Falling in love too soon can go both ways. And for real estate, it can make you miss details you should have noticed if you were not too caught up in the process. These are just a few of the lessons that new investors learn the hard way. And to save you from falling into the same trap, Housing Market Analyst and VP of Data & Analytics at BiggerPockets, Dave Meyer, shares the do’s and don’ts when investing in real estate. He recounts past deals and shares his personal prediction of where the future of the real estate market is heading. If you are looking to invest in passive income, or just looking out for a new home, tune in and get good insights on your best bets for making a great deal.
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The Do’s And Don’ts Of Real Estate Investing And Where It Is Headed With Dave Meyer
You are tuning in to the show . We’ve got an awesome guest, Dave Meyer. If you don’t know Dave, he has been a host of the BiggerPockets podcast a while back. He is a host of a BiggerPockets podcast, On the Market. He works for BiggerPockets. He’s the data junkie that everyone wants to have in their pocket. We have him in ours for the next hour. Give this a read to the end.
He’ll talk about his investing journey, but also about where he thinks that market’s going to be headed and what he thinks you should do about it as an investor in these changing market conditions. He gives some good advice backed by data, which again is always hard to dispute. Z, is there anything you want to add before we bring him on?
No. Let’s bring him in.
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Dave Meyer, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
I’ve been great. This is so much fun. Craig and I used to be working together at BiggerPockets and talking about data and finance. Things have changed a lot.
It has been a while. I was looking back and I’ve known Dave for years. You were probably one of the first people I ever met in Denver. I came to Denver for the interview at BiggerPockets, and then you were one of the people that interviewed me. You were probably the second person I met in Denver. Now, neither of us is in Denver. You’re in Amsterdam. We’ll talk about that. I’m in Idaho. We want to hear your story. Why don’t you rewind it back and tell us where you first heard about financial independence?
I never heard about the word financial independence until I was already doing it. I didn’t know that term. I was out of college. I moved to Denver and was waiting tables. I met a friend who I used to ski with who randomly bought a house with his girlfriend and was crushing it. This was in 2010. It was easy in Denver to get some good cashflow. I was honestly jealous. He was living this super relaxed lifestyle where he was working part-time and making all this money. I was like, “I want to do that.”
I wound up finding three partners. I had no money at the time, so I found three partners who would go in on a deal with me. We split the down payment, but I didn’t even have money for the down payment. I borrowed that on a secondary loan from a family member. We got that first deal. Ever since then, I’ve been completely hooked.
Real estate is super addicting. How did you find these partners? How did you have the courage to go through with partners on your first deal?
I was lucky. The first person I partnered with was my roommate at the time. I went skiing and heard about this guy making all this business. I came back and was like, “We have to do this.” He was someone I knew from high school. Luckily, we brought him in. We both knew some people back in New York where we’re from whom we presented the plan. He and I were the two operating people.
By a stroke of luck, I worked for a developer and a construction management company during college internships and learned how to do financial modeling. I felt pretty comfortable that I could produce an Excel document that would convince people that we would make money. If I looked at my underwriting of that deal, I would be fired by BiggerPockets, but I felt like it was good at the time. Honestly, we went to friends and family and were able to find two other partners. The amount you needed back then was different than what you need now for a down payment in Denver. Fortunately, we all knew each other so we were a little bit more confident probably than we should be. It was probably a lot of naivetés.
We are getting into the For Real Deal, which is the deal that’s your first intentional deal. We’re talking about this. You’re talking about your four partners. You’re talking about how you got creative with it. Denver’s a different place than it was back in 2010 and 2012. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you were looking for and what the house looked like? Did you house hack it?
I bought a fourplex. I was looking for small multifamilies. I was lucky to find a great agent. I was working part-time as a commercial agent to make extra money because I was waiting tables and wanted to make some more money. She introduced me to some people who invest. I wanted to be in a high foot traffic area. I’m from New York. When I first moved to Denver, I looked at the external areas and was like, “This isn’t a city. I don’t understand what this is.” I was looking downtown.
I liked Capitol Hill because there’s a lot of demand in that area. It’s a young area. A lot of people want to move there. I was able to find these old, big Victorian houses that used to be mansions and have been cut up into multiple apartments. It was about 3,800 square feet. There were two 2-bedroom, 1-bath apartments, and two 1-bed, 1-bath apartments.
