In short
“This Is the Best Rental Property to Buy in 2025” plus a guest-recommended flip pivot strategy for the same market conditions.
Guests
Dave Meyer (housing analyst, rental property investor, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets). Henry Washington (co-host; experienced investor; discusses deal structures and underwriting).
Key claims
The “slow BRRRR” is lower-risk than traditional BRRRR because you buy occupied, cash-flowing properties (break-even to 2–5% cash flow) using conventional acquisition financing, renovate after tenant turnover, then refinance for improved cash-on-cash (target 8–10% stabilized). For flips, Henry recommends markets where median home price is $350k–$450k and median rent is near national average; target ARV around $300k with cosmetic-plus renovations ($30k–$70k) and a max allowable offer derived from ARV minus costs/holding/commissions/profit.
Notable examples
Duplex/2–4 unit buy box in the Midwest (e.g., $250k–$300k total; ~$100k–$125k per door; ~$15k–$20k renovation per unit). Flip math example: ARV $300k, $50k renovation, ~$10k holding, ~$10k closing, 6% commission, ~$40k profit → MAO ≈ $172k; pivot to renting at ~$1,800–$2,000/month if needed.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOSimplifying Real Estate Investing
0:45 to 1:40
Hosts discuss the stress of starting in real estate and the focus of the episode.
“One of the best things about it, to me at least, is how customizable it can be.”
Identifying the Ideal Rental Property
1:40 to 2:52
Conversation on the ideal type of rental property for most investors.
“We've sort of avoided doing this show because to Henry's point, there is no one size fits all answer.”
Understanding the Slow BRRRR Strategy
2:52 to 4:47
Exploration of the slow BRRRR method and its advantages.
“My ideal rental property, and I'm going to try and be as specific as possible.”
Financing Your Rental Property
4:47 to 7:14
Discussion on financing options for acquiring and renovating properties.
“I'm looking for something that has at least break-even cash flow, ideally somewhere between two, four, maybe up to 5 % cash flow as is.”
Creative Financing Strategies
7:14 to 11:32
Overview of various strategies for financing renovations on properties.
“So what kind of cash on hand would someone need to have in order to execute a deal like this?”
The Million Point Strategy
14:00 to 15:38
Learn how to leverage credit card points for rental property expenses.
“Because the reason I can possibly have a million points is because I do this with every rental property.”
Market Insights and Buy Box Criteria
19:32 to 28:00
Explore specific strategies for identifying profitable rental properties.
“I'm here with Henry Washington talking about what deals we are buying today and what we would recommend you go out and look for in today's market.”
Understanding Deal Trade-offs
28:00 to 28:40
Learn about the trade-offs in investing with limited capital and effort.
“side to find the amazing deals that, yeah, I can get into a deal with very little of my own capital because I'm going to buy such an amazing deal.”
Understanding Deal Trade-offs
29:48 to 30:20
Learn about the trade-offs in investing with limited capital and effort.
“If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation.”
Finding Profitable Flip Deals
32:51 to 42:00
Learn how to identify and evaluate flip opportunities in the real estate market.
“You can probably find a deal like this on the market.”
Show all 13 chapters
Understanding Market Conditions for Rental Properties
42:00 to 45:31
Learn how to navigate the current real estate market and structure offers effectively.
“on the market because there are more sellers right now who need to sell and are having trouble.”
Profit Potential in Sideways Markets
45:32 to 47:44
Discover how to identify profitable opportunities in fluctuating markets.
“This is like a data analyst's dream, this kind of market, because certain price points, certain neighborhoods, things are absolutely moving.”
The Importance of a Repeatable System in Investing
47:45 to 48:36
Understand the need for a sustainable investing strategy for long-term success.
“Like, yeah, it can't be easy and profitable right now.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is the best rental property to buy in 2025. Today, we're going to give you our real picks and our actual numbers for the deal that will work even with prices and interest rates where they are today. If you're too stressed about all the different ways to get started investing in real estate, we're making it easy for you. Just buy this type of property we're going to share with you today.
0:28Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Meyer, a housing analyst, a rental property investor, and the head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. We've also got Henry Washington with me on the show today. Henry, good to see you, man. Hey, thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here with you. This is going to be a really fun show because real estate has this sort of trade-off, right? One of the best things about it, to me at least, is how customizable it can be. You could do so many different things in the world of real estate investing. Most of them can produce good returns if you're good at them and it fits your lifestyle.
1:02But sometimes that can also be sort of overwhelming, like the amount of choice that you have. So today, what I'm hoping to do with you, Henry, is simplify it for our audience. Given everything that you and I both know about the market, our experience investing in different types of properties, which are the right deals to buy today that are going to be low risk, high upside.
