Mortgage Rates Fall, New Tax Laws Coming

Tony:
Real estate investing feels a little different today, but it shouldn’t stop you from getting started. In today’s episode, we’re going to break down how we’re navigating interest rates, why we’re maybe changing our strategies and what our portfolios look like today.

Ashley:
We’re also going to get a little insight as to what market Tony is looking at today and also why Ashley is now a short-term rental manager. Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I am Ashley Kehr.

Tony:
I’m Tony j Robinson. And with that, let’s get into a few updates on the market. First,

Ashley:
Tony, let’s start the discussion off today with some of the market conditions in 2025 and some of the changes we’ve seen happening and maybe will be happening. So the first change I want to discuss is the big beautiful tax bill. So Tony, is there anything that maybe you are going to do to pivot and change your strategy going forward?

Tony:
I think for me a lot of it is more so doubling down on what we’ve already done. Part of the reason that we started investing in short-term rentals was because of the short-term rental tax loophole, which allowed W2 employees to leverage depreciation of their short-term rentals and apply that against their W2 income, which is unique to short-term rentals. You can’t do that with long-term rentals unless you are what’s called a real estate professional, which is virtually impossible to do if you’re working a W2 job. But as a W2 employee, the short-term rental tax loop pool allows you to do that. And the way that it was initially set up when we started investing was that you could buy a short-term rental, do this cost segregation study, and there was this 100% bonus appreciation, which allowed you to basically get this big massive write-off in year one that was phasing out year over year.

Tony:
So it went from 100%, you could use to 80% to 60% to 40%, but now with the one big beautiful bill, it’s back up to 100%. So I think there’s going to be a renewed interest in short-term rental investing if no other reason than the tax benefits that come along with it. So we did a lot of cost eggs in the last few years. We’ve got a good bank of tax benefit, but I think it is starting to run out. So if we kind of get back into the acquisition mode, I think it’ll help us make sure that we can keep those taxes offset. So I think I’m happy to see that more than anything because it just validates the path that we’ve gone down.

Ashley:
Do you think that it will create this influx of short-term rental investors? Because I feel like there was kind of a mix of that in 20 20, 21 and a little bit into 22 where we had saw so many people buy short-term rentals, but that was also because of the great daily rate, the nightly rate that you could get, how everyone was traveling. Also the low interest rates. So now we’re not seeing as high of nightly rates for everybody, just the unique experiences, but do you think we’ll see a surge because of this tax loophole? That’s back to 100%.

Tony:
Yeah. If I had to make my most educated guests, I’d say no, because to your point, a lot of the folks that were jumping into the Airbnb space, the short-term rental space before they were doing it, many of them with the goal of increased cashflow, thinking it would be an easy play to get more money on a monthly or annual basis, whereas this change is going to be more so targeted towards the folks who are already high income earners and they’re looking at the strategy more so from a tax strategy perspective of preserving more of the money that they’re making. And I think just naturally there’s lots of those folks in the United States and there are people looking for extra money. So I would be surprised if we saw the massive amount of folks getting into the space is what we saw before. But I do think we will see maybe renewed interest within that specific subset of folks getting back into this.

Tony:
I think the other one too, Ash, I dunno if you saw this, but there was a lot of talk about the 10 31 exchange maybe getting axed, but the one big beautiful bill preserved that as well. And I think that’s another, I guess it’s a tax strategy obviously, but it’s just another way that real estate investors can scale their portfolio without losing a bunch of money to taxes. So I was super happy to see that get preserved as well because I think the goal for us is how can we maybe get rid of some of these smaller deals that we have and parlay those into larger properties, maybe more hotels or motels

Ashley:
Without paying taxes on the sale of the smaller one, and then just being able to use those funds into the next deal. One thing I really like about the 10 31 exchange too is you don’t have to use all of the funds or the proceeds from the sale of that property. So if you wanted to keep $50,000 in cash, you could not roll that into the next, but you’re just going to pay taxes on that 50,000. So I really like the flexibility of the 10 31 exchange. Obviously you have your timelines and things like that where you have to identify your property close on a property. You can’t just say, oh, eventually I’m going to buy another property with these funds and let it sit in a high yield savings account for five years until you decide to buy something else. There’s a strict timeline you have to follow.

