Where We'd Invest in Real Estate Right Now (12 Markets)

18:39Ashley Kehr:Myrtle Beach is where when I was in high school, every single person went to Myrtle Beach for vacation. Yeah, I mean, Myrtle Beach is a popular tourist destination. 18 million annual visitors. Now, the city of Myrtle Beach, like the incorporated city of Myrtle Beach, there are restrictions on short-term rentals. But there's a section of North Myrtle Beach that's much more investor friendly and it gets great returns. It's like the Cherry Grove area. It produces great numbers for short-term rentals. We're talking like what I was looking at was about people were getting$54 ,000 a year annual revenue on some of their Airbnbs.

19:14And this is like not in the direct Myrtle Beach city, which is pretty cool. So that tells you you can go and you can get a property. You don't have to pay downtown Myrtle Beach prices, but you're a little outside of town. You can still get close to the coast. It's still a city where people are going to all the time. So, yes, people are going to stay not just in downtown, but they're going to start to stay in some of the outskirts where they can pay a little less, maybe get a little more amenities. But you can still be on the beach. So I really, really liked Myrtle Beach. And yeah, so what? There's golf.

19:46I mean, I may go play a couple of rounds if I was there. It'd be fine.

19:50Henry Washington:Yeah, tax rate off for you, too. But it's got really strong STR numbers. So high season, which is June through August, they average around 70 % to 80 % occupancy, which is pretty stinking good. And the rates are about$260 to$300 a night, which is pretty awesome. In the low season, which is December to February, it drops down to about 35 % occupancy, still around$223 a night. So you got to be pretty strategic with the properties that you buy. You got to make sure that your mortgage payment can sustain even the slow seasons, but you can make up for it in the high seasons. But those are pretty solid numbers for a short-term rental market.

20:32Henry Washington:All right. Well, that's a good one. My short-term rental market, again, in the Southeast, I'm not doing what you think I'm going to do. I picked Blue Ridge, Georgia. I like it because I generally like the idea of short-term rentals that are in driving distances of like big major metros. So if a family wants to get out of town quickly, they could hopefully get to the short-term rental in two or three hours. The barrier to people going to this place is low. And Blue Ridge is like extremely close to Chattanooga. That's how I uncovered this because I was looking around Chattanooga, but it is between Atlanta and Nashville.

21:17Henry Washington:And so you even get people from Asheville, from Charlotte, it's all driving distance from that. So it's a lot of the things people like about Pigeon Forge and the Smoky Mountain area, but it's just far less competitive than that area. Like a lot of people who have invested in short-term rentals and the Smokies are getting crushed right now, not because there was no demand, there's just too much supply, Too many people bought Airbnbs and are investing there, so you have to really compete. And when you look at Blue Ridge, you see prices in the$400 ,000 to$500 ,000 range. I personally, if I was going to go out and buy a short-term rental, I'd like a mid to higher level amenities.

21:58Henry Washington:I don't want to buy a low-end rental personally. And so I think being able to get a decent, good property, a bigger property is probably in the$500 ,000 to$600 ,000 range. But the ADR, the average daily rate is above 300. It's about 350. And so if you can get just the average occupancy on these things, they absolutely will cash flow. Like you were, you know, I was researching some of the top ones in the market are getting a hundred grand in revenue per year. So you can operate that even modestly efficiently. You could probably do that. It has good year round interest. There is low regulation. and in my research, I found that the move here is similar to what I've done with the one short-term rental I own, but it's buying bigger homes.

22:46Henry Washington:In a lot of the markets I've seen, there's a premium because there's less supply of three, four, five bedroom homes, but that's what families wanna rent. If you're having a family reunion or going away with another family, that's what you wanna be doing. And so to me, when I was doing my research, paying up a little bit to get that four bedroom or bigger, You can get great returns there. So that's what's going on in Blue Ridge, Georgia. That's pretty cool. What's the main thing folks do in Blue Ridge, Georgia?

23:16Ashley Kehr:Isn't it like hiking?

23:17Henry Washington:Yeah, it's mostly like hiking and outdoor activities. There's a giant lake, Lake Blue Ridge Recreation Area. It looks really lovely. I don't know. It's not Ozark size, Henry, but it's huge. So I think it's a lot of like lake activity and hiking, that sort of thing. Ashley, what'd you pick? Did you take a similar approach?

