Why 2025 Will Be Great for Real Estate Investors

Mike Hambright (00:00.654)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with the one and only Michael Zuber. We’re going to be talking about why a lot of people are wrong about 2025 and how this is going to be the best year ever. So it’s going to be an exciting conversation. He’s got, he’s done some research. He’s got, he’s got a plan to share with you guys today how this is going to be the best year ever. If for you naysayers out there, you might want to just turn it off right now. Maybe, I don’t know. So Michael, good to see you buddy.

Michael Zuber (00:21.336)
Hahaha!

Michael Zuber (00:25.604)
nice to see as well, Mike. I really appreciate the opportunity. I love what you guys do at Investor Fuel. I have lots of friends that are in the program, and they say nothing but amazing things about you. always an easy answer to say yes to a.

Mike Hambright (00:32.85)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So, hey, before we jump in, I know your book, One Rental at a Time, has been very successful in kind of helping people kind of get started with owning rental properties. I think I always say that the two biggest regrets, I mean, I talk to everybody, I know everybody in the industry, right, or for the most part, the two biggest regrets I ever hear is they wish they had started earlier and they wish they had kept more rentals.

Those are the two biggest things. But anyway, we know how you feel about it, but tell us a little bit about your background. How you got here?

Michael Zuber (01:06.672)
Yeah, I think One Rinse a Lot of Time is an interesting movement because it really focuses on W-2 employees. A lot of the real estate landscape and the gurus really push the entrepreneurship envelope, which is awesome. But as Ed Milet said one time, about 90 % of us are employees and only 10 % are entrepreneurs. So it sometimes gets lost out there. I have a lot of employees like myself who sometimes feel slighted or missed or ignored. And again,

I had a high paying job, My best utility of time was out there selling enterprise software, which could have a seven to eight figure price point of which I would make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was uniquely positioned with some unique opportunity to go do that. And as long as I was able to live below my means, stack cash, I could buy assets. So that worked for me. Some people, you got to start a business, you got to be an entrepreneur and you stack paper that way. But I definitely model an employee.

and a lot of people kind of follow the one Ritzel at a time because I think a lot of people, if you just got to four rentals, not 400 and certainly not 4,000, you fundamentally changed your retirement picture, right? And that’s what most of us are going after. And, you know, I’ve never had some big grand vision. I just wanted to get to enough, maybe enough times two or enough times three. And thankfully that occurred in 2018 and I’ve enjoyed the last seven years doing what I want, when I want, with whom I want. So it’s been a lot of fun.

Mike Hambright (02:34.7)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And your comment on if you…

if you own just four. So obviously a lot of people talk about rentals and they talk about this a lot less these days because they just don’t cash flow all that well. I know yours are in California. I don’t know your situation, but I’m guessing they’re even harder to cash flow generally. But it’s really, there’s obviously principal pay down and just long-term appreciation, right? And so I have a single-family rental portfolio as well as multifamily, but the single-family side has been, they never cash flowed as well as I had hoped.

But the appreciation has been ridiculous, right, over the past, for me, that’s really over the past 10 or 12 years. But is that, when you say that, you’re talking about just changing your overall net worth with appreciation, principal pay down, like all those things?

Michael Zuber (03:24.452)
Well, really what I’m talking about in this example of four is the average employee again, which I was whose vision of retirement is working till 65 and only having a 401k. If you simply added having four rental properties and then you amortize that over 30 years, you then end with retirement and four free and clear assets, which you have options you can borrow against, you could sell, you could live on the cashflow. It’s just about having more options. My grand vision, Mike, for starting rental properties.

was I wanted to have a better retirement than most and four rental properties get there. Now, let’s be clear, four rental properties will not, will not, will not retire you in two years or four years. It just won’t happen. But that’s not the vision I think most employees have. Most employees are like, hey, I’m going to work to 65. I’m going to put away and get the company match. But I want something else just in case. Or I want to have that cherry on top. And if you buy four rental properties in your 30s, they’ll be paid off in your 60s.

and you’ll have better options.

