Where We’d Invest in Real Estate Right Now (12 Markets)

Dave:
These are the best markets to buy real estate right now in 2026. Where you invest is arguably the single biggest decision you make as an investor. Real estate is a local business and even if you find great deals, your rents and appreciation will depend on your surrounding region. With affordability declining in many markets, finding the right place to invest has never been more critical. So we’ve crunched the numbers, prices, rents, job growth and more, and we’re revealing our favorite markets for investors right now. What’s going on everyone? I am Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at BiggerPockets. Today’s episode is our list of best investing markets and this is always one of our most popular shows of the year, so we’re back in June 2026 with an update. This time we’re expanding the list to include not only long-term rentals, but also our favorite markets for short-term rentals, house slipping, and house hacking too.
And as always for this topic, I’m joined by BiggerPockets podcast co-host Henry Washington and real estate rookie host, Ashley Kehr. Ashley, good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Ashley:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me again and giving me more homework with more cities to include this

Dave:
Time. Yeah. Every time you do this, we’re just going to give you more and more work. Henry, how’s it going, man? Good to see you.

Henry:
What’s up buddy? Good to be here.

Dave:
All right, let’s get straight into it. You guys know the drill at this point. We’ve done this format a couple of times, but this time we’re actually going to modify it a litle bit. We’re going to be going through different types of investment strategies and picking markets for each. So we’re going to start with long-term rentals, then we’ll go to short-term rentals, flips, and house hacking. For each strategy, actually, Henry and I are going to give us our favorite for that particular approach. So let’s go long-term rentals first. Ashley, calling on you.

Ashley:
So I actually cheated on this one a little bit. I picked Greenfield Indiana because it is a suburb rural market of Indianapolis, which I think it has a great long-term buy and hold market. So a little bit that I found out about this town in particular, so it’s a smaller town. The median home price is 285,000. Homes are selling in under 30 days, so I like having exit strategies options available. And then it’s only about a 30-minute drive to Indianapolis, which I like these smaller markets that are outside of the city that make it more affordable for renters. And then it’s also a landlord-friendly state.

Dave:
I like it. All those good things. Yeah. If you’re just trying to draft off of Indianapolis, I like that strategy in general just because such a hot market, such good Thai food as Henry can attest to. We had the best meal in Indianapolis. But tell me, Ashley, because Indianapolis has gotten so popular, it’s become pretty competitive with investors and cashflow is getting harder to find. So in Greenfield, what does it look like? Can you still find decent deals?

Ashley:
I would say it’s definitely going to be tight. The cashflow’s going to be tight and it depends on obviously how you’re financing and how much you’re putting down, things like that. But the average rent for a single family home can range from 1,750 to about 2,200 per month. So it’s not quite the 1% rule, but still kind of close.

Henry:
But is it a pure cashflow or do you get some appreciation there?

Ashley:
It does have a 7% year over year growth from last year. So that’s pretty good.

Henry:
That’s solid. See, that’s why I like the cities right outside of major metros because you kind of get to share a little bit of the appreciation of the bigger market because in every big city, there’s always a subset of people who are angry that the city’s growing and so they move further out to these suburbs.

Dave:
This is your strategy is just to rent to the grumpy people who leave.

Henry:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dave:
Yeah. But I mean, there’s certain people who just don’t want to live in cities who want to live or have a smaller situation. And I mean, it really is like drafting and racing. You’re just letting the big city do all the work for you, all the economic growth, a lot of the infrastructure that needs to be built like airports. Smaller cities don’t need to do that if you’re close enough to these other cities to the big city, but you get a lot of the benefits. You get a lot of the job growth, the economic engine, the stability that comes with a big major city. So I like this one. Pretty good. All right. What do you got, Henry, for long-term rentals?

Henry:
First, let me talk about the criteria I used to narrow down my selection. And then the additional criteria I used was that I can’t use one I already used. So the criteria I was looking at is positive five-year price growth and the one-year price forecast are positive, population growth five-year and one-year population growth are positive, five-year job growth and one-year job growth positive, five-year rent growth positive, and then five-year income growth positive. So this is obviously, I want a market where people want to live there and there are jobs for them is essentially what all those things are saying.

Dave:
Those are bold criteria.

Henry:
Yeah, crazy, right? And then what I’m looking for within those markets is a place where the house price is at or below the median national average and where median rents are above or within 10% of the national average. So this is my formula for can I get cashflow in a market where people want to live? And then there’s some other ancillary things to look for like taxes and insurance, but those are the main factors. All right. So the market that I ended up selecting was Drumbo, Richmond, Virginia.