23:37Ashley Kehr:So I took a similar approach to Henry where I wanted a place that I wanted to invest in myself or visit myself or stay at. So this past winter, I went snowboarding in Vermont for the first time since I was like 12. Nice. And I loved it more than I loved going to Colorado. And I've gone snowboarding plenty of times in Colorado, I've gone to Breckenridge, gone to Keystone, Copper. And I could not believe how great it was. So it piqued my interest to look into short-term rentals there. So with Vermont, for me, this is a straight shot from Buffalo. Five and a half hours, you're on the 90s to Vermont to the resort.

24:24Ashley Kehr:Okay, so easy commute from a lot of places, including New York City. So for my city, I picked Morristown, Vermont. The village within it is called Morrisville, Vermont. But I picked this because it's close to a lot of the ski resorts, including Stowe. But it's also a lot cheaper. So you have great access to a lot of the resorts. Obviously, the home prices in Stowe, Vermont are outrageous. You know, million-dollar homes where you can get something between$385 ,000-ish to half a million. that's comparable to what you'd spend a million on right in one of the ski towns. But that was kind of my basis is looking for a market that's kind of outside of the heavily regulated area too, where Morrisville does have regulations in place, which you do want because eventually every town will put some kind of regulation in place, but they don't limit the amount of permits.

25:21Ashley Kehr:So I did a little comparing of like Breckenridge and even Wright and Stowe. And like in Breckenridge, they limit how many you actually can get and stuff like that, too. So that was a main difference is you get a lot of the amenities that you would going to Colorado. Obviously not as high of mountains, but this year we did have way better snow than Colorado.

25:46Henry Washington:Better snow than Colorado this year.

25:48Ashley Kehr:But Vermont sees about 13 million people throughout the year, and it is a four seasons destination with definitely more people during the winter. But there is like hiking and continuous stuff going on all seasons.

26:02Henry Washington:You get all those leaf peepers, too, in the fall, right?

26:05Ashley Kehr:I don't even know what that is.

26:07Henry Washington:What did you just say? Leaf peeper. Oh, come on. It's the people. Is that not a term people know? Leaf peepers. I don't know why. In Colorado, everyone would come to see the Aspens change color and just call it leaf peepers. I guess I'm alone on this one. But I love this one, Ashley. Let me just say, Vermont's great. It's just such a nice place. It's freezing in the winter, but you can ski. So it's great. And it's so nice in the summer. I feel like New England, that part of New England in the summer is very underrated. And the fall is great, too. So love that. And I really like the idea of investing right outside the main town.

26:46Henry Washington:It's actually what I did in my ski house in Colorado. Just like one town over. It's unincorporated. They don't regulate anything. You can get a lot bigger land. A lot of people want to be close to resorts, so they rent the condos. But I've got a big house because I was like, all right, how do I compete? It's a little bit further away. I'm going to give people land, a view, a bigger area. I really like that approach to this. And I'm just, I'm Googling it now and looking on Zillow because it sounds awesome. Like there's really cool homes for very affordable prices in this. Like there's cool houses for like 400 grand and it's literally right down the road from Stowe.

27:23Ashley Kehr:And they have like the cute little villages at all the ski resorts too that like, you know, you see in Colorado also too, which I was surprised to see.

27:32Henry Washington:Time to turn to flipping. And I guess it's my turn to go first as the probably least experienced flipper out here. But I'm going back to my roots, Henry. I'm going to the Northeast and I am picking Hartford, Connecticut. I think I've done this for long-term rental, so I'm probably cheating. But I really like Hartford. There's so many people moving here and it is a great place to flip. The median home price is$2.87. So you can get flips for really, really cheap. But days on market right now for renovated homes, still 18 days. Oh, wow. Yeah, 18 days. It's 40 for non-renovated homes. So if you do these kinds of things, you're going to get appreciation tailwinds.

28:15Henry Washington:It's one of the few markets in the country right now that are still growing faster than inflation. 55 % of homes right now are selling above list price still. So there's still bidding wars on average for these kinds of property. and just to boot for this one, if you don't sell it, you can rent it out. It's a great rental market as well. So I know I cheated, but I never said it was a great flipping market till today. So I'm sticking by it. I like your concept of flipping in a market that also makes sense for long-term rentals. Spoiler alert, I did the same thing for the market that I chose. But it gives you a secondary exit strategy because sometimes you want to hold onto a flip.

28:55Either you realize it's in a great neighborhood and you want to keep it, or you can't get what you want out of it in terms of a sale and you have to pivot and throw a tenant in there. Also, it's a pretty decent sized city and has a lot of other metros that aren't too far. So I think it's got great dynamics, but those days on market. Yeah. Give me that. Give me that all day.