Mike Hambright (04:26.22)
Yeah, that’s awesome. there’s a lot of folks that are, know, the country is obviously divided in a lot of ways right now, right? But I think I divided quite a bit into where we’re going. And there’s some people that think that there’s amazing things ahead.

But some people have pushed that off into the future, like, we gotta go through these periods of pain. And there’s also people that think that the world is about to end. so, where I found is where there’s pain and there’s discomfort, there’s opportunity as well, right? And so what are your thoughts on what folks are saying versus 2025, what’s gonna happen to 2025 versus what you believe?

Michael Zuber (05:06.032)
Well, I think all of that is true. But if you step back and you realize that most of the people that watch our content, yours and mine, we’re real estate investors. And if you’re a real estate investor, me give you a couple rules of thumb. One, you want less competition. Fact. Number two, you would like more motivated sellers. Fact. Well, in an environment of 2025,

where we have a new administration, we have tariffs, we have talk of recession, we have high prices with high interest rates, we have falling demand across all kinds of segments. I believe real estate investors, if you get your head on right and you do the work, you’re set up to have an amazing 2025. Now, if you’re a homeowner, if you’re trying to buy your first home or whatnot, it sucks. Affordability is not a record, but…

But damn close, right? 1981 is still the worst year on record, but it’s not good. So I really speak to the real estate investors and I’m like, folks, stop listening to the headlines. Let me remind you. Do you want less competition or not? Yes or no? Yes, I want less competition. Do you want more motivated sellers? Yes or no? Yes, I want more motivated sellers. Congratulations. 2025 is handing you both that on a silver platter.

Mike Hambright (06:33.827)
Yeah.

Michael Zuber (06:33.902)
I think 2025 will be one of the best buyers markets for investors. And now let me be clear. I never recommend paying less price. Dude, I negotiate on new construction, right? The house that I bought in Vegas, I got more than 10 % off. I got a mortgage rate buy down to sub five when rates were eight or eight and a half. I got a bunch of credits, no lot fee. I negotiated like a crazy man. You can negotiate on new builds.

So I’m not talking about going to the MLS and just buying anything. This is not 2021. But get your head on right. Write lots of disrespectful offers. Write numbers that cash flow with 30 year debt at six and a half. And just do the work, man. Stop being a whiny little cry little bitch. It’s crazy.

Mike Hambright (07:18.954)
Yeah, it’s interesting because you know I started in 2008 and very different market for sure But there was kind of blood in the streets and it it turned out a lot of people were Thought I was crazy that my wife and I were crazy. The truth is we were naive We didn’t plan it like that’s just I got fired from my job and my wife had left to have our son Who was one year old when we started?

her job. And so we were just, that’s just where we entered at. They’re just coincidentally, it wasn’t like planned, right? But it turned out to be one of the best times ever to get in. And there was more motivated sellers and less competition. Everybody else was running away. And a lot of the pros that I, that I know now, a lot of, you know, friends of mine now at the time, they thought we were absolutely crazy. but I was like, well, we were just, you know, crazy like a Fox, guess.

Michael Zuber (08:00.228)
Yeah, it’s yeah. Yeah, no. So Olivia and I started in 2002. So we saw the run up firsthand. Right. We had eight houses in 2006 ish and we went to an event put on by Bruce Norris, who at the time was a California legend now lives in Florida. But he called it the California crash. And I went to that event, Mike, because I had five or six years earlier lost 80 percent of my wealth in the stock market.

Right. I had turned seven grand into almost 200 grand only to lose 80 percent of it. So I didn’t want to do that again. Right. We were a millionaire in 2006 on eight homes. And I’m like, dude, this guy’s talking about a California crash. So we went to that event. We agreed with them and then we took action. So we sold all our houses in 06 at the peak and we 1031 into apartments. We went from eight to 80 units. Then the crash happens and we start buying hand over fist. Had no idea where the bottom was.

We started buying it a hundred and we bought all the way down. The last house we bought was 28 grand, right? The cheapest house we bought. yeah, it was, it was a fun time.