It was run down, to be honest, but I was able to buy four units for $450,000 in a good neighborhood in Denver, which is comical at this point. At that point, it was scary. It was great. We were able to raise the rent pretty quickly. Denver started to boom around that time, so there was some luck involved. It was a good place to cut your teeth. I learned a lot from property managing that place.
We inherited tenants. It was the only time I’ve ever had to evict someone. For the most part, they were pretty solid. The one guy on the top floor didn’t pay and was non-communicative, so we did have to evict him. That’s the only time I’ve ever had to do that, fortunately. There was some deferred maintenance, for sure, mostly cosmetic. We wound up painting pretty much the entire part place. I did a lot of it myself. I learned that was a bad idea.
There were some things that needed to be brought up to code. I tried to do that myself and failed miserably. I felt like it was a great learning experience, learning how to allocate your time efficiently, what I can do myself, and what I should be hiring out. It was good in that way and humbling to recognize how hard it is to do a lot of this maintenance yourself and realize you should be hiring professionals.
Learn how to allocate your time efficiently and look at what you can do yourself and what you should be hiring out. Share on XDo you remember what your mortgage payment was on that first deal? A quick ballpark, what were those initial rents? It’ll be cool to show people the ten-year trajectory of a potential real estate investment.
I’m trying to remember the mortgage payments. I want to say that with escrow, it was maybe $2,200. It was a 5% interest rate. The rents were probably about $3,500 to $4,000 when we bought it. We probably got it up above $5,000 pretty quickly. The number in my mind is sticking as the two bedrooms were each rented for about $1,300 back then.
Quick math, you’re making about $4,000 in rent and $2,200 from your mortgage. That’s $1,800 a month cashflow. You’ve got reserves and vacancies, so maybe, you’re making $1,500 to $1,000 a month in straight cashflow. That was like a deal for me and Melissa in Denver. That’s crazy to think about. Do you still own the house?
No. I sold it in 2018.
I’m sure you’re kicking yourself.
I reinvested in Denver, so it’s fine.
In 2018, when you sold, what were the rents then?
At least $6,000 a month or maybe more. It went up from 50% to 60% over eight years. That was before rent went up like crazy over the last few years. That was normal rent growth.
You’re probably getting $7,000 or $8,000. Let’s say that in a 6 or 7-year period, your rents go up to $2,000. Your mortgage payment is staying the same. You’re still getting all that appreciation. That’s the great thing about holding real estate for the long term. The numbers may barely work when you buy it, but in 8 to 10 years, which everyone, hopefully, is holding for the long-term, your cashflow ends up exploding. Z?
One thing about holding long-term, especially with older buildings, is that they can require a lot of maintenance. Was that one of the reasons why you were like, “Let’s get rid of this and then maybe buy something a little bit easier?”
That’s exactly right. Having partners, people have different desires at that point. It had been truly a grand slam. We decided to go our separate ways after years of partnership. It went well. There was a lot of deferred maintenance. We wanted to sell it, but we had some concessions. We had to put a whole new roof on during the sale. We painted the whole place, but there was more work.
I honestly think if someone had the energy and will, they could have renovated the interior and got the rents up to $8,000 or $9,000. My life was changing and I didn’t have the energy and the partnership buy-in to do it. We sold it and 1031’d into other places in Denver that still had some value add, but were in a little bit easier position to do that.
In 2018, did all four of you sell it together or did anyone ever want out before anybody else? Were there any implications that happened through that 6 or 7-year period?
Yes. Two of us bought the other two out in 2016. It was this progression. It was amicable. It’s because we all knew each other. The other reason is that we made an operating agreement in 2010 that had rights at first refusal and what we would do if someone wanted a lease. It’s something I always recommend to people with partnerships. It sounds stupid. People always think, “It’s not necessary. I know people.” It’s the opposite. If you know someone, the even more reason to do it. You don’t want to mess with your relationship.
When we were ready to sell and two people wanted to exit, I was like, “We got a plan. Here’s what we’ll do. You get an appraisal. We get an appraisal. We’re going to average the two of them together. We’re going to get the option to buy you out. If you refuse, we’ll sell.” We decided to buy them out. It worked out pretty well for everyone. Everyone was happy. That doesn’t happen all the time, but with anything, if you’re clear about what you’re going to do and the operating procedures, it helps a lot.
