO of VaynerMedia, and a New York Times bestselling author, Gary is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in culture, business, and the internet.

In Day Trading Attention: The Essential Guide to Mastering Brands in the Age of Social Media Marketing, Gary says the fastest-growing businesses and brands master the art of storytelling and shift their strategies according to the platform where audiences spend most of their time. The key to success is in winning people’s attention by providing content of real value over time.

At SocialMediaCon, Gary will drill down on the “attention economy” and why most people misunderstand the meaning of “content.” He’ll cover what agents have to do to stay relevant over the next decade, not just the next year, and build a brand that earns people’s trust. With his signature frank style, Gary’s main stage session is designed to help you reset how you think about social media as a whole.

Donald Miller: Clear Messaging That Cuts Through the Noise

If the key to winning people’s attention is great storytelling, then you have to know how to tell a great story. And a great story, says Donald Miller, starts with clarity.

The CEO of StoryBrand and StoryBrand AI, and the author of ten books, including Building a StoryBrand 2.0, Marketing Made Simple, and How to Grow Your Small Business, Donald Miller says that if your message is confusing, customers (and followers) will find it easy to ignore you. By contrast, messaging that helps your audience clearly understand what you can do for them, builds an emotional connection, and offers a clear call to action gives you a competitive advantage.

Using his powerful StoryBrand methodology, Donald will share how to simplify your message, position your audience as the hero, and create effective content that supports business and brand growth.

Chelsea Peitz: Systems for Sustainable Content That Converts

While Donald Miller can help you clarify what to say, Chelsea Peitz can help you get comfortable doing it.

Author of What to Post: How to Create Engaging Social Media Content That Builds Your Brand and Gets Results (for Real Estate), Chelsea is an authority in social media marketing for real estate, the mortgage industry, and title insurance. She’s twice been recognized by Inman for her expertise in creating screen-to-screen connection.

Chelsea’s superpower lies in teaching real estate agents how to show up online as the same person they are offline, with a specific focus on video content.

At SocialMediaCon, she’ll share how to build a repeatable content framework and a planning model that prevents burnout. You’ll leave knowing what to post, why it works, and how to stay consistent to build credibility and convert your followers into clients. 

Giselle Ugarte: On-Camera Confidence & Showing Up When It Matters

If you’ve ever hesitated to hit record, speak up, or put yourself out there because you didn’t feel ready, Giselle Ugarte’s SocialMediaCon session is for you.

Giselle challenges leaders to rethink visibility altogether. Her approach isn’t about hacks, trends, or becoming an influencer. It’s about learning how to show up clearly and confidently when the pressure is on — on camera, in presentations, and in the conversations that matter most. Using science-backed performance coaching techniques, Giselle shares how to stop overthinking, start before you feel ready, and build confidence through action, not perfection.

With a career spanning two decades of television, live production, and executive leadership, Giselle understands what it’s like to start from zero — and how to show up, experiment, and build when it feels like all eyes are on you. 

In this SocialMediaCon session, you’ll learn how to communicate clearly under pressure, use video and visibility as leadership tools, and earn trust and authority by showing up exactly as yourself — online and especially off. 

AI-Supported Social Media Marketing

In this era, you can’t have a conversation about social media without also talking about AI. While the tools change with each passing day, SocialMediaCon will cover how to maintain your authenticity while leveraging AI to eliminate busywork and burnout.

In addition to using AI to generate concepts and copy, you’ll learn strategies and tools for repurposing content across platforms, speeding up workflows, and reducing friction so you can create with clarity and consistency.

Join SocialMediaCon on Sunday, February 22

From agents to team leaders and coaches to brokers, SocialMediaCon is for real estate professionals in every role and at every level. Register to attend FR26 in Atlanta, Georgia, or join in for the FR26 Digital Experience, live online, starting at 7:45 a.m. ET.