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BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast
Data Says It’s a Buyer’s Market: Here’s Where the Most Opportunity Is w/Michael Zuber
00:41:39
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- [00:00]
Michael Zuber
Congratulations. The data says it's a buyer's market for us real estate.
- [00:12]
Scott Trench
Welcome to the Biggerpockets podcast. I'm Scott Trench, CEO of BiggerPockets and co host of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I'm filling in for Dave Meyer today as a guest host of the Biggerpockets Real Estate podcast. And that wonderful gentleman congratulating you for for entering into a real estate buyer's market is Michael Zuber, who hosts and leads and builds the brand One Rental at a Time. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel, one rental at a Time. Go check it out. He's got a fantastic book called One Rental at a Time. Pretty easy to find him around the Internet. Been a guest on his show a few times, had a lot of fun. He's gonna be co hosting today here on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Michael, it's such a privilege to have you here guest hosting the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast.
- [00:56]
Michael Zuber
Thanks. I appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to this. Lots of stuff to discuss on this episode.
- [01:00]
Scott Trench
We're going to discuss if the seller's market of the last few years has changed and whether buyers now have more power. Spoiler alert, Michael already ruined the surprise. We're going to talk about briefly what's going on in the macroeconomic environment, because obviously that does influence people's perceptions about whether it's a good time to buy real estate or not. It's certainly a buyer's market, but that could be or not be a good time to buy real estate. And then we're going to talk about deals that we've done. We've both made major transactions in our personal portfolios in the recent past. We're going to look at the broader data across the United States for most major metro regions, and we'll provide some free links for you guys to check out those resources. And then we're going to talk about a very special project that Biggerpockets has recently launched that should save you a lot of time in finding good deals. So we'll save that surprise for the end here. But, Michael, I do have to ask, what's your take on the current situation going on in stock markets, interest rates, all those kinds of things? Tariffs.
- [01:54]
Michael Zuber
Yeah. So when you step back and look at the macro picture of the investing world, the macro picture of the US Economy, you have to take a pause. Right. The world changed on what was called Liberation Day. Right. The tariffs came out. They were much larger than anybody had expected. And that has caused a reaction. But I Think a bigger picture for real estate investors. We have to keep our head because I think a couple of things are obvious. If you just step back, you know, one step, what's happening in the buyer's market is just homeowner demand is falling. Frankly, homeowners are canceling contracts because they didn't lock rates. Also, we're seeing in this environment, sellers, sellers start to get nervous. So as a real estate investor, I hold a couple of things to be 100% certain. One, I like less competition. Congratulations, you're getting less competition. Number two, I like more supply. That too is also happening. Supply is up by, you know, depending on who you talk to, 35, 37% year on year and going higher. And then finally, I want more motivated sellers. This is the thing that a lot of newer real estate investors certainly of the last four or five years don't appreciate. You don't have to pay list price. You can get a 10, a 20, a 30% reduction off list price if you find a motivated seller. And then the final point that I hold true, Scott, and again, a lot of new investors won't get this, but I truly mean it. I don't care what the cost of capital is, as long as the cost of capital is the same for everyone or roughly the same. I don't care if the cost of capital is 18% or 20% like in Paul Volcker. If everybody is paying that, I will run my numbers with 30 year fixed rate debt and I will only buy great deals at cash flow day one. And if nothing does, guess what? I don't buy anything. So what I would tell real estate investors and anybody on bigger pockets is 2025 is going to be the year of investors. This is our time. We are waiting for an environment of less competition, more supply and creating great deals. So I'm excited for real estate investors, it's going to hurt for home buyers, it's going to hurt for real estate agents, it's going to hurt for mortgage brokers. But real estate investors, we're in a unique spot to find motivated sellers. And frankly, it's getting easier and easier the crazier the world gets. So I'm excited.
- [04:22]
Scott Trench
Yeah, I think that if you're looking for leverage as a buyer in a real estate market, the recent events, you know, can only be helping that situation.
- [04:32]
Michael Zuber
Correct.
- [04:33]
Scott Trench
That said, I'll couch your analysis with a couple of buts on there. One is you are defining supply as the number of total active listings increasing year over year. Another way I like to look at supply is the amount of new construction units being delivered and those I believe are peaking right now here in Q2, 20, 25.
