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Allegiant Air Amex Offer: Spend $250, Get $50 Credit


Allegiant Air Amex Offer

A new targeted Amex Offer is available for Allegiant Air, giving eligible cardholders $50 back after spending $250 or more on qualifying flights.

The offer is valid on one or more eligible Allegiant purchases made directly through Allegiant by September 30, 2026. Flights must originate in the U.S. and be charged in U.S. dollars.

The offer is popping up on consumer and business credit cards. Let’s look at the details below.

Offer Details

Earn a one-time $50 statement credit after using your enrolled eligible Card to spend a minimum of $250 in one or more qualifying purchases of flights booked with Allegiant Air online at allegiantair.com, by phone, or at an Allegiant Air ticket counter by 9/30/2026. Flights must originate in the US & be charged in USD.

Offer details and availability may vary by cardholder. Just login to your American Express account(s) to see if you are eligible to add this offer to your card(s).

Allegiant Air Amex Offer 2026

Important Terms

  • Offer valid only for Allegiant Air marketed flights booked directly with Allegiant Air online at allegiantair.com, by calling Allegiant Air customer service, or in-person at an Allegiant Air ticket counter.
  • Flight must originate in US and be charged in USD to qualify.
  • The Offer is only valid for bookings paid for by 9/30/2026, however the travel can occur after the end date for the Offer, provided that the booking was paid for within the applicable Offer period.
  • Excludes Allianz travel insurance, Trip Flex purchases, merchandise, and bookings made through third party booking sites or travel agents.
  • Purchases must be made in USD, and offer is only valid on purchases made directly with the merchant.
  • Offer not valid on purchases made using third parties, such as resellers, delivery services, or other intermediaries.

About Amex Offers

Amex Offers are an extra perk on all American Express credit cards, charge cards, and even prepaid cards. You can see these offers in your accounts either as a statement credit or extra Membership Rewards points for spending a certain amount at eligible merchants. You will need to add the offer to a specific card first, and then use that card to get the credit. Here are a few things you should know:

Guru’s Wrap-up

This is a straightforward Allegiant Amex Offer that works out to 20% back when spending exactly $250.

The offer applies to qualifying Allegiant-marketed flights booked directly with the airline, but excludes things like Allianz travel insurance, Trip Flex, merchandise and third-party bookings. The travel itself can take place after September 30, as long as the qualifying purchase is made by the deadline.

If you have an Allegiant trip coming up, this is an easy offer to use. Just make sure it’s added to your Amex card before booking.

Remember that you can use the search bar within the “Amex Offers” section in the app to find this offer quickly, instead of scrolling through 100+ deals.

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Markets Still Struggle to Price Heat


A market for weather risk has existed for more than two decades: CME listed its first weather futures in 1999, and volumes surged more than 260% in2023.Utilities arenaturalusers because temperature affects demand, output, and revenue.These markets incorporate forecasts and expectations about temperature. But this signal lives in a different corner of finance. Temperature risk may be tradable in derivatives markets, but it is still not routinely translated into company forecasts, credit ratings, and valuation models. The market can price a weather index. It still struggles to translate that signal into a company’s risk.  

For some sectors, this is a live problem, notgeneralanxiety. Utilities, grid operators, insurers, agriculture, data centers, and heavy industry all depend on physical conditions that heat candisrupt:water, peak-demand patterns, safe outdoor work, or cooling systems that become more expensive when electricity demand is highest.  

The exposure is not the same for every company. That is why it should be priced differently across them, thesame way markets already differentiate on debt maturity, commodity exposure, and refinancing risk.  

Boards cannot control river temperatures, but they can oversee how companies measure and adapt to the resulting exposure. A river becoming too warm to cool a reactor is not a managerial failure. No board caused the heatwave, and no executive chose the river’s temperature. Thefinancial impactstill lands on the company, through lower output, higher adaptation spending, andpossibly ahigher cost of capital.   

Real REMAX ends investment in Motto Mortgage franchises


The newly formed Real REMAX Group will no longer be investing in the growth of its Motto Mortgage franchise system, with its sights set on a more unified mortgage platform, the company confirmed with National Mortgage News.

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The move threatens independent mortgage banks and outside loan originators who rely on real estate agents for referrals, as the company aims to keep borrowers within its platform from the initial home search through funding and closing. The news comes after HomeServices of America announced earlier this week the expansion of its end-to-end real estate ecosystem to include mortgage servicing.

The Real REMAX platform will likely be similar to what competitors like Zillow, with its mortgage business Zillow Home Loans, and Rocket Cos., following the acquisitions of Mr. Cooper’s servicing and real estate brokerage Redfin, have created over the past few years.

Vic Lombardo has also stepped down as president of mortgage services, and Kate Gurevich, CEO of One Real Mortgage, is now leading the mortgage business, a company spokesperson said.

When The Real Brokerage and REMAX initially announced the merger in late April, the press release said “REMAX and Motto Mortgage, the first and only national mortgage brokerage franchise brand in the U.S., will continue to operate under their current brands.”

The company echoed that sentiment in an email sent to Motto broker owners and loan originators the same day, which said support from headquarters remained unchanged and the brand will be maintained and continue to operate as a dedicated franchise model even after the transaction closes, according to a United States Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The April email also said, “By bringing more ancillary services together, it’s designed to give agents and their clients more control over each transaction with fewer handoffs, and a better experience end-to-end.”

But the company’s tone has changed. It will no longer offer the sale of new franchises and existing branches will have flexibility in determining the future of their business, including ending their franchise agreements. For owners who chose not to terminate it, Real REMAX will honor the obligations under existing contracts, a company spokesperson said.

Motto operates independently owned mortgage brokerages in more than 40 states, while Real runs One Real Mortgage, a brokerage built on the back of its acquisition of LemonBrew Lending in 2022. The company has not clarified how mortgage opportunities will be distributed.