When entering into a partnership, be really clear about what you're going to do and what the operating procedures are. Share on XFor people to understand a buyout, did you guys have to refinance? Where did you get the capital to be able to give them that money?
We were able to refinance and buy them out without any additional capital injection. For six years, we built up a lot of equity in the home and did a refi. The two people who sold got a lot of liquidity. The refi did bring down our cashflow for a while but gave the two of us a better equity position. Honestly, everyone got what they wanted, which was great.
In 2018, what did you end up selling that for?
$1.15 million.
Talk about a grand slam. You went from $450,000 to $1.15 million. I almost can’t even do that math. It’s too big. Was it $700,000?
The way it worked out for the equity position was a 6X.
You had 6X for the return of investment. That’s amazing. You’re right. It was an unprecedented time in the real estate space. You bought it at the perfect time.
It’s a lot of luck, honestly.
You also need to put yourself in the position to be lucky in order to do that. You have to at least buy something at some point. No one knows what the next ten years are going to look like, but I would bet even though we may be seeing it down in the next 12 to 24 months, over the course of 6, 8, to 10 years, you can almost guarantee that it will go up. You mentioned that in 2018, you sold it and then 1031’d into another property. What did you 1031 into?
We did 1031. I reinvested into two places. One was in Denver. It was a single-family near the BiggerPockets office. I liked that area a lot. There’s a lot of development money going in there from the city. I then bought my first short-term rental that was near Winter Park in Tabernash, Colorado. It was mostly for selfish reasons because I wanted to use it.
You were able to sell a $1.1 million property. In order to 1031, you need to go into something bigger. I suspect none of those individually were bigger, but collectively, they were. That’s why you’re able to do that.
That’s exactly right. As long as you take on the purchase price more and the same amount of debt, those two combined were probably around $1.3 million for the total acquisition cost.
Let’s talk about the Denver place first. This was the place that was near the BiggerPockets office. Why else did you like that place? Why else did you end up going through with it?
I had this whole deal lined up for 1031 and then there was a title issue at the last minute. I needed to identify a property. I’m sure you two are like this, but I go look at houses for fun because I’m weird. I was like, “I know that’s not on the market,” so I ran back over there. It’s in the neighborhood. It was three blocks from the house I lived in, which I liked. I was still self-managing everything at that point. It was convenient. I knew this neighborhood like the back of my hand, which is super important.
I had bought my personal residence because I knew there was a park coming in. They were building this nice park, bike path, and all this stuff when the city was putting in a lot of infrastructure. It was in the same area, so it was easy to manage. I thought it would cashflow. It did. I did buy it from a flipper, which was weird. It was turnkey. There are some downsides to that, for sure. I learned my lesson there. Overall, it worked out well.
Why is it bad to buy from a flipper?
They take a lot of shortcuts sometimes, but this was okay. There are always some skeletons in the closet. That’s not every flipper. This is a flipper I don’t know. There was random stuff missing. It was fine. It was nothing significant. I learned to do a little bit more due diligence and not take for granted the fact that everything looks new so it functions properly.
Do your due diligence. Just because everything looks new doesn’t mean they function properly. Share on XWhen you’re looking through the house before you buy it, is there anything you can go to think, “Maybe this isn’t done with the best quality?” Do you have any secrets up your sleeve with that?
I don’t even know. I’ll give you examples of stuff that I found. I pulled out the dishwasher once and there was no subfloor beneath it. They didn’t bother to put any subflooring in. There was no garage door engine. It was not there. It was open when they were showing the house. I was like, “It’s there.” That wasn’t caught in the inspection. It was little things like that. I didn’t honestly use a punch list. I was coming off this deal, falling through, and desperate to find something. I was like, “This is great. This is the perfect house.” I cut some corners I shouldn’t have.
That’s the trouble of falling in love. That happens to me a lot. You’re like, “This is perfect. I know it,” and then it blinds you.
There’s a reason you should go through a checklist. You had asked about house hacking earlier. I didn’t wind up house hacking that one, but I did a different triplex in Denver for a while. I’m sure both of you could tell a lot of stories, but the house you line in is the move you want to make.
