6 Predictions for 2026 That Could Reshape the Economy and Housing Market

Summary

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Podcast Summary

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

Episode: 6 Predictions for 2026 That Could Reshape the Economy and Housing Market
Host: Dave Meyer
Guest: Ben Miller (CEO, Fundrise)
Date: December 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features a deep-dive conversation between Dave Meyer and Ben Miller about what factors will shape the economy and housing market by 2026, with a particular focus on the rapid advance of AI and its subsequent economic, labor, and investment ripple effects. The dialogue combines macroeconomic analysis, forecasts for real estate investors, and concrete examples of how technological disruption is reordering the landscape—both creating risks and presenting new strategies.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Four Major Forces Shaping Real Estate and the Economy (01:29)

• Ben Miller identifies four major drivers:
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Interest Rates
  • Political Environment
  • Declining Supply (especially new construction)
• Miller notes, “There are three or four really big things happening in the world today... AI, interest rates, the political environment... supply is going away. New supply of construction is really falling off a cliff.” (01:29)

2. Interest Rates: Predictions and Debate (02:08–07:45)

• Miller argues real estate has “bottomed,” with the worst likely behind, but recognizes lingering humility after Covid and rate shocks.
• He predicts further rate cuts and declining mortgage rates, challenging the market’s prevailing uncertainty.
• The only sectors propping up economic growth are tax policy and AI/data center spend.
• Quote: “I’m skeptical on both. I think the economy is not doing great outside of AI, outside data centers... Most people aren’t like in a risk appetite mood.” (03:31)

3. AI as a Deflationary Force (08:41–10:27)

• Miller shares firsthand how Fundrise uses AI, drastically reducing needs in customer service, cybersecurity, copywriting, etc.
• He forecasts suppressed wage growth as “AI is deflationary on wages”—real wage growth could even go negative next year.
• Quote: "AI is the first technology that really makes services cheaper... it's going to make people cheaper." (10:14, 10:20)

4. Societal and Labor Market Implications (14:40–18:31)

• Both discuss the “ugly transition” ahead: job losses or changing hiring patterns, especially hitting young workers.
• Miller notes tech has long redirected gains to capital over labor, but AI may dramatically accelerate that trajectory.
• Quote: “You have this thing where people became more expensive and goods became cheaper... AI is the first technology that really makes services cheaper.” (10:10–10:14)

5. Paradigm Shift: Asset Prices and Wealth Divide (19:02–21:17)

• Miller sees the coming era as high productivity growth, low inflation, higher real interest rates. This will mostly benefit capital, not labor.
• He suggests, “high end does better than low end real estate,” forecasting a windfall for wealthy households in premium markets (San Francisco, New York, etc.).
• Quote: “High end is absolutely crazy—how much money is going to be created for [the] top 0.1% of the country.” (20:20)

6. Political and Social Responses to Inequality (22:12–25:45)

• Miller doubts universal basic income but suspects growing popularity for “pre-distribution” (unions, minimum wage, rent control) instead of after-the-fact redistribution.
• He warns of increasing government intervention and possible “extreme effects” as assets rise and wages stagnate.
• Quote: "I just don’t think you can have a functioning society where people continue to make less and less and unemployment goes up and up and all the money’s going to a very small percentage of people—that’s just the recipe for civil unrest." (24:11)

7. Practical Strategies for Real Estate Investors (31:18–34:08)

• Miller stays away from office real estate due to job losses; favors industrial, high-end multifamily, and residential assets in wealthy, less-regulated markets near economic centers.
• He highlights Fundrise’s new “Real AI” investment tool, which merges disparate real estate data sources for powerful deal analysis.
• Quote: “It turns ordinary people into advanced data scientists... Anyone can do it, but you could do it in a fraction of the time it even took me to do it.” (32:42, 35:19)