The acquisition officially closed Monday, creating a platform with more than 180,000 agents worldwide, including over 100,000 in the United States and Canada. Shares of the combined company began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market Tuesday under the ticker symbol “REAX.” The stock began trading at $24.11, and has since declined to $20.77 as of 2 p.m. Friday. BTIG gave the company a buy rating with a $35 price target Thursday.



NAYA eyes 200 restaurants as America’s Mediterranean fast-casual market booms



When Hady Kfoury opened his first restaurant in Manhattan in 2008, he was already out of money. He had raised cash from friends and family to bring the Lebanese food he grew up eating to New York, but construction had cost more than he expected. He still owed money to his general contractor and resorted to buying equipment on eBay just to get the 54-seat restaurant open.

“It was a nightmare,” Kfoury told Fortune.

The nightmare eventually turned into 48 restaurants and counting. NAYA now employs more than 1,000 people, with average annual sales of roughly $3 million per restaurant and same-store sales growth above 10% yearly. Its footprint has grown more than 40% in each of the past four years, just as Mediterranean bowls have become a fast-casual lunch staple. Kfoury’s next target is 200 NAYAs by 2030.

The fast-casual restaurant he couldn’t open

Kfoury was born in Lebanon in 1981, during the country’s civil war. He remembers some days going to school and other days having to take shelter in basements as bombs fell nearby. After studying hospitality in Switzerland and working in New York with chef Daniel Boulud, Kfoury returned to Lebanon, only to live through another war in 2006.

“I’m like, all right, that’s not going to work,” he recalled. “I have to move to the U.S., start a restaurant, and take the flavors that I was raised on and do it over there.”

By 2007, he was back in New York looking for space for a fast-casual Lebanese concept in the city’s office-heavy neighborhoods. But landlords wouldn’t lease to him.

Kfoury had no track record as a restaurant owner, and after months of searching Midtown and Wall Street, he took a space on East 56th Street and Second Avenue. It happened to sit across the street from the aunt he’d stayed with during childhood trips to New York. The location wasn’t busy enough for the high-volume concept he envisioned, so Kfoury opened NAYA as a fine-dining Lebanese restaurant instead.

His mother and aunt became what he calls the “culinary mastermind” behind it. His mother was a talented cook who didn’t measure ingredients, so Kfoury convinced her to turn the food he had grown up eating—chicken kebabs, falafel, rice with vermicelli, baba ghanoush and hummus—into written recipes.

The restaurant attracted attention, but Kfoury hadn’t abandoned his original idea. In 2010, he finally shifted NAYA to fast casual. The challenge was figuring out how to reproduce his family’s food quickly and cheaply enough to serve hundreds of customers without stripping away what made it Lebanese.

“The most difficult part is how do you do it at scale,” Kfoury said.

Ingredients weren’t necessarily the problem. Lebanese cooking is labor intensive, he said, so NAYA introduced equipment, preparation techniques and systems designed to make that labor more efficient. The fast-casual model also depended on higher volumes at smaller margins.

But being early didn’t mean customers immediately understood the concept.

“The first two years were very hard at the fast casual,” Kfoury said. “People didn’t get it.”

America catches up to the Mediterranean bowl

Kfoury spent nearly a decade refining the model. By 2019, NAYA had just seven restaurants. Since then, the category around it has changed dramatically. Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors have become increasingly common across grocery stores and restaurant menus, while the customizable bowl has become a fixture of the American workday lunch.

Fast-casual Mediterranean chains generated just under $2.5 billion in sales last year, according to Technomic data provided to Fortune. Sales across the category jumped 16% in 2025, significantly outpacing the 6% growth of the broader fast-casual segment. Technomic tracks about 30 leading Mediterranean fast-casual chains with a combined footprint of roughly 1,500 restaurants.

The biggest player offers a glimpse of just how large the category can get. Publicly traded Cava ended its latest quarter with 476 restaurants, nearly 10 times NAYA’s total, yet the two chains generate similar sales per location. Cava reported average unit volume of $3.1 million in the second quarter, compared with roughly $3 million at NAYA. Cava’s same-store sales rose 9% during the quarter, driven in part by a 5.3% increase in traffic.

That growth has come alongside a broader familiarity with foods that Kfoury once had to introduce to customers.

“Ten years ago, you would say shawarma to someone, maybe you would get three out of 10 people who would know what it is,” he said. “Today, eight, nine out of 10 would know what shawarma is.”

Kfoury thinks Americans are also becoming more discerning about what “Mediterranean” actually means. As the label can encompass cuisines from Lebanon and Turkey to Greece, Italy and Morocco, he compares it to the way Americans once broadly categorized distinct cuisines as “Asian food.” Over time, diners learned to distinguish Japanese food from Korean, Taiwanese or Sichuan cuisine. Kfoury expects something similar to happen with Mediterranean food.

“I think the same thing is about to happen in the Mediterranean,” he said. For now, he doesn’t mind NAYA falling under the broader umbrella, even as the company emphasizes its Lebanese roots.

From seven restaurants to 50

By 2019, Kfoury believed he’d finally refined NAYA’s model enough to scale. After years without institutional backing, he brought on restaurant-focused private equity firm TriSpan in 2020.

Then COVID hit.

NAYA’s seven restaurants were concentrated in Midtown and the Financial District, leaving the company particularly exposed when office workers disappeared. The restaurants shut down for months before gradually reopening, and Kfoury said TriSpan’s arrival helped give NAYA the financial backing to survive the disruption.

What followed was a dramatically faster period of expansion. NAYA’s unit count grew 55.6% in 2022, 42.9% in 2023, 45% in 2024 and 44.8% in 2025, according to the company. It ended last year with 42 restaurants after opening 14 and now operates 48, all company-owned. Its 50th is expected to open in September.