Ashley:
But the other thing that I saw that was kind of interesting, and this isn’t something that has gone into effect, there’s just been different people from Congress who have kind of put in their ideas of what should happen with primary residences and being exempt from capital gains tax. And so there’s a couple different things where one is increasing it so that right now it’s at 250,000 for single and 500,000 for married, where that would pretty much double. And then another one was just to completely eliminate taxes altogether on sale of a primary residence, which I don’t think that one will happen. I don’t think they will completely eliminate it, but the reason they’re looking at this is because the values of homes have changed so much since this. These amounts were set and I can’t remember offhand, but it was a long time ago that they actually set these metrics of 250,000 and 500,000 in place. And you live in a city like Seattle or a high cost of living area, you can very easily live in your property for three years, five years and obtain more than a million dollars in equity, especially if you bought it five years ago.

Tony:
So I think the next thing that’s going on right now that’s really impacting real estate investors obviously are interest rates. We’re holding just south of 7%. I think I checked last night we’re at seven or 6.7 in some change, right around 6.8 though it is coming down and I think there’s a lot of pressure economically on interest rates to start falling. Ash and I are not economists, but there was a drop reports that came out recently that was, I dunno, it was like 73,000 jobs got added, which is really low. They revised the previous month’s numbers down by a big margin as well. So we’re starting to see signs that the economy is starting to weaken, I think a little bit. And as that happens, we will start to see interest rates I think drop. So I think a lot of signs are pointing to the Fed.

Tony:
I think their next meeting is in September, so a month from now. And I think there’s a lot of signs that they will drop the Fed funds rate. But I think in anticipation of that, we’re already starting to see interest rates come down on the mortgage interest rates. So I’ve talked to a lot of folks who are a lot smarter than me when it comes to this and there’s this big consensus that when rates can kind of get two 6% or lower, that’s when you’ll unlock a lot of the kind of buyers that are waiting on the sidelines. And I think it’s a double-edged sword dash, and here’s what your take is. It is a double-edged sword for investors because if rates get below that threshold that a lot of folks are talking about, obviously it makes deals more affordable, right? We’re getting our principal and interest payments down to a more affordable level, which makes it easier to have those deals pencil out.

Tony:
But then it also unlocks all of these other buyers, which then means we’re competing with more people, prices are going to go up and now we’re kind of fighting a different battle. So I think we are in the sweet spot. We had Jeff GaN on a few episodes ago and he talked about this as well, but I think we’re in this sweet spot where if you buy a deal today that is still cashflow positive, we probably have an opportunity in the next 12 to 24 months to refinance that deal. And your worst case scenario is that you have a deal today that cashflow is okay and your best case scenario is that you have a deal that cashflow is okay today and cashflow is amazing in 12 to 24 months when you refinance. So I think if you’re waiting for rates to go down, I think that is a wrong move. I would rather challenge you to find a deal that makes sense today and then if the opportunity presents itself to refinance and turn it into an even better deal, then you’d take that opportunity. But I think waiting, I think waiting is a wrong move. What’s your take, ash?

Ashley:
Yeah, I definitely agree. I don’t think going into a deal relying on interest rates to be cut, that is the wrong move. Also, don’t get into a deal saying, oh well I’ll just refinance when rates go down. I can weather this property for a year with negative cash flow and just wait. That is also the wrong thing to do. But if you work harder to find the deals and you’ll see investors, maybe they’re not getting as many deals because they’re really focusing on finding the good ones. And that is harder to do today. I do listen to a lot of podcasts about the economy and the market and it seems as though the prediction, and they will say these are just predictions, is that there will be two rate cuts this year each a quarter percentage of a point. And so we’ll see that in the end of the year.

Ashley:
But who knows? Those are just predictions of what will happen when you are thinking, okay, I’m going to get this property now and if rates do drop, I do want to refinance to get that lower rate. Make sure you’re taking into consideration closing costs. I don’t want you to get excited that you’re able to refinance because rates, they just announced a rate cut and you’re going to have a little bit more cashflow. Look at what the closing costs are. Is it actually going to be worth it for you to refinance for half a percentage point less and still pay the closing costs? The 2D SER loans that I have done, they both have required two year prepayment penalties too. So if I do go and refinance in the first year, I’m paying a 2% fee on the balance that is paid off. And then if it’s the second year, I’m paying a 1% balance on the balance that I’m paying off.