8. AI Tools: Democratizing (and Overwhelming) Analysis (34:40–37:41)

• Dave and Ben discuss pros and cons: AI empowers regular investors but may overwhelm non-analytical types with sheer data.
• Analogy: “It’s like cooking an omelet: so much of your work is just not valuable... That’s the stuff AI is so good at.” (37:16, 37:22)
• Both end on an optimistic note, seeing AI as a way to eliminate drudgery and make investing more enjoyable and accessible—if investors learn to use the tools wisely.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ben Miller: “AI really—AI data center spend is the biggest capex. It's absolutely insane.” (05:00)
• Dave Meyer: “Real wage growth is going to go negative next year. I just think that trend is going to continue.” (09:27)
• Ben Miller: “It’s not that unemployment goes through the roof. Maybe unemployment goes to 5.5% or 6%. Mostly, it suppresses hiring.” (15:44)
• Ben Miller: “Tech has been making the economy more productive, need less workers—and it's been mostly gains to capital, not gains to labor.” (17:17)
• Dave Meyer: “I haven’t thought about it that way... trying to find places where the average person can afford the average price home. [But]... affordability for the average American could get even worse.” (20:43)
• Ben Miller: “I’m a big believer in industrial and in multifamily. ...The asset classes around places that are extreme wealth will just get even crazier.” (31:22)
• Dave Meyer: “It just seems a much more robust and rich set of information... I think it's going to become more fun [to be an investor].” (35:18–36:58)
• Ben Miller: “[AI] isn’t going to get rid of the four minutes [of enjoyment]... There’s so much of your work that's just grindy, administrative, sucky work—that's the stuff AI is so good at.” (37:16, 37:22)
• Dave Meyer: “That's a great positive view of how AI might impact all of us on our work. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. It’s always a pleasure.” (37:41)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Intro & Market Backdrop: 00:00–01:29
• Four Major Economic Forces: 01:29–02:00
• Interest Rate Debate & Macro Analysis: 02:08–08:26
• Deflation, AI, and Wage Impact: 08:41–10:47
• Labor Market and Societal Transition: 14:40–18:31
• Paradigm Shift and Asset Pricing: 19:02–22:12
• Inequality & Political Response: 22:12–25:45
• Investment Asset Strategies: 31:18–34:08
• AI Tools for Investors: 34:40–37:41
• Final Thoughts: 37:41–End

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Summary Takeaways

• AI is the biggest single factor shaping the next era for both the economy and the housing market, likely driving deflation, lower wage growth, and expanding wealth gaps.
• Real estate is (or soon will be) at its cyclical bottom, with opportunity especially at the high end and around economic corridors—less so for typical workforce housing.
• Investors able to leverage AI-powered analysis and adapt to a data-rich environment will be the best positioned to navigate—and profit from—these changes.
• The societal and political response to these disruptions remains a wildcard, but government intervention and new policies (like rent control and predistibution) are almost guaranteed as inequality widens.

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This episode is a must-listen for investors, analysts, and anyone concerned with the radical reshaping underway in real estate and the wider economy. The conversation is forthright, sometimes sobering, but ultimately empowers listeners to adapt and invest intelligently amid the whirlwind—and to use new tools to their greatest advantage.

Transcript

[Dave Meyer]

How will AI impact the economy, and what does it mean for investors in 2026? It's a massive question that may define the next few years and beyond. And today, we're diving deep. Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, housing market.

[Ben Miller]

Analyst and head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets.

[Dave Meyer]

My guest today is Ben Miller, the CEO of Fundrise. Ben is a thought leader in the real estate and finance space, and he has a long track record of finding value and deals work in many different investing markets. We had him on last December when he came onto the show and presented a case for real estate investing in 2025 that mostly proved correct. But since the market is always changing and we face a lot of uncertainty heading into next year, I had to bring Ben back on to share his expectations for the economy next year and.

[Ben Miller]

How he recommends real estate investors take advantage of.

[Dave Meyer]

We talk a lot about AI and.

[Ben Miller]

Its potential impact on different parts of.

[Dave Meyer]

The economy and the housing market, including how you can leverage new tools in.

[Ben Miller]

Your own analysis and investing.

[Dave Meyer]

Ben, welcome back to the show.

[Ben Miller]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I am always looking forward to these conversations. You are exposed to a lot. You see a lot of different stuff in real estate and in the economy, and you always have a very unique perspective on where things are going. So maybe we can start there and.

[Dave Meyer]

Have you tell us just what's your.

