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Is the 1% Rule Dead? + Why Building (NOT Buying) Could Make You More

Is the 1% Rule Dead? + Why Building (NOT Buying) Could Make You More

Could building houses make you more money than buying existing ones? When should someone use the 1% rule in real estate, and when does this metric point to a cash flow disaster? What’s the best way to get more capital or funding for future real estate deals: get a HELOC on your primary residence or look for investor-only DSCR loans? We’re pulling some of the top questions from the BiggerPockets Forums and giving our answers on today’s show!

Expert investors Dave Meyer, James Dainard, and Kathy Fettke from the BiggerPockets On the Market podcast are on today to answer YOUR real estate investing questions. First, we return to the age-old debate, “Does the 1% rule exist anymore?” With high home prices and lagging rent growth, this once foolproof metric could be an outdated calculation inexperienced real estate investors should avoid. Next, can you make more money building houses than flipping houses? 

Are turnkey rentals the best “low headache” real estate investment? We’ll answer that and give our thoughts on when to use a HELOC (home equity line of credit) vs. a DSCR loan (debt service coverage ratio). Finally, for our out-of-state investors, we share the top metrics to look at BEFORE you invest in a new market.

Want to ask a real estate investing question? Post yours in the BiggerPockets Forums, and we might select it for our next show!

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Dave:
Should investors consider building a new home versus renovating an existing one? Does the 1% rule even exist anymore? What is the best way to fund a new investment, A-D-S-C-R loan or a heloc? This ends so much more on today’s episode.

Dave:
Hey everyone, I’m your host, Dave Meyer and with me are two very seasoned investors from the BiggerPockets Universe, James Dainard and Kathy Fettke. And today we’re going to answer your listener questions. Our team went through the BiggerPockets forum and pulled some of the most interesting thought-provoking conversation starters, and James, Kathy and I are going to dive into them and debate them today and I think you’re all going to learn a lot. So let’s jump in. Alright, so our first question from the community is, does the 1% rule exist anymore? Is this how I should still be thinking about my investments? Kathy, I already see you smirking, so jump in on this one first.

Kathy:
I want to say it’s a bit of a unicorn, so you can definitely search for it. You might find it, it’s harder. Three quarter percent rule is probably what you need to be focused on right now. Just last year we had our single family rental fund. We were buying in the North Texas area and we were, almost every property we got was 1% because we got them so cheap, but we were buying in that little window when people were really scared to do anything. So there was zero competition. We were able to buy cheap, renovate cheap, and it came in at the 1%. Today our plan was to refinance that whole fund like a burr fund basically and do it all over again and we can’t find it right now. So just that’s one example. It could be because I’ve talked about that metro area far too much on the market and everybody’s

Dave:
In there now. He gave away 1% rules to everyone else could be, it was very generous of you. I guess I should just also clarify what the 1% rule is to everyone. It’s a metric called the rent to price ratio. Basically you take one month of rent and divide it by the purchase price of the property. And the idea of the 1% rule is that if you do that calculation one month rent divided by purchase price and the result is 1% or higher, then you’re going to have a good cash flowing deal. And if it’s lower than that, then it’s not a good deal. That was the 1% rule. I just want to clarify for everyone that rule this rule of thumb, it’s not a rule, it’s just a guideline was created 10 years ago, which was a very different real estate investing timeline. So I think that’s what the user is asking. They’re asking, should I still be using this rule of thumb from 10 years ago to make decisions about investing today? James, what do you think? Well,

James:
I mean it’s just an underwriting tool for yourself. I would never buy based on a simple 1% rule, but it’s a way for us as investors, we get over inundated with properties, opinions, all these things are coming at us every which way. So it’s a way to look at a deal and go, okay, well I can make 1% of the price and I need to explore this more. That’s how I take it. People took this as gospel 10 years ago though. It was like, did it hit the 1% or not? I have never really been concerned with it too much, but I do love that people think that it doesn’t work anymore or with rates as high as they are. The math doesn’t quite work even at that with the high rates on your cashflow. But the good thing about it’s rates will normalize and it will be a metric that you can use and you can still get that I hear three quarter percent or you just can’t get it anymore, but you have to cut the deals up differently to get it to the end results.