Dave:
Oh, good choice. I like Richmond.

Henry:
I like Richmond too. I used to live in Virginia Beach. So Richmond’s like an hour and a half outside of Virginia Beach. It’s also about two hours outside of Washington DC. You’ve got a median home price of 364,000, but the median rent is 2,100. And so that tells me if the median house price is 364, then I can definitely get deals under that price probably on the market. And if I’m willing to employ some sort of off-market deal finding strategy, I can probably find really good deals because a $2,100 median rent is a really good median rent price for a city that’s not a massive city.

Dave:
I like it. And I want to zoom in on something that Henry just said because people use the rent to price ratio a little aggressively in my opinion and have to see 0.1, 0.9. Just remember that when you’re doing the rent to price ratio, which is one month of rent divided by the purchase price, the higher it is, the better. And there is a rule of thumb that kind of originated 15 years ago when things were much different prices that you said you had to get the 1% rule. That does not really exist. There are almost no markets in the country at all. I think there’s maybe one, maybe Baltimore, maybe Detroit where you can average 1%. But remember, that is an average. That means that when home buyers go out and buy the average price home, this is what they’re getting. It’s not what an investor should be looking at.
It’s not necessarily what you’re getting for rent after you renovate something. So I wouldn’t get too tied up on it. Now, if the rent to price ratio for the whole region’s below 0.5, probably going to be pretty hard to find cashflow. But if you’re in the 0.6 to 1%, it’s probably worth looking at deals in those

Henry:
Markets.
Right. Yeah. The criteria that I use to select a market, it’s like the opening act. It lets you know that you need to dive a little deeper. And so as you dive deeper into Richmond, what I liked about this market was, yes, the population growth and the economic growth. So 56,000 new residents in the last four years, that’s great growth. They’ve got good employers. Capital One has 13,000 employees there plus 800 or so open positions. VCU, the colleges there and VCU, the hospital system there is really good and employs lots of people. So Dave, for people who like Legos, there’s a Lego manufacturing facility, so pretty cool. Are you

Dave:
Saying that like I like Legos? Are you seeing?

Henry:
I mean, if any one of us on this show was to say they were into Legos, I think we would all pick, it would probably be you.

Dave:
That’s totally fair. That is totally fair, but I’m not, but I can see why you would think so.

Henry:
Also, other things I dig into when I’m doing this deeper research for markets to invest in, especially with a buy and hold market is I look to see is the city or companies within the city spending money on infrastructure within the city? Because that tells you they’re invested. They’re growing roots there. They’re not going anywhere. We’ve got the Diamond District Redevelopment Project in Richmond, which is a billion plus mixed use development project that they’re doing. So that is all good signs, positive population growth, positive job growth, decent numbers. You’ll probably have to do a litle bit of work to find yourself like a screaming deal, but you’re going to get cashflow and depreciation, great long-term hold market.

Dave:
Awesome. I like it. Virginia in general, just so many good hybrid markets there. All right. My turn for a long-term rental and for once I’m not picking a place in the Midwest. I deliberately, I set a criteria for

Henry:
Myself. Wait, let me guess. Let me guess. It’s in the Northeast.

Dave:
No. Oh, no. I’ve tried to do things that are a little contrarian and I was picking ones in the Northeast previously, but now that’s my thing. So now I’m going to where everyone invests in the Southeast. And I am picking Chattanooga Tennessee.

Henry:
Oh, that’s a great market.

Dave:
There’s so much good stuff about this market. So my number one criteria is looking for hybrid markets. That just means to me that I’m going to get appreciation and cashflow. I need at least a little bit of cashflow and you’ll be able to find that in Chattanooga. It’s really growing in a good way, just population-wise. The rent-to-price ratio is not terrible. It’s like 0.6, a litle bit higher than that. But I actually started looking at deals because it is a really good market, so I was just underwriting some random deals I found. And multifamily actually has a better rent to price ratio there. So I do think you can find small multifamily that you’re getting. It has huge population growth, almost 6% in the last five years. And you see people all over the country moving there. There’s some actually cool tools that you can find out seeing where people are moving from.
LA, Miami, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, people are moving there and I think it’s because of the vibes. Henry and I talk about this all the time, but I like investing for vibes where people want to live where there’s a strong quality of life. Obviously work from home is not what it once was, but still people have more flexibility and choice in where they work now and I think that matters a lot. So I’m big on Chattanooga. I’ll just tell you, I started looking around. I found a duplex. It was like a little under 500 and had been sitting on market for a while. So I think you could get it for cheaper in a really good area. It’s on a double lot so you could develop it. Each side was three bed, one bath. Bedrooms were kind of small, but you could fix it up and you could cash flow that property.That was a nice property in a good area that you could cash flow.
The rents on those I think were like 1,900 bucks each. So I think you get 3,800 on, it’s listed at 500, but it’s been on the market for 72 days now. So if you go get that for 450 or something, that’s a cashflowing deal right off the bat in a really good market. So I like Chattanooga a lot.