[Ben Miller]

Read on real estate and the housing market right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think real estate's bottomed, but I've been humbled by the last half decade. You know, we had Covid. We had interest rates. So I'm much more humbled than I was before. There are three or four really big things happening in the world today, obviously, AI, interest rates, the political environment affects the business environment a lot these days. And then, I mean, the good news is that supply is going away. New supply of construction is really falling off a cliff. So those are part of the big four things driving real estate these days.

[Dave Meyer]

All right, great.

[Ben Miller]

Well, let's dig into each one of them one at a time. But before we do, when you say real estate has bottomed, do you mean that for multifamily specifically?

Well, I guess all real estate is interest rate sensitive. And I think interest rates are approximately, is my point of view. Obviously, it's impossible to know, but. But it's. Yeah, I think interest rates are going to keep falling. The market doesn't believe that. The market doesn't know. There's a lot of debate about that, and I think so. That would affect all real estate, including Single family housing.

So you think the federal funds rate will keep falling, is that right? But you also think mortgage rates will fall as well?

Yeah, I think everything will fall. I can walk you through my argument. So let's just set the stage right. So the stage is they cut rates 3.75 to 4. The Federal Reserve doesn't want to cut anymore because they really don't know. Inflation has been stuck at about 3% for the last 18 to 24 months. And the long end of the curve 10 year treasury has also pretty much been stuck at the low fours. And so what you're seeing is essentially a lot of uncertainty about the future interest rates. Some people arguing that we're going to see a re acceleration in the economy and then some people arguing it's going to soften. And so the re acceleration of the economy would happen for two main reasons. One is that the great beautiful bill, that big bill is going to start hitting the economy around April. And so a lot of those tax incentives will hit in 26. And there's an argument that companies will start spending and hiring as they get all these tax incentives from the bill. That's one acceleration argument. The other one is obviously AI and data center build. Those are the two main arguments for why the economy reaccelerate. I'm skeptical on both. I think that the economy is not doing great outside of AI, outside data centers and that most companies, most people. If you get a big windfall from your taxes, are you going to spend it on hiring people or are you going to basically sock it away? A little worried about the state of the economy? Yeah. I personally think most people aren't like in a risk appetite mood.

It's risk off. Right. Like most people are risk off right now and wait and see. And although a tax boone might help some people start hiring, I don't think it fundamentally changes the outlook in a way where people are going to feel confident about making large investments. I think that on a business level and actually on an individual level as well, just like average consumers.

Totally. That's, that's my view as well. I say, you know, a year ago when they passed that bill, they didn't realize that sentiment would be so much more negative. And so maybe it would have worked a year ago, but I think it's not going to re. Accelerate the economy in any way, material sense. April's a while away, things could change. So it's possible. But that's, that's not my expectation. It doesn't seem to be yours either. The other one Is AI. AI Data Center. AI really? AI Data center spend is the biggest capex or biggest, like dollars moving the economy. It's absolutely insane.

It's wild.

I think it's real. I think that it's not a bubble right now and that the amount of money, I mean, it's definitely going to keep the economy propped up, but it's such a narrow part of the economy that like, I don't think it's enough to re accelerate inflation outside of like transformers, electrical equipment, things that you need for data centers are going to be really inflated. But there's like limited spillover effects the way that you have spillover effects in like housing, huge spillover effects in housing construction. If we were spending a trillion dollars more on housing construction, we'd see massive spillover effects. I just don't think that's true for AI. So what would cause things to get slower? I think that you have sort of two main things. One is that generally things outside of AI are not that strong, not that hot. I mean, it's like high interest rates really did slow down the economy. Home builders are as strained as they've been in more than a decade. Inventories are high. Multifamily construction is off a cliff. All real estate's pretty, pretty, pretty depressed. Outside of AI, wage growth is not really strong. Hiring is not very strong. So generally the economy is pretty soft. And then on top of that, I mean, everybody knows this, but it's one of those things that people forget. So the tariffs were put in place in April. Companies did raise prices, they raised prices April, May, June, July, August. And so we saw inflation stay high for longer because of all because of tariffs. But I think we'll start to see, hey, actually there really isn't any more inflation in the economy. I think the inflation is gone. This thing is just not a driver of the economy anymore. And then people will realize, oh my God, interest rates are too high. Inflation is not 3%, it's actually 2% or low twos. And then I think everybody's going to wake up to that and that's just going to cause interest rate sensitive things to get really, really, really valuable.

