Where We’d Invest in Real Estate in 2025 (If We Could Buy Anywhere)

Dave:
These are the best markets to buy rental properties right now in the middle of 2025. We keep saying it, but the housing market is shifting more and more towards a buyer’s market every week. So if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines because you don’t know which city or region across the US is the most profitable for real estate investing, now could be the time to actually make that decision and start putting your money to work. And we’ve crunched all the data for you today, we’re going to reveal nine of our favorite markets for investors looking to start or diversify their real estate portfolios.
Hey everyone, I’m Dave Meyer, head of Real Estate investing at BiggerPockets, and today’s show we got for you. It’s back by popular demand because a lot of you have been sending us feedback that you want to hear more about the best places to invest given today’s housing market conditions. So today that’s what we’re doing. We’re sharing some of our favorites once again, and of course I could not make this particular episode without my favorite trusty housing market analyst, Ashley Care, co-host of the Real Estate Rookie podcast, and Henry Washington co-host of On the Market. Ashley, thanks for coming back and joining us today.

Ashley:
Yes, thank you so much for having me

Dave:
And Henry, good to see you again. Thanks for doing all the homework and being here on time. Unlike me.

Henry:
Happy to be here, man. Thanks.

Dave:
The format for today’s show is a little bit more of the same, where we’re going to share with you markets that we actually like, but also go into some of the criteria that we use and the thought process behind each decision that we make and we’re sort of spreading it out. Each of us has been tasked with picking our favorite investing market in three regions of the US, east, central, and west. So we divided the country pretty roughly to be honest, into thirds. This was not very scientific. We basically will put a map up on YouTube if you’re watching this right now. But if you’re listening, the general idea is the east is every state that touches the Atlantic Ocean. Plus we just threw in Vermont and West Virginia for good fun. Our central region is west of that over to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. So broadly the Midwest and some of the south and then the west region is everything. If you draw a vertical line from North Dakota down to Texas over to the Pacific Ocean, it’s about half the country by area, but only about one third of the population. So I’m sure many of you’ll leave comments about our horrible geography. Totally understood. That is welcomed, but let’s just get into these investment markets. What’s actually important here, Ashley, you are up first. We’re going to start and go east to west, east region. What’s the market?

Ashley:
I did pick a market that’s close to my hometown of Buffalo, New York, and the reason I picked it is because it’s been making a lot of headlines lately and I wanted to dig a little deeper into this. So this is Rochester, New York,

Ashley:
So

Ashley:
If you haven’t seen it in the yet, they’re talking about how this is the fastest selling market. So I think right now it’s averaging properties, 13 days on market, which is the best right now in the

Dave:
Country. Wow, okay. So maybe you could tell us why that stat alone is something that got you excited about Rochester.

Ashley:
So I thought this would be a great opportunity to actually flip a home
Or to have it as a rental, but plan to sell it within the next couple of years. So some other things that kind of drew my attention is the affordability, a good rent to price ratio at 0.77%. One thing that I was actually really surprised about this as the insurance costs were actually lower than the national average compared to a lot of the other markets at 2100. So it was mid to low range of what other markets were spending for insurance costs. Then also just a lot going on there was 335 million in new capital investments last year. So I really think this would be a good market for flipping. New York state is not landlord friendly and it was estimated that over the next year we could see a 9% increase in the sales price on properties.

Dave:
Alright, well I’m surprised. Just flipping though, I guess what makes you think it wouldn’t be good for holding rentals? Just the landlord friendliness because a rent to price ratio as high as you just listed is definitely one of the better ones, especially for a major city in the country. It does indicate there is possible cashflow in Rochester.

Ashley:
Yeah, I would say the biggest downside is that it’s not landlord friendly, but also another pro if you did want to do a rental here is that the five-year rent increase was 49%, which I thought that was actually really good too. So it could do both flipping or long-term buy and hold.