NAYA came roaring back, helped by Manhattan’s rebound. Office leasing across the borough totaled 22.8 million square feet in the first half of 2026, the strongest first half since 2002, according to Colliers. By July, Manhattan’s office availability rate had fallen to 12.7%, its lowest level since September 2020. Tech has helped fuel the demand: Manhattan tech leasing reached a record for the first half of the year as AI companies expanded. 

New stores aren’t the only source of growth. Same-store sales are up more than 10%, while catering accounts for roughly 10% of total sales. NAYA has also had to adapt as it pushes beyond the Manhattan office districts where its model was born. City restaurants remain heavily weighted toward lunch, while suburban locations can approach an even lunch-dinner split and draw more families, prompting NAYA to add kids’ meals and develop family meals.

That expansion is coming as restaurants contend with higher labor and food costs without unlimited room to raise prices. Kfoury said NAYA won’t respond by shrinking portions or compromising ingredient quality. Instead, he is willing to let margins tighten during periods of higher costs rather than immediately pass every increase on to customers.

“If there’s a few months or a period or a quarter that we don’t perform as well as the bottom line, it’s totally fine,” he said. “It’s part of running a business.”

The bigger concern for Kfoury is whether NAYA can find enough good real estate while maintaining the food, service and consistency of a much smaller chain as it races toward 200 locations by 2030.

And 200, he insists, isn’t a ceiling. His ultimate goal is to put NAYA “in every neighborhood.” And the ambitions extend beyond store count. 

“If all goes well,” he said, “an IPO could be an option.”

Singapore has overhauled its baby bonus scheme. Will it work to boost birth rates this time?



Singapore is overhauling its landmark baby bonus scheme, first introduced in 2001, as the city’s fertility rate and number of births fall to record lows. 

In 2025, births in the Southeast Asian country fell below 30,000 for the first time in its post-independence history, while the fertility rate dropped to just 0.87 per woman, a record low. That’s a dangerous prospect for any country, but especially for Singapore, crammed into a space smaller than New York City.

“The country does not have the natural resources to finance the costs of supporting an aged society, including both care and medical expenditures,” Tan Poh Lin, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS)’s Institute for Policy Studies explains. Immigration, in his view, won’t be enough to solve the problem: “Boosting the fertility rate is crucial to slow down the rate of change and allow society to adjust economically as well as institutionally.”

At the country’s National Day Rally on Aug. 23, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong unveiled the “SG Child Support Package,” boasting measures like expanded childcare leave, strong financial support for parents, more affordable caregiving options, and extra chances to get subsidized housing. In total, the support is equal to almost 70,000 Singapore dollars ($55,000) by the time a child is 17.

Demographic experts are cautiously optimistic about the new scheme, which appears to offer more sustained and holistic support for families. 

“Singapore’s family policies had become increasingly complicated, with benefits varying by birth order and across different schemes,” says Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, a social demographer and sociologist from NUS. With the new package, “support is attached more clearly to each child and is provided over a longer period of childhood rather than being concentrated primarily around birth.”

But previous policies to give parents more money, both in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, haven’t been able to reverse falling birth rates.

“Singapore has progressively expanded financial support for marriage and parenthood over many years, yet fertility has continued to decline,” Teerawichitchainan admits. “Concerns voiced by parents increasingly involve not just money but time, work-family pressures, childcare, housing and other demands associated with raising children.”

Economic impact of low birth rates

Persistently low birth rates could threaten a country’s ability to sustain its economy. “Smaller younger cohorts enter the workforce while the older population continues to grow…over time, that places greater pressure on labor supply and the tax base,” says Chua Yeow Hwee, an economist at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). “For businesses, an aging and shrinking workforce also makes labor constraints more acute.”

Singapore has long turned to foreign workers to make up for a dwindling domestic workforce. As of 2025, Singapore is home to nearly 1.6 million foreign workers, making up 40% of the country’s total labor force, the highest in Asia outside of countries in the Middle East, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a U.S. think tank.

The country is also placing its hopes on automation, with the government committing 1 billion Singapore dollars ($787 million) to public AI research from 2026 to 2030. 

“The relationship between demography and economic growth is complicated,” Teerawichitchainan explains. “Economies can adapt through productivity growth, technology, longer and healthier working lives, higher labor force participation and immigration.”

The role of companies

Singapore’s new scheme shifts from merely encouraging births to focus on family well-being over the long term, which might help change how potential parents think about children.

“Cash gifts have a positive impact on births, but the effect tends to be short-lived as many beneficiaries do not increase their final family size,” Tan of NUS explains. “Tangible change can only be achieved by adjusting parenting expectations, including the notion that parenthood involves sacrificing personal wellbeing.”

Some of the responsibility for changing these expectations lies with companies. “There is a limit to what government policy can do directly, and employers have an important role,” Chua says. “A generous leave entitlement has less value if employees believe that using it will make them appear less committed or affect their advancement.” (Singaporeans get 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and four weeks of paternity leave, as well as 10 weeks of parental leave, shared between both parents, that must be used within a year of birth).

But there may be little anyone–government or corporate–can do to persuade people to have children amid greater economic uncertainty. 

“These days, folks will have children only if they are confident that they could ease their children’s journey ahead and help them access a good life in the future,” says Tan Ern Ser, an adjunct principal research fellow at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “Unfortunately, the world we live in today does not leave much room for optimism, notwithstanding the government’s relentless efforts.”

Singapore’s government, too, acknowledges that there are limits to its ability to influence its populace to have kids. “The decision to have children is a deeply personal one. Policies alone cannot make this happen,” Wong, Singapore’s Prime Minister, said during his speech. “But what we can do is make it easier for Singaporeans who want children to start and raise a family.”

Ultimately, Singapore may just need to accept that it’ll have to live with fewer people.

“The economic challenge is not simply to restore some particular fertility level,” Teerawichitchainan concludes. “It is also to build institutions, labor markets, and technologies that allow Singapore to prosper under a demographic reality that may remain one of low fertility and population aging.”