I see. So my opinion is that mortgage rates wouldn't change very much in 2026 because I think until we get a line of sight of like, what's the bigger risk? Inflation or recession, bond yields are kind of locked up and like people are kind of locked up. And so it sounds like you think we'll get that line of sight sometime in 2026 and your feeling is that inflation will be. Maybe we don't get back down to 2%, but people will see the path down to 2% and that will feel more confident that the risks, whether it's, you know, tariffs or some other risk that could create inflation will be mitigated. And then for reasons bond yields start to come down, spreads start to come down, we start to see better buying conditions and a lot more activity in real estate.

Yes, completely. That's exactly what I think. And I think like if you were sort of play that out, I think there's like two main questions. One, you know, the market's forward looking, so it's possible we start seeing that sooner than October or November or something. Like probably really, really like 100% by November or December. But like the market probably starts to like get anticipatory like signals earlier than that. And then, you know, everybody, you know, this is at this point like you always end up like conditioned by recent events. So everybody got conditioned by inflation, high inflation. And it's like usually what happens is because everybody's conditioned for it, it's the least likely thing to happen.

That's interesting.

The thing we're defending against, that's my view. And then I think what's going to. The question is going to be what happens after that? What then? Now I'm going to take a really big leap. I think it goes through 2%. Really?

Why? I'm curious.

Because AI is deflationary.

Yeah. Yeah. So please expand.

Yeah, So I. Okay, so let me do Funrise. So Fundrise. We're 200 people. We have a lot of different departments. Customer Service. We get 6,000 tickets a month. Half of them are handled by AI.

Wow.

Maybe more. We used to have twice as many investor relations people handling tickets as we do now. You know, we have like cybersecurity. It. We used to have eight people, now we have five. We used to have three people doing copywriting, now we have none. Yeah, I mean it's just go down the list. Everywhere that AI touches, it either suppresses the number of jobs hiring or it gets rid of jobs and then that will suppress wage growth.

Yes, I agree with that. I was actually just debating this with someone on, on the market, our other podcast earlier that I thought real wage growth was going to go negative next year. I just think that trend is going to continue. But so basically people are going to lose their negotiating leverage in labor negotiations and so wages are going to go down.

Yeah, we can debate and I think it's really hard to know exactly if it goes negative or exactly what happens, because certain people benefit and certain people will get punished. But overall, you replacing people with software and that's deflationary on wages. So you have this thing where people became more expensive and goods became cheaper.

Yeah, or services, basically. Yeah. So services are more expensive.

Exactly. And so AI is the first technology that really makes services cheaper.

Interesting.

It's going to make people cheaper.

So that's the argument for lower wage growth in general.

You basically have majority of people with lower wages and then a minority of people with higher wages. Because If Dave had 10 employees and now he has five, is Dave making more money? Maybe. Because he has a lot more profit. So the average may not be lower, but, like the median will be lower.

Okay.

[Dave Meyer]

All right, everyone, we got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with Ben Miller right after this.

[Ben Miller]

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[Dave Meyer]

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[Ben Miller]

That's a scary proposition, to be honest, when I think about it. Just like society wise to me, the idea that we'll have fewer people employed and at lower wages is a big break in the Economic system, is it not?

I think that there's a transitionary period that could be quite ugly. And I've actually sat down and done a lot of work on this. You can go on ChatGPT, go on Claude and ask these questions of like, okay, you know, what percentage of their work can be replaced by, you know, GPT5, GPT6, you know, go through the tasks they do and you can really quickly get to a pretty confident conclusion that like it's not less than 10% of most people's work. And in some places where you've, where you've built a customized application like for customer service or customized accounting software for AI, it can do more than 50%, I think, let's say 50%, maybe 90% in some cases. And so you say, okay, let's just say it's 20%. Well, 20%. 100 million is 20 million people.

[Dave Meyer]

Right.

[Ben Miller]

It's a lot.

[Dave Meyer]

Huge.