Kathy:
And one thing that really books me about the 1% rule, and ironically I wrote about it in my book 10 years ago, got to get the 1% and I had to update my book because people were freaking out that they weren’t getting it. It’s like, oh shoot. No, no, no, you can’t really, it’s harder today. But what people were overlooking, it’s really the final number that’s all that matters is the numbers in your proforma because the 1% rule might work where the rents are coming in at 1% of the purchase price. But what if the expenses are really high? What if it’s an old property and needs all this work? What if the taxes are high? And there’s so many factors that need to be calculated and put into the proforma to really determine if it’s a good property. That’s just like you were saying, James, it’s one way to just sort of glance at it or it used to be, but it doesn’t matter as much as really in the end of the day what you’re going to get from that property.

Dave:
Yeah, I like rent to price ratio. I think it’s a good way to screen markets or screen neighborhoods just to understand where’s offering cashflow. But I think the more important thing here too is looking at just a single metric, even if you got the 1% rule is not a good way. It’s not a proper way to underwrite a property. Like Kathy just said, you can find deals right now, I guarantee on the MLS that have 1% rule, those are probably not great investments in a lot of areas. They’re either super old. I ran the numbers on a deal this weekend that was a 1.6 and I was like, oh my god, it’s unbelievable. And my agent went there and he was like, run away from that property. It is terrible. Do not go anywhere close to it. So it’s like obviously it is one input you should be looking at or should think about, but honestly, once you get, you’re looking at a deal and really are analyzing it. I don’t even really think about the 1% rule after once I’ve got it in a calculator or a spreadsheet. I don’t know about you guys,

James:
It’s just the next indicator. Should I spend more time on this time’s money? Should I want this more or just cut it loose? But don’t buy that way. Use performance, use actual numbers

Kathy:
And check crime rates. Check because you will find 1% in the c and D class neighborhoods for sure, meaning areas that’ll be more difficult to manage over the longterm.

Dave:
One thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve been able to get closer to 1% rule, but it’s stabilized not what you get off the market, buy it right there. But once you’ve put a little bit of money and effort into it to get rents up to market rate, I think it is actually not super hard to get close to 1% even for on market deals. Nice.

James:
There’s always a way,

Dave:
Dave. I think what’s frustrating though for people is there’s no, do you guys have a rule of thumb? I think that’s what’s annoying is it used to just be like you could do this back of the envelope, pull out your iPhone, put in two numbers and have a good rough idea. But now it does seem like you have to sort of do at least a five to 10 minute analysis or initial run with rough estimates to get a good idea if a deal works or not. Or do you have a quick way that you look at things these days?

James:
We just use our performance and keep ’em simple. We don’t try to go down it’s rabbit hole, it’s how much cash needs to be left in the property, what’s our payment based on a rate that the mortgage professional gave us, and then what is it going to rent for? And we keep it very simple that way and then we look at that cash on cash return. If we don’t like it, then how do we get to a return that makes sense for us? But for all the investors out there, just build your team. If you have a really good property manager that you are working with, you can hit them pretty regularly and get the rent payment or projected rent out of that property. Call your mortgage professional. I’m looking at a property, it’s this price. What’s my monthly payment? How much cash do I going to leave in? If you just send those messages out within six hours, you’re going to have the information back to calculate it, look at it’s profitable or not. You don’t have to spend hours doing this. Just build the right team, they’ll help you get it done.

Kathy:
And again, just depending on what you’re trying to do, I really believe in equity growth models. So right now I just want to make sure that the property does not have a lot of maintenance. So it’s newer or completely renovated that it’s in a high growth area, meaning lots of population growth and job growth. And as long as my expenses are covered, I know that I’m going to make more money in the upside over time than I would in the cashflow, but it’s got to break even. I’m not going to be feeding that property.