Ashley:
So there’s that to look at. And also too, the purchase price, whatever you purchase that property for, you owe that money. That is money that somehow you have to pay back or money that you already spent if you paid for it in cash, okay? There is no changing what you purchased the property for the interest rates that can change. So I think I would rather find a really good deal now, pay less for the property than wait until it’s easier and pay more for the property, even if it’s going to cashflow a little bit more because I have that lower interest rate, but it also could not cashflow that much more because you’re going to be paying more for the property if there’s more competition and more buyers come back into the market. So always look at that too as to you can pay off the property and that payment is gone, you can pay the property off and your interest rate is gone too. So I think make sure you’re just looking at all sides of it and not just thinking, oh, if rates drop, let’s go ahead and refinance.

Tony:
Yeah, date the rate, marry the house, right? So I think there’s something to be said there as well. I think next, Ashley, let’s talk about what’s going on at a regional perspective. We talked macro, right? Interest rates are affecting everyone. Macro tax changes, that’s a macro impact as well. But regionally, I think we’re seeing a lot of shifts in markets as well. A few years ago it felt like Florida was one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet. It’s like everyone was leaving California, they were going to Texas, they were going to Florida. But I think we’re starting to see some of those trends reverse, and I think part of it is insurance costs. Places like Florida are getting harder to ensure places like even parts of Texas, hurricanes, new Orleans and other place where insurance prices are rising. But I think we’re seeing some regional trends that are also starting to impact investors. How are things looking where you’re at in Buffalo Ash? Are you seeing the market improve? Is it getting shakier? What are you seeing in your neck of the woods?

Ashley:
We’re definitely seeing more inventory, more days on market, but the property type that is actually selling the best is the mom and pop home that isn’t updated, but it is extremely well taken care of. It is clean, the foundation is strong. There’s not repairs and maintenance that need to be done. It just cosmetically would need some updates, but it’s still good. And those are the properties that you’re seeing going for over asking, getting flooded with showings as they’re somewhat still affordable because they’re not completely remodeled, but they’re in really good shape and condition. And that’s what I’m seeing at least just looking at the inventory in the different little neighborhoods that I invest in. Those are the ones that are going so fast. It’s not the high-end luxury homes, it’s not the dilapidated, it’s almost like starter homes I would say in a sense. But overall, Buffalo made a list of number two for least days on market. Rochester, New York was number one, but that was also several months ago that list came out.

Tony:
Yeah, I think what we’re seeing, so I’m in Southern California, which is a very, I think distinct real estate market. But what I’ve noticed is that because we flip homes, we probably flip a couple of homes a year. We only bought one flip last year. And part of the reason that we only bought one was because I felt like I was seeing sellers even, especially the wholesalers that we work with who were presenting me with deals where the price point relative to the margin, it was just way too tight. They’re sending me properties like, Hey, you can pick this up, cash offer at 5 65 and your RV is six 15. It’s like that is such a tight difference between what they’re trying to wholesale it to me for what the RV is. And it’s like, okay, do I want to go out there and risk half a million dollars to maybe make 15,000 or can I go into a different market?

Tony:
And I’ve talked about in the podcast that we took a trip out to OKC about a month ago, and the goal of that was can I get the same raw dollar amount but do that in a market where the entry price points are significantly lower? And there were a lot of things that we saw in the OKC market that made me more confident starting to build a flipping ecosystem there as opposed to trying to continue to bang my head against the wall and flip in a super competitive, overly expensive market like California. So that’s a big shift we’ve made, just kind of seeing where buyers are at, where sellers are at. The type of risk we’re willing to take on is, Hey, I’m just going to leave that to the side. Let me go focus on a market that’s a little bit more a market that can present a little less risk. And I think that’s what we found in OKC.

Ashley:
Okay, we’re going to take a short break and when we come back we’re going to check in on mine and Tony’s portfolios to see how they performed so far in 2025. Okay, we’re back after our short break. Thank you guys so much for checking out our show sponsors. So Tony, give us a little oversight of where your portfolio is at today. I don’t even think I know how many short-term rentals you have now and everything that’s going on.

