The private wealth industry in the Chinese Mainland (China) is entering a new chapter. The first major wave of intergenerational wealth transfer is unfolding alongside structural economic shifts, socioeconomic digital integration, and a capital market that remains policy-salient. For wealth management professionals in this environment, understanding how the next generation of affluent investors thinks and acts is no longer optional. Rather, this understanding forms the starting point for any future-ready advisory strategy.

This report provides a practical and forward-looking portrait of young, affluent investors in China for investment advisers and private wealth management professionals — including those at banks, securities firms, trusts, family offices, and wealth platforms. It is based on a survey of 300 young, wealthy investors in China (for details, see the Methodology portion of the section on the study’s results). The report is designed to inform practitioners how they can adjust their business strategy and operating models to capture young investors’ unique aspirations and portfolio demands. To meet the needs of this rising demographic of young clients, advisers must understand how trust is built and maintained in a digital-first environment and offer targeted advice that can withstand a market shaped by changing policy signals, sentiment cycles, and reinforcement dynamics.

A core storyline running through the findings is an aspiration–implementation gap. Young, affluent investors express clear long-term ambitions centered on wealth accumulation and preservation and report relatively high confidence, yet they also identify capability constraints, such as limited investing knowledge and limited access to skilled advice. Confidence is strongest for near-term financial tasks and weaker for more complex, long-horizon planning activities such as retirement and legacy/estate preparation. Their portfolios remain anchored in liquidity through cash-like instruments and bank/trust products. The practical implication is not that these investors lack ambition but rather that ambitious goals and typically shorter investment horizons compared with previous generations require more disciplined planning, education, and portfolio construction than many investors currently exhibit.

Portfolio posture in China is further shaped by preferences for domestic fixed assets (typically, housing) and offshore assets, which sit on top of a standard liquid portfolio baseline. Although a minority of young, wealthy Chinese investors hold investment real estate, the portfolio weight allocated to such assets among these investors can be material, averaging more than two-fifths of total assets. Despite capital controls, exposure to offshore assets is already mainstream among young, affluent investors, driven primarily by the need for asset preservation and international diversification. Together, these dynamics necessitate advisory capabilities that are balance-sheet aware and that integrate onshore and offshore exposures coherently.

Trust and adviser–client engagement in China also follow a distinctive architecture that differs from that of many mature wealth markets. Investors place unusually high weight on professional credentials and institutional credibility when choosing advisers, and ongoing trust is anchored most strongly in firms’ data security. Underperformance and data/confidentiality breaches are leading triggers for investors to switch advisers. Engagement expectations are for high-cadence and digital-first communications, with private messaging and in-person contact remaining central. These preferences indicate that service quality is increasingly judged on the basis of secure, compliant digital engagement practices rather than traditional periodic-reporting formats.

Finally, the China survey results reveal a behavioral challenge that calls for a more structured governance approach. Policy cues and market sentiment frequently influence investment actions, yet investors rarely perceive the outcomes of these actions as negative. The strategic takeaway is to combine a long-term core investment discipline with explicit guardrails and structured review so that short-term decisions driven by behavioral factors do not cause portfolios to deviate materially from strategic asset allocations.

Dave:
When Nathan Nicholson cashed in his 401k to start buying real estate, people told him he would fail. They said he’d lose everything. But today he owns 23 rental properties generating more than $100,000 in annual cash flow. Nathan was 33 and the top salesperson at his company, but years of top performance still left him with only $30,000 in his savings account, hardly enough to dream about retirement. So Nathan liquidated his retirement fund and he started buying rental properties in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. They were little brick houses, most of them under a hundred grand. That was 13 years ago. Now, Nathan generates six figures every year after all his bills are paid and his financial future is secure. It’s a simple formula. Buy the smallest house possible, fix it up, and watch the monthly rent checks roll in. Nathan’s approach is so boring that he actually calls himself the tortoise, but don’t let that confuse you.
This strategy absolutely works. And today he’s sharing his exact repeatable formula. The one rule he never breaks, how he’s managed to pay off 10 properties even as he scales, and how he’s pivoted his strategy for 2026. What’s up everyone? I’m Dave Meyer, chief investment officer at BiggerPockets. Thank you all for being here. We got a great show for you today. We’re bringing on Nathan Nicholson, who is one of the most popular BiggerPockets guests in 2025. You can hear his full story by going back and listening to episode 1132 from last June. But today he’s back with an update what he’s been up to, how he’s pivoting to make the most of current market conditions. So let’s bring on Nathan. Nathan, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Great to have you here.