Sign Up For Rewards & Get 1,000 Points ($1 Off Per Gallon)


Update 8/28/26: Deal is back until 9/30/26. This time works on your first 5 fill ups. 

The Offer

Direct link to offer

  • Chevron Texaco is offering new rewards members 1,000 points when they sign up. This can be used for $1 Off Per Gallon. Simply enter the phone number used to sign up at the pump to apply the discount. Valid on up to 25 gallons

Our Verdict

$1 discount should account for any pricing differences in your area.

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Which Makes More Money in 2026 (I Did the Math)


Is it better to buy an existing property with value-add potential or a new construction home in 2026?

For years, there was no debate. The ability to buy a property at a discount, add value through renovations, force appreciation, and recycle your money made the BRRRR method a no-brainer for most investors.

But in 2026, things are a little different. Builders are sitting on inventory, which means new homes are being sold for less than we’ve seen in years. Not to mention, builders are giving buyers massive incentives like mortgage rate buydowns, closing credits, and even price reductions—just to get these properties off their books.

But are these perks enough to make new construction a better option than the BRRRR strategy?

Today, we’re going to put them head-to-head and find out. I’m comparing two real estate deals in the exact same market—a new construction home and a value-add property. We’ll crunch the numbers and see which strategy actually comes out on top from a cash flow and appreciation perspective. The answer may surprise you.