Henry:
Yeah. Chattanooga is a cool city just because it’s big enough that there’s plenty to do but not so big that you get overwhelmed, but you’re like a stone’s throw from Atlanta. I don’t know if people realize how close to Atlanta it is. And so you get some commuters from the Atlanta area, but you get really great numbers. You’re not paying Atlanta prices for properties, but you get good rents, man. I think it’s a great market.

Dave:
And no state income tax in Tennessee. Got to like that. Right. The only person I know who invests in Chattanooga is Alex Pallet, who you both know who works at BiggerPockets, is my colleague and who plans BPCon and all of our incredible events. And she started buying in Chattanooga like 12 years ago or something. She was like a profit. Maybe it was 10 years ago. It was right when she started at BiggerPockets and her deals have done just absolutely incredibly and I’ve been so jealous of that. And while we’re on the topic of BPCon, you all should come to BPCon because we are starting to fill out the programming and I’m getting very excited about the speakers that we have. We’re adding new networking this year. Alex does an incredible job and she always has a lot of surprise and delights as she calls them.
Little things that we’re throwing in there to make sure everyone has an amazing time. Ashley, what are you speaking about this year?

Ashley:
I’m going to be speaking about optimizing your revenue and how to operate basically your property management operations to maximize your revenue.

Dave:
Awesome. Oh, I like that one a lot. Very popular these days. We did a survey at BiggerPockets about what people’s priorities were and that was like the number two thing for everything in their portfolio. It was like, how do you maximize your existing portfolio? It’s a great one.

Ashley:
Yeah, it’s going to be part of the 10 plus track. So if you have 10 or more deals, it’s going to be really tailored towards you as to what you can be doing with your current portfolio.

Dave:
Oh, nice.

Henry:
The last time BPCon was in Orlando is arguably the best BPCon. So I’m super excited.

Dave:
I say best party I’ve ever been to in my life. Absolutely. It was so fun. It’s going to be a very good time. If you’re listening to this right when it came out, you just have a few days left to get early bird pricing. It is the cheapest ticket that we have, honestly, just a couple of days. So if you’re going to come, which you should, go to biggerpockets.com/conference and grab your ticket today. All right, let’s take a break, but when we come back, we’ll have our best short-term rental markets. Stick with us. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m here with Ashley Kare and Henry Washington sharing our favorite markets in the summer of 2026. Before the break, we talked about long-term rentals. Let’s go into short-term rentals. Henry, go for it.

Henry:
All right, short-term rentals. Again, let me talk about the criteria I use to narrow down the markets that I was going to choose from. So I was looking for the top 10 markets with above average population growth, steady job growth, also where insurance is at the national average or within 10% on the higher side or below the national average. I also prioritize markets with strong vacation rental based economies already. In other words, I want to pick a market that depends on vacation rental income that it’s used to doing that. I don’t want to pick a market where vacation rentals are new and they have other income. And

Dave:
They’re not going to regulate it.

Henry:
And they’re not going to regulate it as much. Exactly. I also wanted to prioritize larger markets, some markets with a bigger population, not massive cities, because I kind of want that diamond in the rough in terms of investing in a short term rental market. So the market that I landed on is drum roll, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Dave:
Oh, you just want to go play golf.

Henry:
60 miles of coastline, 78 golf courses.

Dave:
Of course you knew that.

Ashley:
Myrtle Beach is where when I was in high school, every single person went to Myrtle Beach for vacation.