Tony:
So we’ve sold off a couple. We sold one of our short-term rentals maybe three months ago, and that was one of our earlier cabins that we bought. And just when we looked at the cashflow relative to the equity, we feel like it was the right move for us to make a lot of, inject some capital back into the business. So again, our single family short term rentals are really in two main markets. We in the Smoky Mountains, were in Joshua Tree, the Smoky Mountains. That market’s been pretty steady for us. It’s just like, obviously it came down from the super high peaks of 2020 and 2021, but after that we’ve had pretty consistent performance year over year. So that market’s been pretty solid. Josh, on the other hand, that one really bottomed out. I’d say in probably 23. That was of if you draft our revenue market wide across that portfolio peaked in 22 probably or maybe 21, a little bit of a dip in 22.

Tony:
Bottom out in 23, we saw a rebound in 24 and 25. We pretty much paced mostly to kind of what 24 has done, and that tracks mostly with how that market has performed as well. Now that’s aggregate across our portfolio. If we were to drill down on certain properties, we have some properties that are outperforming and I’ve probably got, I dunno, maybe four out of the 18 properties that we have in Joshua Tree that are just underperforming losing money. So the goal with those is how can we stabilize those properties? Can we reinvest back into those? So we’re building a pool at one of ’em right now and we’re just trying to see, hey, what other levers can we add to get these bottom performers performing like our top performers in that market?

Ashley:
I was going to ask, what do you notice a difference between the top performers? Is it maybe they’re in a different neighborhood or they’re bigger, it can fit more people you are any noticing anything like that?

Tony:
We’ve dug into this data pretty extensively. And those four properties, those are all the larger renovated homes that we have in that market. So we’ve got a couple three bedrooms, actually one of the two bedrooms that’s slightly newer, so that one’s a little bit of an anomaly, but the other three are three bedroom properties that we rehabbed. The majority of our portfolio in that market are new construction, tiny homes that were built between 2020 and 2022. So these are new products and what we’ve seen in that market is that the top performers tend to be new construction. So when we look at the other three bedrooms, we’re talking about properties that were probably built between the nineties, maybe early two thousands. So these are products that are 30 years old at this point. And although we’ve done a good job rehabbing them, these are still 1990s products that we’re trying to compete with short-term rentals that were built in 2024.

Tony:
And I think we’re seeing better amenities added to the new construction. We’re seeing higher ceilings, we’re seeing better floor plans, it just flows better. They’re both three bedrooms, but the square footage is bigger. So we came to the realization that if we can’t compete on a footprint perspective, can we take the resources that we do have, which in a lot of these bigger properties is just space in the backyard, like outdoor space and try and compete there. So we added our first in-ground pool last summer or last spring actually. And that one helped a lot with one of our three bedroom properties. We’re adding that now to a few of our other properties as well to see, okay, if we can’t get ’em within the four walls, can we just make the experience better? So that’s what we’re focusing on right now.

Ashley:
And then what about the motel? So you have your one motel in Utah, go over that and any other properties besides the motel and the short-term rentals?

Tony:
Yeah, the motel has been, I think the bright spot for sure of the portfolio because we launched it in spring of last year. And I’ll give you guys the numbers really quickly. I think it’s interesting and it’s really kind of shifted my mindset of what kind of properties you want to buy moving forward. Tell you guys just hands down, managing the 13 room motel significantly easier than managing 13 separate single family Airbnbs. The quality of guests and their expectations on the 13 single family Airbnbs significantly higher than what we see on the motel. The reliance on a single OTA very high with the short-term rental, single family homes very low. We’ve got a really good mix of the different OTAs, our own direct booking website with the motel and Airbnb’s recently made a lot of changes that I’m not super stoked about. So the fact that we don’t have that same reliance on the hotel has been awesome as well.