- [04:53]
Michael Zuber
Sure.
- [04:53]
Scott Trench
Here. And those will begin to slow dramatically in the back half of this year. On that front, and when, as a real estate investor, when you think about the returns of a real estate investment portfolio over the near term, they are dictated, I think by three factors. One is supply, which is new construction, the amount of new construction hitting the market. The second is going to be interest rates and the third is going to be demand. It's very, very simple. These are Ecom 101 concepts here. Supply is very high in the near term and that should all else equal, push prices and rents down. Interest rates are a wild card. You got to have an opinion on these. Whatever your opinion is, it's going to embarrass you. My opinion, which you can come back and laugh at me at in six months or a year from now, is that there's a lot of real threat to near term rises in interest rates. A normalized yield curve with the federal funds rate at 4%, 4ish, 4 and a quarter could trade at 5 and 3 quarters. So the market is betting that the Fed will lower rates 5, 6, 7 times to keep the 10 year, which is a very clear correlate to 30 year mortgage rates where it is. And you've got the added factor of whether foreign investors like China, Japan, Germany, parts of the EU are going to continue lending money to the United States government at low interest rates. So I think there's some real risks that rates can go up in the near term. So you've got three to five year horizon here. The first year of that horizon is going to have some scary stuff in it. And the last piece is going to be demand. And I think demand is a wild card that you can spend 30 years trying to master and you're going to, you're going to mess it up. And my favorite example of that is Austin, Texas. Right. Because people move from California, where Michael's located, to Austin, Texas and they realize that there are bugs and snakes and humidity and all the nasty stuff that go in there. They move right back to California two or three years later.
- [06:43]
Michael Zuber
Yeah, the boomerang. Yep.
- [06:45]
Scott Trench
So I think that that's, you know, but that's hard to predict. Right. And I think that the headline for demand is that it's actually been stronger than many people, myself included, would have anticipated in Q1 with most of that new supply getting absorbed in most markets. So those are headwinds. And I think that that dynamic is creating. It is. You know, I don't think most people can articulate it that way, but I think that that dynamic is contributing to the buyer's market that we're starting to see in many places around the country.
- [07:12]
Michael Zuber
First thing, I think I want to highlight again, you and I have, you know, years in this game. Buyer's markets don't actually come around that often. Right. You know, over the last 20 years, you know, I've been doing this 25 years, we've probably seen two legitimate buyers markets. The Great Recession being the most obvious example of that. But there was also examples in 2001 and 2002 when I got started. It was, it was leaning definitely towards the buyer's market. And all the new investors today, they've never seen a buyer's market. Right. If you start in the last four or five years, we've seen some of the most extreme sellers markets that I've seen in 25 years. So this change to a buyer's market is going to feel unusual. And it my fear for a new real estate investors, they don't take advantage of it. I think a lot of real estate investors started to feel like you had to pay list price or you, you had to, you had to, you know, wave contingencies. None of those things you have to do in a true buyer's market. In fact, you can ask, ask for seller credits. You know, you can ask for rate buy downs. If you're gonna, if you're gonna write a deal in this environment, your job is to get a great deal that cash flows day one.
- [08:18]
Scott Trench
Mm.
- [08:18]
Michael Zuber
It's hard, but not impossible.
- [08:20]
Scott Trench
Well, let's translate that to practical reality. What have you bought? Can you give us an example of something you bought recently and what that experience was like?