Henry:
Yeah. I mean, Myrtle Beach is a popular tourist destination, 18 million annual visitors. Now the city of Myrtle Beach, like the incorporated city of Myrtle Beach, there are restrictions on short-term rentals, but there’s a section of North Myrtle Beach that’s much more investor-friendly and it gets great returns. It’s like the Cherry Grove area. It produces great numbers for short-term rentals. What I was looking at was about people were getting $54,000 a year annual revenue on some of their Airbnbs. And this is not in the direct Myrtle Beach city, which is pretty cool. So that tells you, you can go and you can get a property. You don’t have to pay downtown Myrtle Beach prices, but you’re a little outside of town. You can still get close to the coast. It’s still a city where people are going to all the time. So yes, people are going to stay not just in downtown, but they’re going to start to stay in some of the outskirts where they can pay a little less, maybe get a little more amenities, but you can still be on the beach.
So I really, really liked Myrtle Beach and yeah, so what? There’s golf. I mean, I may go play a couple of rounds if I was there. Be fine. Yeah,

Dave:
Tax rate off free too.

Henry:
But it’s got really strong STR numbers. So high season, which is June through August, they average around 70 to 80% occupancy, which is pretty stinking good and the rates are about 260 to $300 a night, which is pretty awesome. In the low season, which is December to February, it drops down to about 35% occupancy, still around $223 a night. So you got to be pretty strategic with the properties that you buy. You got to make sure that your mortgage payment can sustain even the slow seasons, but you can make up for it in the high seasons. But I mean, those are pretty solid numbers for a short-term rental market.

Dave:
All right. Well, that’s a good one. My short-term rental market, again, in the Southeast, I’m not doing what you think I’m going to do. I picked Blue Ridge, Georgia. I like it because I generally like the idea of short-term rentals that are in driving distances of big major metros. So if a family wants to get out of town quickly, they could hopefully get to the short-term rental in two or three hours. The barrier to people going to this place is low. And Blue Ridge is extremely close to Chattanooga. That’s how I uncovered this because I was looking around Chattanooga, but it is between Atlanta and Nashville. And so you even get people from Asheville, from Charlotte, it’s all driving distance from that. So it’s a lot of the things people like about Pigeon Forge and the Smokey Mountain area, but it’s just far less competitive than that area.
A lot of people who have invested in short-term rentals and the Smokies are getting crushed right now, not because there was no demand, there’s just too much supply. Too many people bought Airbnbs and are investing there, so you have to really compete. And when you look at Blue Ridge, you see prices in the four to $500,000 range. I personally, if I was going to go out and buy a short-term rental, I’d like a mid to higher level amenities. I don’t want to buy a low end rental personally. And so I think being able to get a decent good property, a bigger property is probably in the five to $600 range, but the ADR, the average daily rate is above 300. It’s about 350. And so if you

Henry:
Can

Dave:
Get just the average occupancy on these things, they absolutely will cash flow. I was researching some of the top ones in the market are getting a hundred grand in revenue per year. So if you can operate that even modestly efficiently, you could probably do that. It has good year around interest. There is low regulation. And in my research, I found that the move here is similar to what I’ve done with the one short-term rental I own, but it’s buying bigger homes. In a lot of the markets I’ve seen, there’s a premium because there’s less supply of three, four, five bedroom homes, but that’s what families want to rent. If you’re having a family reunion or going away with another family, that’s what you want to be doing. And so to me, when I was doing my research, paying up a little bit to get that four bedroom or bigger, you can get great returns there.
So that’s what’s going on in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

Henry:
That’s pretty cool. What’s the main thing folks do in Blue Ridge, Georgia?

Ashley:
Isn’t it like hiking?

Dave:
Yeah, it’s mostly like hiking and outdoor activities. There’s a giant lake, lake Blue Ridge recreation area. It looks really lovely. I don’t know. It’s not Ozark size, Henry, but it’s huge. So I think it’s a lot of lake activity and hiking, that sort of thing. Ashley, what’d you pick? Did you take a similar approach?