Henry:
I like this market for a lot of the reasons that you said, but especially for beginner investors because your entry price points are typically going to be low. There’s lots of opportunity because there are a lot of older homes in this region of the country, so that indicates that there’s opportunity to buy distressed properties and as a rookie investor, chances are you’re going to screw something up. And so if you screw something up too bad, this is a great place where you have multiple exits. If you can’t sell it or you go over budget, you can always throw a tenant in it and probably rent it and protect yourself. And so I think it’s a nice safe market if you’re going to get started investing and it’s not a super popular market, so there’s probably less competition. You can probably buy deals right off the MLS. I think it’s a pretty safe market to start in.

Dave:
Ashley, I feel like you brought this city up because it’s my greatest shame and missed opportunity in Rochester. I actually went to college there, lived there for a while and missed this by a thousand miles that Rochester was going to be a really popular place for real estate and investment when I was there. It was honestly pretty depressed. City housing prices were super cheap, unemployment was really high, but it has really turned around a lot and although I’m very happy for the city in that, it was something I actually thought about for a while and decided not to pull the trigger on, although it would’ve been a great decision for me. So don’t follow in my footsteps and perhaps consider Rochester more seriously than I did. Alright, that’s our first market. Thank you. Ashley Henry, tell us about your pick on the east coast.

Henry:
My pick on the east coast is one of my favorite cities just in the country in general. That’s Durham Chapel Hill in North Carolina.

Ashley:
Oh, nice.

Henry:
I’ve always enjoyed the time I spent in Raleigh Durham, North Carolina area. But before we get into that, I want to talk about the way I kind of narrowed down my selections regardless of region. What I was looking for first and foremost was I wanted all the markets where the median home price is under the national average, meaning I can buy a house for less than the national average in the country. And at the same time I wanted all the markets where the median rent was within 10% or above the national average. So I want to be able to buy under the average, but rent at or above the average.

Dave:
I like that criteria. That’s a good one.

Henry:
What I’m looking for with this is opportunities to buy properties that cashflow even in the current economy, but I’m also looking for equity and appreciation. So once I had that list, some of the additional criteria that I look for is I want markets where unemployment is low, where the five year price growth is high and where vacancy is the lowest. Also, I’m looking for population growth to be positive over the last five years. I want it to show a history of people wanting to move there and not just a blip on the radar. And I’m also looking for job growth over that same time period. So if I’m seeing purchase prices under the national average rents at or above the national average, plus people moving there consistently over the last five years and jobs growing over the last five years, that for me is a formula for where you’re going to be able to get cashflow but also some appreciation over time. I want markets where you get both cashflow protects you now, pays you now, but wealth is built through equity and appreciation. So if you can get both, you’re building a pretty safe portfolio. So that’s kind of how I was looking at narrowing down my list.

Dave:
And you could still buy that affordably in Raleigh Durham. I feel like you hear that as one of those markets that’s just grown crazy over the last few years.

Henry:
Yeah, median home price rally Durham is 383,400, which is under the national average, not super low, but median rent price is 1870. So what that tells me is if I do the work to find good deals, I can probably find deals at cashflow. Will I be able to find ’em on the market? Probably not, but that’s typically not how I invest anyway. So based on what I know about how I invest these metrics, tell me if I do the work, I can probably find deals that cashflow five year job growth is 8%, unemployment rate is only 3.3%. Vacancy rate 0.08%.

Dave:
What? Seriously? Yeah,

Henry:
Yeah,

Dave:
That might be the lowest vacancy rate I’ve ever heard.

Henry:
So basically what they’re saying is if it’s available for rent, it’s getting rented and with a median rent price that high, that means if you make your property desirable, you’re going to get it rented and you’re probably going to get good rents. Obviously there’s multiple colleges in this area, so a lot of that is probably college students renting places. But I like this market for that reason. Again, not going to find properties on the market, but if you can do the work, if you’re into buying off market properties, this is a place where you can probably buy value.

Dave:
All right, great. I like it. Very good criteria there and definitely one of the more stable markets. We’ll see what happens with the national housing market, but it just seems like a great market that’s going to continue to keep

Henry:
Growing. I think what people miss about this market is there are a lot of colleges there because their top employers are Duke Healthcare and UNC Chapel Hill, but the third top employer is IBM. It’s a big tech market as well. And so a lot of these people are graduating and going to work for tech in that area, which is great for your properties and Reynolds as well.