With this house that you ended up buying, it was a flip. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. What did you end up renting that one for?
It was about $3,000 a month and bought it for $550. It was cashflowing probably 5.5% or 6% return cash-on-cash. It was not great, but honestly, in Denver at that time, that was pretty good. Given the tax savings and the situation I was under, I was pretty thrilled with that. For the record, it didn’t keep up. I sold that earlier in 2022.
Did you rent it as a traditional rental or was it Airbnb?
Traditional.
Why did you sell it? Were the rents not keeping up or was there a lot of maintenance?
It was the return on equity. The property had appreciated so much that we had a lot of equity in it and the price of the rent wasn’t keeping pace. It was a cool house. The neighbors were a problem. We kept losing good tenants because the neighbors were causing issues. It was a headache. I live in Europe. I didn’t want to deal with it. I wound up selling it at a good time and put it into a passive investment instead.
What was the passive investment? Was it syndication?
I did a DST. Have you ever done or heard of a DST?
It sounds like a drug.
It’s not. It’s called a Delaware Statutory Trust. It’s this legal structure that allows you to put 1031 money into syndication because otherwise, it is hard. You need to either do a tenancy in common or a Delaware Statutory Trust. I did that. It’s cool. We’ll see how it goes, but so far so good.
Let’s not forget about your luxury house up in Tabernash, your short-term rental. Tell us a little bit about that one. What did you end up buying that one for? How much was the mortgage payment? How’s it going with the short-term rental stuff?
I was in Grand County for a long time. It’s a great, wonderful place. Prices there are so much cheaper than they were. There are other ski towns in Colorado. They’re not anymore, but they were. I did a lot of analysis and found that houses that had 4 or 5 bedrooms were outperforming the market and they weren’t that much more expensive. I went and looked.
Luckily, in a small area like that, you can go look at every house on the market, and I did. I found one that was three bedrooms but had maybe 1,500 square feet of excess living space in the basement. I converted those into two additional bedrooms. I bought it for $740,000 and have been renting it out with a professional rental property company for a few years. It has been doing great.
It’s not a tremendous cash-on-cash return probably because I do it with a professional property management company. If I did it myself or built the systems, I’d probably do better. I’d probably do over 10% easily. It’s still doing well by my standards. When I go back to Colorado, I still get to use it, so I like it. It has been a great investment. The appreciation everywhere has gone crazy. Ski towns, in particular, have done well over the last few years. We’ll see if that holds up over the next few months, but it has worked out great.
It all stems from that one great decision that you made back in 2010 to partner with everybody and buy the house. It’s cool how it goes from that to where you’ve got a ski house that’s making a whole bunch. You’ve got your primary residence. You’ve got another property. You’ve probably got a few more as well. We don’t have time to go into your whole portfolio, but why don’t you give us an overview of what your portfolio looks like? I then want to talk a little bit about where you think the market’s going to be headed and all that good stuff.
To your comment about that, when I first did that first deal, I had no equity. I was paying off a secondary loan using the money I was making by being the property manager. I got some tailwinds from the economy and everything, but you never know where it’s going to go. I do still own a few single-families and one small multifamily in Denver.
Since moving to Europe a few years ago, I haven’t done any individual deals. I invest in syndications, mostly in large multifamily value adds. I like that because it suits me. Part of my job at BiggerPockets is exploring different markets and learning about different markets and asset classes. I like syndications because it allows you to invest in those types of things without having to build a team. It is not that hard, to be honest, but at the stage I’m in with my career and my lifestyle, that’s what I invest in most.
It sounds like where you want to focus on is your job at BiggerPockets. You don’t want to focus on being an investor.
I’m weird. I like my job at BiggerPockets, so I’m going to stay with it. I do invest. I like doing it. I’ve done three this 2022. I probably will do 1 or 2 more syndications by the end of 2022. I’m trying to be active, but logistically, living in Europe, it’s hard to think about managing properties again. I don’t have the time to get the deal flow that I would need. Even deploying the amount of capital I want to, it’s easier. If we move back I probably would start again buying individual properties.
I feel like you have all this information in your head with all these different markets. I’m like, “It’s going to waste. We need to have regular calls. I need to figure that out.”