Dave:
Alright, so we’re out here casually debunking decade old investing advice already and there are more questions to come after the break. We dig into the pros and cons of turnkey investing and whether new build is a cost-effective strategy in the current market. Stick with us. Welcome back everyone. I’m here with Kathy Feki and James Dard and we are answering your real estate investing questions. Let’s jump back in. Alright, well let’s move on to our second question, which is right now the median home price is the closest I have ever seen to the price to build new. Would you jump from renovating properties or flipping homes to building new right now? What is the hardest learning curve part? So there’s actually two questions here that you two are perfect to answer for this. So let’s start with you James. Do you think it makes sense for people to move from flipping a renovation to ground up development?

James:
It kind of depends. Sometimes I see markets where I see what home sell for price per square foot brand new, and I’m like, how did they make any money building this?

Dave:
And

Kathy:
Did they?

James:
Yeah, what are your build costs?

Dave:
Yeah, the answer is they didn’t.

James:
Yeah, maybe they didn’t at all. And so it really just comes down to if you want to evaluate a property, it’s what your cost to build in Seattle, we know it costs us 325 to $350 a square foot start to finish. That’s permits plans built. If we can sell that for $650 a square foot, that’s usually going to be a margin in there for us. And so it really comes down to what is the price per square foot to build? What is your price per square foot for value? And then what can you rent it for per square foot? And that will tell you whether it’s the right choice or not because we renovate and build and if we go whatever is highest and best use, I would say that it’s not always the case with bill costs and you can still renovate a property fairly cheap and be well under replacement costs. Like if I can renovate a property for a hundred dollars a square foot and rebuild the whole thing and I’m buying it for $250 a square foot and it’s worth six, I’m going to renovate that property. And so a lot of what that metrics come down to is your cost per construction per square foot, your dispo, which is when you sell the property per square foot and then you look at where the biggest margin is.

Dave:
Kathy, what do you think here?

Kathy:
I mean it’s a great question and it does depend on so many things. How much you’re paying for the land and how much work needs to be done on the renovation. I mean it’s too hard to answer generally, but I would say it’s two different businesses. So anytime you shift gears and you try something new, you are starting over and that’s what a lot of people kind of forget. Obviously there’s a lot of things that overlap, but it is different. And one of the biggest mistakes I made is my second syndication I ever did back in 2010, we were able to overtake a subdivision of new homes that never had their final, they weren’t finished, but they went back to the bank. The first one of these I did, we rocked it and our investors made a ton of money. The second one I thought would be just as easy, but it was in Oakland, California and it was much, much more difficult. My partner on that one was had been an amazing flipper, but he had not built new homes and he didn’t understand the difference. And we ended up struggling because again, a very different situation because these weren’t the homes that we built from ground up. They were halfway built when we got them, but he didn’t understand the requirements of getting that certificate of occupancy. An existing home already has it, a new one and the city has to approve it before you could do anything with that property.

James:
Yeah, there’s a big learning curve in there. It’s funny. People think it’s the same business. You’re buying something, you’re putting together a plan and then you’re either selling it or renting it. Right. And a lot of it comes down to that heavy construction plan, but they have to be structured completely differently. The biggest thing you want to look out for with new construction is your timelines. Yes, with a renovated property or a property you can renovate, it’s a structure that was there and then you’re working on inside those walls a lot of times and so you’re not building something new so you can get permits a lot quicker.

Dave:
That’s a good transition to the second part of this question, which is what is the biggest learning curve? If someone wanted to do this and take this on, where would you focus your energy to educate yourself on making the switch?