Mike Hambright (09:08.654)
Yeah, I just saw a Facebook post, like one of the memories that I posted like a long time ago now, was probably 12 years ago or so that we had just picked up a house for $500 in Dallas. I like, this is the cheapest house I’ve ever bought. The truth is we had lots of people that are willing to give us their house, but it wasn’t even worth it. that was the most that we’d ever, or the cheapest that we’d ever paid for a house. yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about, you know,

Michael Zuber (09:26.447)
Yeah.

Michael Zuber (09:30.542)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:37.206)
some comparisons to the past. I know you’ve been doing some research and kind of looking at a lot of data to kind of come up with why this is going to be a great year. Like what have you come up with?

Michael Zuber (09:47.856)
Yeah, so one of things that I do, so I have an econ degree in MBA and I’ve been studying the economy for the better part of three decades. Something I did in 2021 is I started taking economic statistics all the way back to 1970. Home prices, unemployment, interest rates, inflation, know, all of the like 30 different metrics. I called it the 50 year spreadsheet. It’s now been updated. It’s the 55 year spreadsheet. But

One of the things that this allowed me to see when Paul Volcker, I’m sorry, Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole, I think it’s been two and a half years, basically said pain is coming and rates are going much, much higher. I was able to look back into the spreadsheet and identify the last time that happened. And that started in 1980 when Paul Volcker started yanking interest rates higher. And by having that spreadsheet at my disposal, I was able to answer a couple of questions correctly.

that most people got wrong. Most people said something like, if interest rates go up 1%, home prices have to fall 10%. Right? It logically makes sense. Affordability gets that much worse. Unfortunately, we saw interest rates go up 300 basis points, and thus, people were saying we were going to crash 30%. I said, no, no, no, no. Given history, the only thing that’s going to crash is transactions.

and i said to people at the time that i thought transactions would crash to four million they actually broke four million so we did have a real estate crash it was in transactions not price which we got right

Mike Hambright (11:24.046)
Yeah. So what do you think holding price, what do you think is holding prices up?

Michael Zuber (11:28.24)
Well, there’s a couple of things that are holding price up. First, we have to realize what is price. So price on most measures is something called median price. And if you understand math, median is nothing but the middle, right? So if you lay out a series of 100 numbers, just 1 to 100, or maybe 1 to 101, the median is 50. What we have done and what happened in the past, this is why there’s historical context,

When you take rates from very little to very much, the people at the low end don’t sell because they can’t get a yes answer from the bank, right? They want to move up. The only reason they got a yes answer is because their mortgage rates 3%. They can’t sell this asset, buy the next one at another 100 grand, but it’s 7%. The bank says no. So what we have done for the last three years is we have broken the housing market.

The housing market is very much entry level, move up, luxury. We have taken the move up buyer out of the market. So what’s happening? Only the luxury stuff is transacting. So if you’re only transacting above the median, the median moves because that’s just how math works. You’ve seen a lot less low end homes or entry level homes transact because we’re frozen. And you’ve seen richy rich people transact.

So that’s one of the, it’s one of the reasons the median price is so high is because we have a broken housing market.

Mike Hambright (13:01.484)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’ve been saying something similar to you, but differently without the data is like.

You know, if you think of, us, as distressed, I mean, my whole real estate investing career has been marketing to distressed sellers that might sell at a deep discount, right? Like, we don’t buy on the MLS, we don’t buy even generally from other wholesalers, but just direct to seller, is that half of that market, I’ve just made up a number half, but half of that, half of those like would be sellers is still happening. It’s people that are in distress, death, divorce, inheritance, you know, landlords, distressed landlords, tired landlords.

that want to sell, that it’s not their primary house, they’re selling that. But the people that would sell to investors like us at a deep discount for convenience reasons, where they need some other place to live, that stopped because they can’t afford the next place. Yeah.

Michael Zuber (13:53.836)
Exactly right. That’s exactly what’s going on on the low end and this is why you’re gonna have a great year if you’re a real estate investors because that first 50 % that always happens. Let me give you again some statistics from and this might blow your mind and blow your audience mind but you can go look it up. It’s it’s you can go either directly to st. Louis Fed or you can go to my 55 year spreadsheet. In 1978 we did roughly 4 million existing home sales. Okay.