That’s why I talk about it.
You need to become a regular @TheDataDeli, Z.
I’m trying to share the information. I’m happy to share what I know if you have questions.
Let’s get your crystal ball out. I imagine people ask you all the time how to predict the future. None of us can. We have some ideas. What do you think of this market and people still investing in real estate?
People do ask me all the time. To your point, the only honest answer is that no one knows. My guess is that the market is likely going to see a single-digit decline in property values on a national scale. It could be more like a flat market. These ideas that people are saying that it’s going to revert to pre-pandemic levels are nonsense. There’s a small chance of that happening. You are starting to see certain large markets. Seattle and San Jose have seen almost 5% to 7% month-over-month declines from June to July 2022. I do think that trend is likely to continue for a little while and will probably accelerate into winter.
With that said, we’re reaching this point where the market is going to split. Certain markets are going to perform well and certain markets are going to decline further. It comes down to knowing your local market well. To your question about investing, I’m more interested in investing now than I was a few months ago, to be perfectly honest. Most people who are experienced understand that there’s less competition, sellers are more motivated, and you have more leverage. It’s a different environment.
I get that it’s scary as a first-time investor. Unlike a few years ago, you could buy anything and you would make a killing. That is no longer the case. You have to be a lot more selective. You have to stick to your fundamentals. I genuinely believe there are more opportunities now than there were a few months ago if you’re buying for the long-term. I wouldn’t be flipping houses, but I’ve never flipped a house, so I’m biased.
To echo your point there, our team, the Fi Team, we’re constantly helping house hackers and long-term investors mostly on the buy side. We have never had this much leverage in our entire history. It’s like, “We can go in a little below asking. Ask for concessions. We don’t need to waive inspections or appraisals. We have power.”
It’s good. Interest rates are higher, but if you have the power to make a good purchase, in a few years, when the interest rates drop again, you can refinance it. You want to do that. You want to make sure you buy the property before interest rates go back down. When interest rates go down, housing prices are going to go back up. That’s my take on it. Maybe you can call my bullshit or not.
There is never a time when there’s going to be a perfect alignment on every factor in the housing market. People are like, “I want to see the market crash so then I could buy something cheap at the new bottom.” We all want to do that. We also want that to be at a time when there are low-interest rates, employment’s high, and we have a great debt-to-income ratio. Those things don’t exist. There are always going to be some adverse conditions. It’s interest rates. That’s something to think about.
My guess is that interest rates will fall probably at some point again in the future. We don’t know, but that does seem to be trending in that direction. It’s unlikely we’ll see 3% or 4%, again, but I do think below 5% is probably somewhere it will settle in the next few years. That is my personal belief. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable prediction.
I’m sure as realtors, you know this. If you want to understand where your market’s heading, it’s not that hard. You look at days on market and inventory. It’s a pretty good indicator of where the market is heading. If inventory and days on market are spiking in your area, you’re probably going to see price declines, especially if they’re approaching or exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
Boston is a good example. Inventory hasn’t gone up there at all. It looks the same as it did a few months ago. Is that marketing going to see price declines? Probably not because it shows that there’s still a seller’s market. It’s not a crystal ball. You can’t predict everything that way, but it is a pretty good lead indicator of where things are heading in your market.
Where is a good place to invest?
One of the most fascinating dynamics in the housing market is the work-from-home phenomenon and how it’s changing where people want to live. We don’t know what’s going to happen. The days the average American works from home have flatlined at 30%. Market changes are conditioning and they started calling people back to the office. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the suburbs and urban areas outperform the urban core. It is pretty unusual for the housing market, especially since the Great Recession, the urban core has recovered way faster. That is something to watch. My guess is that work-from-home is not going away. It will probably come off its peak, but we’re not going back to pre-pandemic levels.
I do think there are probably still some suburban areas that are going to do pretty well. Generally speaking, anything that has low affordability is going to underperform. You see these markets like San Jose, Reno, Las Vegas, and Austin. They’re ridiculously unaffordable. They are going to come down in my mind. Whereas you see other markets like Philadelphia or Hartford, Connecticut where they are much more affordable. I don’t know if they’re going to keep going up, but they’ll probably be flatter than the other markets.