James:
The biggest learning curve in that transition is really the financing cost and how you structure that initial close with a flip. We will buy a property and we can give a seller an offer and close in two weeks and we know we can get a permit within four to eight weeks, renovate it in nine, sell it, and we can do it in a certain time period With new construction, it depends on what you’re building. It can take a substantially longer timeframe once you close that property to when you can start on that. And that’s what actually is the biggest learning curve for a lot of investors is they weren’t anticipating that cashflow suck for a year before they can start. And properties that you can do in nine months turn into two years and that’s okay, but you need to make sure that you have the liquidity there to cover and you have to also make sure that the return’s worth it. I don’t want to be in a deal for two years if I’m only making 10% more. And that’s a huge mistake is people rush for the bigger profit when many times the annualized return is a lot less.

Kathy:
And finally we are in new home construction, but we are doing lots of them subdivisions to just sort of do one-offs and you’re just trying to make a profit on that one property, it’s going to be a lot harder. You don’t have the economies of scale.

James:
I will say though, building a house is way more efficient than renovating a house. You can make your plan and then you open the walls and you’re going, oh no, I got termites in the wall, I got rocked, I got a body in. Whatever it is right

Dave:
Inside the wall will tell you

James:
A different story. With new construction, you have a plan set. You can get quotes through different professionals, they’re different trades. The build is actually a lot easier. You get a lot more logic because you, you’re dealing with different professional trades too, so you can negotiate more. You can have business to business conversations with flip contractors, you can’t. So it’s not that it’s worse or harder, it’s just you have to structure your deal. And so it is a good business because you can scale and it’s a lot more organized.

Dave:
Awesome. Moving on to our third question, which says, if I want a low headache investment such as a turnkey property, is this still a good investment? Am I missing out on potential upside if there isn’t any opportunity for value add? So two questions here. First one is, is it still a good investment? And I’ll just take this one. To me that’s a big case of it depends on what you’re looking for because some people are looking for really easy investments and some aren’t. But to answer the second question, are you missing out on potential upside if there isn’t opportunity value add? I think so, right? That is part of the trade-off. You’re either taking something easy and accepting relatively lower returns or you’re taking on a project and you’re going to get rewarded for that. But at least in my mind, you never get it all. You never get something easy and maximum upside. But what do you guys think, Kathy?

Kathy:
Oh my gosh, yeah, you nailed it. I mean, I’ve been in the turnkey business for 20 years. This is our jam. This is what we do and there’s a need for it. You just nailed it. It is a trade-off. You’re either pushing the easy button or you’re not. So you can buy a new car or you could buy an old car and fix it up. If you’ve got those skills and that ability, maybe you’ll do that, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to buy a new car. So there’s many, many people and the people that we represent at real wealth and have for years, they aren’t in a position where they can do it themselves. And a lot of people haven’t understood that. Not everybody has the skills, the ability or the desire to buy an old property and fix it. We work with professional athletes.

Kathy:
What about them? What about people in the tech industry that work 80 hours a week? What about doctors, dentists? My dad was a dentist, believe me, he would have screwed it up if he tries to do a renovation while his expertise was fixing teeth, not houses. So there are people who have more time than money and therefore they don’t have the option of turnkey. Now it’s off the table. They have to do the thing that costs less and they have an abundance of time. So it works. But you’ve got someone who’s spent eight to 10 years on a profession and is doing well in it and that’s their thing. They don’t have time, but they have money and turnkey’s what just makes sense.

Dave:
Or you can be James and have no time and money, but still voluntarily. Just do value add projects. I

James:
Love the equity use. I will take everyone’s leftovers and turn it into a gourmet meal. I am the person that still buys used cars. I don’t like paying full price.

Dave:
James, have you ever bought a turnkey property in your life?

James:
Yes. Well, I still painted it though. Does that count?

Dave:
That counts. That counts. I think just paint is pretty much as turnkey as it gets.