That’s when interest rates start going up. First guess for you is how many homes do you think we transacted in 1981? So four years later.

Mike Hambright (14:32.994)
sure.

Michael Zuber (14:33.868)
One point, so just call it two million. Transactions went down 50%. So that’s what gave me confidence that we were going to go from six to four. And we got that right. But here, here’s the joy. So from 1981, how long do you think it took us to get back to four million? Remember, four million to two million. 78, 81, how long until we were back above four million existing home sales? Wild guess.

Mike Hambright (14:35.83)
Okay. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:02.574)
10 years.

Michael Zuber (15:03.632)
1996.

Mike Hambright (15:05.555)
wow.

Michael Zuber (15:06.992)
So think about that. So what does that mean for today? Well, it means for today that I believe 2025 is going to be the cycle low for existing home sales, something at or just below 4 million. So I’m below Redfin, I’m below Zillow. They’re calling 401 and 43. I’m calling 4 million or below. But if you’re a real estate agent, you’re escrow, you’re you’re an appraiser, you’re somebody that gets paid a drip on every transaction. All you have to do is survive 25.

let all the dead weight in the pretenders disappear. And then you’re going to be at a Vegas buffet in 26 and 27 and 28 and 29, because every year will be better than the year before. This is what history says. So 2025 year of the investor. We do the work. We find a motivated sellers, people in distress. We write deals that make sense. And then things get incrementally better in 26 and 27 and 28.

Mike Hambright (15:45.676)
Hahaha

Michael Zuber (16:05.508)
That’s what I see coming and this is based on history because we have jacked up rates before. We have seen housing transactions crash. And then we just go from there.

Mike Hambright (16:11.234)
Right.

Mike Hambright (16:15.203)
Yep.

So Michael, you’re more of the buy and hold guy. I you don’t do a whole lot of fix and flips and wholesales a little bit, but not a ton. So for the full-time real estate investor, for the W2 type investor, this is fine because they have a base income, right? For the active investor, they have to be transacting in something and earning income. So what are they to do? I mean, obviously there’s some competition going away and arguably that 50 % or number in my head that I said that was like the distressed is going up. I mean, we know there’s a lot of pre-foreclosure activity stuff.

Michael Zuber (16:22.885)
Nope.

Michael Zuber (16:28.186)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Mike Hambright (16:46.668)
There’s more there’s an aging population. There’s there’s a lot of things that are creating more opportunities for Discount real estate investors, but in the meantime, they’ve got to pay the bills and so is it just a matter of kind of getting lean and mean? over the next couple years or

Michael Zuber (16:46.738)
for sure.

Michael Zuber (17:01.1)
I would, so I have a lot of real estate investor friends. We know a lot of the same people. And what I’m telling all of them is you gotta change your buying model a little bit, right? Your buying model on this house, let’s say, you know, ARV is 400 and your model says you can buy it for 225. I’m telling you to get it at 210 or 205. Because what you’re gonna have into this environment, again, cause you gotta get out of this thing as well, is you’re gonna probably have longer hold times.

going to have a smaller pool of buyers in 2025. So if you’re looking to get in and out in 2025, please buy with a little bit more margin because a lot of folks out there, the carrying costs could kill you. So buy a little better, right? You may be operating in environment where you have evidence that you could be in and out in six months. I would plan for eight and be happy if I’m wrong.

But I do think the environment in 25, as I’ve said a couple of times, is going to be the cycle low. We’re going to have consumers that are scared. We’re going to have layoff notices. And very few people have the appetite to sign up for their biggest purchase of a year when they’re afraid for their jobs. So what I’m telling the professional investors is just buy a little deeper. then in 26, maybe you go back to the old model. But you’ve got to survive 25. You can’t go bankrupt.

Mike Hambright (18:24.664)
Right. Yeah, that’s one of the things that, you know,

Obviously you’re big on the buy and hold stuff. You talk about building a rental portfolio. That’s one of the things that I never looked at as with my rental portfolio. For most of the time that I’ve had them, which I started, most of my rentals I bought, most of my single family rentals I bought from 09 to 2013 or 14, great time to buy, right? Yeah. And then I was like, man, I can’t buy them like I used to, so I’m just gonna move into multifamily ultimately. But anyway, and that’s gotten hard too. So another lesson there that I talk about,

Michael Zuber (18:45.998)
Yeah, not bad.