Dave:
Alright, great. Well we’ve heard Ashley’s Eastern market with Rochester Henry’s at Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, and we’ll move on to mine. I think for all of mine. You may have heard of these places, but I doubt you’ve heard any of them mentioned as investing places. I was just trying to pick obscure places that might light a fire or spark some ideas for people who haven’t thought of these markets before. And so what I’m looking for, similar to what Ashley and Henry mentioned, but my main two criteria here are affordability and job growth. To me, those are the best long-term predictors of stability in the housing market and long-term growth. And I also personally don’t buy deals that don’t cashflow within the first year. I’m willing to do a little bit of a rehab, but I need them to get up to that cashflow positive in the first year. And where I came up with was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Have you guys been there, know anything about it? Have not.

Ashley:
I’ve been there.

Dave:
I guess it’s actually not that far from me, right, Ashley?

Ashley:
Yeah, yeah.

Dave:
Okay. Harrisburg has this surprisingly great economy that I really didn’t know about. Their unemployment rate is 2.9%, well below the national average. There’s a lot of government jobs there because it’s actually the state capital. I was kind of surprised I bad at geography, did not know that before this. I always figured Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, maybe. Nope, it is Harrisburg, but there’s also just a really diversified economy there and the job growth is just going really, really well there. Particularly for a place that isn’t as sexy as Raleigh Durham or is not making any Zillows topless for hottest markets like Rochester. This is just one of those solid towns where as a rental property investor, I think you can build a really strong solid career. It might not have the equity growth that Henry was mentioning, but housing prices have still gone up a lot. They’ve gone up 38% in the last five years, their forecast to go up between four and 6% in the next year, which is above the national average.
So I think there’s a lot to like about a city like this. And actually Henry, you made me think of something because for me, as someone who invests out of state for rental property investing, I do think I looked around just on the BiggerPockets deal finder a little bit before this. You can find cash flowing deals on the market. So I think that’s another criteria for people who are more on the passive side of the spectrum. Like me, that’s something I tend to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, a little bit less competitive marketplace, and a place like Harrisburg offers that for me.

Ashley:
And don’t forget, it’s also located near Hershey Park, so when you go to visit your property as a tax right off, you can go to Hershey Park.

Dave:
Awesome. All right. Well those are eastern markets. Just as a recap, they’re Rochester, New York, Raleigh Durham, North Carolina, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. When we come back, we will move on to the central market stick with us. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Henry Washington and Ashley Care talking about some of our favorite investing markets for 2025. We’ve moved on from the eastern market now to the central region, which again, we roughly just included Midwest down to where Henry lives in Arkansas, but not including Texas, Oklahoma, that all goes into the west coast. So Henry, let’s start with you. Where did you pick in your home region?

Henry:
In my home region, I did not pick my home region because you wouldn’t allow it, but it did show up in my search criteria. That’s just how amazing of a market. But with this selection, I chose Knoxville, Tennessee, I like Knoxville, Tennessee for a couple of reasons. A Nashville has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the country for some time now, and it’s continuing to grow and expand. And Knoxville, Tennessee is obviously in that same area of the country. Median home price there, 351,000, almost 352,000. You’re not going to get that in Nashville, Tennessee. The median rent though is guess somebody take a guess. What do you think the median rent is?

Ashley:
1750

Henry:
Ashley.

Ashley:
1400

Henry:
$2,100.

Ashley:
What?

Henry:
Median? Hey, serious? Yes sir. Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s got a good economy. They’re spending a lot of money in the local economy. So Covenant Health is the biggest employer in the area and they are spending $114 million on a Covenant Health Park, which is a stadium that they’re building down there, a sports stadium. They’ve got a federal grant, 42.6 for city connectivity improvements. So they’re improving their downtown area building sidewalks, bridges, plus the tech sector has a huge expansion going on down there. So they’re spending a lot of money. Companies are spending money, infrastructure is getting better and like I said, I was only picking markets that have positive job growth and positive population growth. And so this is a way for you to not spend as much as you would in a Nashville, but get rents similar to a Nashville, which means you’ve got more cashflow opportunities. Plus a lot of people who are moving to Tennessee may not want to move all the way and get the hustle and bustle of Nashville. And so people are picking Knoxville, Tennessee. There’s like I said, because there’s lots of jobs, because there’s population growth. Vacancy rate is 10%, which is pretty good. It is also a college town as well because that is where the University of Tennessee is. And that is the second largest employer in the area.