James:
Yes, it was a luxury vacation rental. It’s the only short-term rental I’ve ever done. And it was turnkey, it was dialed, but I liked it because I bought it below replacement cost. So I still feel like you can get a good deal and I think you guys both nailed it. It’s like if you don’t want the headache, don’t buy value add. It is a headache and there’s a purpose to it. I always like to explore when I’m meeting with any new client or as I’m talking to people or as I’m looking at my own portfolio as well, there is benefit to buying turnkey because you hit cashflow day one with value add, you have a cash suck for six to 12 months. And so you have to work that all in. And sometimes I see people jumping over hoops to do this value add, but I’m like, wait, your return, if you would’ve just got your rent for a year, you actually would’ve made more money. Oh

Dave:
My gosh.

James:
And it’s a get the money working, but use it correctly. Again, I will always renovate and do a property, but it’s not for everybody. If you can’t execute the plan to, you might as well buy that turnkey. I mean you’re getting assets that are warrantied, they’re well taken care of, your deferred maintenance costs is going to be less. There’s huge benefit, especially if you don’t have the time. Yeah,

Dave:
I mean this just all comes back to what your personal strategy is and what you’re looking for in your investing. I tend to, even though I talk about real estate investing all day, I skew on the more passive, less headache side of the investing spectrum because I work live overseas. I invest in multiple outstate markets and that’s just my prerogative. James is a full-time real estate investor. And so he has plenty of time. He has a big team like Kathy said, to go in and do these things. So it really just comes down to what you want. And I think this is the main lesson here, at least to me, is there are trade-offs with everything. If you could in theory go out and buy a turnkey property that had the same upside as a value add situation, literally everyone would buy that. That would be the only real estate strategy. And so you have to think about what trade-offs you’re willing to accept. What are you willing to give up? Are you going to give up some time? Are you going to give up a little bit of upside? That’s your job as an investor is to figure that out for yourself.

James:
And there is one little tip and thing that has worked on newer built properties I’ve seen is if you want to get some equity, you want a little bit of value add. Value add means you’re creating a spread and an equity margin. Sometimes it’s not about the construction plan, it’s the financing plan. And some of these builders have been running out of liquidity a little bit and they’re willing to sell you the property at a discount just by bridging them the cash.

Dave:
Now you’re talking Kathy’s language.

James:
And so then all of a sudden if you could pick up 10% equity in your cash flow and right away, that could be a much bigger home run than a Burr property.

Kathy:
Well, and also think of it this way, if you’re working really hard, I have a close friend who’s been flying out from California to St. Louis because you can flip and make things work there, but the time, the effort, the cost of going there, the airplane, the hotel, like all these fees to make let’s say 30,000 to $50,000 in upside, well in the time that that took six months, let’s say I just bought a brand new property and within that six months it went up 50 grand value and I didn’t do anything. So anyway, you just got to look at the numbers in the end.

Dave:
Okay, we have to take one more quick break, but stick around. When we come back, we will have a great question about how and when to use HELOCs and DSCR loans. Welcome back investors. Let’s pick up where we left off. Alright, let’s move on to our fourth question, which is HELOC verse DSCR. These are both acronyms. HELOC stands for home equity line of credit, which is basically when you borrow against the equity that you have in your primary residence versus A-D-S-C-R, which is a debt service coverage ratio loan, which is a type of loan that allows you to use the fundamentals of your deal to have a loan underwritten rather than your personal credit worthiness. And so these are both good or common real estate loan tactics. And so the question is, I’m interested in pulling money out of an investment property through a heloc, but it seems like many banks aren’t offering this anymore. If I can’t get a heloc, do you think that A-D-S-C-R would be good? Can I do this for a house hack? Okay, a couple things here. First and foremost, a HELOC specifically that terminology is for your primary residence or for your home. So what this user is talking about is an investment property line of credit. So it says it does seem like many banks aren’t offering this anymore. And I think that is generally true. That is not a super common line of credit, at least in my experience. Do you see that often, Kathy?

Kathy:
I think that they’re pretty hard to get and either way, the HELOCs herb, even on your primary are really costly. They’re like nine to 10% right now. We have one, but we just kind of use it as reserves or a quick kind of in and out type thing. We need the money for something, but we’re going to get it back soon. Just recently quoted, our real wealth lender just said his DS CR loans are in the mid sevens. So between the two, the HELOCs going to be more expensive and some people use it for the down payment, like I said, for quick deals to be able to get in and out. But I don’t know. What are your thoughts, James?