29:16Henry Washington:Exactly. Staying strong. And just for everyone to know, we've talked about this in the past, but Hartford is kind of right in the middle between Boston and New York. It's not close. You But for people who only have to be in the office a couple days a week, it's a pretty appealing location because, I mean, you're not getting a medium-price home of$287 in New York or Boston. It's literally three or four times that. So it's a lot more affordable. And depending on where you are, the taxes are a lot more favorable in Connecticut, too, than Massachusetts or New York. So that's what I'm choosing. Henry, a resident flipper, what did you pick?

29:53The market I landed on is Allentown, Pennsylvania. Ooh, okay. Well, I cheated a little bit because I kind of chose two markets. I chose Allentown, Pennsylvania and Reading, Pennsylvania. Here's why I chose these markets. Again, want to be able to pivot and rent if I need to, but median home price is$348 ,000 in Allentown and it's$327 ,000 in Reading. Now, Allentown, it has an abundance of 1920s to 1970s row houses that are in desperate need of renovation. And I was looking up kind of like what the average like purchase prices are versus how much you're having to put into these things versus what you're able to sell them for.

30:39So on average, people can buy distressed properties in the ballpark. And this is without having to go with some healthy off market strategy. This is just normal networking, MLS listings, those kinds of things. So buying between$150 ,000 to$200 ,000, spending between$50 ,000 and$80 ,000 on the renovation, and selling between$280 ,000 and$340 ,000. Those are just good, solid flip numbers. Not too risky, allows you to be able to pivot and rent it if you need to. You're not having to do big, high-priced renovations. You're not having to do luxury homes. You're providing affordable housing. So I really like those dynamics.

31:17This is not far from the Philadelphia and New York metro areas. And so people could commute to those cities. Also, Allentown is having a growth spurt right now, if you want to call it. So population growth is going up in Allentown right now. Job growth is growing up in Allentown right now. What people don't know about Allentown is it is a huge city for companies like Amazon and Walmart who have big warehousing facilities, tons of warehousing operations. The scale of these warehouses that these companies are building or renting and creating tons of jobs is pretty cool. But that creates opportunity for you to rehab housing and provide rehabbed housing for people.

31:56So I like it as a flip market. The reason I chose Redding is because it's not far from Allentown. It's not having as big of a boom right now as Allentown, but it's kind of what's next up on the list. And it's in between Allentown and Philadelphia. so very similar market dynamics not as popular great for you to get in now and start flipping some homes and making some profit but you can still pivot and rent so both those markets are kind of interchangeable to me but i think they're great market dynamics for flipping yeah it's a

32:26Henry Washington:great rental market too so i just i think similar approach like you said and i like the price point

32:32Ashley Kehr:all right ashley also a flipper what do you got i went with murfreesboro oh tennessee and i did Googled the pronunciation of this. So Google is wrong if I said it wrong. So this is actually outside of Nashville, Tennessee. So you're getting the overflow of people, you know, moving out of Nashville that can't afford it. It's seen 5 % year over year prices go up. But the thing I liked most about this market is it has newer homes, but are outdated. So they're structurally sound. So It's kind of the sweet spot to do three to four beds that just need cosmetic rehabs and don't need full gut jobs. The median price point is a little higher than I would like for doing a flip, especially if you're not an experienced flipper, but$400 ,000 to$450 ,000.

33:26Ashley Kehr:Days on market are pretty decent considering about 28 is average days on market with 30 % of the homes actually selling within the first week. if they're priced right and not overpriced.

33:39Henry Washington:I like that. All right, so those are our best flipping markets. We have one more to do, house hacking. We'll get to that right after this break.

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37:29Henry Washington:Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast here with Henry and Ashley doing our best markets for the summer of 2026. We've done long-term rentals. We've done short-term. We've done flipping. It's time to do house hacking. Ashley, I think we've made our way around. It's your turn to go first again.

37:46Ashley Kehr:So I wanted to house hack in a high cost of living market. So I started off with just searching over the last 30 years, which were like the top 20 markets that saw the most appreciation. And it definitely wasn't in the top five, but I picked Boston, Massachusetts. I kind of weeded out like New York City, LA, things like that that I didn't want to invest in. So I went with Boston, Massachusetts. As if I'm going to house hack, this is where I would want to be. I'd want to be on the Northeast. Really just looked at a town that I saw a lot of appreciation and a way for me to get a deal there while reducing my living costs, basically.

38:34Ashley Kehr:And that was really my only basis behind I like it. Yeah. Those several things because it's house hacking. So it's going to be an emotional decision.