Ashley:
This is also the closest airport if you’re going to Pigeon Forge, correct.

Dave:
Oh, that’s a good one. So

Ashley:
If you fly in, you stay the night, maybe it’s a little bit cheaper. So maybe even Airbnb would work and then you drive out. I’m just trying to name attractions of why we should buy a market so we can go visit the,

Henry:
Well somebody research the pizza and the wings. Please let us know in the comments of the video where we should get pizza and wins. Yes, definitely in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Dave:
Alright, well, I feel like this is a theme, honestly, I see a lot these days when I’m picking markets that meet a lot of the criteria is college towns, they tend to perform well. Rochester, Raleigh, Durham, both college towns, I guess Harrisburg I don’t think has any notably big colleges, but Knoxville obviously does. And some of the other ones we’re going to talk about I think do as well. So that is something to keep an eye on. It really does tend to stabilize an economy, right? Colleges, they don’t have these swings when the economy goes down, they still have a lot of students coming in. It’s a very stable economic provider. As is healthcare, which you also mentioned.

Henry:
And I want people to realize too, that college town doesn’t mean you have to buy properties and rent to college students.

Ashley:
No.

Henry:
Right. College town is stability because there are companies, universities, restaurants, sports teams who are way better at analyzing markets than the three of us. And they’ve all done this and have chosen these markets for particular reasons. And so we’re leveraging that to help us choose where we should invest. It’s a college town for a reason. There’s a lot of jobs and employment for a reason, and if you can leverage some of the analysis of some of these super smart people who they’ve hired to do all this research, then you can buy properties I live in. Technically I rent in a college town, Fayetteville, Arkansas is where the University of Arkansas is. But I’d argue to say that I don’t know less than 5% of my tenants are college students.

Dave:
Well, yeah, it’s like companies move to college towns, this steady streamline of talent for people to hire, there’s a good labor force. So yeah, it just makes a lot of sense.

Ashley:
I was actually reading an article this morning on BiggerPockets. It was written by Austin Wolf and it was talking about the top three cash flowing markets for 2025, and one of them was Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I love that. And I said the reason was it’s a college town and just the university is having such a growth in student population that it’s creating a demand for rentals.

Dave:
With that segue, I will just go to my central market also in Alabama, but I feel like Tuscaloosa gets a lot of the love and Huntsville gets a lot of the love, but there are a lot of other good markets in Alabama. And so what I picked was Montgomery, Alabama. I think this gets overlooked a lot, but one of the things I really liked here is that it was the number one city in Alabama for capital investment and it’s the number two in the state for job creation and there are other good cities, but I was kind of surprised to see that because not as hyped up as a lot of the other markets in Alabama. It also has a great unemployment rate at 3.8%. And one of the things that I think is particularly interesting is we don’t know exactly what’s going to go on with tariffs, but a lot has been made about potentially car companies reinvesting into the United States.
And Montgomery has had this longstanding relationship with Hyundai for 20 years and they’ve sort of indicated that they’re going to start ramping up production there or that they’re going to continue to invest. There’s also a major air force base in the area, so that provides a lot of stability to the general economy there. And so I think this is just another example of one of these very affordable cities. The median home price in Montgomery is under $200,000. It’s $185,000, but the median rent is 1400 bucks. So you’re not quite at the 1% rule, but I bet you could go on bigger deals right now and find a cash flowing property today in a market that has a lot of capital investment and job growth. To me, that’s just kind of a no brainer.

Henry:
Alabama’s such a sleeper state for real estate investing. People don’t realize how many high level aerospace tech jobs, engineering jobs are out there. Yes, there’s a lot of manufacturing, but lots of high income earners have to live there and lots of government jobs, which means lots of government contracts, which means they can also be good sleeper markets for midterm rentals.