That’s exactly how I’m thinking of it, too. I also think that as people have gotten a taste of working from home, most people probably prefer at least that option. Whether they’re not working from home, they may, at this point, still be trying to figure out a way where they can work from home. Maybe they’re starting their little side hustle. Maybe they’re trying to find a new job. I don’t know what we’ll see. I do think there’s something to not living in that urban core of the city because parking’s a pain in the butt or it’s expensive. My thoughts are all qualitative whereas Dave’s is all quantitative. Believe in what you want to believe.
It’s true. I agree. I like working from home. I’m sitting in my kitchen. It’s great.
We’re going to be heading into the final part of our show. Are there any other words of wisdom or anything that you want to give to our audience before we head there?
The last thing I’ll say is that people always want to ask me what’s going to happen. I don’t know. I think strongly that there is an opportunity in the next few months. As long as you know how to analyze deals and underwrite property, you should not be super afraid. The housing market works in cycles. When I bought it in 2010, that was before the bottom. The market bottomed in 2011. It’s about long-term strategy. Deal underwriting is the key.
The thing I was going to ask you before is that back then when the market bottomed out, it was hard to get a loan. Did you guys struggle with that in 2010?
No. It was fine. I don’t even think I was on it because I was a waiter. That’s true. Back to what we were talking about earlier where we were saying people want it to be at the bottom of the market and have great lending conditions, it doesn’t usually happen. There are always trade-offs.
Let’s head into the Final Four. Z, kick us off.
What are you reading?
I’m reading a BiggerPockets book.
Is it mine?
Is it The House Hacking Strategy?
I’m reading The Hands-Off Investor by Brian Burke. It’s good. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in passive investing.
Are you investing in Opendoor or any of those other syndications you invested in?
Not Opendoor, but a couple of other BiggerPockets-affiliated folks. I have nothing against Opendoor. I honestly don’t even know that much about it. I tried once and they oversubscribed in five minutes. I was like, “I don’t know.”
Here’s the second question. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
One of my bosses was in an internship. Before I was even interested in real estate, he told me to acquire as many assets as early as I could in life. That’s pretty sage advice for people tuning in to this show.
Acquire as many assets as early as you can in life. Share on XThat might be the best advice I’ve ever heard. That sounds great.
It’s my boss at a construction management company. He took me to lunch on my last day and said that. I was like, “I’ll try.” I had no idea I was going to do it but it was good advice.
This is question number three. What is your why?
More time to spend with my friends and family and to travel. Honestly, living abroad was a dream of mine for most of my life. In 2016, my partner, Jane, and I decided we wanted to do that. It was motivating. We’ve done that. I’m happy to say that we’ve ticked one of those major motivations off the box since we live in Amsterdam.
Are you guys taking part in the Dutch American Friendship Treaty? Is that why you’re there? Did you know about that?
I do know about that. The name is hilarious.
That’s cute.
It’s quaint. No. My partner, Jane, worked for a company that was bought by Booking.com, which is a Dutch company. They transferred her over here a few years ago. Luckily, they let me come, too.
This is the last question. Craft us your favorite sandwich that’s custom-made.
I’m all over the place on this, but my go-to is you got to start with ciabatta. Ciabatta is the finest of all sandwich bread. It’s a great vessel for any sort of filling. I then would go with Italian. Craig, you must appreciate this being from Boston. You can’t get good Italian sandwiches outside the East Coast. If you like ham, capicola, or a little salami, then you got to go with roasted red pepper, arugula, and then a giardiniera or an olive spread. You’re done. That’s it.
No cheese?
I’m lactose intolerant, so no cheese for me. If you’re out there, put some provolone on there.
There you go. Take it from a true New Yorker.
I love how he went into that question.
I’m not going to tell you PB and J. I got to describe it in intimate detail.
That’s why I needed to hear that. I was taking notes and was like, “That’s for lunch.” Where can people find out more about you? Tell us about @TheDataDeli and all that good stuff.
I’m on Instagram @TheDataDeli. I also host a podcast called On the Market. It’s a BiggerPockets podcast. We talk about the stuff we were talking about at the end here, like trends, news, and data about the real estate market. I wrote a book. I don’t know when this is coming out, but it’s from BiggerPockets. I wrote it with J. Scott who’s an incredible investor. It’s called Real Estate by the Numbers. It’s all about a deep understanding of the numbers and math behind being a great real estate investor.