- [08:26]
Michael Zuber
A lot of people think you can't get deals from homebuilders. And maybe in an environment that's an extreme seller's market, that's true. I happen to be shopping for a second home in Las Vegas last year, year and a half ago, and my budget was between 500 and 750 grand. That was where my wife and I were comfortable. And this was at the time where interest rates were 8%. Just so we can put context around when this was, was when this was going on. And, you know, we weren't finding anything that kind of met our needs in the existing home market. Back to the point about existing versus new. So we ran into a builder that was building up in the hills and the price points just for, you know, to put it out there was $1.3 million. So way above what we were looking at for existing homes. But what we stumbled across was a house that was complete, was finished, all done, right in the middle of their development because somebody canceled, right? They took the deposit, they kept it. But now they had this almost albatross out there. So what we were able to do by talking with them is frankly negotiate. My first offer to them was a million bucks. Also I wanted them to buy the rate down to sub 5% and I asked for some seller credits. So taking a long story a little bit short, a lot of negotiations with them, we end up paying 1.05. So we get a quarter of a million dollar reduction, we end up paying zero for a lot fee. If you don't know how Vegas works, typically you buy the home and then there's a lot fee on top of that. Our lot fee was zero. The house that we bought had about $50,000 in upgrades because that's what the old owner wanted. We paid zero for those. We got a 30 year mortgage at 4.99. So they bought us down from eight and an eighth to 4.99 and we got 10,000 bucks in closing cost credit. So this is a story of buying something that was frankly at the top of the market. What would that be? $500,000 more than we wanted to pay. But I was payment constrained. So what we ended up buying for a million 50 at 4.99, the payment is less than I would have paid for an existing home sales. And I'm hearing more and more people in this environment, to your point about rising supply, get deals from builders. So that's, that's the first story that I want people to realize is in an environment of rising supply and new construction, you can negotiate with builders. What is something, Scott, you have purchased recently.
- [11:09]
Scott Trench
So, Michael, I talked about this purchase back in episode 1095 and I don't think I negotiated nearly as well as you did. Frankly, I think you did a much better job than me on that recent purchase here. But I had a similar ish experience here where they listed this property in 2024.
- [11:26]
Michael Zuber
Oh wow.
- [11:27]
Scott Trench
At 1.2 mil. Then they dropped at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times over the course of a year. Yeah, and I closed on it for a million even. And then from there the negotiation is very eerily parallel to your situation. I chose to use no debt and I financed this by selling out of my stock portfolio in February because I felt that I was not able to handle the risk to Reward ratio of stocks at that point. So literally a decade and a half of piling money into the stock market. I exited that position and used the proceeds from that to close on this purchase. And I did not use a load, but I probably should have negotiated that. I just was like, I don't know what's going to happen in 2025. I don't know about all these things. For me the best risk to reward ratio is to just have the thing paid off.
- [12:15]
Michael Zuber
Sure.
- [12:16]
Scott Trench
And then generate my. The seller says seven and a half percent. I say 6.5% cap rate on the 65,000 in net operating income which I've so far seemed to be achieving there. The property was to your parallel to yours. It was not new, but it was a flip. These folks had actually purchased it for 700,000 in 2020, I think 2023, early 2023 and put $200,000 into it. New roof, all the units remodeled and upgraded, all the appliances and stuff less than five years old. This is a property that should not need much work at all for the next 10 years. Fully leased through the end of next year. So that's the deal. There is. I didn't have to negotiate. I felt as much as you, I probably should have in some cases because I was getting exactly what I wanted. This is the one of the best deals I've ever purchased in the city limits of Denver in my career from a price to relative to income potential range. So I'm seeing the same thing you're seeing.
- [13:07]
Michael Zuber
I think you did great. I mean again, at the end of the day, every single investor needs to figure out what their buy box is or what their criteria is for a great deal. And if your criteria for a great deal is a six and a half cap, congratulations. Awesome. Get the deal right. You know, just because you hear some other investor do something a little wild and crazy, don't compare to others. Do what's right for, you know, your numbers going in. Don't guess. Oh my goodness, don't guess. But if you, if you hit your bar, write the offer. So I would say nothing but congratulations, you, you, you know, you did it. Congrats.
- [13:41]
Scott Trench
Yeah. And I think also the cap rate consideration, you know, that includes my assessment for property management. Fully loaded. I'm not managing this property myself.
- [13:48]
Michael Zuber
Sure.
- [13:49]
Scott Trench
That includes my assumptions for vacancy maintenance capex. That includes my assumptions, you know, for taxes and insurance on there. So I'm feeling pretty good. Like, I'm feeling like there's a reasonable conservatism in there. So that that's, but like those are two examples here, I think, of what you and I are seeing as individuals. How about we go and shift over to the data here and look at it from a market level perspective?