[Ben Miller]

It's too many. Yeah.

And it doesn't actually cause unemployment to go through the roof. Maybe unemployment goes to 5 and a half percent or 6%. Is it mostly it suppresses hiring?

Well, that's kind of what's going on right now. Right. Like we're not seeing layoffs, we're just seeing no one hiring.

Yeah, I think that like a generation of people who are in their early 20s are going to like really get impacted.

Yeah. I mean you look at unemployment for 16 to 24 year olds right now, it's already 10%. Like that's really high. And it's hard to imagine that picking up anytime soon. That's what I mean about the societal challenges here. Like there's obviously benefits to it, but there's a lot of stuff that just feels uncertain. Another reason why, going back to your previous point about people not wanting to make a lot of investments, it just feels like so uncertain about these things, how these things are going to play out. We've had ChatGPT for two or three years now, but it's still so brand new. There's going to be so many different forms of AI that start to come in, not just in large language models that could do totally different things. So I buy the idea that this could be deflationary, at least in the short to medium term. And I can't really think in my head of like precedent for that. In the economy where it's been a sustained deflationary period, we'd have, we've had lagging wage growth for 40 years in this country. But this seems more serious than that.

Yeah, I guess I'D argue the opposite of that. You've probably seen this graph, but corporate profits have been going up for like 25 years. Yeah. And if you look at the number of people it takes to produce something, it's been falling. Used to take eight people per, you know, corporate dollar, and now it takes like two and it's falling to one. So technology has been making the economy more productive, need less workers, and it's been mostly gains to capital.

Yes.

Not gains to labor.

That's right.

So I think this is very consistent with that.

That's a good point. So there is precedent.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's. It's more similar, but more extreme.

It's just more dramatic. Yeah, it's just basically the acceleration of a pattern we've seen.

Right. And it's a pattern that is both very productive and very counterproductive. Counterproductive politically, productively. From a capital point of view, I'm not as bearish. I think that an optimistic view would be that AI is really designed for the young people. They're much more adaptive. So it could be that at some point all these young people are getting hired to really be the. The person in the office who understands how to use AI.

I'm following you. I mean, obviously no one really knows, but I think this is very plausible. This is a very plausible line of thinking here. To continue, sort of your thesis here about real estate in general. How do you think this impacts, like you're saying deflationary, that could lead to lower mortgage rates. I totally buy that if it is deflationary. So then, like, is this kind of where the thesis about real estate bottoming comes from? Is like we're going to get cheaper, cost of borrowing and asset prices are going to go back up.

That's my expectation, my belief that, yeah, that basically the. We end up in a new era. This era is different. We go through these paradigms. You and I have been through. I don't know how many now, three or four. So we're going into a new one and. And that new one is not like the old one. Covid almost accelerated it or something. Like we went through like a. Usually they're like about a decade, and this one ended up being five years or something, but instead of being 10. And so the old one was money printing, inflation, high rates. And now we're going to go into something that's like high productivity growth, high returns of capital, lower inflation, but higher real interest rates. Because what happens is we have really high GDP growth and high growth that drives the real interest rate up, but it drives inflation rate down. So it's a little bit of a, you get some and you lose some. But generally like that's good for growth in which, you know, real estate is a leverage levered investment in growth and so the leverage part gets cheaper and you get more growth. And so I think you're just going to see a lot of benefits and then it's going to be more asymmetric. I think that high end does better than low end real estate. So San Francisco, New York, you know, places that selling to a multimillionaire, the high end is absolutely crazy. How much money is going to be created for top 0.1% of the country. So a high end real estate I think is where you want to be.

Interesting.

I've been 20 years focusing on workforce real estate, real estate for middle class because usually middle class real estate is more resilient. This is where I don't have my thinking as refined, but I think that could be impacted by this hollowing out dynamic.

I haven't thought about it that way. I buy the idea, you know, if you're right, that we'll have a lot of wealth creation at the top. That's certainly a continuation of a trend that's existed in the US for a while now. I guess I've, I've made my own investing thesis more about affordability and trying to find places similar to what you're saying about workforce housing. Trying to find places where the average person can afford the average price home is your move away from that. Thinking that affordability for the average American could get even worse than it is right now.