James:
To get the loans? Primary residences are a lot easier to do it then investment investment was, you were able to get ’em fairly easily three years ago. Now you have to go to a portfolio lenner in a local bank to really look at tapping your investment properties. A function of growing access to capital is just a function of growth. If the HELOCs 10%, well, that’s just the cost of the deal. Does the deal make sense with the money that you can access right now? The one thing I always try to look out for though, even on my own primary as real estate investing, this business can get risky. And I always like to cautious people, don’t pull up HELOCs to just go keep buying properties unless you really have a clear plan and purpose because your primary residence, you do not. I mean that’s something you want to live in for a while.

James:
It’s where you’re going to protect yourself. Don’t over over-leverage that and use the money wisely, like A-D-S-E-R loan. If it’s 10%, get a high return, make sure you can pay that back off. And they both have a purpose. I kind of feel like they have a different purpose though. The HELOC is going to be more of a bridge item for you to get yourself in and out of a deal or to get you in DSER. That’s going to be how you’re going to finance your deal for the next one to five years and run your cashflow analysis with that. And so they do have a different purpose. If I was looking at between the two, I would, if I had a 3% homeowner rate and now I’m looking at a 7% DSCR loan, that’s a big spread you’re taking out because with the DSCR, you’re losing your access to that cheap loan. And so you just want to run, is it worth it if I’m going to take out money and borrow it from more, is my return a lot greater than what your interest rate is? If it’s not, maybe leave that cheap money alone.

Dave:
Yeah, absolutely. And this person on the BiggerPockets forum is asking, can I do this for a house hack? And I think one of the benefits of a house hack is that you can use owner occupant residential financing. So in an ideal house hack, you’re probably not using either of these options using a HELOC or A-D-S-C-R and you’re instead taking out a conforming loan where you’re going to get better terms and a better interest rate.

Kathy:
Good point.

Dave:
Alright, let’s move on to our fifth and final question today, which is, what tools and resources do you use to track population and job growth for potential out of state’s investments in the us? What metrics do you value most? Kathy, I’ll ask you because James, you even invest out of state. You’re just a Seattle dude, you don’t know the answer.

James:
I’m a short term guy. But after our evictions talk, I need to start exploring out of state.

Dave:
Yeah. James and I, just before this, we were recording an episode for on the market about squatters rights, and we heard a lot about Seattle’s challenges. But back to this question, Kathy, what tools do you use to track metrics for your out-of-state markets that you invest in and you help your clients with? Yeah,

Kathy:
I mean, census data is pretty easy to obtain. City data.com I found to be pretty useful. Our team just did something cool at Real Wealth, took the census data of where the fastest growing markets were population wise, and then the median home price and median rents in those areas to determine which areas still had the right rent to price ratios like we were talking about earlier. And also have growth because I love cashflow, but I like equity even better. So I want to be in those growth areas. So the census data has worked for us. It’s also kind of fun every year U-Haul comes out with a list of where their trucks are going and where people are moving. And while it’s not science, it’s kind of interesting like, oh, Southeast guess that’s where people are moving still and where are they leaving? Well, California is always on the last, it’s number 50 on the U-Haul list where people are going.

Dave:
Yeah, right now it is for sure. Yeah, I think population is not something that changes all that often. You get data once a year, usually it’s the census. It’s the most reliable as the most consistent methodology. And so that’s what I use personally. I’ll just give you a trick though. I think there’s actually a better metric to track if you can find it than track population. Something called household formation, which is basically it takes into account population growth, but it also takes into account demand for housing. So basically household formulating is if someone moves to the area, but also, for example, if there were two roommates who were living together and then they decide to both go out and get their own apartment, that would create another household in that area and it would create one more demand for a housing unit in that market.