- [14:12]
Michael Zuber
Absolutely. Again, that's, that's where you, that's where people need to focus. If you're, if you're out there starting to look, you got to get focused on the data, the buy box. You got to know what your area is doing. So I look forward to seeing what you guys put together.
- [14:24]
Scott Trench
Michael in prep for this recording, we'd agreed that there were four metrics that were going to be of paramount importance to determining at an aggregate level whether a market is a buyer's market or a seller's market, whether it's likely to be one. Those are the total change in active listings, the percent change in active listings. Right. That percent change matters greatly if you know, for example, Los Angeles is much larger than Kansas City. We know what listing growth it looks like on a percentage basis, the percentage of listings with price drops and that year over year change in days on market. Those are the four that we agreed on. So I'm going to surprise you with that data after the break.
- [15:05]
Dave Meyer
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- [18:12]
Scott Trench
And we're back. All right, reminder. Those four metrics that we talked about are total change in the total number of active listings year over year, the percent change in active listings, the percent of listings in a given market with price drops and the year over year change in days on market. Michael, where are you located?
- [18:31]
Michael Zuber
So I my buy box is in Fresno, California and I also have a second buy box in Vegas.
- [18:37]
Scott Trench
And you think that Fresno is a buyer seller somewhere in between?
- [18:41]
Michael Zuber
I think it is slightly skewed to a buyer's market.
- [18:43]
Scott Trench
All right, let's take a look.
- [18:45]
Michael Zuber
Oh wow, look at this again, huge.
- [18:48]
Scott Trench
Credit to Austin Wolfe for putting this together. The percentage of properties with price dropped 6.7%. We've seen the median price drop about 2%. We've seen days on market go to 44, up 8 days from last year. So surely an incremental buyer's market. We've seen 402 or 34% year over year increase in active listings, which is pretty large. But we are seeing folks generally pricing it right with the median sale to list price at 100%. What do you think here? What's your reaction to this?
- [19:17]
Michael Zuber
Yeah, so I love data like this. I love that you guys were able to put this together, shout out to the team. I just. Because again, I look literally every day. There's one subtlety below this data and that is what's happening above and below the median. Right. What we are seeing in Fresno, California is median and below. Less inventory, more competition, less price drops. Median and above. And oh my Goodness, if you're 2x, the median inventory is stacking up. So right now we are seeing, which I think we're seeing in a lot of the country is above the median is starting to, to balloon out where below the median is still relatively competitive. But you know, this is a great set of data to start with.
- [20:00]
Scott Trench
Yeah, this is, this is fun. I love it.
- [20:02]
Michael Zuber
Let me tell people because again, I talk about buy box all the time and I don't want people to miss it. I want to be very specific on how focused my buy box was in 2001 when I started here. It is 93703. So I picked a zip code of Fresno, California. And again, remember, I never lived there, I never visited there. I relied on my network of people to tell me, hey, where should I go? So that was the winning zip code. I then picked single family homes. So not condos, not townhouses, not duplexes, not apartments, not mobile homes, not land, none of that. Then I picked three or four bedrooms. So not small, not big. Single story, two car garage between 1200 and 2100 square feet. And when you look at that set of criteria day after day after day after day, and you're tracking what's going on, what sells, what price drop, what, what this, what's that? You start to learn the market. You start to understand what an average deal is. And then once you unlock what average is, the world's your oyster. Because then you could start writing good or great deals. Back in 2002, an average yield, cash on cash, was 7%. I don't think investors should ever do average deals. So if, if your average yield is 7%, you should do 9 or 10 now that's hard. They're not out there all the time, but when you are looking daily for 20 minutes, you will start to uncover this. It takes time, it feels boring, but once you get the unlock, it's like, I get it now. So I looked at that buy box in Fresno, California for almost three years, which means in that buy box I knew it better than anybody else on the planet. And it means I knew nothing else about Fresno. You could been in the Tower district or Fig Garden or Clovis, I would have had no idea. I only carried about single family homes, three or four bedrooms in this particular zip code. And I think most investors, certainly in the beginning, Scott, are not focused enough and thus are not learning and building that skill, that experience.