Ashley:
So I took a similar approach to Henry where I wanted a place that I wanted to invest in myself or visit myself or stay at. So this past winter I went snowboarding in Vermont for the first time since I was like 12
And I loved it more than I loved going to Colorado. I’ve gone snowboarding plenty of times in Colorado, gone to Breckenridge, gone to Keystone and Copper and I could not believe how great it was. So it piqued my interest to look into short-term rentals there. So with Vermont for me, this is a straight shop from Buffalo. Five and a half hours, you’re on the 90- Oh, that’s doable. … to Vermont to the resort. Okay? So easy commute from a lot of places including New York City. So for my city, I picked Morristown, Vermont. The village within it is called Morrisville, Vermont, but I picked this because it’s close to a lot of the ski resorts, including Stowe, but it’s also a lot cheaper. So you have great access to a lot of the resorts. Obviously the home prices in Stowe Vermont are outrageous, million dollar homes where you can get something between 385,000- ish to half a million that’s comparable to what you’d spend a million on right in one of the ski towns.
But that was kind of my basis is looking for a market that’s kind of outside of the heavily regulated area too, where Morrisville does have regulations in place, which you do want because eventually every town will put some kind of regulation in place, but they don’t limit the amount of permits. So I did a little comparing of Breckenridge and even right in Stowe and in Breckenridge, they limit how many you actually can get and stuff like that too. So that was a main difference is you get a lot of the amenities that you would going to Colorado, obviously not as high of mountains, but this year we did have way better snow than Colorado. Better

Dave:
Snow than Colorado this year. Yeah,

Ashley:
For sure. But Vermont sees about 13 million people throughout the year and it is a four seasons destination with definitely more people during the winter, but there is hiking and continuous stuff going on all seasons.

Dave:
You get all those leaf peepers too in the fall, right?

Ashley:
I don’t even know what that is.

Henry:
What did you just say?

Dave:
Leaf peeper. Go, come on. It’s the people. Is that not a term people know?

Henry:
Leaf peepers.

Dave:
I don’t know why. In Colorado, everyone would come to see the Aspens change color and they just call it leaf beepers. I guess I’m alone on this one, but I love this one, Ashley. Let me just say Vermont’s great. It’s just such a nice place. It’s freezing in the winter, but you can ski, so it’s great. And it’s so nice in the summer. I feel like New England, that part of New England in the summer is very underrated and the fall is great too. So love that. And I really like the idea of investing right outside the main town. It’s actually what I did in my ski house in Colorado. Just like on town over, it’s unincorporated. They don’t regulate anything and you can get a lot bigger land. A lot of people want to be close to resorts so they rent the condos, but I’ve got a big house because I was like, all right, how do I compete?
It’s a little bit further away. I’m going to give people land, a view, a bigger area. I really like that approach to this. And I’m Googling it now and looking on Zillow because it sounds awesome. There’s really cool homes for very affordable prices in this. There’s cool houses for like 400 grand and it’s literally right down the road from Stowe.

Ashley:
And they have the cute little villages at all the ski resorts too that you see in Colorado also too, which I was surprised to see.

Dave:
Time to turn to flipping, and I guess it’s my turn to go first as the probably least experienced flipper out here, but I’m going back to my roots, Henry. I’m going to the Northeast and I am picking Hartford, Connecticut. I think I’ve done this for long-term rental, so I’m probably cheating, but I really like Hartford. There’s so many people moving here and it is a great place to flip. The median home price is 287. So you can get flips for really, really cheap, but days on market right now for renovated homes, still 18 days. Oh, wow. So people are … Yeah, 18 days. It’s 40 for non-renovated homes. So if you do these kinds of things, you’re going to get appreciation tailwinds. It’s one of the few markets in the country right now that are still growing faster than inflation. 55% of homes right now are selling above list price still.
So there’s still bidding wars on average for these kinds of property. And just to boot for this one, if you don’t sell it, you can rent it out. It’s a great rental market as well. So I know I cheated, but I never said it was a great flipping market till today, so I’m sticking by it.

Henry:
I like your concept of flipping in a market that also makes sense for long-term rentals. Spoiler alert. I did the same thing for the market that I chose, but it gives you a secondary exit strategy because sometimes you want to hold onto a flip. Either you realize it’s in a great neighborhood and you want to keep it or you can’t get what you want out of it in terms of a sale and you have to pivot and throw a tenant in there. Also, it’s a pretty decent size city and has a lot of other metros that aren’t too far. So I think it’s got great dynamics, but those days on market, yeah, give me that. Give me that all day.

Dave:
Exactly. Staying strong. And just for everyone to know, we’ve talked about this in the past, but Hartford is kind of right in the middle between Boston and New York. It’s not close. It’s still a couple hour drive, but for people who only have to be in the office a couple days a week, it’s pretty appealing location because I mean, you’re not getting a medium price home of 287 in New York or Boston. It’s literally three or four times that. So it’s a lot more affordable. And depending on where you are, the taxes are a lot more favorable in Connecticut too than Massachusetts or New York. So that’s what I’m choosing. Henry, a resident flipper. What did you pick?