Mike Hambright (18:58.042)
whatever’s easy now will too get hard at some point. you know.

Michael Zuber (19:00.738)
Amen. Yes.

Mike Hambright (19:03.19)
my rentals at some point I started to look at them as an insurance policy. It’s like they were a pain in the ass. And then I was like, huh, this is interesting. It was usually around tax time when I see the tax values going up and I’m like, that can’t be worth that. And sure enough it is. And I start to realize that, hey, I’m, wealthy on paper, right? But it’s a, it’s an amazing insurance policy. Like if everything goes to pot, if my whole life falls apart, like I have a lot of equity in my rentals that we can, you know, harvest and stuff like that. Of course they cashflow more than they ever did because they’re largely paid off, but it really

is an insurance policy for me and for a lot of people, right?

Michael Zuber (19:36.036)
Yeah, you could call it an insurance policy. I’ve also heard it referred to as a piggy bank. think either is true because, know, one of the things that, again, I love telling people what I’m doing. One of the things that I’m looking at is taking advantage of this opportunity. Now, I have two markets that I’m looking at, the market that I’ve historically been in Central California. I’m looking to perhaps jump on some larger multifamily opportunities, right? I would love to pick up a 50 to maybe 100 unit building.

Mike Hambright (19:41.27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Zuber (20:06.008)
I don’t have partners, this is just my wife and I, so no, I’m not a GP. I don’t want my life any harder than it is, so I don’t do that. But I would love to pick those, a 50, 60, 80 unit building at a distressed valuation. And again, I’ve done this already. We bought apartment buildings for nothing down in the last cycle. So, you we have those relationships. But to your point, I have a bunch of single family assets with seven figures, know, multiple seven figures in equity that I will go tap as a piggy bank.

to go transact there, right? I might 1031, right? We talked earlier about going from eight houses to 80 units. That was all 1031 money. wasn’t new. I have zero new capital. So I have a lot more than eight houses today. There’s nothing better, Mike, that I would love to do than take, pick a number, 30 single family homes and go get 300 units. I would love to do that again. So I think that opportunity is coming. It’s probably 2026 because we have a lot of extended per trend.

Mike Hambright (20:55.618)
Right. Yeah.

Michael Zuber (21:04.016)
hold and pray going on by the lending institutions. But that money can’t stay dormant forever. That pain is coming. Class B and Class C is not trading. Class A is trading. It’s trading at a 25 % discount. I think Class B and Class C will go 40 or more. So I look forward to being a buyer when that happens.

Mike Hambright (21:22.424)
Yeah, that’s one of the nice things about like having some having some wisdom having done this before is like I think a lot of people that get started especially if they’re wholesalers like they’re very they’re on the transaction treadmill like they have to transact otherwise they don’t eat right and I think once you Have a little more experience. You’ve got some cushion Maybe because you have multiple streams of income you have a rental portfolio that you could tap into a piggy bank if you want to is It gives you the ability to sit on the sidelines and wait for opportunities to come to you instead of you chasing opportunities, right? Yeah

Michael Zuber (21:50.658)
Amen. There’s a peace in that. There’s absolutely a peace.

Mike Hambright (21:53.474)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don’t have to do business anymore. I don’t have to work anymore, but I’m an opportunist. I’m gonna wait for opportunities to come up and there’s always market cycles like this. I think the last one took way longer than what anybody expected and that’s probably what’s gonna cause a little extra pain this time is it was delayed for maybe too long, right? Yeah.

Michael Zuber (22:11.664)
No, I think I think there’s we’re seeing more and more of it in the single-family area There’s there’s some nonsense going on with FHA mortgages and movements of silent seconds and whatnot So I think there’s some single-family pain coming to FHA area. I would definitely be doing some NOD Marketing to that kind of stuff if I was in that game, but the we will have a real estate crash It’s gonna be in commercial real estate multifamily will have pain class a is trading class B and class C is frozen

that will unlock and it will be bloody. There are lots of LPs that are in syndications that have already lost their money. just don’t know it. It’s coming.