I did not know that 1) There was an On the Market podcast, and 2) That you were coming out with a book. I didn’t even know that, so I’ll have to check that out.
The podcast is great. It’s a panel show. It’s our first panel show. It’s me and four other people. I moderate it. I have a bunch of experienced people on there. It’s super cool. The book hasn’t even been announced. It’s in pre-launch so far. Hopefully, it’ll be as successful as your books. I’m very nervous.
We’ll see. Mine is also in pre-launch. We’re here together.
Let’s hope for a good book-buying season.
Thanks so much for coming to the show. Go enjoy your boat rides to the canals, your crazy sandwiches on ciabatta bread, and bike rides. We will see you at BPCon. I’m looking forward to that.
I’ll see you there. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much for having me.
I’ll see you, then.
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That was Dave Meyer. Z, what did you think of Dave?
I love Dave’s investor trajectory. He started with whatever he could afford, which turned out to be a great investment. He then turned it into something that was a typical single-family home, which a lot of people do. The next thing was a vacation rental because people are like, “Now, I want to do a good cash-on-cash return. It’s interesting to see how he flowed through everything.
I love that he’s doing syndications and it’s that hands-off investor experience, which is the name of that book he’s reading, The Hands-Off Investor. It’s important for people to see that even though it’s great to hold real estate over time, it doesn’t mean that the first place you’re going to buy is going to be your best place and that you’re going to necessarily keep that 1 for 30 years. There are lots of options. Get your foot in the door with whatever you can start with. My first place was a one-bedroom apartment. His first place was older. It depends on where you can go. From there, the future is bright.
One thing that he illustrated is that things change over time. You can adhere your real estate investing strategy to your life. What do you want? Clearly, Dave is excited about having a few properties in Denver that are pretty hands-off. He likes his W-2 job at BiggerPockets where he probably makes decent money if I had to guess. He’s like, “I don’t want to work anymore, so I’m going to put it into syndications and be hands-free.”
Could he get a better return if he went to go find these deals himself and put it all together because he has the network to do it? Dave has all the resources to do big multifamily himself. I promise you, but he’s like, “I don’t want to do that. I want to enjoy my time with my partner, Jane, in Amsterdam.” That’s what he does. As you’re progressing through your real estate journey, you need to figure out what you want out of life and make your real estate adhere to that.
That’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that. Many people feel like you have to have 100 doors and you have to be bigger every year to be a valued investor. Honestly, we’re doing this for financial freedom. That’s his version of freedom. It’s great.
Don’t compare yourself to other people with lots of doors. If you want to be that person because you genuinely want to be that person, go for it. If you just want $10,000 a month of passive income, then you probably don’t need to do that. Do you know what I want? I want ratings and reviews for this show on Apple Podcasts.
You hear us say this every episode. If you haven’t done it yet, what’s wrong with you? Get out there and write a review. I tried to leave someone to review on Apple Podcasts. It was difficult. If you’re having trouble with that, go to Spotify or anything else and leave us a review there. We’d appreciate it.
You could also give us a follow on Instagram. I’m @TheFiGuy.
I’m @ZeonaMcIntyre. We will love you forever.
We’ll always love you. Thanks again for tuning in. We will see you next time.
Important Links
- On the Market
- BiggerPockets
- The House Hacking Strategy
- The Hands-Off Investor
- Booking.com
- @TheDataDeli
- On the Market
- Real Estate by the Numbers
- Apple Podcasts – Invest2Fi
- Spotify – Invest2Fi
- @TheFiGuy
- @ZeonaMcIntyre
- www.RentRedi.com — CODE: INVEST2FI
- https://www.Kapre.com/ CODE – Invest2
- https://www.StepByStepBNB.com/a/2147508384/zG79Sujh
About David Meyer
Dave Meyer has been investing in real estate for 12 years, housing market analyst, and the VP of Data & Analytics at BiggerPockets. Dave uses an analytical approach to investing, and helps others to do the same on his podcast On The Market, and in his book Real Estate By The Numbers, and his Instagram: @thedatadeli. Dave holds a Master’s Degree in Business Analytics and outside of investing is a travel, outdoors, and sandwich enthusiast.