1:25Brandon Turner:I'm excited to see how this episode does, because this is like the question people ask. It's always like, hey, what exactly should I go do? And I'm like, I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. And they're like, how should I invest? So here, we're going to tell you exactly what you should go buy. Exactly. We've sort of avoided doing this show because to Henry's point, there is no one size fits all answer. It's so customizable, but at least the way I approached preparing for this episode, and maybe you did this differently, but the way I prepared was like for the most people, 75 % of people or something like what is the best way to buy a rental property?
2:04That's what I'm thinking about. It's not going to work for everyone and where you live and what market you live in are going to depend a little bit. But I tried to just like the best things that you can think about for the most people is what I'm going to be sharing.
2:16Brandon Turner:I think what I would want to hear, and I think what's probably more beneficial for everybody, is to hear like what your ideal rental property scenario would be for people. Because if I do it, like everybody knows I find off market deals. You're better at it than me. Is that what you're saying? I just mean the amount of work that someone would have to, casual investor would have to put in to find what I would deem worthy as a good rental property, like most investors, most casual investors aren't going to do. So why don't you share with people, like, what does the part-timer investor look for for a rental property?
2:52My ideal rental property, and I'm going to try and be as specific as possible. For both myself and what I would recommend for people trying to get started is what I have been calling the slow BRRRR on this show for most of the year. BRRRR, if you are not familiar, is an acronym. It stands for buy, renovate, rent, refinance, and repeat. So your goal of the BRRRR is to buy something that needs a little bit of work. You're going to build equity in that property by renovating it. Then you are going to hopefully create a cash flowing property. Once it's renovated, ideally you are generating positive cash flow.
3:28That's part of my criteria. Then you refinance and pull some of the money out because you're going to put a decent chunk of change into these properties. If you're going out and buying it, you're renovating, you're going to put some money into it. So you refinance to get some of that money out. And then you do that over and over again as many times as you can, presuming you can find more profitable deals. So that's a great way to make money, Bert. And if you can do that in the traditional way, you should absolutely do that. But the traditional way sort of had a specific dimension to it that I don't think works as well as it used to, which is you were looking to buy something typically that was vacant.
4:06So there was no people in the property. Those are getting harder to find. And you need to renovate it really quickly. So you're usually buying this on high interest debt. So either a hard money loan or a bridge loan or private lending. So it's a more expensive debt. And there's this pressure to renovate the property in three, six, nine months and get it rented so you could refinance out of that high interest debt into something more sustainable. And that's where this concept of the slow burr comes in. So my ideal rental property is a burr. But rather than finding something that's vacant and renovating it as quickly as possible, I look for places that are cash flowing with tenants already in them.
4:49I'm looking for something that has at least break-even cash flow, ideally somewhere between two, four, maybe up to 5 % cash flow as is. I buy it and it's already making money. That's what I want to find. Then when my tenants go and move out from this property, which might be in three months, it might be six months, it might be a year or two. Then I go in and do the renovation. I build equity in the home. Then I get rents up to market rate and that will get my cash on cash return at to a minimum of 8%, ideally higher. And I think in the deals that I'm looking at, you could probably get them to 10 or maybe 12 % once these things are stabilized.
5:27But to Henry's point, for me as a part-time investor, this allows me to take advantage of the BRRRR, but take some of the time pressure that I don't like out of the equation. And I'll share some more about my buy box in just a minute. But Henry, how do you react to this framework in general of what people should be looking for for a rental property?
5:46Brandon Turner:No, I think this is a very smart approach. because it limits your risk on the front side because you're walking into something that's already making money or at least breaking even. So it allows you to be safe in a market where things can go bad quickly if the smallest thing changes. And I think previously, and when I say previously, I mean when the market was outstanding, 2021, 22, you could buy a deal. And then if If something didn't go well, time was on your side and the property value was going to go up and the market would save you. And in this market, that doesn't necessarily happen. So this saves people from the perspective of what if you buy something and then life happens and you don't get around to doing what you want to do in terms of renovating it.
6:38Brandon Turner:Like you can just still operate the property, put another tenant back in at the same rents without renovating it. And you can stay comfortable versus if you buy it and you know you have to renovate it to get to where you need to be because you're on short-term debt, then you don't have a choice. It doesn't matter if life lives. You've got to do something to get this property where it needs to be or it's going to be a detriment to you financially. So I like the safety of it. One question I would have, and maybe you'll touch on this later, is this scenario sounds like you're going to need to have some cash on hand to not just buy the property, but also renovate it.
7:14Brandon Turner:So what kind of cash on hand would someone need to have in order to execute a deal like this? That's a great question, because this is one of the challenges, because a lot of times I think this is probably what you're getting at is if you do the traditional BRRRR, what you do is you go out and get a hard money loan for both the acquisition cost and the renovation cost. But what I'm proposing and the way I structure these types of deals for myself is that I go out and get a conventional loan on the acquisition price. And that's one of the key differences here that I think is really beneficial for people who are thinking about this.