Henry:
The market I landed on is Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Dave:
Ooh, okay.

Henry:
Well, I cheated a little bit because I kind of chose two markets. I chose Allentown, Pennsylvania and Reading, Pennsylvania. Here’s why I chose these markets. Again, want to be able to pivot and rent if I need to, but median home price is 348,000 in Allentown and it’s 327 in Redding. Now Allentown, it has an abundance of 1920s to 1970s row houses that are in desperate need of renovation. And I was looking up what the average purchase prices are versus how much you’re having to put into these things versus what you’re able to sell them for. So on average, people can buy distressed properties in the ballpark and this is without having to go with some healthy off market strategy. This is just normal networking, MLS listings, those kinds of things. So buying between 150 to 200K, spending between 50,000 and 80,000 on the renovation and selling between 280 and 340.
Those are just good solid flip numbers, not too risky, allows you to be able to pivot and rent it if you need to. You’re not having to do big high price renovations. You’re not having to do luxury homes. You’re providing affordable housing. So I really like those dynamics. This is not far from the Philadelphia and New York metro areas and so people could commute to those cities. Also, Allentown is having a growth spurt right now, if you want to call it. So population growth is going up in Allentown right now. Job growth is growing up in Allentown right now. What people don’t know about Allentown is it is huge city for companies like Amazon and Walmart who have big warehousing facilities, tons of warehousing operations. The scale of these warehouses that these companies are building or renting and creating tons of jobs is pretty cool, but that creates opportunity for you to rehab housing and provide rehabbed housing for people.
So I like it as a flip market. The reason I chose Reading is because it’s not far from Allentown. It’s not having as big of a boom right now as Allentown, but it’s kind of what’s next up on the list and it’s in between Allentown and Philadelphia. So very similar market dynamics, not as popular, great for you to get in now and start flipping some homes and making some profit, but you can still pivot and rent. So both those markets are kind of interchangeable to me, but I think they’re great market dynamics for flipping.

Dave:
Yeah. It’s a great rental market too. I think similar approach, like you said, and I like the price point.

Henry:
All

Dave:
Right Ashley, also a flipper. What do you got?

Ashley:
I went to way It’s Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, and I did Google the pronunciation of this. Google is wrong if I said it wrong, not me. So this is actually outside of Nashville, Tennessee. So you’re getting the overflow of people moving out of Nashville that can’t afford it. It’s seen 5% year over year prices go up. But the thing I liked most about this market is it has newer homes but are outdated. So they’re structurally sound. So from 1990 to 2010 is kind of the sweet spot to do three to four beds that just need cosmetic rehabs and don’t need full gut jobs. The median price point is a little higher than I would like for doing a flip, especially if you’re not an experienced flipper, but 400 to 450,000. Days on market are pretty decent considering about 28 is average days on market with 30% of the homes actually selling within the first week if they are priced right and not overpriced.

Dave:
I like that. All right, those are our best flipping markets. We have one more to do house hacking. We’ll get to that right after this break. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast here with Henry and Ashley doing our best markets for the summer of 2026. We’ve done long-term rentals. We’ve done short-term, we’ve done flipping. It’s time to do house hacking. Ashley, I think we’ve made our way around. It’s your turn to go first again.

Ashley:
So I wanted to house hack in a high cost of living market. So I started off with just searching over the last 30 years, which were the top 20 markets that saw the most appreciation. And it definitely wasn’t in the top five, but I picked Boston, Massachusetts. I kind of weeded out New York City, LA, things like that that I didn’t want to invest in. So I went with Boston, Massachusetts as if I’m going to house hack, this is where I would want to be. I’d want to be on the Northeast. Really just looked at a town that I saw a lot of appreciation and a way for me to get a deal there while reducing my living costs basically. And that was really my only basis behind- I like

Dave:
It.