That's the political dynamic that's really quite ugly. Yeah, there's affordability in terms of goods and services and there's affordability in terms of assets. Sure, yes, assets get more expensive, but goods and services get cheaper. So it's harder to buy a house, but you can afford the healthcare. Maybe it gets cheaper for the first time, not in the short term. But really healthcare is I think very impacted by AI. And so that's why I say if you're going to buy assets, which is real estate, you want to be in assets that benefit from that wealth effect. And we haven't shifted our real estate strategy yet around this. It's still early, early days on this. But high end San Francisco for sure, no question. High end New York, you probably want to be in the suburbs. I think it's a challenge for where you want to invest. You really have to think about that. So you'd Want to be near these big economic centers, but not actually probably in them.

I'm curious, this is kind of another tangent, but like how does the average person afford rent in this scenario? You know, asset prices are going up, people are making less and less money. Like I see a lot of people talking about universal basic income. Is that kind of the avenue you go down?

I don't think so. Have you heard this thing? It's a new concept to me. I heard it recently. It's as opposed to redistribution. You have pre distribution.

No, I have not heard of that.

It actually comes from the right, but it's the argument from Oren Cass from New Compass. The argument is people don't want handouts, they want a job and they want a purpose. And so we'd rather do it as effect. So unions are pre distribution, minimum wage, pre distribution things that are before you get to the government. So you sort of, you affect the workplace. So rent control is kind of a pre distribution thing anyways. I think it's going to be really popular. And so I think that there'll be this new movement around how you address this inequality. Rent control is obviously an example of that. And it's pretty crazy in some places where you can't evict people and you can't raise rents and probably a million units in New York will go bankrupt because they essentially, their costs went up. Their, you know, their, their mortgage went up, their insurance went up, everything went up, but their rents didn't go up. So like all these affordable housing projects in San Francisco and D.C. and New York and are going bankrupt. So it's like that's a taking, right? That's a way of like kind of redistribucing wealth from the owner to the renter. So that's a version that's already happening. So what's the next version of that? I think it's hard. I think maybe, maybe they, you know, Europe, you can't fire people. Maybe they start making it so you can't fire. Maybe like unemployment insurance becomes like 10 times more expensive. So you have to like support people like, so they. There's all sorts of possibilities. But I think it's like in a world where you have an extreme effect when I think you see extreme government intervention to the private economy.

Yeah, I mean something would have to happen in this if this scenario. I just don't think you can have a functioning society where people continue to make less and less and unemployment goes up and up and all the money's going to a very small percentage of People like that's, that's just the recipe for civil unrest. If you look at history, something would have to happen. Yeah.

And you, what you'd hope is that somebody has a good idea.

Yes, I would definitely hope that.

[Ad Read Host]

Right.

[Ben Miller]

Well, mostly I'm giving you bad ideas.

I mean, I, but this is not your job. Like, you're not.

No, no.

So I understand. I'm just curious if you had any, if you had seen any good ideas now.

Have I seen any good ideas? I have to think about that. But I, but, I mean, anyways, but you, but you. Can you understand what I'm.

I do understand what you mean. Yes.

But I mean, the point is, people say AI is a bubble. What I hear is deflation.

Yeah.

I say, oh, so you're going to put 2, 3, 4 trillion dollars into, into AI. It's either deflationary, very deflationary. So the two versions of, of it is they put trillions of dollars into building artificial people. It's software that can do the work of 20 to 50% of people's work. That's like my base case, or worse. It is a bubble. It blows up and then we have super deflation because you have, you have built trillions of dollars of AI data centers that are pumping out all these tokens that are replacing people's tasks. And the AI economy blew up and deflated. So I'm like, oh, it's just a question of how deflationary it is.

[Dave Meyer]

Stay with us everyone. We gotta take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

[Ben Miller]

Henry, it's holiday season. What do you get a real estate investor for the holidays?

[Dave Meyer]

Well, if that real estate investor is me, you can get me a 15 unit apartment building.

[Ben Miller]

Oh, does that work? Do people just send you apartment buildings?

[Dave Meyer]

They are now.