Tony:
So it’s really, I think encouraging me to our next purchase will most likely be another motel, but again, we bought that property for just under a million bucks. We dumped in another just over 400 k on the rehab, so we were all in for 1.35 I think was our total all in cost. And the first year, so from April of 24 through the end of the year, I think we did $190,000 in revenue, but our last 12 months, so if I look at August, we’re recording this in August. If I look at August of 24 to August of now, we’ve done, I think it was like 310,000 in revenue and our projections were to do about three 50. So we’re a little bit behind, but it’s encouraging for me to see that we’re actually trekking towards what that projection is. And I feel like we’re getting into our rhythm now from a management perspective, from a pricing perspective, and all signs point to this deal being a really, really solid deal for us. I’m super excited about it.

Ashley:
Now, does this qualify for the short-term rental loophole?

Tony:
It does, but it’s because we had to set it up in a very specific way to do that. If it was a traditional full service hotel where guests come in, they’ll walk up to the front desk, someone greets them, they say, Hey, Mrs. Care, you’re in room number 12. Here’s your room. Key housekeeping knocks on your door in the morning saying, Hey, would you like some service? If we did all of that, it wouldn’t qualify. But we run this hotel the same way that we run all of our Airbnbs, so it’s full self check-in. There’s no one stationed at the front desk. It’s not even open to guests. We don’t offer any midterm stays or midterm, sorry, we don’t offer any mid-state cleaning. If someone asks for something like specific, then we’re dropping for more towels or more coffee pots, whatever it is. We’re not going in and turning the rooms during each day. And that limited service allows us to still operate as a short, we’re just a short-term rental that’s in a motel. And because we’ve set it up that way, it allows us to still qualify as a short-term rental.

Ashley:
We’re going to take a short break, but when we come back, we’re going to find out what is going on with my current portfolio. We’ll be right back. Okay. Thank you guys so much for checking out the show sponsors. Let’s get into what I’m doing today with real estate. I think that’s very interesting as to how you can manipulate the operations to tailor, and obviously your goal wasn’t the tax benefit that was your goal. Going into buying that was probably just a bonus that you found out that you were able to do that because you want, and you went in to buy that motel to operate as a short-term rental. But very interesting to think about when you are taking a different property type and operating it as a different kind of strategy.

Tony:
I’m super excited about scaling up this model, but Ashley United an episode not too long ago where we talked about mistakes that we made and both of us kind of reflected on the mistake of scaling too quickly, and we’re trying to really, really make sure that we don’t make that same mistake with the motel. And that’s why we’ve had it. It is been operational for 14 months now and we haven’t bought another one yet because you really want to make sure that we’ve got the operations down. We’ve got the inventory process down, we’ve got the scheduling down. I just spent the last three days there at the motel and my only focus there was putting in a better inventory process in our laundry room because we had 50 gallons of bleach. We had no conditioner, we had 80,000 K pot. We were over ordering a bunch of stuff under ordering a bunch of stuff. And it sounds so small, but when you think about a hotel, those little things really do add up. So yeah, anyway, I’m super stoked for that. Super excited for that next step. What about you, Ash? Give us the update on the care portfolio.

Ashley:
Well, Tony, we see each other every Wednesday when we record podcasts. And there’s always these little random things that you’re off doing. I feel like you need to start a vlog on YouTube or something sharing some of these things. I actually think that would be super interesting to watch as you’re in the supply room of the laundry room taking inventory. This is how I’m doing it, this is how I’m tracking. I feel like I would watch that

Tony:
You’re going to get me in trouble with my wife. She literally told me, she was like, babe, you need to record while you’re out there. This is good content. People want to see this stuff. And I think it got two videos and one of them was me just at the charging station waiting for my car to charge. So yeah, I got to do a better

Ashley:
Job. A B-roll.

Tony:
Yeah, just some B-roll of me charging my car. But yeah, I got to jump on that trend for sure.

Ashley:
So for my portfolio, I sold a single family rental that I had this year was I had bought it in 2020. I just sold it and we made about a hundred k profit on this property, and we do have 20 K being held in escrow on this property because it did not pass the septic inspection. So they’re going to have to make repairs on the septic and then they’ll use the $20,000 to pay for that. And if there’s any leftover, we’ll get that back. If not, they get the full 20,000. So that’s even with the 20,000 being taken out of it already. So that was nice just to be done with that property. We only had two tenants in it the whole time, so it was a very easy property. Just the reason we decided to sell it was there so much appreciation in this area and the amount of cashflow we were getting. We wanted the equity. I have a partner on this deal where we both had different things we wanted more capital for, so it made sense we didn’t do a 10 31 exchange because we would’ve had to stay in the same partnership. So we’re just each taking our equity and putting ’em into different things.