- [22:10]
Scott Trench
I've been investing in Denver since 2014. I've been investing in several neighborhoods. So I'm not as prescriptive as one zip code in there, but I have lived in three out of the six properties I've purchased there. By the way, it's one thing to say, hey, you should study the market for three years. It's another to say you're 22 and you want to get started. It's if you house hack, you defray a lot of these risks, right? So like that defrays a lot of the risk. I moved into my first few properties here and that makes it much more manageable. I can make a lot of mistakes as a house hacker that I can't make as a fairly semi passive investor hiring out property management, for example, in these areas. But I'm investing for 10 years, right? And like people are going to say, oh, I can find better deals in Denver. No you can't, not that much better. I know this market, I know it really well. I looked at another deal right nearby that's arguably selling at a higher cap rate. Guess what? That property, the roof and the basement unit which is rented out there, is 6 foot 2 inches, right? So like, yeah, I'm getting a totally different quality of property here at this price point than what is theoretically available in some other situations there. And I just know it. I know the market. I've done it for 10 years, I'm on it and I'll do it for another 20 or 30. And that's where this data can't possibly get to that next level bit there. But over time, Mark, that can help you. And this data can, can tell you at the very least that you're probably not buying at the peak or you are in some cases, right? So like let's let's do some quick observations that I'll preview with you because you're reacting to this data live. I didn't previous with you intentionally because I want to get your, your live reactions to some of it just like that on this. So Denver, for example, Denver is probably a buyer's market at this point, right? We've seen much more properties with price drops here, 7.3% compared to Fresno. We've seen a price drop a little bit further than Fresno. Days on market is actually lower in some cases. So maybe I'm wrong on a couple of these items here. Active listings is up 48%. So that is a big jump over Fresno, for example, for sure. And then median sales to list price is slightly under one. So folks are reasonably pricing here. A counterpoint here is let's look at Kansas City, right? Kansas City, we're seeing actually a couple of properties with price drops. We're not seeing the same dynamics that screams, you know, buyer's market here in Kansas City on most of the key four variables that you outlined for us here. We're seeing deep buyers markets from the data that we can perceive here in Florida, right? Like look at Florida, compare Florida to California right now, right? Florida, you can see is in deep purple, right? It means that there's a lot of properties with price drops, a lot of properties. All the variables we think signal a buyer's market here. In most of these categories it is shining purple, while California is orange or yellow On a lot of these things, you're seeing the same pattern in the Northeast with a lot of those markets signaling if they're not truly sellers markets, they're certainly not as deep of buyers markets as other places around the country. One of the places I like to pick on the most and I'm kind of wrong ish frankly on is Austin, Texas, where Austin, Texas is certainly seeing signals of a buyer's market here. But it's not as deep a buyer's market as Florida, for example, or other parts of Texas, based on the data that we can see in aggregate, which is surprising given how much supply has come into Austin and how, you know, how hot it was two or three years ago not to see the inverse happening here. The same way.
- [25:28]
Michael Zuber
I think Austin would be really, really cool to look at if we had a time machine because I think Austin was peak buyer's market a year ago, right. And it kind of worked through its stuff and we kind of transitioned to Florida with maximum pain. I, you know, again, I'm pretty geeky with this data. My Guess is Austin would have been a deep purple a year ago, certainly 16 months ago. But people in Austin are, you know, the boomerang has happened and people are starting to buy again in Austin for sure.
- [25:56]
Scott Trench
By the way, we will create a little link. This is all free for folks who want to play around with this data. It's pretty simple. Wow. You can take a look at it again. It does not cover the whole country because we don't have good data in rural remote places in the Midwest and West. But it should cover the places where 90 plus percent of the US population are housed.
- [26:13]
Michael Zuber
That's, that's pretty cool of you because again, a lot of people put out data like this, but it's behind a paywall. So that's very nice of you.
- [26:19]
Scott Trench
All right, we have another big freebie to announce here that I think will be pretty fun where we're going to actually show you how to find the best cash flowing deals or the at least save some time in searching for those best cash flowing deals here. And that big unveil will come right after another break.