Dave Meyer:
Should you buy a fixer-upper as an investment property or a brand new house? For years, we’d never even asked this question. Buying a property, fixing it up to increase its value, and renting it out was the obvious choice. But the market has changed, and renting out a newly built home is more appealing than it’s ever been before. We’re seeing dropping prices, mortgage rate buydowns, and new properties don’t come with maintenance worries. It is an outside the box option, but savvy investors are taking notice. But of course, renovations with the BRRR method can still be one of the most powerful scaling tools available to investors. So which one should you pick? At the end of the day, it really just all comes down to the math. So today in the show, I’m going to analyze two deals in the exact same market, one new construction, one BRR deal, and we’re going to put them head-to-head to see what’s a better investment in 2026.
New construction or value add? The answer might surprise me.
Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. We got a fun show today. I am really excited about it. We’re actually just going to compare two different types of investments and decide which is the best one in 2026. We’re going to first look at a classic kind of investment, a value add deal, kind of like a burr where you renovate an existing home, rent it out, build some equity. It’s a classic. We’re going to compare that to buying new construction, which may not be a strategy you’ve thought of before. But I think as we go through this episode, you’ll see that the pros and cons and the trade-offs of each strategy really might surprise you. If you had asked me before COVID, should I go out and buy new construction? I would’ve said no in one second. I wouldn’t have even really thought about it.
As an investor myself, it never crossed my mind for at least the first 12 years or so of my investing career because buying a property that needed some repairs, even just a cosmetic update was just a no-brainer way to build equity in your portfolio. That was basically the whole job of being the investor was doing the BRRR over and over and over again. But there are things in the market going on right now that make it intriguing to buy new construction. And there are four things you should know about why investors should consider new construction right now. The first one is that builders are sitting on a ton of inventory that they’ve already built and haven’t sold yet. All of this inventory means that builders are willing to cut deals because builders just have a different business model than a home seller. If a regular homeowner doesn’t like their price, they might just choose not to sell.
But the way a builder’s business model works is they have to move this inventory, otherwise they’re just paying for it indefinitely and that doesn’t work for them. And so they’re offering all sorts of incentives to get these homes off their books. These incentives come in the form of rate buydowns, which we’re going to talk about a lot right now. A lot of them are advertising five and a half percent mortgage rates on their websites right now. They’re also doing seller concessions, which can reduce the cost of your closing costs, for example, or you can negotiate better finishes in their home. And sometimes they’re even willing to drop the price. The second thing is, and listen to this because it’s kind of crazy, to go out and buy a newly built home right now is cheaper than buying an existing home on average across the United States.
There’s actually an analysis that the National Association of Home Builders did, and they found that the median home price for a newly built home was $1,400 less than an existing home. Now $1,400 grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal, but this is not normal. Usually new construction to go out and buy a new home is a lot more expensive than going out and buying the existing home. But the opposite is true right now, which is exactly what makes this so interesting to look at. So those are two things that are sort of happening right now in 2026. Then on top of that, there are some benefits that are always there. A newly built home is going to have lower maintenance and repair costs, especially in early years, which allows you to build up reserves and save up for your next purchase. That’s a great thing for your portfolio.
And then the second thing, that is not true in every situation, but in many situations, new construction is going to have higher renter demand. People will be attracted to a new home with modern amenities more than a dated home. So that means one, you may have lower vacancies, but two, you can probably charge higher rent. So when you put all those things together, the fact that builders are willing to cut deals, that new construction is cheaper than existing homes, the lower maintenance and repair costs and higher renter demand, it makes it worth looking at. For the first time, maybe in at least as long as I’ve been an investor, but probably for many decades, for the first time, it’s actually worth looking at. With that, let’s jump into the analysis. And for this analysis, we’re going to look at two properties in the exact same market.
And I picked, not entirely randomly, Sherman, Texas. Why Sherman? I wanted a good area where I could find a solid deal for both kinds of investments. New construction is not everywhere. Builders tend to build sort of in pockets. I went on Lennar, they’re one of the biggest home builders in the country. They actually have an investor marketplace. So I went on there, looked for deals that I liked new construction for, and I found a deal in Sherman, Texas that I like. And I like Sherman because it’s near Dallas, which is a very good investing market, some of the best jobs, best population growth in the country. And Sherman in particular, which is a suburb of Dallas or a small city outside Dallas in particular has huge investments in chip manufacturing. Texas Instruments actually is investing $60 billion into the area. It’s creating thousands of new high paying jobs that leads to the needs for more work for housing.
So it’s a good area. It’s also super affordable, which I really like. It’s about half the national average in terms of price. So I genuinely like Sherman and I was able to find what I think is a good bird deal and a good new construction deal so we can get a true test of which one’s better. All right, so first up, I am going to analyze the new construction deal, but we do have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today we’re doing a head-to-head between new construction and the burr in Sherman, Texas. I’m going to start my analysis by just running the numbers on the new construction. So here’s the deal I found. It is from Lennar, that’s the builder. They’re one of the biggest builders in the country, and they have this property listed for $243,000 and it’s in Sherman, Texas. So if you look at it, it’s a little bit outside Sherman, but it’s really not on the outskirts. So I like that. That is something you really do need to look for in new construction. Sometimes they kind of build in the middle of nowhere and you definitely don’t want that. Now, I wish they had better pictures on the website, but they don’t. But you can go on their website and look at some of their stock homes.
It’s pretty nice. It is builder grade. It’s not super high-end finishes, but it is going to be a pretty nice home. If you walked into it, you’d say, “This is a nice house. It has all the amenities I was expecting.” Now, I did go onto the street here and what I saw, I was doing the street view, is that it’s not super developed over here. It’s going to be in a subdivision with a lot of similar homes, which we’ll talk about for rents in just a minute. But some of the specs on this house, four bed, two bath, great for almost anyone, for families. It’s 1,700 square feet, so not huge for four bedrooms, but still a very nice size home. It’s a one-story ranch, which is super convenient and appealing to a lot of people, and it has a two-car garage, also a big selling point.
All right, so now that we’ve combed through the listing a little bit, I’m going to move over to the BiggerPockets calculator. If you want to follow along here, you can go to biggerpockets.com/calculator and check out how to do great deal analysis really quickly. So what I’m going to do here is just put in for now, I’m going to assume I’m paying full asking price for this. So that was $243,000, so I’ll put that into the calculator. And they actually, one of the nice things about buying from a builder is they’ve figured out a lot of the cost for you and they put their own closing costs at 3,500 bucks so you know that’s what you’re going to be doing. You’re not going to be rehabbing this property, so there’s no opportunity for value add in new construction. That is one of the cons or the downsides to this is you can’t build equity, right?
There’s nothing to fix on this property. It’s brand new. And so the analysis is actually pretty straightforward here because we know what we’re buying it for, 243. I’m going to assume that you’re buying this as an investor and putting 25% down. And on their website, you might have noticed that they were advertising five and a half percent mortgage rates. So they’re saying that they’re just telling you right off the bat, you don’t even need to go out and negotiate this. They’re offering you right off the bat, five and a half percent interest rates. Now, right now, as of today, when I’m recording this, mortgage rates are around 6.6 – ish for a primary. So for an investor, you’re probably looking at something like 7%. And so that’s very significant savings having one and a half percentage points off your mortgage rates. Next, we’re going to put in rent.
I did some comps before this, and what I was looking at is around $2,000 is what I think we can get. That’s pretty good. If you’re looking at the rent to price ratio, getting two grand in rent for a property you’re buying for 243,000 is pretty good. So I’m already thinking this property is going to cash flow, but we’re in Texas and this is where things start to hurt a little bit is where you get your property taxes. Texas has one of the highest property tax rates in the entire country at 2.2%. They don’t have an income tax, so they got to get their tax somewhere. But that means that for this property, even though you’re just buying it for 243, the annual taxes are $5,346. So that’s going to take a bite out of your cash flow, but that’s just what it is. For insurance, actually, Lennar has scoped this out for us and it’s $1,280.