[Ben Miller]

Well, I got a suggestion actually. If you are looking for a gift to get a real estate investor, buy them a ticket to the upcoming Texas Cash Flow Roadshow.

[Dave Meyer]

We're going to be in Texas.

[Ben Miller]

We're going to Austin, Houston, Houston and Dallas from January 13th to 16th. We're going to be having meetups, workshops, live podcast recording. We'd love to see you all there. So if you're thinking you got a.

[Dave Meyer]

Friend in the Texas area and they're.

[Ben Miller]

Trying to get into real estate investing.

[Dave Meyer]

They'Re trying to scale their portfolio. Go to biggerpockets.com Texas and go buy them a ticket. I've had my home security system for quite some time now. And the best part, half the time I forget it's even there. It's just quietly doing its job, keeping my place safe while I get on with life. If you're wondering what I use, it's Simplisafe and it has been solid from day one. What makes it different is how proactive it is. Most systems only react after someone breaks in. That's like opening an umbrella after the rain stops. Simplisafe helps stop trouble before it starts. Its AI Cameras can spot a potential threat outside, and real live agents jump in, talking through the camera, letting the person know they're on video, that the police are on the way, or even flipping on a siren or spotlight if needed. It's protection that actually prevents problems instead of cleaning up after them. That's why I've stuck with it all these years. It just works quietly and confidently, like the world's most polite bodyguard. And right now is a great time to get started. 50% off any new system For a limited time, go to simplisafe.com host again, that's simplisafe.com host because there's no safe like SimpliSafe.

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I thought I had a pretty good.

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[Dave Meyer]

Welcome back to the show. Let's jump back in with Fundrise CEO Ben Miller.

[Ben Miller]

All right, well, you've given me a lot to think about. A lot. Before we get out of here though, just curious. You know, you've given us a couple hints that you think about investing near these big economic hubs. You know, being careful about where around those hubs you choose to invest. What about different asset classes? Like do you think residential versus multifamily or commercial will perform differently in the coming years?

Well, I definitely don't touch office.

Yes, me neither, thankfully.

Yeah, I mean, it's obvious because you know, I'm talking about eliminating jobs, which eliminates office and office was already bad. No, I mean I'm a big believer in industrial and in multifamily. I think you're high end for sale housing and then also rental housing in places that are not going to be over regulated. And then we don't do high end, super high end residential, maybe super even high end retail where it sort of caters to that upper class. It's not something I think I want to do, but I think that that's a. The asset classes around like Greenwich and Sausalito and places that are extreme wealth would just get even crazier. And then, I mean, I'd be remiss not to talk about our AI product that we've been building.

Yeah, let's do it. Because I mean we talked a lot about AI. So tell me how you and fundrise are using AI in your own investing.

Yeah, so we for the last couple years been building a real estate AI product called Real AI. It's not realai.com, it's still kind of in beta, but you can go in there and it's pretty amazing.

I've got to use it. It's really cool.

It's amazing to me because I'm like, it makes me understand the potential of AI in a different way.

Yeah, it makes me glad that I'm a podcaster now and no longer a data analyst.

Yeah. I mean it turns ordinary people into advanced data scientists.

Yeah, it does. It's crazy.

We built real estate one called Real Estate AI and that's basically to help you do analysis. We're building more things you can like if you take like, oh, I have an om from a broker. I have maybe I have a T12, I have some information, I upload the deal and I start using it to like interrogate the deal. Like, do you think these rents are realistic? What if tariffs get removed? And what if like you can do like all this thinking, all this analysis with this tools and then have it produce like drafts for you that you can then edit it Both saves you a lot of time, but it makes you so much smarter. I mean so much.

It really does. Yeah. I find myself doing the same amount of thinking that I used to like. I don't feel like I'm necessarily spending less time working, but it's like I just get better information to consider so much faster and ideas are like introduced that I would have taken me a longer time to come to or just like, you know, I'm an analyst. So, like, sometimes AI will suggest a data set I didn't even know existed. And that means that I can now start thinking about something else or there's just framing it somewhere away. I wouldn't think of it. I still find myself working, of course, but it just seems it's just a much more robust and, like, rich set of information that I can work with. At least that's how I'm using it right now.