Nathan:
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Dave:
Some of our audience may not have listened to your first appearance here on the show, so maybe just give us a little bit of background about yourself and your investing career.

Nathan:
Yeah, my investing career, I mean from the prior podcast, it was how to basically make money with $100,000 or less rentals in all honesty with you. And so realistically, my beginning has kind of happened with me really just realizing I have to do something different at the age of 33 being a top salesperson and only having about 30 grand in my checking account going, “Man, if I’m really good at sales, what do I only have $30,000 in my checking account?” And going, “What can I do?” And I had a couple friends of mine basically talk about real estate investing and what they were doing. And so I sold my 401k off, took every penny I had, had a dream to say the least, and put all my money into real estate at that time and just kind of been doing it ever since. So that’s been about 13 to 14 years at this point.

Dave:
Tell us a little bit about what your portfolio looks like here today.

Nathan:
Yeah, I mean, from the last time we spoke, it’s grown a little bit. I’m sitting at 23 properties, all single family residence at this point, and about to pay off my 11th house, so I’ve got 10 free and clear.

Dave:
Oh, wow.

Nathan:
And I literally sent the wire on Friday, so I’m paying off a little two bedroom house that’ll net me about 600 a month. But beyond that, I mean, as far as my breakdown, my rents have gone up. My total cashflow has been going up because I’ve been trying to surify my property business, but my rents are at about 311,000 right now. Total cashflow. Wow. That’s total in is 143. And my true net, which is what I go by, I don’t say cashflow, I’ll go by true net. True net is $112,000 right now. And I think the last time we spoke, it was about a hundred.

Dave:
Is it fair to say then then you reinvest 100% of your cashflow back into some sort of business, even if it’s not, for acquisition of your next rental?

Nathan:
100%. Yeah.

Dave:
Is that hard for you? Do you ever get tempted to just live off of it or you’re still in growth mode?

Nathan:
I mean, I’m the tortoise investor, right? I’m very conservative. So to your point, I’ve thought about it. I’m 46 years old. I would love to retire at 55. I mean, I could probably retire now, but at the same time, it’s one of those things where it’s like, I haven’t really accomplished really what I want to do yet. I think most investors will tell you the same thing. It’s like I have not reached that spot and that spot is coming, but yes, that’s what I’m going towards. But at 55, I think I’ll be there. I really want to be at 30 doors and have about 20 of them paid off before I really go full on real estate. And that’s at about 55 for me.

Dave:
Okay. I love the goal. It seems very achievable and you’re well on your way. Maybe before we talk about just what you’ve been up to recently, you can remind everyone how you got here because this is where most people want to get to. 10 paid off rentals, incredible, nine grand a month in cashflow. Amazing. What was the primary strategy you used to get your portfolio to this size?