7:48So one of the keys is having an occupied property, like something that is safe and livable. Then you're going to be able to get a conventional loan. The thing I like about this is then you can put 20 % down. You're going to get good fixed rate debt that you can hold on to for as long as you need to. I think if I were new, I would probably target something that's like a duplex that's$250 ,000 to$300 ,000. Like if you could find something for$100 ,000 to$125 ,000 a door, I think that's a pretty good rate. So even if you go up to three plex, you can increase that budget to 300, 375, something like that.
8:27So you're going to need 25 % probably down on that. So let's just say that you are buying something 300 grand. You're going to need$75 ,000 to put down on that. So that is a significant amount of money. If you don't have that amount of money, you can do a couple of different things. You could do a house hack where you live in one of the units and rent out the other ones. That could probably mean you put 5 % or 10 % down. Or the second thing that I would consider doing is partnering. And I know a lot of new people don't want to do this, but like everyone partners on deals. Like I actually, I don't know how much you do, but a lot of real estate investors partner on a lot of deals, right?
9:01Yeah, I've got partners in some of my deals for sure. That's how I got started. I did my first deal with three different partners because I didn't have the money to do this. So that's one way to think about the acquisition costs is if you have 75 grand, go do that. If not, consider a partnership or an owner occupied strategy. Then you have to finance the renovation. So if you're at this$300 ,000 property that we're talking about, for me, per unit, I'd be looking to invest like 15 to 20 grand. In the Midwest, where I would be looking to do this, I think that's pretty realistic. It's like you're buying these for 100 to 125 a unit.
9:35You're putting 15 to 20 grand a unit. That means it's going to be mostly cosmetic. You're not moving a ton of walls. You're maybe fixing up the kitchen, the bathrooms, paint, maybe a little bit of floors, making it nice. So you need to find that kind of property. But that's what I would be looking for.
9:50Brandon Turner:Obviously, that means you need more money in there. And so I think there's a couple of different ways that you can go about financing this. Maybe you have some more ideas, but I'll just throw out a couple of ideas. Number one is if you are a homeowner using a home equity line of credit to go out and use your home equity to finance something. Remember, this is ideally going to be short term. So if you're going to put 50 grand into this property, you get a home equity line of credit. You use that to renovate, and then you're going to refinance your rental property. Once the renovations are done, ideally you get that 50 grand back or part of it back.
10:24You pay off your home equity line of credit, so you're not paying it. You could go get a hard money loan. That's going to be the most expensive option, but it's definitely possible. Other options are, again, partnering, trying to find someone who has that capital. Or the fourth option that I think is interesting and not a lot of people would do, And one of the reasons I love the slow burr is just saving your own money and waiting and doing it when you have money to do it. One of the benefits, I know that's crazy to like not go out and get into debt to do everything. And debt can be used, you know, applicably.
10:58But like the cool thing about this kind of debt structure and this kind of deal is like maybe you buy it and your tenants stay for a year and you just save up money. Maybe you save a thousand bucks a month. Let's just use that as a nice round number. You save up 12 grand, that's your renovation budget when they move out. Go spend 12 grand and renovate it. Then maybe you have a tenant turnover and you don't renovate the other one while you save up another 12 grand. And then just as you have time and as you have the money, you actually go and renovate that. I know that's not something we talk about in the real estate world that you could just save money and use that instead of debt.
11:31But I actually think that's one of the benefits of this slow burr approach.
11:35Brandon Turner:Well, yeah, saving up some money to actually invest it in your property sounds crazy. Crazy, but as legitimately a good thing to do. I think one option you could consider. Now, I have to give some caveats with this option. This option is not for everybody. This option will require you to be extremely disciplined and meticulous with making sure that you are paying back this money in the appropriate schedule. But one thing you could do is get a 0 % interest credit card for 15 months, for 12 months, 15 months, or 24 months, sometimes you can even find them. And then you can finance the renovation on this credit card.
12:17Brandon Turner:And then if you're going from a property, let's say that's cash flowing$100 a month, but now after you renovate it, it's going to cash flow$300 or$400 a month. You take the additional cash flow and you use that to pay back the credit card and you just need to do the math, right? So if it's 15 months and you borrowed, you know,$25 ,000, then you figure out what your payment is because you're paying all principal balance down and you have to do it in that 15 month timeframe. I would actually urge you to get that paid off one month prior to when that hits, because if you're one day late on that payment, then you get smacked with like 22 to 25 % interest and it backdates to all of the money you spent.
13:01Yeah.