Ashley:
Is Alabama a landlord friendly state?

Henry:
Absolutely.

Dave:
It is. Yeah, it is. One thing I was actually curious about because a lot of stuff that going on on the Gulf Coast is you’re seeing insurance costs really go up. And so I was curious and looked into this and the median insurance cost in Montgomery is 3,800 bucks, which is a lot, I mean that’s more than I pay in most places, but it’s definitely less than Louisiana. But to offset that, their property tax rate is 0.28%. And just for reference, the average in the country is about 1%, so it’s about a quarter of the average. In states like Texas, it’s over 2%. So you really have this big wild swing, but Alabama has extremely low property taxes, so that’s just another thing that can help offset those higher than average insurance costs when you’re trying to calculate your cashflow. All right, well those are the first two, but Ashley, we haven’t heard from you on the central region just yet. Right.

Ashley:
Okay. So I picked Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Dave:
I almost picked that one popular city college town, right? Yeah,

Ashley:
I just think everything is steady. None of the data was detrimental, but none of it was also super great. Wow. This is a great unemployment rate. It’s super low. There was, I just felt like everything was really steady, so that’s what I liked about this market. Also super affordable. The median housing was 247 house price. The median rent was 1600. I just thought everything was just kind of middle of the road.

Dave:
What’s going on in Fort Wayne? I said Collegetown, but I think that’s actually wrong. What’s going on there? Is there a Hershey Park? Is there good pizza?

Ashley:
It’s a strong manufacturing base, but it does have some growth in the technology sectors too. So I just like the numbers on it that it was very conservative. It seemed less risky, I would say.

Dave:
Okay, I like that. I think, yeah, generally speaking, the Midwest, that whole area, a lot of Ohio, a lot of Indiana offers that I think, but some have gotten really expensive. So Indianapolis is a great market too, but it’s really gotten a lot more competitive, well known. Same with places like Columbus.

Henry:
Google announced a big 2 billion data center there. Okay.

Ashley:
Actually, we’re going to have a speaker at BP Con that invests in Fort Wayne, Sarah King. She’s going to be one of the speakers at BP Con this year in Las Vegas, and she invests there. That was one of the reasons the market stood out to me too, is because she’s always sharing her experience and even though she does well there doesn’t mean that I would or it’s the right market for you too. But it’s always a good starting point to look where others are investing and then look at the data and see if it would actually work out for you.

Dave:
All right. Those are essential markets, Knoxville, Fort Wayne, and Montgomery. And if you’re thinking those aren’t all central, you’re probably right, but we’re just doing the best that we can out here. Ashley mentioned BP Con, which actually lies in our Western region this year. It is in Las Vegas. I’m curious if either of you pick that, but we’ll see after this break. But if you want to hear Sarah King speaking at BP Con or Ashley Henry or myself speaking at BP Con plus meeting thousands of like-minded investors, there are still tickets available. So go to biggerpockets.com/conference to get yours today. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m here with Ashley and Henry and we’re picking our top favorite markets. We’ve gone from the east to the central to the west coast. Ashley, tell us where you picked on the Western half of the United States. But again, that’s just one third of the country in terms of population.

Ashley:
This one is way out of touch for me that this is an expensive market, but I saw some opportunity here. So I picked Colorado Springs

Dave:
And

Ashley:
It’s more expensive with the median price around 485,000. Oh,

Dave:
Okay.

Ashley:
But what stood out to me is that they’re having a housing shortage. So by 2028, they need to fulfill 28,000 to 39,000 housing units in order to meet just the current demand for housing. And then also just a lot of job opportunity with the US Space Command is putting headquarters there, which will create around 600 jobs, a microchip technology company, 700 jobs, and then a solar panel manufacturing that was a little less than 400 jobs. There were some numbers too that kind of stood out with me with this housing shortage is that the five-year rent growth is supposed to be 49%

Dave:
Project,

Ashley:
And then just the five year job growth of 10% too, and then 5% for household growth. So I see a lot of opportunity and appreciation in this market. Maybe some overflow from the Denver area into Colorado Springs, but just the demand for housing needed and just what the expected increase in the value of those properties is going to be.