Mike Hambright (22:49.55)
Yeah. Let’s talk about like what do you think is going happen over the next 10 years? We’ve alluded to some of it, obviously, right? But like, where do you see things going for the real estate market for the next 10 years? Let’s say single family.

Michael Zuber (23:01.518)
Yeah, so if we stay in the residential space, the good news is if you are in the business and you’re paid on a transaction, every year the next decade is better than the year before, after 25, right? 25 is the cycle low, in my opinion. So that’s good news, right? If you can survive through this, you know, your teams get bigger, you do more transactions, you have less competition, life is good. So that’s all, you know, that’s appraisers, that’s escrow, that’s everybody involved. It’s just better from there. I think price…

is probably still flat for the next three to five years. I believe every decade has about 10 to 12 percent appreciation. We got a lot of that in 21 and 22. So I think we have a flat decade, roughly speaking, for home prices. Yeah, so that’s what I think is coming to residential. I think the – oh, of course. Oh, yeah. I’m talking national, yeah.

Mike Hambright (23:50.7)
Yeah, and it depends largely on market, right? Like obviously some markets are different than others and you know, in some markets where, right, yeah, yeah, okay.

Michael Zuber (24:02.948)
Yeah, I think the big opportunity is for home builders. One of the things that I hope happens in the next decade is really two things. One is I think home builders find a way, perhaps with government assistance, to build entry level housing. We haven’t had a inter level housing boom since the 70s. And some argue the 50s, which is really scary to think about, right? Home builders today can only build McMansions because that’s all where the profit lies. That’s a crime. So I hope something happens there. The second thing I hope for

Mike Hambright (24:19.374)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (24:27.128)
Right.

Michael Zuber (24:32.354)
is we haven’t really had any innovation in building. I don’t know if that’s container homes or 3D homes or boxable or whatever it is. I hope there’s some innovation in home building that we get away from this stick built and everything takes six months to build or whatnot. So I hope there’s innovation. faster, faster, faster and cheaper. We do have a housing affordability problem. hope technology.

Mike Hambright (24:49.11)
Yeah, something that’s easier to construct and more cost effective. Yeah.

Michael Zuber (25:01.42)
is one of the cures for that, in my opinion.

Mike Hambright (25:04.322)
Yeah, there’s always gonna be disruption in that space. Obviously there’s been a lot of disruption even in the realtor marketplace. I think, I hate to, for my realtor friends that are listening to this, like, sorry, but most people go find their house online and then just find a realtor to go do the transaction for you for the most part, right?

Michael Zuber (25:22.052)
Yeah, I do, I don’t know if you saw it this morning, it looks like realtor or it looks like Rocket Mortgage is going to be a vertically integrated company. So Rocket Mortgage at the beginning of the month, bought Redfin. Yesterday or this morning, they bought Mr. Cooper. So think about what Rocket now has. You have any interest in a house? Redfin’s there to help you. You need a mortgage? Rocket’s there to help you. You want to service the mortgage? Mr. Cooper is there to help you.

Mike Hambright (25:33.838)
I saw that, yeah.

Mike Hambright (25:37.952)
I saw that.

Mike Hambright (25:51.022)
Yeah.

Michael Zuber (25:51.576)
Rocket mortgage, assuming both of these close and they don’t have any issues closing, are going to be the first vertically integrated soup to nuts residential whatever they’re going to call themselves. And that actually unlocks a lot of creativity. So rocket mortgage could create brand new mortgage products that we haven’t thought about. They own the entire cycle. So I look forward to what Rocket

Mike Hambright (26:16.096)
right.

Michael Zuber (26:19.14)
could do with Redfin and Mr. Cooper. I think it’s going to be disruptive. So we’ll see.

Mike Hambright (26:24.6)
Well, that’s what all the iBuyers, I mean, it’s different, but similar, what all the iBuyers were doing is like, which I never really understood that they’re overpaying for houses generally, but they’re like, well, they’re making money on insurance, they’re making money on transactions, they’re making money a lot of different ways. And so I think more real estate investors should think that way as well. How else can you monetize what you’re already doing, right?