Tony:
Just very similar thought process for us on selling ours. And I think that is a decision that real estate investors need to think about is compare your equity to your cashflow as well and see how big of a gap there is. And it’s like, could we maybe better use that equity somewhere else? Or how much time would it take for me from a cashflow perspective to equal the amount of equity that we have in the deal?

Ashley:
And too, this property, we actually bought it. My partner actually funded the deal, so we made a mortgage payment to him every month too. So he’s actually getting his, he’s made, I think it was 6% interest off of this deal. And then he’s also going to get paid back the balance of his principal, so he’ll be getting that big chunk of money back. I think we owed him maybe 78,000 maybe on it or something like that, that will be paid back for him too, that he can use into another investment that he wants to do. So besides that, as of the end of July, I no longer have a short-term rental manager for my two short-term rentals. I got rid of my Airbnb arbitrage. I just have the two little unique cabins.

Ashley:
So part of the reason my manager, she had a full-time job and she wanted to learn more about real estate. So I hired her and paid her a chunk of money, be like, learn everything you can about managing a short term rental and you can manage it. And for I think it’s been almost two, three years, I’ve paid her 5% of the revenue, which is very, very cheap. But part of that was she didn’t have any experience and she was going to learn everything along the way, and I was her Guinea pig. She ended up getting a job with a much bigger short-term rental operator, co-hosting and stuff. And so she eventually said, this is just becoming such a big opportunity for me. I’m going to have to drop your properties, which is fine. And so I’ve taken on kind of that management role and I’ve been confiding in Tony and also Garrett from bigger stays of different things.

Ashley:
And I’m proud to say that we are now on VRBO, we never were before. And I figured all that out. And my next one is to figure out booking.com. I went to do it the other day and I got this alert from our property management software that said, beware, before you do this, please know there are multiple steps that you need to do take. And I was like, I don’t have the time for that today. I’ll save this for another day. So I feel like I’m relearning how to properly manage a short-term rental and really make it unique because I used to manage ours in when we started 2018, 1920, and it was very, very casual. You didn’t need to provide an exceptional experience. If I didn’t send someone a message or respond right away, it was not a big deal at all. And now it’s like if you’re not responding within five minutes, it’s considered a big deal.

Tony:
Well, I think what I’m most curious about Ashe is your live and flip. Give us the update on that. How’s that project going? Did you move in already or you moved in? I don’t even know this. Are you in it?

Ashley:
Yeah, I’m in it. We actually hustled and got it livable within one month. This property was vacant for about two years before I bought it, and I had it under contract almost that whole time. And the person that owned it, she passed away during the process, and so we had to wait for the executor of her will to be named and things like that. So we closed on it in February, did a month of renovations on the property, and we were able to get moved in. We replaced all the flooring, refinished, the hardwoods, the kids got really nice bedrooms just because we knew they would have to be living in somewhat of a construction zone and rehab. So we at least made sure their space was really nice. And so right now I’m up in the loft, which I’ve turned into my podcast area. There’s also a little couch and stuff over there and a little TV area.

Ashley:
But yeah, so we’re very, very slowly going through the renovations. We have new siding that’s going on next week. And the thing I’m really excited about this is, okay, we hustled during that first month of getting everything done. We replaced all of the plumbing, we repaired the septic, all these different things, put on a new porch. And then it was kind of like, this isn’t a flip or a rental. I don’t consider myself having holding costs because I’m living in the property, so it is my cost of living. So it’s very, very nice and relaxing. I will say, to not be on a super strict timeline because even if we don’t finish everything in two years, worst case scenario, we get to live in a really nice house for a couple more months while we finish up loose ends. And then just the thinking about how much equity and how much forced appreciation by adding value I can put into this property without paying taxes on it, is really motivating.

Ashley:
Thinking about how much I would’ve had to work at a W2 job to actually make that same amount of money after taxes. And I ran the scenario the other day of I made $200,000 and I worked at a job that paid me, I can’t remember what I used 85,000 a year, something like that, or I don’t remember the exact numbers I did, but it was almost three times. I’d have to work that many more years than what I would’ve made on the flip or whatever, just from living in the property and living in a construction zone. But if you do it at a nice pace, I mean, it would be nice to be able to do it all before I moved in, but that just wasn’t feasible for me at the time. So we’re going to slowly do it over time.