Nathan:
Being really safe is the best way to put it. I took a little bit of leverage in the very beginning. I took quite a bit of risk. I cashed out my 401k. A lot of people would tell you not to do it, but if you don’t have any money, it’s the only thing that you could use. You might as

Dave:
Well do

Nathan:
It because it’s the only thing you got available. And that’s what I did, and it was very risky. And a lot of people told me that I would fail. I mean, it’s weird how your friends and people around you will say, “You’re going to fail, you’re going to lose everything.” But in situations like this, if you believe in yourself, it really does help. And I mean, 13 years, 14 years ago, that was the catalyst. It was a dream and that and me cashing that 401k out and just playing it very conservative. I mean, I’m a tortoise. I mean, you’ll hear people use this analogy, turtle or the hair. I literally will not move forward unless I have cashflow to cover my expenses. And so I’ve really stayed true to that. And so that goes back to the first property. If you only make 300 a month, well, that’s 3,600 a year.
What do I do with that? And you leverage it to 7,200 to 11,000 to 12,000 to 15,000. You keep slowly pushing that forward. And that’s very beneficial. But that’s why I’ve been able to do this at the rate that I have and actually have 10 to 11 paid off properties is because of following that same process.

Dave:
I love the philosophy. Subscribe to the same one myself. It sounds patient and slow. And you’re saying all the things I agree with that you should be slow and just take your time with it. But it’s really not that slow. You said you’ve been doing this for 13 or 14 years. Going from where you were, which sounds like not a necessarily terrible place financially, but not where you wanted to be, and not having the level of savings that you wanted, not having the nest egg that you wanted, to being pretty darn close to financially free if you kind of wanted to go in that direction in 12, 13 years. That’s incredible. It takes most people – That’s

Nathan:
Very fast, actually.

Dave:
40 years plus to do that if you do it at all. So many people never accomplish that. So I think what we’re saying is patient in real estate is still faster than almost any other avenue to pursue this kind of financial security.

Nathan:
Agree fully.

Dave:
Nate, tell us a little bit about how you did the financing because you said you started with 401k, you cashed that out, you can’t buy 22 properties in that. So were you just saving in between acquisitions and reinvesting cashflow or was there something more you were doing?

Nathan:
In the 401k, I started buying the houses with cash upfront because my concept was a domino effect. I wanted the dominoes to fall in a way that made me more money. And also like a cat with a laser pointer, I wanted to have a toy to play with because I didn’t know what I was doing. I literally did not know. And so the best course of action was to pay off my first house and it was an estate sale for about $40,000, give or take 38. And I paid it off cash and it was livable. And then once I started running out of that cash, I started putting 20% down and I was doing renovation loans. Those are 203Ks in the mortgage world. A lot of people use those, and that helped me out with a couple of them at the very beginning. But then what I realized real quick was I wanted to have a better kind of loan set.
And so I started doing single family residence and using my personal credit and putting 20% down. So I’m a staunch proponent of 20% down. It’s almost one of the only ways you could cashflow a property properly right now is with 20% unless you get a really good deal on a bird deal that you’re doing.

Dave:
You’ve never gone and raised outside capital. You’ve just figured out a way to do it with a W-2 income – Correct. Saving and relationships with banks. You were able to just over 13 years build a very impressive portfolio, sort of the old-fashioned way.

Nathan:
The old-fashioned way. Yeah, correct. And I know a lot of people that do raise capital, and that’s a very good way to go about it. That’s your lending structure. But what I figured out is you have to be a cash buyer to get these houses these days. And so my whole motivation once I figured that out was to pay my properties off as fast as I could because unlike a HELOC or a line of credit on a personal house, you could put it on your home and use it to buy houses and have that liquid, but you could also get business lines of credit, and that’s kind of my focus of what I’ve done. So every time I pay a property off, I refinance it and put it on my line. It has zero money on it, but my line of credit might increase like this property I’m about to pay off, I’ll get another extra $100,000 on my line of credit.
And then I have a million dollars in a line of credit on 10 properties individually in the line, and I could use that to buy houses as my own bank technically. That’s how I got around crowdfunding is literally doing it that way, slow and steady, but you can absolutely do that if you just take your time.