13:01Brandon Turner:You get smoked. Right. You get smoked. So I would urge you to say, whatever it is, just take a month prior. And that's when you want to aim to have it paid off. And you can let your new cashflow pay that off. And one of the benefits of this strategy is you get all the benefits and perks of that credit card. So if it's a high air miles credit card, or if it's a hotel's credit card, you can get free flights. I know people who do this religiously for their renovations on their flips and they are traveling for free wherever they want to go because they flip a few houses a year. They use credit card points and they rack up miles and hotels and cash back.
13:39Brandon Turner:But the people who I know who are doing this successfully are so meticulous about their credit and so meticulous about paying this spec that uh it works for them this strategy is not for everyone you have to like the game of this i am one of those people i love the like credit card hacking thing i i don't want to brag well i do want to brag i'm actually purposely bragging right now i am about to become a million point air which is like the biggest red flag of the world like you should be spending these points when you get them, but I hoard them for no reason. I don't know why. I just like, I love the game of it.
14:20And like, for some reason it works. Because the reason I can possibly have a million points is because I do this with every rental property. Start an LLC, I get a business credit card with it. They give you a introductory bonus if you're going to spend five grand or whatever. Like I just go and get the bonus and then I use that credit card for that property for my expenses, my operating account on these things. You just do that over and over again. I am always hesitant publicly to give advice to go get a credit card, but it does work if you are good at this. A million caveats, like Henry said, you have to be this kind of person who's going to look at it every day, or you can get absolutely, you can get burned bad, like real bad, like forever bad.
15:04Brandon Turner:If you have ever in your life ever had a collections call on a credit card, this probably isn't for you. Yes. No. Absolutely not. The way you use credit cards is if you know you can pay them back and you're just going to take advantage of some of this arbitrage. That's the way to do it. Do not take out credit card debt if you do not have the money to pay it back immediately at any point almost. That's the key. But I like that approach to this. All right. I got a couple more things to share, though, here about my buy box and the things that I would be looking for. But we got to take a quick break.
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19:31Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm here with Henry Washington talking about what deals we are buying today and what we would recommend you go out and look for in today's market. Before the break, I was talking about the slow burr that I really like because it is very low risk in this kind of environment, but still has upside. It is very low time intensity or low time pressure, I should say, which is really ideal for people like me who work full time and do a lot of investing out of state. And it has a really good potential for debt structure that makes it low risk and has a lot of advantages.
20:05I do want to share just like some other thoughts, though, on my buy box, because I got real specific when I was thinking about these things of like stuff that I would look for too. So right now I am really pleased. My favorite asset class in real estate is small multifamilies. I love two to four units, but they've been hard to buy the last couple of years. I see that changing. We were talking about this the other day, you and I, like I see more of this inventory coming on the market right now. And so I'm looking at that. Personally, I don't care about the maximum number of units. I'm like, if it's two, it's three, it's four.
20:36I don't care. It's like the numbers for me, but I would adjust that if I were you based on your budget. If you can buy four units at a good price per unit, go do that. If you can only afford two units right now and it is a good price per unit, do the same thing. Second thing I would really look for in this market, especially if you're new, is low maintenance. This is something I missed when I was getting started. I'll tell you that. I bought a lot of houses that were built between 1880 and 1920. It's pretty much all I bought for a while. and uh that it's uh it comes with some pros and cons i'll just say it that way so now in my buy box i would look for something that is ideally in the 80s or newer if you go in the 70s or 60s that's okay depending on this specific situation but like if you're just blanket looking for things if there's housing stock in your neighborhood where you can get two bucks and built in the 80s at a good price per unit i would look at that you want electrical to be in the net last 30 or 40 years, like ideally in the last 20 years.
21:39But like if you can get in the last couple of years, you don't want galvanized plumbing, that's going to be a pain in your butt. And you want a solid HVAC system that you're not going to have to replace. These are all the things that are going to sort of like reduce your huge capital expense needs. A couple more things here just before we move on to your deal, Henry. One is, you know, I gave numbers out there of 250, 300. I look for these deals in the Midwest. I think if you're willing to invest out of state, you can find these kinds of deals on market in the Midwest, which is really beneficial.
22:09So I would look for that. But if you are in a different area, the price point thing is going to vary, obviously, a lot if you're in a high expensive market. So I would also just think about this relatively where just try and buy under the median home price. Like right now, the thing that's messing with the market is affordability. And so if you're buying stuff that is above the median home price is going to rent for well above the median rent, it could work. It totally could, but it is a little bit riskier in my opinion. I like to just be buying below the median home price, having the ARV close to the median home price, because that's just where the demand for rentals is going to be.
Read the full transcript
22:47If I have to go sell it, that's where the demand is going to be. I just think it makes your life easier.
22:52Brandon Turner:It's interesting because I can hear the naysayers already in the YouTube comments that are going to be like, well, these deals don't exist. And I was literally just on biggerpockets.com slash listing. So this is the bigger deals. And in the Midwest, there are literally tons of deals on the market right now with positive cashflow. You can get on bigger deals right now and you can see deals that fit this criteria in multiple markets in the country. I mean, we just drove around the Midwest and saw these deals firsthand. They absolutely do exist. Now, yes, you're going to need some cash to execute this strategy.