- [26:38]
Dave Meyer
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- [28:36]
D
PPR Aaron, the ad guy here. Yeah, that's right. I do all the ads for biggerpockets and you might be saying to me, Aaron, the ads are too long or Aaron, there's far too many ads. You know what, come get me then. You think you're so tough. If you can tag me while I'm unawares, I will remove every single ad from the BiggerPockets network. You have my word. But you're never going to catch me. You know why? Because I have the SimpliSafe home security system and I've got multiple locations I can go to with it installed there too. Just try and get past my high tech sensors that detect break ins, fires and floods or indoor and outdoor cameras to keep watch day and night. There's no way you're getting past my 247 professional monitoring that I only pay like a dollar a day for. And they even said if I don't like my system that I could get a full refund with SimpliSafe 60 day money back guarantee. But that'd be crazy because I love it so much and they love us so much that they're doing 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with fast protect monitoring@simplisafe.com pockets that's simplisafe.com pockets. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
- [29:34]
Michael Zuber
Who?
- [29:35]
D
Another safe ad in the books.
- [29:41]
Scott Trench
All right, Michael, let's talk about the path that you use to just begin browsing for cash flowing deals. Like let's say you haven't looked at the market in a while. Life's gotten away from you a little bit on this and you haven't, you haven't checked the MLS for a couple of months. I'm sure it's happened to you a few times. Happens to me quite frequently there. How do you kind of recommence that search?
- [29:58]
Michael Zuber
Yeah, so if I was talking to myself, getting started, a new investor, or I wanted to get started in a new market, I think it first goes down to my belief, Scott, that real estate investing is a skill. And any skill, whether that be a new sport, a new language, a new instrument, takes focus and discipline. So what I would do is go back to what I talked about earlier in this episode is I would try to find a defined buy box. I would search the country, I would look for what that is, and then I would set it and forget it, which would then allow me to go learn what's going on. So it's a very manual process, very Excel based. It's monotonous, it's time consuming. Again, I started this 20 years ago. There wasn't really great options. That's what I would do. And, you know, I've always hoped somebody could produce something that would make that more efficient and quicker, but I haven't seen anything.
- [30:46]
Scott Trench
All right, well, today's your lucky day, so let's, let's talk about this. We at BiggerPockets have, I think, built something pretty cool here, right? So when I, when I want to go look for properties on there, I'm an agent, right? I'm licensed in my, my market, so I go to the mls, right? If I wasn't, I'd go to someplace like Zillow and just start poking around, try to filter things by like multifamily or whatever the problem is, then I'm presented with dozens or hundreds of listings. And while I can confine and refine my buy box or whatever, I have to click on every single property.
- [31:14]
Michael Zuber
Yes, you do, Scott. Yes, you do.
- [31:16]
Scott Trench
To make, to make, like, to make an opinion about whether it's worth diving into further. And this is an hours and hours and hours long exercise. Every single time I want to recommence my search. And so we at BiggerPockets thought we'd save some, some investors some time here. And I could not be more thrilled to present this new piece of technology that we've built where we are taking MLS data here. Let's, let's start from the beginning here. We'll go to biggerpockets.com bigger deals. This is our new product called Bigger Deals. I'm not a marketer, so I find it fun to just label everything. Bigger. Bigger deals, bigger pockets, money.
- [31:51]
Michael Zuber
Yeah, makes sense.