38:42Henry Washington:I mean, Boston is an incredibly strong market. It's also one of those things, not necessarily if you're going to move there, but if you live in Boston, the rent is so expensive that house hacking is one of the only way to make living costs affordable. Boston also having spent a good amount of time there, there's a lot of good housing stock. Like there's a lot of duplexes and triplexes, like stuff that you can buy and rent out multiple units. That's not true in every city in the country, but Boston definitely has that. Duplex, triplex in Boston is going to be quite expensive, but if you can afford it, you can make that work, putting 5 % down, 10 % down, or there are parts obviously not in the heart of downtown where you can definitely, there are more affordable parts of the city too.

39:25Henry Washington:But I like your general thinking about house hacking and what to do with it. I had a similar train of thought, like wanting to get into a more expensive market to get appreciation. So I went through a similar analysis here and I picked a market. I've never been here, but in my brain, this is like the perfect place to live. I picked Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. I love Raleigh. Is it as awesome as it sounds on paper? I've enjoyed it. Every time I've been there, I've just enjoyed it so much. Love that place. The job market in this area is just incredible. So if you're young and trying to move somewhere where the real estate is good and you can get a high paying job, like there are not many better places in the country.

40:08Henry Washington:And it's not so expensive that you can't get into homes, right? Like if you're looking in Raleigh, Durham, it's different in different markets. Raleigh is more expensive than Durham, but like I was still finding duplexes for 400 ,000, right? Like you could still find homes in this excellent market. The weather is good. I think there's a lot of young professionals. So if I were young looking for a place to go house hack, I do probably think this is where I would pick. I just think there's so much good stuff going on there. I also personally just like being in college towns. There's always interesting things going on.

40:48Henry Washington:There's usually good food. You got Duke. You also have NC State not far away. So there's just so much good stuff going on down there. I got to go visit. It's probably good golf, Henry, I would imagine, North Carolina. So I'm picking Raleigh-Durham. All right. Last market of the day. Henry, what's your house hacking market? All right. House hacking market. The criteria that I use to narrow down the markets I wanted to choose from where I was looking for top 10 markets where home prices were above the national average, but where rents were also above the national average. But what was important here was I wanted reasonable property taxes that are closer to the national average, but I wanted to prioritize markets where the total rent for one unit of a duplex would cover the mortgage payment.

41:33Henry Washington:Ooh, I like that. Or if it doesn't cover the mortgage payment, the remaining balance would still be less than it would cost to go and rent a property in that market. That's right. So I was looking for where it's expensive, but where it would still make financial sense for you to do that over just going and renting a property. Does that make sense? Yep, that makes perfect sense. I like that. So the market I landed on was Riverside, California. Oh, wow. Is this our first California entry? I think so. I don't think we've had a California before, but Henry's a California boy, if you guys don't know.

42:13I am. I am born and raised in California. So the math on this one is$537 ,000 median home price with a 5 % down on a 6.2 % 30-year mortgage produces about a$3 ,000 a month mortgage payment, a duplex or an ADU property. Renting one of those units would give you about$1 ,500, so half the median rent. That leaves a gap of about$1 ,725 a month. So that gap of$17.25 a month is about$930 less than what it would cost you to go rent a unit in that market.

42:54Henry Washington:Nice. So if you're able to house hack there, you're actually saving yourself about$1 ,000 a month instead of going to rent something. So now you can get some appreciation. You may have to come out of pocket a little bit, but the numbers make sense for you to house hack in this market. And so in places like California, sometimes people feel stuck. They feel like, hey, I've got to pay expensive rent. I can't afford to buy anything. So I think it makes a great house hacking market in a place like this. And there are other cities around the Los Angeles area that have similar dynamics. So if you live in an area like the Los Angeles proper, you can't do this.

43:35It still may be cheaper for you to rent. But if you look in areas like Riverside or surrounding areas, you can probably find yourself a property that you can afford to buy as a duplex, rent one unit and live in the other and save money in terms of just renting in that market flat out.

43:51Henry Washington:Awesome. All right. Well, hopefully this helps you all. Maybe you were interested in some of these individual markets, or maybe just by hearing the criteria that three experienced investors use to pick markets based on strategy can help you pick where you invest. Because right now, the market split. Some markets are doing well, some are not. And making sure that you're investing in places that have good long-term fundamentals and investing in places where the fundamentals match the strategy that you're actually using is more important than ever. Thank you both for being here. If you wanna, just as a reminder, if you wanna hear more from Ashley, she's the host of the BiggerPockets Rookie Show, you can check out that show anywhere you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

44:34Henry Washington:And Henry and I will see you back on this channel sometime soon. Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian Kay. Copywriting is by Calico Content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only.

45:09Henry Washington:All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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