So those are our fixed costs. We know our mortgage, we know our taxes, and we know our insurance. That stuff’s not going to change over the lifetime of our hold. But now we move on to what are called variable costs. So these are things like repairs and maintenance and capital expenditures. Capital expenditures are similar to repairs and maintenance, but it’s big ticket items. It’s like repairing a roof or adding a new unit or adding an HVAC system, air conditioning, something like that. It’s treated differently by the IRS, so we separate them. Now, this is where new construction really starts to shine. For repairs and maintenance, a lot of times they come with warranties for several years, and there should be no capital expenditures in my mind for eight years. First thing you’ll probably have to replace is a water heater. Hopefully that’s eight to 10 years from now, but your HVAC should be good, your roof should be good for 20 to 30 years, all of your electrical and plumbing, none of that’s going to have problems.
Siding shouldn’t have any problems. So you can put the numbers here for your repairs, maintenance, capital expenditures, which are really big things, a lot lower. Now I’m not going to put them at zero. And in fact, I’m going to keep my repairs and maintenance at 3% and I’m going to put my capital expenditures at 2%. So I’m going to keep total 5% in reserves. Now, the reason I’m not making it zero, even though it should be zero for several years, is because I want to build up a cash reserve and sometimes things break. Now with a builder, when you’re negotiating, you should get that warranty, right? And so you’re doing no repairs and maintenance for the first two years, but I just want to put away some of my money so that in year five, six, seven, when I get to the point where I have to replace that water heater, I’ve put some money aside.
But hopefully you’re not touching that cash reserve for a long time because the stuff is so new. The one reason I do have repairs and maintenance is not because I expect something to break, it’s actually because they’re a turnover cost. If you have a tenant for two or three years and they move out, you’re going to have to touch some stuff up. So I like putting money away for that even though I’m not going to have to really repair any big things because a warranty’s not going to cover that. So that’s why I keep it at around 5%. Vacancy, I’m going to put at 5% as well. And then property management fees as an out-of-state investor, I usually pay about 8%. Now that’s it. This is a single family home, so I’m not planning as the property owner to pay for the utilities. I’m going to just have my tenants sign up for electricity and gas, water, garbage, all of that, right?
I don’t have to think about that. So I’m just going to hit finish analysis and let’s see how this deal does. All right, so here’s what we got. For our property in Sherman, Texas, just analyzing it the way I did it, we had $53 a month in cash flow for a 1% cash on cash return. Not great, but that’s a cash flowing rental property that’s going to have very little work. But if this were me, if there’s no value add opportunity, a 1% cash on cash return is not good enough. But luckily, this is not how we have to buy this deal. Remember, when I did this analysis, I just put in things as they were asking for, right? They were asking for 243. There’s all that inventory on the market. Remember, this is the time to negotiate. And so there are a couple of things I would try and do if I were going out to buy this property.
When you go to negotiate for new construction, you need to keep in mind, again, the business model of the builders. In this area where this home is, they’re probably building dozens, if not hundreds of homes. And so when you go out and negotiate, think about what the builder is thinking. They want to, almost at all costs, maintain their comps, because if they offer you 5% off this home and sell it to you for 220, now that is a comp that everyone else is going to see. So every other home they go and sell potentially dozens or hundreds of more homes are going to be comped against that lower price. Texas where we’re buying this, this is a non-disclosure state, but in most states, other people are going to see that. The point here though is that builders are going to try and preserve the purchase price more than anything else.
So even though you should try and negotiate price, and you can usually get it down a little bit, but they’re going to be more stubborn on that, what you want to really try and do is get other types of seller concessions. And the things I would focus on are one, a rate buydown and two, getting rid of all of your closing costs. That can lower your expenses, right? But then on top of that, you can maybe negotiate for a longer warranty to control your repair costs or better upgrades like nicer appliances or something in the unit. Now as an investor, I would actually go in that order of priority for me personally. I’d want to get my rate down first, then I try and get rid of the closing costs, then I try and get the longer warranty, and then I go for the nicer fixtures.
So they are advertising on their website a five and a half percent mortgage rate. I actually bet you can probably negotiate a three point buy down right now. I bet you can get it to about four and a half percent. That’s like a two and a half point buy down. So now I’m going to go in and just assume I can get a four and a half percent interest rate and I can negotiate this down and I’m going to put my closing costs at zero because I’m going to assume they’re willing to give up 3,500 bucks. So if I do that, that saves me 3,500 bucks and that gets our cash on cash return up to 3.25. So honestly, I think this is pretty good. In most markets, you just can’t find a 3% cash on cash return deal. You just can’t. If you want to go out and buy a quote unquote turnkey property where everything’s done and you don’t have to work and you could just kind of set it and forget it, this is a pretty good deal.
You’re in a good area that is likely going to appreciate long-term. You’re getting a 10% annualized growth rate, which is about the stock market or better, and you’re getting tax advantage cash flow at the same time. Now, this is a pretty good deal in my opinion. Now, is it as good as Burr? We’re going to look at that, but I think for some investors this works, but at the same time, I would still try and negotiate down the price a little bit, right? I’d like to get it to a four or 5% cash on cash return. That beats bonds, that beats most dividend stocks. So I think if I can get this for like 235, that gets you to a 4% cash on cash return, 200 bucks a month in cash flow.That’s a good deal in today’s market. So this is why I’m talking about new construction right now.
Everyone says you can’t find cash flow and cash flow is dead, but this is cash flow for a newly built property in a good area, right? The difference is this rate buydown, getting that four and a half percent mortgage rate instead of a 7% mortgage rate goes from most deals on the MLS that do not cash flow to a deal that does cash flow, that’s going to have a warranty, that’s going to have high demand, that’s in a good area. This is why we’re talking about new construction right now because this is actually a good thing worthy of consideration for a lot of investors. But is it as good as the burr? We’re going to get to that analysis right after this break.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. We’re doing our analysis head-to-head between new construction and the burr. Before the break, I analyzed a new construction deal and found that we could get somewhere between a three and 4% cash on cash return for a newly built home in a good area. That is pretty compelling. It’s not the sexiest cash on cash return on earth, but in a good neighborhood for a newly built home, that is a pretty darn good deal. So we got to compare that now and see if the burr can do better. So for our analysis, I was just poking around on Zillow looking for a deal, and I found in Sherman, Texas, in a good neighborhood. I actually think this is a slightly better neighborhood. It’s closer to sort of the walkable downtown of Sherman, Texas. And I found it for $160,000.
And the reason I picked this is one, I think there’s opportunity for a value add. It’s a good Burr candidate, and it’s very, very similar to new construction. So I really wanted to compare apples to apples. This property is four bed, three bath. So our new construction was 4-2. So this actually has a third bathroom, but it’s about the same size. It’s 1,700 square feet. This property, only a one-car garage versus our new construction, a two-car garage. So these are important things when you’re comping things out, but obviously we’re not going to find two exactly same properties. So I think these are pretty darn close. This property was built in 1961, which I like, really like homes built in the ’60s and ’70s, and it’s on a very nice sized lot of 8,000 square feet. We can look at the pictures here. It’s a nice ranch style home.
It looks like it’s in pretty good shape. You can see at least in the living room, there are hardwood floors that can definitely stay. Those look pretty nice. I’m looking at the ceiling here. It’s popcorn ceiling, so we’re probably going to have to scrape that. Kitchen definitely needs to be renovated. It might be original cabinets in there. Some of it’s been upgraded, but we’re going to have to scrap that kitchen and start fresh there. Man, there’s different kinds of floors in every single room in this house, so we’re probably going to need some new flooring. It’s definitely going to need paint. Oh, this bathroom’s nice. So one of the bathrooms has been upgraded, so that’ll help save us some money. The second bathroom definitely needs to be upgraded. It’s not terrible, but it can use some work. And then the third bathroom needs some work.