23:29Brandon Turner:But in terms of finding deals like this that exist, they're out there. And you don't have to do a ton of work to find them. Absolutely. All right, last two criteria, and then we'll move on to Henry's deal. One thing got to do market kind of in a decline right now in broad sense, I would try and buy 5 % under market comps. This is kind of like Henry's whole thing about buying deep makes a lot of sense. And everyone again, YouTube's gonna be like, yeah, okay, just go buy under market rents. like, actually, you can do that right now. You can buy under market rate. And for me, I think we're going to see in a lot of markets a correction of two, 3%.
24:03So I'm targeting 5 % under current market comps. Not every seller is going to be willing to do that. But there are sellers who are willing to do that 100 % right now, like there definitely are. And so you need to find those deals like that's what I would be looking for. And then the last thing is I said that for me, I'm pretty comfortable with two, 3 % cash on cash return when I first buy it. But I am not buying a rental property for 2 % or 3 % cash on cash return. That's what I'm doing while I stabilize my property. And so the last thing I would say is look for at least an 8%, ideally a 10 % stabilized cash on cash return.
24:39And what that means is basically analyze your deal two ways. Go and analyze it for what it's going to get you when you buy it. That's got to be at least break-even cash flow. Then once you're done with the renovations, whether it takes you six months, a year, or two years, what's your cash on cash return going to be after you refinance it and after you get rents up? To me, that's got to be about 10 % for me to hold on to the deal. And so that's what I would look for. And again, the only difference between what I'm saying and a long burr is I don't need to do this whole process in six months. I'm willing to take probably up to ideally like a year and a half, but I'd take two years to do this too.
25:12Brandon Turner:And also you got to look at your pro forma past year two or three. We say this is a long-term game and we know real estate is a long-term game. Yet when we're analyzing deals, we're only looking at like year one and year two on the proforma and determining that a deal is not a good deal. The other considerations are rent growth year over year in the market you're looking to buy this. Because the more your rent grows, the more your cash on cash return is going to grow over the time. So when you analyze it in your calculator, even on the bigger pockets calculators, when you scroll down, you can see multiple years out and you can assume your rent growth and you can assume your appreciation over that time.
25:59Brandon Turner:And you can see that your cash on cash return is not static. It doesn't stay the same. It grows the longer you own that property and the more that property goes up and rents go up in value. I completely agree. I think it's so silly looking at year one. I just think year one and year two about low risk to me. It's like, just don't lose the property, right? And then get it up to its highest and best use. And that's why I love BRRRR in general and this specific one is it has the best of both worlds, right? You flip houses, you know how much wealth value-add strategies, renovations can create. And the BRRRR gives you that opportunity in a smaller sense.
26:39It's not going to make you the same amount of equity as flipping a house, but it gives you some opportunity to build equity and the opportunity for cash flow. And you can recycle at least some of your capital. To me, that's really important. That just reminded me I had to say one thing. When I do the refinance, I do not expect to take 100 % of my money out of this deal. I think I should have mentioned that earlier. If I could take like 50 % plus out, I'm pretty happy. I just think we got in this era where people are like, oh, I could just acquire assets with zero money into them. And that's just not realistic in the new day and age.
27:10That's just the reality of investing in 2025. And that's okay. You can still build a great portfolio doing it this way. That's not something I really even consider. I just consider the total return on investment.
27:22Brandon Turner:It's a trade-off, right? The method that you're talking about is maybe easier to find the deal, Buried to entry is a little higher because you got to have the cash, right? But you're able to almost eliminate risk on the front side based on what you're buying and the capital that you're putting into the deal. Because at any point, especially if you're buying it with a slight discount, if you need to get out, you can get out. You can sell that property and you can get your money back and start over again, live to fight another day. The trade-off is when you operate like me, which like as a full-time investor, my trade-off is I'm doing so much work on the front side and spending a lot of time and capital on the front side to find the amazing deals that, yeah, I can get into a deal with very little of my own capital because I'm going to buy such an amazing deal.
28:11Brandon Turner:But I had to spend two, three, four,$5 ,000 a month on marketing to get there. Right? Like, so it's a trade-off. If you're going to put in the work on the front side, you can get the better deals and invest with less money out of your pocket, or you put less work in on the front side, you're probably going to have to spend some money. but you can have limited risk and you can get into the game now if you've got the capital. So it's just, it's absolutely going to be a trade-off. We got more coming up about what deals we recommend buying in today's market, but we do have to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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32:50welcome back to the bigger pockets podcast henry and i are here breaking down what deals we think you should look at in 2025 let's move on to your deal henry what would you recommend all right so
33:02Brandon Turner:i'm gonna talk about a flip since we did a rental everybody wants to know where to go or how to go find a flip that makes sense and i'm gonna be pretty specific in terms of numbers like i want you to go look for this deal with these numbers. Yes, it exists. You can probably find a deal like this on the market. You can definitely find it off market. But the big caveats are this is not going to be in every market in the country. It's just like Dave's strategy. You're going to have to go looking for a market where these conditions exist. Let me guess, they're not going to exist in Seattle. No, they do not exist in Seattle or Los Angeles or New York City.