Ashley:
Yeah. … thinking that was those several things because it’s house hacking so it’s going to be an emotional decision. I

Dave:
Mean, Boston, incredibly strong market. It’s also one of those things, not necessarily if you’re going to move there, but if you live in Boston, the rent is so expensive that house hacking is one of the only way to make living costs affordable. Boston also, having spent a good amount of time there, there’s a lot of good housing stock. There’s a lot of duplexes and triplexes, like stuff that you can buy and rent out multiple units. That’s not true in every city in the country, but Boston definitely has that. Duplex, triplex in Boston’s going to be quite expensive, but if you can afford it, you can make that work, putting 5% down, 10% down, or there are parts obviously not in the heart of downtown where you can definitely … There are more affordable parts of the city too. But I like your general thinking about house hacking and what to do with it.
I had a similar train of thought, wanting to get into a more expensive market to get appreciation. So I went through a similar analysis here and I picked a market. I’ve never been here, but in my brain, this is the perfect place to live. I picked Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina.

Henry:
I love Raleigh.

Dave:
Is it as awesome as it sounds on paper?

Henry:
I’ve enjoyed it. Every time I’ve been there, I’ve just enjoyed it so much. Love that place.

Dave:
The job market in this area is just incredible. So if you’re young and trying to move somewhere where the real estate is good and you can get a high paying job, there are not many better places in the country. And it’s not so expensive that you can’t get into homes. If you’re looking in Raleigh, Durham, it’s different in different markets. Raleigh is more expensive than Durham, but I was still finding duplexes for 400,000.You could still find homes in this excellent market. The weather is good. I think there’s a lot of young professionals. So if I were young looking for a place to go house hack, I do probably think this is where I would pick. I just think there’s so much good stuff going on there. I also personally just like being in college towns. There’s always interesting things going on. There’s usually good food.
You got Duke. You also have NC State not far away. So there’s just so much good stuff going on down there. I got to go business. Probably good Gulf, Henry, I would imagine, North Carolina. I’m picking Raleigh Durham. All right. Last market of the day, Henry, what’s your house hacking market?

Henry:
All right. House hacking market. The criteria that I used to narrow down the markets I wanted to choose from where I was looking for top 10 markets where home prices were above the national average, but where rents were also above the national average. But what was important here was I wanted reasonable property taxes that are closer to the national average, but I wanted to prioritize markets where the total rent for one unit of a duplex would cover the mortgage payment.

Dave:
Ooh, I like that.

Henry:
Or if it doesn’t cover the mortgage payment, the remaining balance would still be less than it would cost to go and rent a property in that market.

Dave:
That’s right.

Henry:
So I was looking for where it’s expensive, but where it would still make financial sense for you to do that over just going and renting a property. Does that make sense?

Dave:
Yep, that makes perfect sense. I like that.

Henry:
So the market I landed on was Riverside, California.

Dave:
Oh, wow. Is this our first California- I

Henry:
Think

Dave:
So. … tree? I think so. Of all these shows, I don’t think we’ve had a California before, but Henry’s a California boy, if you guys don’t know.

Henry:
I am. I’m born and raised in California. So the math on this one is 537,000 median home price with a 5% down on a 6.2% 30-year mortgage produces about a $3,000 a month mortgage payment, a duplex or an ADU property. Renting one of those units would give you about 1,500. So half the median rent that leaves a gap of about 1,725 a month. So that gap of 1,725 a month is about $930 less than what it would cost you to go rent a unit in that market.

Dave:
Nice. Okay.

Henry:
So if you’re able to house hack there, you’re actually saving yourself about $1,000 a month instead of going to rent something. So now you can get some appreciation. You may have to come out of pocket a little bit, but the numbers make sense for you to house hack in this market. And so in places like California, sometimes people feel stuck. They feel like, “Hey, I’ve got to pay expensive rent. I can’t afford to buy anything.” So I think it makes a great house hacking market in a place like this. And there are other cities around the Los Angeles area that have similar dynamics. So if you live in an area like the Los Angeles proper, you can’t do this. It still may be cheaper for you to rent, but if you look in areas like Riverside or surrounding areas, you can probably find yourself a property that you can afford to buy as a duplex, rent one unit and live in the other and save money in terms of just renting in that market flat out.

Dave:
Awesome. All right. Well, hopefully this helps you all. Maybe you were interested in some of these individual markets or maybe just by hearing the criteria that three experienced investors use to pick markets based on strategy can help you pick where you invest because right now the market’s split. Some markets are doing well, some are not, and making sure that you’re investing in places that have good long-term fundamentals and investing in places where the fundamentals match the strategy that you’re actually using is more important than ever. Thank you both for being here. If you want to, just as a reminder, if you want to hear more from Ashley, she’s the host of the BiggerPockets Rookie Show. You can check out that show anywhere you get your podcast or on YouTube and Henry and I will see you back on this channel sometime soon.