Tony:
So having started the process at least, do you think that you’ll repeat it? So when you guys sell this one, it’s a plan to move into another live and flip.

Ashley:
I’ve already identified my

Ashley:
Next, and now I’m in this position of how do I buy this other one and still fulfill my two year commitment? So do I buy this one as a rental and rent it out for the next year and a half and then I move into it as my primary and sell the other one? And the reason this is an off market deal that I’ve been talking to the sellers with. The dad had to move out and go to assisted living, and I’m talking with the daughters, but the property is on the same street as my sister. And I have to say, never ever thought that I’d want to live next to my sister, but she’s about to have her third baby. And just seeing our kids grow up together, we’re like, can’t stop thinking about it, talking about it. And it’s like, okay, but I got a strategy.

Ashley:
I don’t want to give up $200,000 plus and tax-free money to live next to you. So yeah, that’s also the thing is you got to be very strategic about it. And we just had Matt Krieger on who talked about how he would go from, he’d live in one property for a year and then rent it out after. And he said he even got denied one time and lost out on a deal because it wasn’t exactly one year. And the lender for the next property denied his loan and he lost the contract on the house because it wasn’t over a year. So being very strategic and make sure I’m following the rules of this so that I can get that primary residence exclusion, that’s kind of where I’m at in my portfolio is just hold on to my long-term rentals, focusing on my two short-term rentals, and then also doing this live and flip and trying to figure out how to get the next one already. But Tony, you had mentioned another example of the secret trips where you don’t vlog for us is you actually went to Oklahoma City with your son. Have you gotten any deals out of that? And I think we should do a whole nother episode on, we kind of covered today what we’ve done so far this year, but we could do a whole nother episode on what we’re looking into. But quickly, if you could just recap what’s going on in Oklahoma City and why you’ve been traveling there.

Tony:
Yeah, so what’s going on there is, yeah, we’re focusing on that market specifically for flips. Again, we did a few flips a year here in Southern California, but as this market has gotten, I think a little bit more aggressive and the margins have gotten slimmer, we’re just not willing to take that risk at these high purchase prices for the amount of profit that we’re getting. So I’d rather go to a market where price points a little bit lower, even if the actual profit amount is smaller, the actual margin on a percentage basis is bigger. So I think that’s the goal for us there. So yeah, we went out there right at the end of last month or beginning of last month at this point, and we met one of an agent that we met through bp, the BiggerPockets agent finder, and she spent two days with us who has taking us around town and kind gave us a lay of the land.

Tony:
And we’ve probably submitted 20 offers. Vast majority of those were just like hard nos. A couple we got counters on. But I’m okay with that. I know it’s going to take, I know we probably need to submit on a hundred deals before we’re going to find the one the tracks. So it’s like every time I see a deal that pops, I’m just sending off Lois to my agent and she’s kind of giving me her feedback and we’re getting them out. And yeah, right now we’re just kind of working the numbers until we find one that actually makes sense.

Ashley:
And I think that sounds like such a rookie tip. Like, oh yeah, everyone says, as a rookie you should be analyzing a hundred deals a week. You should putting out a hundred offers. Look at Tony is no longer a rookie in a lot of things, but he is still sending out as many, many, many offers as he can because it’s not just something investors say to give you busy work to do. It’s actually an effective tool to get your next deal.

Tony:
And you guys are actually here coming up on episode six 12, we have Dominique Gunnison and Henry Washington just kind of give an update on the state of flipping, and they echo that same idea that they’re seeing. They’re having to put out double the amount of offers to get the same number of deals. So it’s just the reality of where we’re at. Otherwise, if you’re getting a bunch of accepted offers right now, it’s probably because you’re over offering your offer price is too high to actually make those deals work. So yeah, we’re going into it knowing it’s going to take some time to find that first deal, but we just need one. And I think once we get that first one, we build some momentum, it’ll start snowballing from there.

Ashley:
Thank you guys so much for joining us today for this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys next time.