33:44Brandon Turner:Okay. But deals like this do exist in multiple markets across the country. And so here is the market conditions you want to look for. So you want to find a market where the median home price is somewhere between 350 ,000 to 450 ,000. Oh, that's great. So just for context, everyone, that's the median home price in the United States. So that means at minimum, 50 % of the markets in the country hit that number, if not more, it's probably like 60, 65%. And then you want to also be looking for markets where the median rent price is at the national average or within 10 % of it. And I know I talked about flip.
34:27Brandon Turner:So people are like, well, why do you care about rent? Yeah. Yeah. Why? You care about rent, because what I'm trying to help you do is to find a flip that makes sense, but in the event something goes wrong and you have to pivot, we could put a tenant in this property and you could hold onto it until market conditions change and then you can sell it later. So I'm trying to help you protect yourself in the event things don't go 100 % smoothly. So you also wanna look for a market where the rents are fairly strong. So if you've got a median home price at the national average or below, and you've got rent prices at the national average or slightly above, then that's a good formula for you to be able to protect yourself by taking your flip and making it a rental.
35:10I like that. I'm tracking so far because there must be tons of markets in this country that meet that criteria.
35:15Brandon Turner:Exactly. So those are your caveats. All right. So what does the deal look like? So let's start with the most important number for a flip. What's the most important number for a flip, Dave? The ARV? The after repair value. This is the value of that property. After you've done your renovation, you're going to sell that property. This is the number you need to be looking for for your deal. You want your after repair value for this market to be somewhere around$300 ,000. And what that does is it allows you to put a product on the market at less than the average home price for that market, which means you've opened up your buyer's pool to lots of first-time home buyers, right?
35:57Brandon Turner:You want the most buyers looking for your type of property. You also want to put a desirable property on the market. And everybody wants to buy a house for less than the normal home price in that market. So your thought process here is like, When I go to sell my flip, which is the liquidation, that's where you make the money. That's where you make the money. Who's going to buy it? That's what you're thinking about. You're trying to say like, how do I find something where all said and done, there's going to be a lot of people coming to my showings and I'm going to hopefully get a lot of interest in this property.
36:33That's what you're thinking about before you even think about renovation budget or anything like that.
36:36Brandon Turner:Absolutely. Because you said it earlier, we're in a slightly air quotes down market, which means there's less eyeballs. And so as an investor, as a flipper, as a good flipper, what you want to be thinking is, how can I take advantage of the most eyeballs possible? And if you're selling a house under the average home price in that market, you're going to come up on a lot of people's home searches on Zillow and Realtor.com when they start looking for homes. And that's exactly what you want. So you were saying, just so I can recap here, I'm writing down notes because I'm interested in flipping, is you're basically looking for the median home price to be, like you said, $350 to$450.
37:18You're looking for something with the ARV that's going to come below that. But you haven't even talked about acquisition price yet.
37:25Brandon Turner:Right. Nope, not yet. We're working backwards. Okay. So where do we go from here? Now what you want to be doing is you want your renovation costs to be on the low to medium renovation. So we're not looking for a gut rehab here. We're looking for something where you're going to be doing a cosmetic rehab, paint floors. Maybe you take out a wall or two, but you're not moving a kitchen from one side of the house to the other. You're not tearing up the slab foundation to rearrange the property. We're not, this isn't a down to the studs renovation. This is something where you can spend somewhere between 30 and$70 ,000.
38:04Brandon Turner:You know, let's call it 50 grand on your renovation. This is cosmetic, maybe a little more than cosmetic buy. Maybe you got to put a new roof on it. Maybe you got to replace the HVAC. Maybe you got to update the plumbing, right? It's a cosmetic rehab with some additional big ticket items in there. And that's important because if it was just a lipstick renovation, it's going to be gone. Somebody's going to buy that, right? Like you got to buy some sort of a problem that's going to be too big for the current homeowner to want to deal with it, right? You got to look for that motivation. Why would somebody be willing to sell this property discount?
38:39Brandon Turner:Well, because it's got a couple of big ticket items, but most everything else is going to be cosmetic. So your sweet spot for renovation is between$30 ,000 and$70 ,000. Okay. I like that. And that's a pretty big range though. So does it, is that just depend on the property or your budget? Depends on the property, depends on the budget, right? What I'm trying to do is give you a profitability range here. So if you know your ARV is going to be around$300 ,000 and that your or renovation costs are going to be between 30 and 70, let's call it 50. Those are the two numbers you need in order to figure out what your max allowable offer needs to be for this type of property.