Dave:
This is a great way of looking at potential markets. At the end of the day, it really does come down to supply and demand. And oftentimes when we talk about things like job growth or population growth or household growth, what we’re really trying to predict is demand. And unless you’re someone like me who looks at permit data all the time, it’s a little bit harder to look to forecast supply. But a lot of cities put out these housing analyses. There’s a couple in the Midwest that I’ve been reading about where they just do a very detailed analysis knowing everything they know about their own city and being like, we need X number of new houses. And oftentimes the cities put these out because it’s kind of like a call for alarm. There’s just not enough housing, obviously, personally I feel like I hope they produce more housing, but as an investor, you can one be a part of that if you want to up zone things or you can just be someone who’s able to provide high quality housing to tenants in these places where they might not be able to afford to buy a single family home normally.
So I think that’s a great one. Colorado Springs, Ashley, you’re just beating me up. That’s another one that got away from me. I always thought like, oh, spillover from Denver. It’s a great place. I actually drove down there a few times and looked at properties, but never pulled the trigger. But it’s been growing crazy for 10 years and sounds like it probably will keep going.

Ashley:
Yeah, I think you look at people who bought in Denver 10 years ago or whatever, they probably have a nice chunk of in their property from appreciation and the similar circumstance could happen in Colorado Springs. So you got to get in now.

Henry:
I’ve just heard that’s a beautiful place. Colorado Springs.

Dave:
Yeah, pike Place, garden of the Gods. Henry’s great golf course there at the Broadmoor. Should go apply. Say less. There we go. There’s our attraction. I don’t know if you play golf actually, but you’re invited I puck. Okay, perfect. Alright, well great Pink. I know from personal experience, really high quality of life there too. It’s like a nice place. All right, moving on, Henry, what is your Western market region?

Henry:
Well, you’re going to get comments about this because technically it doesn’t seem like it’s in the West, it’s in Texas. But Kathy Tke would be proud of me because I picked Sherman Denison, Texas.

Dave:
Never heard of it, never heard of it.

Henry:
Neither had I until I did this research. But it is about an hour north of Dallas, so not too far from major metro Dallas, Texas. But median home price, what do you think it is? 2 25, 2 50.
Nailed it. 2 51 median home price in Sherman Venison, Texas. Nailed it. Median rent, 1572. What I like about this is the cost of housing relative to the distance from Dallas, Texas, the major metro. If you know anything about Dallas, it’s just been growing like crazy and it’s been expanding. And so people who were early to the Dallas boom are now, get me out of here. All these California and New York folks are moving to Dallas and they’re moving toward the outskirts. And so you’ve got growth in these areas just outside of Dallas, but you also got affordability. They have 3,700 housing units under construction. They are planning 8,000 more. So they are growing crazy out there, which I like to see top employers, Tyson Foods, which is a top employer in one of my markets. So we know they’re doing well. But I really like this in terms of your ability to buy a property brand new and keep it as a rental property.

Dave:
Man, you really do sound like Kathy Feck. I

Henry:
Know, right? Right. I mean, 2 51 median home price. You can probably go out here and get yourself a $200,000 new construction home, rent that thing out and break even, or cashflow a little bit, but you’ve got no maintenance or CapEx expenditures for your first five to 10 years because it’s brand new construction. There are tons of money being poured into that area. Preston Harbor, $6 billion, 3,100 acre development going on there. Texas Instruments is opening a manufacturing plant that’s under development right now out there. So you’re going to have jobs. It’s going to keep growing. Dallas is expanding. That’s going to keep growing. So I just thought this was a pretty cool way to get into the, with maybe something new and not having to do value add.

Dave:
I like that. That’s a really good strategy. I just Googled it. I obviously am terrible at geography and I needed to see on a map where this was, and I see why you like it, Henry, because it seems to be surrounded by casinos. So another

Ashley:
Place to run

Dave:
To visit, telling

Henry:
My secrets,

Dave:
Going with Ashley’s theory of why you want to pick these places, but there seemed to be several casinos in the area and maybe a good reason for Henry to go visit his potential rentals frequently.