Backyard’s not awful. There’s some weird pergola thing, but we’re going to need to put some work into the landscaping here. So overall, I was looking a little bit into expenses of the area. My estimate is that we’re going to put in $30,000 into this project, so not crazy. I actually analyzed it. It came to about 25,000, but I’m just looking at Zillow right now. I don’t know if there’s something lurking in the walls here, so I’m going to throw an extra $5,000 into the budget because realistically, having done this a lot, there’s probably something wrong here that I am not seeing, so I’m going to put another $5,000 in here. Now, the other reason I like this is because of the comps. Now, Texas makes comping hard because they are a non-disclosure state, which means that they don’t post what things sold for recently, which is a bummer.
But I was just looking around at other listings, similar listings in the area, and I found this one here for 2.85. This is a super similar home. This is a 4-2 for 1,700 square feet. So this is very similar and it’s right around the corner. Now, we don’t know if it will sell for this price, but I am guessing, let’s just knock it down that it’s going to sell instead of for 2.85. Let’s say it’s going to sell for 2.75, but this looks like what I would try and get this property to. It has nice floors, fresh paint, a builder sort of renter grade kitchen, but it’s solid, right? It’s a solid spot. On top of that, I also found another one that was actually for 3.20. This is a little bit bigger home. It’s about 2,000 square feet, but it’s also a 4.2. It’s in a little better shape, but it’s not super modern.
So I would peg this one, maybe it will sell at 300. So I’m going to put my ARV, my after repair value for this property that we’re going to bur at 270, 275. Let’s just call it 270. We’re going to be conservative on this, but we can buy this property at 160 and we’re putting $30,000 into it. So I’m already liking what this property is going to look like, but to really tell, we’re going to have to go to the calculator and run the numbers. All right, so we’re going to do our analysis here. We’re going to put in our property address and then go to our purchase price, which is 160,000. Purchase closing costs are going to be, let’s call it 4,500 bucks. It’s going to be probably a little more expensive than going with the builder. They usually pay for some of those expenses.
And ideally, like we talked about in our negotiation, you’re playing zero closing costs for new construction. So the thing you got to do here when you’re doing a value add is click this tab. If you’re watching on YouTube, click this tab on the BiggerPockets calculator and go and put in the after repair value. I’m going to be conservative here. Let’s just call it 260 just in case we’re low, and we’re going to put the repair values. I said 30,000. Let’s just call it 35,000. I’m just going to be extra conservative on this deal because I don’t know that much about it. Next, we’re going to move onto our down payment, which I’m going to put at 25% because we’re investors and our interest rate’s going to be 7%. That’s going to be a really big, probably the biggest difference between new construction and BRR. And so 7% between four and a half percent, that’s going to eat into your cash flow a little bit.
But on this property, I think we could probably get similar rents. I think it’s actually maybe a little bit higher because of the location. Let’s call it 2050 instead of 2000 just because of the location. It’s in a more mature neighborhood. For expenses, our taxes are, man, it’s 4,800 bucks, super expensive here. Insurance, 1200 bucks. Repairs and maintenance, I’m going to put 5% repairs and maintenance. I’m going to put 8% for our capital expenditures just because it’s an older home, things are going to come up, vacancy at 5%, management fees at 8%. And then for our other variable costs, I’m not touching them because again, I’m going to just have tenant pay it. They’re going to pay electricity, gas, all that. So with that, let’s finish our analysis. What we get here, pretty darn good deal. Wow. So this deal right here would come out right off the bat, $218 a month in cash flow for a 3.3% cash on cash return.
So right here, even without negotiating, we’re getting about the same cash on cash return, pretty darn close to new construction. So this is actually, I just did this analysis for the first time, but this is actually a really good head-to-head comparison. But the thing I want you to think about here is it’s not just about cash on cash return. We have this other metric here on the BiggerPockets calculator that you should look at, which is your compound annual growth rate. This is how quickly you’re benefiting from all the things that you benefit in real estate because it’s not cash flow. It’s appreciation, cash flow, amortization, tax benefits. And if you remember back to the new construction, that was growing about 10%. But with the BRRR deal, it’s 17%. And it’s not because of the cash flow, it’s because you invested $35,000 to drive up the value of this property by nearly $100,000.
That is the reward you get for going out and doing the work, taking on the risk, taking on the time commitment to go out and do the BRRR. You get a very similar cash on cash return, but your equity is growing so much faster in the BRRR. And that obviously helps if you want to stare at your net worth, but that’s not why most of us are in it. Most people are looking to scale their portfolio. And by building that equity, that means you can refinance out of this, take it and go do another deal. Now, when you refinance it, you should know that your cash on cash return is going to go down, right? You’re going to be taking out a bigger loan, and so your cash on cash return is going to go closer to break even, but that’s a decision that you get to make.
That’s the beauty of building equity is you get to decide, do I want to hold onto this property that has good equity and get a higher cash on cash return, or do I take a property that’s still going to be breaking even or better? It’s not going to have great cash flow, but I can take my money out and go do this exact same deal again so I can scale up and build our portfolio. This is what’s so great about the BRRR. So which one is better though, right? As you can see, both have their pros and cons. New construction is better because it’s less work. It’s far more predictable and you’re going to have a lot less headaches. And actually, a new construction deal will probably have better cash flow than a BRRR after you do your refinance on that BRRR. So there’s a lot to like about that new construction, but the BRRR is better for scaling.
If you want to build equity and you really place a lot of value on recycling your capital so you can keep using the same money to acquire more and more and more properties, the BRRR is better. So here’s personally how I would think about it. If you are early in your investing career and you want to acquire more units, I would go with the BRRR still. There’s just the value of recycling your capital with the BRRR strategy just really can’t be replicated anywhere else. The opportunity to build equity is so valuable early in your career if you’re not starting with a lot of capital. So for me, if I were in that circumstances, I was early and trying to scale up, I would probably still do this BRR deal. In other circumstances though, I would do new construction. And I think there’s sort of like three buckets of investors that this makes sense for.
The first is you already have a lot of money. Good for you. If you got a lot of money, I would just go out and buy these deals. It’s going to be less headache. You can buy them pretty easily. You’re not going to have to scour for tons of deals. It’ll probably work really well for you. The second is if you work full time and you have a longer time horizon, if you’re comfortable building financial freedom, building your portfolio over the next 15, 20 years, I would do new construction, right? That property is going to still be in good shape 15 years from now, and that’s really, really valuable. And if you’re just like, I have a high enough income, I can put enough money away or I can still buy a new construction deal like this for $240,000 every two to three years, that’s pretty good.
You’re not going to have a lot of problems and it’s going to be pretty darn sure. That’s a lot of predictability about your portfolio. So if you’re willing to take 15-ish years to do this, man, that is pretty compelling. Burr, like I said, if you want to scale aggressively, build up your portfolio seven, eight, 10 years to financial Freedom, that’s what I was saying with the burr. But there’s also a third bucket, I guess, of people who I would consider new construction for, and those are people in their harvest phase. I’ve talked about this before, I’ve stolen this framework from Chad, Chad Carson, but he says there’s a starting phase, a scaling phase, and a harvest phase. Like I said, if you’re scaling, I think brew makes a lot of sense, but if you’re in the point where you’ve built a lot of equity in your portfolio and you want to sell off some properties and maybe just make the management of your total portfolio easier, new construction’s pretty compelling, right?
You can go out and earn a cash on cash return of three and a half percent right now. It’s going to grow to five, six, 7% in the next couple of years. And I mean, that’s pretty good to retire off of, right? If you could do that now and start harvesting, you’re just going to have low maintenance deals that just produce more and more cashflow every year, that’s also pretty compelling. So for new construction, I’d say people in their harvest phase, people who already have a lot of cash, or people who are working full-time and want to take 15-ish years, new construction can absolutely be the right option for you. So I hope this analysis is helpful for you when you’re trying to decide what your next deal should be. I just think this is a really interesting question, and I actually thought of this question in an episode because I saw information about new construction in the BiggerPockets newsletter, which was just relaunched.
It’s awesome. It is called The Investor Brief, and it is just chock full of information that help you get a leg up on your investing. A lot of people wouldn’t know to look at new construction, but BiggerPockets is putting out news like this three times a week. That’s the BiggerPockets Investor Brief. You can sign up at biggerpockets.com/newsletter. That’s our show for today. Thank you all so much for watching the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. I’ll see you next time.