- [31:52]
Scott Trench
Yeah, smaller pockets, all those kinds of things. Basically, this is a listings platform, right? This is like a place to go and find properties for sale. The deals today are all on market, but we do hope to add off market deals, foreclosures and auctions, maybe even some wholesale listings. And we have approximated the cap rate of these properties. This is an art, right? Do not come in here and think this is a precise estimate of cash flow. For example, this is a starting point for the search. But we are saying, hey, here's a property, here's what we think it will rent for. And then after using maximum leverage with today's interest rates and factoring out conservative assumptions for, you know, things like your operating expenses like property taxes, insurance, all those kinds of things, where's your operating expenses and where's your operating income here? And we've done this in an automated fashion for every on market property that is listed for sale. Right. Some of these will be wrong. You might maybe you disagree with our conclusion there, but hopefully Bigger Deals biggerpockets.com Bigger Deals is a useful starting point for your search on this and will help you click on the ones that are most likely to be successful. Right now, investors have told us they want cash flow. I think investors should be looking at cap rate. So I had the team also provide toggles here to filter all the deals in a given area by cap rate here. So you can see that. And then I think there's a component here where from a cash flow perspective and we show cash flow on the little icons here. There's a reality check here with some of these areas in the market where not a lot of deals produce that positive cash flow at max leverage in Denver with conservative assumptions. But you can at least start the search and begin challenging whether some of these might cash flow by looking at the MLS in Denver, for example, in multifamily and clicking through and saying let's take a look at this and see if I agree with the assumptions here. Maybe I can make it work. Maybe it will be a good house hack for me. Maybe there's a good opportunity here to begin looking at it. It's at least the least bad cash flowing property in the area here. So what do you think about this so far? This is an early version. Any initial feedback or suggestions?
- [33:54]
Michael Zuber
Well, I think there's a couple of things that jump out at me right away. First off, this would have helped me immensely in the beginning because literally I went to realtor.com or redfin and put in my criteria, built a spreadsheet and then had to do all of this. So the fact that I could have come here and started really evaluating different areas and then maybe making a more educated guess on where I should start. So thumbs up for that. Definitely more efficient and quick. I like the fact that you can toggle based on what different investors like. Some like cash flow, some like, you know, cap rate. I like yield. Everybody finds their things. You know, the one thing when I look at this, that I would be really cool. And again, it does look like we're taking list price.
- [34:34]
Scott Trench
Yes.
- [34:35]
Michael Zuber
Right. Which you obviously have to start somewhere. You know, one of the things that I often get with, and this is, you know, this is just getting nitpicky, frankly. One of the things that I challenge investors adding, okay, you like that property, but it doesn't cash flow or it doesn't meet your minimum. How low do you have to write an offer where it would make sense.
- [34:55]
Scott Trench
That's right.
- [34:55]
Michael Zuber
Those are. That, that's. That's what I think a lot of investors need to be thinking about in a buyer's market. Right. You bought a fourplex that was listed at 1 3. Ultimately, for a million bucks, it made sense at a million, it didn't make sense at 1:3. So if the app eventually could allow you to say, hey, you can't pay this, but if you pay this, you're getting close, that would be kind of cool.
- [35:16]
Scott Trench
Let's see here again, all, all this is free with the exclusion that some of the more advanced items here, like you want to, you want to get super specific in your calculations, then that some of that is behind the Pro. But the feature that you're asking for is right here.
- [35:28]
Michael Zuber
Look at you. You can change that.
- [35:30]
Scott Trench
The analysis defaults to whatever the asking price is.
- [35:33]
Michael Zuber
Totally makes sense.
- [35:34]
Scott Trench
But you can customize the inputs here and say, like, let's say we can get this property for 275.
- [35:39]
Michael Zuber
Oh, wow.
- [35:39]
Scott Trench
How does that change things? Right? Okay, now we got some cash flow.
- [35:43]
Michael Zuber
Oh, that's not cool, dude. You know how long that took me to do that in the old days? That's not. That's not fair.
- [35:49]
Scott Trench
That's it. Right? So I think this is, I think.
- [35:51]
Michael Zuber
This is pretty cool. I did not think you had that. That is awesome.
- [35:55]
Scott Trench
So that's right there on the customized inputs on any, any of these listings. You can filter that. And also if you're going to sell or finance or you think that you can get a better interest rate, change the rate too. You can change those types of things here. And the basic toggles, there's also, there's obviously way more advanced, but we, we thought this was the simplest way to help investors make a fairly rapid screening decision before learning more. And Going to see the property like that was. That was the whole plan. Here is again, this may not be precise, you may not like some of these inputs. Change them, change them with this and put your own ones in here. We've just hopefully given you a time saver here. We've also all of the listings for Denver for example are here.
- [36:33]
Michael Zuber
Right.
- [36:34]
Scott Trench
They're just, we've taken away many of them so it's not an overwhelming grid and provided the ones that are in the upper echelon. So as you zoom in more, you'll see more and more pop up in different ways.