Dave:
And so if you can find that data, you can’t, for many markets, some of it’s paid. I use CoStar for that, which is a paid solution. But if you can find that, that’s a really good one. And then in terms of job growth, there are tons of great ways to track job growth. Again, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they actually put out data for most metro areas in the United States monthly. And so that’s a really good reliable place to do it. And then there were private payroll companies like a DP that put that out. But I find that if you’re just trying to get broad strokes, try to understand the general dynamics of the market. Government data is pretty easy and there are aggregator websites like Fred or Y charts that you can just access that for free. But the second question here, part of this is what metrics do you value the most, Kathy, so what are you looking for other than population growth?

Kathy:
City data is kind of cool in that you can hone in on a certain part of a metro. A big mistake people make is they’ll say Dallas for example. Dallas is a great market, but Dallas is huge. So which part? And there are definitely parts of Dallas that are not growing at all. There are definitely of Dallas that are just too expensive. So you need to be able to hone in on the metro areas and not just the big city. So city data, you can go in, pick the area that you really want to focus on, and it will tell you wage growth. I think that’s really interesting. It will tell you crime rates, like I talked about earlier, you could find that 1% rural house or an affordable house and only to find out that you’ll never be able to keep it rented. No one wants to live there. So I’ve just found a lot of value from that. And quite honestly, the easiest way without having to be a data nerd is just to talk to my property manager. I’ll just talk to the property manager and say, what do you think of this area? Does it rent? And they’re like, oh yeah, we’re getting calls for it all the time. Or no, absolutely not. We will not manage that area. They’re going to give you the information you need as a landlord.

Dave:
It’s so true. Yeah, just picking up the phone and talking to people is very useful, but I totally agree. I think job growth, population growth, these are just underlying mechanics that you just want to understand. Is it a place that people want to live? Is it a place that people want to move? Because that’s going to help your long-term dynamics. I also just like generally, this is what is a data scientist, we would call unstructured data. So it’s not neat, but I personally just love subscribing to the local newspaper or the local chamber of commerce and just reading what’s going on because they’ll also tell you what businesses are laying people off, what businesses are hiring, and you start to just get a sense of what is going on in individual markets. And those are unstructured data points that can really help make a decision about, is this market worth my time?

Dave:
Is it somewhere that I want to invest? Alright, so those are our five questions that we have today. If you all are sitting there listening and thinking, I have questions that I too would answered by this esteemed panel, you can do that. Just go to biggerpockets.com/forums, write your questions out there, and you’ll probably get some expert advice from the people in the BiggerPockets community. But we might also select your question for a future show where Kathy, James, and myself will answer it for you. Kathy and James, thank you so much for hanging out and answering these questions with me.

Kathy:
I love this format. I think it’s great. It’s like I used to do live radio and we could get live questions. It’s different on these podcasts, so it almost feels almost live. Well, I’m

Dave:
Glad it’s not live. I don’t want people to know how many times I screw up every time I host a podcast

James:
And everybody should submit their questions. I mean, I know I learned a lot of hard lessons when I got started in this business because there wasn’t all the tech and the information here, and I definitely wish I could have asked a lot more. It would’ve saved me thousands of dollars.

Dave:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you like Kathy, like this format, please let us know. We would appreciate that by in the reviews either on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, or let us know on the BiggerPockets platform that you like this episode. We’d really appreciate it. Kathy and James, thank you for BiggerPockets. I’m Dave Meyer and thank you all for listening. We’ll see you next time.

 

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In This Episode We Cover:

  • The 1% rule explained and when you should (and definitely shouldn’t) use it to decide on deals
  • Building new construction vs. flipping houses, plus which could make you more in 2024
  • Turnkey real estate investing and whether the lost value-add potential is worth the passive income
  • HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) vs. DSCR (debt service coverage ratio) loans
  • Best tools to use and metrics to track when looking into out-of-state investing markets
  • And So Much More!

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.