39:18Brandon Turner:Okay. So now that we have those two numbers, let's figure the rest out. So we know we need a$300 ,000 after repair value. It's going to need about$50 ,000 worth of work. So what is the offer price you need to make to have a profitable flip here? So the way I calculate this is max allowable offer equals after repair value minus renovation costs minus holding costs. And so holding costs are going to be what are you paying for the mortgage while you have it? We're going to assume that the person doing this is going to have to get a loan. Typically, you're going to get some sort of a hard money loan.
39:5712 percent.
39:58Brandon Turner:Yeah, pay 12 % interest. So I'm assuming holding costs of about$2 ,000 a month for five or six months, right? So 10 to 12 grand just to put you in the ballpark of where your offer needs to be. So let's call it 10 grand on holding costs. So we got MAO, max level offer equals ARV minus renovation costs, minus holding costs, minus closing costs. And when you think of your closing costs, you're going to pay your closing costs twice. You're going to pay it when you buy, and then you're going to pay it when you sell. And so for a property of this price point, I would probably assume somewhere around$10 ,000 ish in closing costs could be a little higher, could be a little lower.
40:39Brandon Turner:And then your commissions. So 6 % of your ARV is going to be your realtor commissions. That's going to be about 18 grand. Okay. All right. So we've got 300 ,000 minus a$50 ,000 renovation, that's going to put you down to$250 ,000. Minus$10 ,000 in holding costs, that's going to put you down to$240 ,000. Minus$10 ,000 in closing costs, that's going to put you down to$230 ,000. Then minus 6 % of the$300 ,000 for commissions, that's$18 ,000. That's going to put you down to$212 ,000. And then the most important number you need to be thinking about is how much money do you want to make? Yeah, profit.
41:25That's the one thing we're missing here. Yeah.
41:27Brandon Turner:So we need to subtract our profit. My rule, a general rule of thumb is I want to make about what I spend. $50 ,000 renovation, I want to make somewhere between$30 ,000 and$60 ,000 on the flip. We'll call this one 40. So subtract 40. That puts your max allowable offer at$172 ,000 for this property. And I think that that is a very reasonable thing to find in the parts of the country where these deals exist. And I think these are things that you could potentially find on the market because there are more sellers right now who need to sell and are having trouble. Now, you're probably going to have to make a lot of offers.
42:07Brandon Turner:You're probably going to have to run the numbers on a lot of deals. And a lot of these offers are going to be uncomfortable because you may find a deal that works like this, but the list price on the MLS is going to be 250. Yeah. Right. And so now you've got to come in and offer 172 and that's OK. Now, obviously, these numbers will fluctuate. If you pay more in closing costs, then your max allowable offer will need to be a little lower or maybe you're willing to make a little less profit. So your max allowable offer can be a little higher or, you know, maybe you're an agent yourself. And so you don't have to worry about the commissions.
42:37Brandon Turner:And so your max liable offer can be a little higher. But the equation stays the same. The equation stays the same. This is the general. What you're looking for is an ARV of$300 ,000 in a market where the median home price is higher than that, where your rent price is about the national average or more. So that let's say this doesn't sell and you need to pivot. You can stick a tenant in it, maybe paying somewhere between$1 ,800 to$2 ,000 a month. And you just hold on to it until the market shifts. but this is going to get you a solid$40 ,000 to$50 ,000 net profit. And then that gives you enough cushion for if you screw up on your renovation budget.
43:13Brandon Turner:And instead of spending$50 ,000, you spend$70 ,000. Well, you still make$20 ,000. Yeah, you're still making like a 40 % ROI in half a year. That's insane. This is a fairly safe flip calculation. Yeah, I love this so much. One, if you could just make anything into a math equation for me, I'm pretty happy. But this is the reason why, honestly, I'm thinking about trying to flip a house or two, even just a year. Like, I'm not trying to do this full time, but we're in these market conditions where a sideways market or even a modestly declining market may not make sense to a lot of people. They might say, oh, that's a bad condition to flip.
43:52And if you do it wrong, it definitely does come with additional risk. But the reason I love the way Henry is doing this is because it's adding in a lot of buffer And it's backing into what you can actually acquire things for. It's not based on, oh my God, I'm going to get maximized my ARV or like, I'm going to really figure out the way to squeeze my, my subs to make sure that my renovation budget is, is perfectly optimized. You're like, no, just like this is the equation. I'm going to give myself cushion on all of this. And the thing I'm going to be super disciplined about is what I am willing to pay.