- [36:46]
Michael Zuber
That's a good idea.
- [36:47]
Scott Trench
That one's, you know, we love feedback on that. We're not sure if that's the right way to present it, but we wanted to show the relative best opportunities, not all of them. Which would you would be presented with for example on a, on a Zillow.
- [36:58]
Michael Zuber
Yeah, I think that makes sense. And again, as you drilled in it, more popped up. So I think that makes perfect sense. Again, you could be overwhelmed sometimes.
- [37:07]
Scott Trench
So this is going to be a first version MVP. Go check it out. Biggerpockets.com Biggerdeals the difference here is these. This is again free. And that's been a. It was a big challenge for us because there are platforms that provide similar types of analysis but they're typically very expensive software subscriptions.
- [37:23]
Michael Zuber
Yes, they are.
- [37:24]
Scott Trench
And so this is our goal is to make this a free to consume experience on BiggerPockets to help save some time and hopefully begin the starting point for folks doing more research. And we've gone to great lengths there. We had to go and like negotiate with mls.
- [37:35]
Michael Zuber
Oh yeah.
- [37:36]
Scott Trench
To be able to provide this data and present it in an investor friendly format. In many cases they're very particular about the way you display listings data. So this is a big, big, big effort from BiggerPockets to do this.
- [37:46]
Michael Zuber
So when I think about myself or my community and how we could use this, I think there's a couple of ways right off. First and foremost, if you're just getting started, this is a, I don't know, 100x faster, more efficient, you know, set the criteria, pull the data, especially if you're trying to figure out where you should start. Huge game saver. The other thing, I think for more experienced folks like people like me who have a buy box defined and know the numbers, I can use it to double check what's going on. Right. I could go in and see, hey, you know, I think this or I think that what is pulling from this. And again, this data being represented is not gospel. It's just meant to be a first cut. But you could use it to cross check yourself, which I think is very valuable because sometimes, myself included, I almost get tunnel vision. Right. I've looked at the same list for 37 days in a row, but I missed something. And an application like this, which is not a human, isn't going to miss anything. It'll pull it out for you. So I think, I think you're onto something.
- [38:44]
Scott Trench
We think it's a good product. So hopefully folks will go and check it out here and take a look. So thanks for letting me demo it to you very briefly here.
- [38:49]
Michael Zuber
That was fun. Again, I mean, I know a lot of these listing services out there, so to see what you guys put together and the price tag is free. Is just shows that BiggerPockets cares about real estate investors. So shout out to you and the team for doing that. That, that certainly didn't have to be free, but I'm glad you did it. Free.
- [39:05]
Scott Trench
This is a fun one. Yeah. And the team, I think the technology team here deserves a lot of kudos for having built this. A lot of work to do. This will be just a starting point for it, but we'll look forward to plenty of feedback from folks. Folks, folks at Bigger Pockets always, always give us great feedback when we release new stuff and makes the product better.
- [39:22]
Michael Zuber
There you go.
- [39:22]
Scott Trench
Well, cool. Any other thoughts that you want to discuss here before we adjourn on whether it's a buyer's market here or not?
- [39:28]
Michael Zuber
No, I think at the end of the day, kind of going back to the beginning, 2025 is going to be full of chaos and disruption. I would tell real estate investors to distance yourself. We don't really care about the cost of capital as long as it's the same. We want less competition, which we're getting. You want more supply, which we're getting. It's time to do the work. It's time to create good deals and go find that motivated seller. You can do it.
- [39:53]
Scott Trench
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Michael. True privilege.
- [39:56]
Michael Zuber
Thank you.
- [39:57]
Scott Trench
As a reminder, the two core resources that we link to, one's a free data set, right? So it's just a data set visualized on some maps that's free for everyone. And then the other product that we demoed here, bigger deals, is our new listings platform that can be found@biggerpockets.com biggerdeals. So go check those out and play around with them. Both are free. Some components, the more advanced analytics functions of Bigger Deals are only for our Pro members. And thank you very much to everyone who is already a Pro member. We really appreciate your business and support of Biggerpockets.
- [40:30]
Dave Meyer
Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico, content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Biggerpockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.