Michael Zuber (26:32.717)
You

Michael Zuber (26:45.486)
Yeah, I think the iBuyers is an interesting conversation. When you have known wholesalers laughing at bringing you inventory, that probably means you’re overpaying. I was in plenty of those rooms where people were just like, I can’t believe Open Door paid this or so-and-so paid that. It was a wild time.

Mike Hambright (26:56.472)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (27:03.692)
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Michael, tell us a little bit about what your plans are, investment wise. You talked about it a little bit, but just basically being an opportunist, looking for opportunities as they come along, probably leaning more into multifamily, sounds like, than single family or?

Michael Zuber (27:13.325)
Yeah.

Michael Zuber (27:21.828)
Yeah, so I have two tracks I’m currently executing on. One is I in a new market, right? We did move to Nevada. I am going to build a small, we’re talking two to 10, you know, single family homes, rental portfolio in my new market. So that’s happening. I think that happens regardless of where we’re going. I’m actively looking for deals now. My deals, my buy box today is something in the Henderson area that’s single story has enough to add an ADU.

Basically what I’m finding in Vegas, it’s hard to cash flow with just the main house. So I’m looking to break even on the main house and cash flow on the ADU. So that’s what likely I’ll be building the portfolio there. So I think that happens over the next two to five years. I get to my eight units or so. But in my main market where I have my team, I have the majority of my infrastructure, I’m actively networking with commercial brokers because that’s where I believe the pain is coming.

They’re telling me about owners and syndications in distress, but as long as the bank doesn’t force a sell, there’s a lot of extend and pretend. So at this point, I’m just networking, networking like a madman. I’m trying to get to know the top 20 commercial agents in Central Valley. And I will be picking up, you know, speaking it into existence somewhere between 100 and 200 units between today and 2027, all distressed, all at

40 % off or more, all with really no cash. I’ll be either using debt from singles or 1031s to get into. So, you know, our portfolio could double pretty easily should it happen. But there’s a risk to that. You never know. Banks might just extend and pretend for a decade, at which point the pain never comes. But I don’t think it’s possible. But I’m willing to admit it’s possible that they extend and pretend forever.

Mike Hambright (29:16.374)
Yeah. Yeah. I think with this administration, they’re less likely to do that than maybe the previous one, right? Yeah. There’s just so much government kind of waste that’s being cut out, right? That’s used to propping stuff up. So, but we’ll see. Time will tell. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Zuber (29:22.288)
Amen. Yes, I agree.

Michael Zuber (29:32.014)
Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. Yep, exactly. again, if the opportunity because again, you know, our big our big leaps in wealth was moving from residential to multifamily was buying multifamily at 50 % or better discounts, holding through some tough years, right, buying an ugly property that’s an ugly position is two years of hell. But once you get through that, it’s really nice. So, you know, wouldn’t mind doing that again.

Mike Hambright (29:55.576)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, Michael, folks, thanks for spending some time with us today. If folks want to connect with you and learn more about what you’ve got going on, where can they go?

Michael Zuber (30:00.698)
Sure, of course, I like it. It’s always fun talking to shots.

Michael Zuber (30:05.76)
I would go to YouTube. I have a YouTube channel with nearly 7,000 subs called One Rental at a Time. If you want to hear about my 15-year journey from one house to retirement, you can always buy my book on Amazon, One Rental at a Time. Shouldn’t be hard to find.

Mike Hambright (30:20.418)
We’ll add links for all that stuff down below here. So thanks again for spending some time with us today. Yeah, folks, hopefully you got some good lessons here from today, really good knowledge. I think at the end of the day, wealth is built over time. So you have to make sure you’re not so focused on immediate gratification that you lose out on opportunities that you can transact today and make your money over a long period of time. That’s where wealth is really built. So appreciate you guys. Have a great day. We’ll see you on the next show.

Michael Zuber (30:23.088)
Appreciate it. You got it, Mike. Take care. Good luck.