Henry:
Yes, you can follow my investing advice. Please do not follow my gambling advice.

Dave:
Alright, well I like that. That is a really good strategy. And I think, I guess outside of maybe Raleigh Durham, a lot of the ones that we’re picking here today are sort of these secondary and tertiary cities. Not that they’re Rochester a big city. Colorado Springs a big city, but Harrisburg actually, it’s a way bigger population than I thought at like 600,000 people, but just not the most obvious places. And sort of going to some of these places that probably haven’t seen all of their growth yet, they’re still growing and there’s still this potential in these cities. So this could be a really good example of another one, even though I’d never heard of this place before.

Ashley:
Well, Dave, I think too, when you look at these secondary markets, you’re getting more accurate data because most of them are smaller. Where when you go to these big cities and you look at the overall number, it drastically changes from neighborhood to neighborhood. So especially as a new investor, it’s actually easier to analyze these smaller markets because the information is more concise.

Dave:
I completely agree. I for a while, thought about investing in San Antonio. It’s just so big and it’s so sprawling. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it as an out-of-state investor. It was just too hard and wound up choosing some smaller Midwest markets where I could just go and I can drive around ’em in an hour and I can get a sense of it in a different way. It really does make a big difference.

Ashley:
Well, the next time we do this, then we have to do small hometown little markets. Okay,

Dave:
I like that. Yeah, no bigger than a hundred thousand people or something like that. It could be fun. Alright, well I’ll give you my last market, which is actually the smallest market that I picked at least for this episode. But I picked Twin Falls, Idaho, because Idaho is sort of how I was thinking about Pennsylvania and Alabama, which all states that are growing a lot. But I was looking just for a secondary tertiary market. Everyone knows Boise has been growing like crazy, but Twin Falls, it has a lot to like, it’s affordable at $358,000. The population’s a hundred thousand. So it’s not tiny super low vacancy rate at 5%. It’s not point to 8%. Henry, sorry, but 5% vacancy rate is still really good. The median rent is over $2,200. So there’s solid rent growth here. And meanwhile, everything sort of like what you were saying about Fort Wayne, Ashley, there’s no red flag.
It’s landlord friendly. Insurance is pretty low, property taxes are low, incomes are growing, jobs are going there and droves. And there’s a lot of stuff to like here. And I just again, think that similar to what you said, Ashley, a lot of the spillover from Denver went to Colorado Springs. Boise is growing so much. I wonder if that impact will sort of happen to so do these other markets in Idaho, which is why the appreciation hasn’t been crazy there over the last couple of years. But I just wonder if it’s one of those markets that we’ll see sustained growth over the next couple of years. And again, it’s a place I don’t think most people have been to or have heard of, which is what I was looking for today.

Ashley:
And no major attraction. They have waterfalls, I think.

Dave:
Okay. It sounds like they have two waterfalls at least.

Henry:
Yeah, I think just what we need from everybody is if you could give us the best pizza place and the best wing place in each city, we mentioned in the comments of these videos, that would be super helpful for research purposes.

Dave:
Well, this was a lot of fun and I think again, the idea here is maybe one of these nine markets appeals to you. Feel free to go check ’em out. But the idea here is to share with you some of the thought process, some of the fundamentals that you could be looking for in your own search for markets, or as Ashley pointed out in your search for neighborhoods within a market, these fundamentals don’t just apply in a state level or a metro level, but also on a neighborhood by neighborhood level as well. Henry, thanks so much for being here. We always appreciate it.

Henry:
Thank you for having me.

Dave:
Ashley. Thank you for coming over from the Rookie Show. We are always happy to have you here.

Ashley:
Yes, thanks so much.

Dave:
And for all of you, if you do want to do this research yourself, you could download the spreadsheet that Ashley Henry and I have been using for free at biggerpockets.com/resources. We’ll put a link to that below. But it’s a super helpful thing that conglomerates all of this data into one place makes it easy for you to start identifying metro areas you might be interested in investing in. Thank you all so much for listening and watching this episode of BiggerPockets Podcast. We’ll see you next time.