44:27And that means you are eliminating a lot of the risk that goes into flipping. Like everything, there's a trade-off. And the trade-off is probably a lot of your offers are going to get rejected.
44:38Brandon Turner:Yes, a whole lot. You know, right? So that, but like, that's fine because you're eliminating the risk for yourself. So you got to ask yourself, do you want to get more offers accepted and take more risk? I don't. I would rather just have people tell me no and take less risk. That's much more, much more appealing. You may have to submit 50 to 100 offers on the market before you get a deal like this accepted. But I'd argue if you're looking in the right markets, there are places where you can pull something like this off. It's just you got to pick the right market. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like the reason I'm looking in a very expensive market, and obviously I'm not following your rules of median home price and that kind of stuff.
45:18But like these margins exist in expensive markets too, if you have the capital and ability to pull this off, like these types of margins exist. And that actually brings me to the second thing I wanted to mention about these sideways markets. Not everything is going sideways. This is like a data analyst's dream, this kind of market, because certain price points, certain neighborhoods, things are absolutely moving. And one of the things that you see when you enter a buyer's market, like we're in right now, is that the price of properties that are distressed or not renovated go down the most. And the ones that are really nice don't go down at all or go down the least or might even still be growing.
45:58Right. And so that actually increases the profit potential. Right. Because if you're even if your top line number, your ARV is flat for the next even year or two, or maybe if it's going down or one or two percent. The acquisition price you can buy these deals at is probably going down 3 % or 5 % or 8%. And yes, that does mean you need to be really disciplined and good at finding those deals, but it does mean that the potential is there and it might actually be getting better in the next couple of years if you are willing to sort of be disciplined about what you pay. That profit margin is available.
46:32Brandon Turner:Yeah. And let's put some perspective around this because, again, I can hear the nice layers in the comments like, you can't find a deal like this. Okay, realistically, let's say you had to make 100 on-market offers to land one deal with these ratios. And that made you 50 grand in a net profit. And it took you about six months. So if you submit 200 offers, you get two deals that make you 50 grand each. And you do one every six months. That's$100 ,000. That's more than some people's salaries. You're making more than the median income in the United States,$72 ,000. It's significantly more. Absolutely.
47:12I mean, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty good. That's why I'm thinking about doing one or two a year. It's like, why not just, I mean, that's a ton of money. It's a ton of money. Well, this is a lot of fun. Henry, thank you for bringing this deal. I appreciate your unique perspective. I was learning a lot and might be doing something just like this in the next few weeks.
47:29Brandon Turner:This investing in real estate is possible even in the climate that we're in. but I think what we want to do here at BiggerPockets is be realistic with people about what it actually takes to be successful given the environment. And so I know what we said doesn't sound as cool or as easy as things sounded in 2020 and 2022, but that's not the way the market is anymore. That's just the way reality. Like, yeah, it can't be easy and profitable right now. Like, I mean, there are spectrums, like some things are relatively easy and relatively profitable. That's what I look for, right? But the idea that you're going to hit these home runs without doing some of the effort and work that we're talking about, I'm sorry, you might get one of those every once in a while, but that is not the norm anymore.
48:14And what we're trying to give you is a repeatable formula because the whole goal here, right, is to long-term, it's a long game, over 10, 15 years, replace your income, achieve a level of financial independence. And for that, you can't just look for home runs. Those are unusual. You need a repeatable system that you can do for the next 5, 10, 12 years. And these are both examples of things that fit that bill. All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate you being here as always.
48:39Brandon Turner:Thank you for having me, man. It was a great time. And thank you all so much for listening. I'm Dave Meyer. He's Henry Washington for BiggerPockets. We'll see you next time.
From the publisher
You want to invest in real estate, but don’t know which property to buy. We’re about to make it much easier. These are the two best investment properties to buy in 2025, whether you’re a beginner with little to no real estate investing experience or a veteran investor ready for something with a bit more meat on the bone. We’ll share exactly how much they cost, where to find them, and how much they could make.
Let’s start with the beginners/part-time real estate investors. If you’ve got limited time in the day to dedicate to real estate, we’ve got the property for you. Dave is investing in these types of properties right now, even with his packed schedule and full-time job. These rental properties give you long-term returns with the added upside of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands in equity growth.
Next, for those who are a bit more dedicated, Henry will share the investment property “formula” you can rinse and repeat to build your real estate wealth. This works even better in today’s buyer's market and, when done right, can replace a six-figure salary, if you’re willing to put in the work. These are the investment properties working in today’s market!
In This Episode We Cover
The “slow” BRRRR method that makes you equity rich without the stress of a quick renovation
How much money you’ll need to invest in either of these solid real estate deals
Where to find properties like this (cheaper than the average home price!)
How to replace a six-figure salary with Henry’s house flipping “formula”
Funding a home renovation when you don’t have the cash (best options)
And So Much More!
Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1167
Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com.
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