 

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Wall Street Isn’t Giving Up on CVS Health — and Its Valuation Looks Stronger Than Investors Think


CVS Health (CVS +0.15%) is a vertically integrated healthcare giant. It has around 9,000 retail pharmacy locations, more than 1,000 walk-in and primary care medical clinics, and is a leading pharmacy benefits manager with approximately 87 million plan members. Its Aetna segment is No. 2 in health insurance market share, according to the most recent National Association of Insurance Commissioners figures.

The company reported second-quarter earnings on Aug. 5. Revenue was $106.1 billion, up 7.3% year over year. Earnings per share (EPS) were up 188% over the same period, to $2.31.

CVS is predicting revenue of at least $414 billion in 2026, up from earlier estimates of at least $405 billion. Yearly EPS was forecasted between $6.84 and $7.04, again an increase from the earlier guidance of $6.24 to $6.44.

Image source: Getty Images.

Unfortunately for shareholders, the initial excitement over the earnings wasn’t enough to sustain a rally for the stock.

The company’s shares are down more than 12% over the past month, bringing its year-to-date gains down to 17%.

However, analysts are high on the healthcare giant, with an average price target of $116.08, nearly 25% above its current share price. Here are the reasons why the stock is oversold at this point.

What are investors’ concerns about the stock?

They boil down to certain worries that could weigh on the company’s future margins. On the earnings call, management mentioned membership declines at Caremark in 2027 and noted ongoing revenue headwinds in the 340B drug pricing program due to manufacturer-imposed restrictions.

CVS Health Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(0.15%) $0.14

Current Price

$93.06

The company’s pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) side is facing regulatory scrutiny. That includes heightened Federal Trade Commission (FTC) oversight that led to an antitrust settlement with Caremark in July and proposed legislation targeting PBM pricing transparency. While the company’s health benefits segment (Aetna) saw its medical benefit ratio improve to 87.4%, investors remain skeptical about whether medical cost trends will stay contained, given broader industry inflation in healthcare utilization.

The stock is priced for a buy now, though

The company doesn’t really have a direct competitor because it operates in three different healthcare segments: PBM through Caremark, health insurance through its Aetna segment, and, of course, its pharmaceutical segment.

UnitedHealth Group, which mirrors CVS’ vertically integrated model by combining health insurance with pharmacy benefit management and provider services, is the closest thing to a rival to CVS. When you compare the two, CVS is trading at less than 12 times forward earnings, while UnitedHealth Group is trading at just under 20 times earnings.

The company’s strong dividend history, health

CVS has never cut its dividend and has increased it by more than 56% over the past decade. It’s now $2.66 per quarterly share. The yield on that dividend is 2.8% at its current share price, more than twice the S&P 500 average.

With a cash payout ratio below 30% of free cash flow and an adjusted earnings payout ratio below 40%, its dividend is well protected. A dividend cut is unlikely under current operating conditions.

Adaptation is built into the company’s DNA

CVS has been around for 63 years, and that’s because it can constantly adapt to regulatory and market changes.

The two primary reasons CVS is likely to thrive over the long haul stem from its unmatched vertical integration and its proactive pivot to new business models.

CVS controls almost every step of the healthcare dollar, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that insulates it from reliance on any single revenue stream. That ecosystem means that even if one part of the chain is seeing margin pressure, another area is likely to benefit. Considering the company’s guidance and its performance so far this year, it’s clear that the stock has considerable upside.