That's a funny way to think about it because I was on a podcast three years ago and I was on again this week, and they said, three years ago you recommended a bunch of podcasts. What do you recommend now? And I was like, I think I spent all my time now in AI, where I used to spend it, like on listening to podcasts. Yeah.

Listen to podcasts.

[Ad Read Host]

Right?

[Ben Miller]

Yeah.

Because I just spend so much time. Essentially, it's a form of content where I'm like, what about this? What about that? And I'm thinking about things and it's producing things for me. And so I want to ask you, because you've played around with real AI, what do you have to say about it?

I love it. I being sincere that someone like me who analyze housing markets don't go into that career. Right now, aggregating real estate data is a huge pain in the butt. And we don't need to get into why, but it's really disparate. There's MLS is, there's data source, there's private sources, there's public sources there, county and national. It's a lot of stuff. And what Ben and his team has done and allowed us to access all this information about a city, dig into comps, dig into migration patterns, dig into ARV is like all of it in one place.

[Dave Meyer]

It's incredible.

[Ben Miller]

It just. This is like a true time saver. Like, I felt like I could do this analysis before, but I was probably one of few people who could do it confidently. But now, not only can anyone do it, but you could do it in a fraction of the time it even took me to do it. And so I think it's going to be an interesting thing, but I can even feel myself feeling a little overwhelmed by it almost. Where if you're not an analyst, digesting just, you know, tons of data might be a little bit intimidating. But for people like me who are analytical, it's a playground, you know, it's super, super fun. And I'm sure what you and everyone else is working on is just like, how do you make this different levels, like how do you create a level for a beginner investor to understand things and then a little bit more sophisticated. More sophisticated and have like different levels of communication. But the fact that it's all there is just fascinating. I am guessing because I get messages from our audience all the time, people saying like, where do I get data about the housing market? And they're not even talking about anything like what you're doing. But it's frustrating for, for regular investors even to go to Redfin than to go to the BLS and to go to the Fred website and just even get four or five data points. Even if you're not trying to aggregate them, it's frustrating to do just that. And so I think the merging of all this information into one digestible place is going to make the job of an investor, I think, just more fun. You get to do more of the enjoyable part and less of the admin kind of back end stuff that someone like me does. At least I think it's going to become more fun.

Like my, my friend, I have a friend who's very inappropriate person but he, he says like, you know, wake up in the morning, I should have an omelet. There's the insight.

Go to the store.

He's got to get these eggs, he's got to get the butter. You got to cook it. Finally at the end, you get to eat it. Right? But how much of the time was not the insight, not the eating?

Oh my God, I'll spend an hour cooking in four minutes eating. I just inhale food. It's embarrassing.

That's how I think a lot of work is. I don't think AI is going to get rid of the four minutes. I think that we're nowhere close to AI replacing people. There's so much of your work is just not valuable. It's just grindy administrative sucky work. That's the stuff AI is so good at.

All right, let's end there because to me that is an optimistic out. I love that idea. That's a great positive view of how AI might impact all of us on our work. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you all next time.

[Dave Meyer]

I've had my home security system for quite some time now. And the best part, half the time I forget it's even there. It's just quietly doing its job, keeping my place safe while I get on with life. If you're wondering what I use. It's SimpliSafe, and it has been solid from day one. What makes it different is how proactive it is. Most systems only react after someone breaks in. That's like opening an umbrella after the rain stops. SimpliSafe helps stop trouble before it starts. Its AI cameras can spot a potential threat outside, and real live agents jo jump in, talking through the camera, letting the person know they're on video, that the police are on the way, or even flipping on a siren or spotlight if needed. It's protection that actually prevents problems instead of cleaning up after them. That's why I've stuck with it all these years. It just works quietly and confidently, like the world's most polite bodyguard. And right now is a great time to get started. 50% off any new system. For a limited time, go to simplisafe.com host again, that's simplisafe.com host because there's no safe like SimpliSafe, most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of the smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily they focus exclusively on landlords. Whether it's a single family rental, a BRRR Builders risk policy, or midterm holiday guests, you get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in [e-mail] landlordinsurance steadily landlord insurance designed for the modern investor.