Dave:
We got to take a quick break, but when we come back, Nathan, I’d love to talk to you more about what you’re up to today and how you’re making deals and your portfolio grow even during these challenging market conditions. Stick with us, we’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m here with investor Nathan Nicholson talking about his impressive career he’s built in Louisville, Kentucky over the last 13, 14 years. Now we’ve alluded to it a few times. Everyone here listening to it knows it. The market has changed. It’s different. And so tell us a little bit about your approach here in 2026. The

Nathan:
First thing I would tell you is I only really focus on a 1.3 DSER now.

Dave:
And

Nathan:
That is the very true number. That is kind of your new 1% rule is the best way to put it. A 1% is usually breakeven. 1.3, you’re going to make a couple hundred dollars off of it a month.

Dave:
And for everyone listening, if you’re not familiar with the acronym, DSER stands for debt service coverage ratio. It measures your debt service, basically what you’re paying to your loan company every month versus your income. Different investors have different targets, but it sounds like, Nate, yours is a 1.3. Some banks will lend on different ratios. 1.1 sometimes 1.2. Nate looks for 1.3. If you’re interested in getting a DSCR loan, there’s all sorts of benefits to it. You don’t have the same level of underwriting. Sometimes it can be a lot quicker. If you don’t have a W-2 income, you don’t have necessarily the credit that most banks are looking for. These are loans that are underwritten like commercial loans, but are specifically designed for people like us. These are loan products created for our kinds of investors. If you are a pro member, we do have discounts on DSER loans.
You can go check those out from Kiavi at biggerpockets.com/pro. Go check those out. So Nate, 1.3, right? So that’s your number. That’s getting you cashflow in Louisville. You finding 1.3 deals in Louisville right now?

Nathan:
Not really.

Dave:
Even though you’re not finding it, you’re holding the line at 1.3. That’s correct. So you’re not buying it still unless it’s the 1.3, that’s the way you got to do it.

Nathan:
Yeah. You don’t want to lose money. And so a lot of people will tell you appreciation is an approach, and it is. It really is. I mean, you could get a 1% rule house, break even on it. It could have low CapEx because it has new features if you’re doing a bur or whatever that you’re doing, new floors, whatever. But at the same time, if you’re barely making it and you have, I had a house, a rat house, I call it the rat house. It cost me $27,000 to repair this house. So a normal person wouldn’t be able to absorb that. That’s a huge

Dave:
Hit.

Nathan:
And without cashflow, I would’ve been hurt or anyone else would’ve been hurt. So yeah, the 1.3 rule is really steadfast in my mind because that’s what’s gotten me here. I’ve really followed this approach from day one. But the other thing is the creative finance angle is some people like sub two. I personally am not a sub two person. I know a lot of people that have a lot of positive things that have happened to them by doing sub-two. I personally like owner financing on free and clear properties. I like doing the tricks that I just gave you with commercial financing. I like these little tricks because I’m in control. That is the one thing. At sub-two, you don’t always have control. The ways that I’m telling you, you have control. Your name’s on the personal guarantee. You own the property, stuff of that nature.

Dave:
This makes sense to me. First of all, your affinity to seller financing over sub two makes sense to me given just what you’ve told me a little bit about your risk tolerance in real estate. Yeah, exactly. I am not a sub-two expert, but there is some gray areas in sub-two that add risk. And it might be right for some people, presuming that’s done ethically and legally. There still are some gray areas and those are things that you need to consider.

Nathan:
That is correct.

Dave:
When you do seller finance, if someone owns a property outright and they’re writing you a loan, that is very low risk, very high upside in my opinion. And although they’re not the easiest to find, they’re out there. I hear investors doing them all the time. So are you just acquiring those the same way you would do a wholesale? You’re doing direct-to-seller marketing, you’re sending postcards, you’re building websites. And that’s why, as you said, getting in front of the deal, you’re trying to eliminate all the middlemen is essentially what you’re saying. I’ve worked with wholesalers. I have nothing against wholesalers, but they’re charging a fee for their service as they should. It’s a business. And I’m paying that fee. So I don’t get the best possible price on that property because me, Dave Meyer, I am not willing to do the direct-to-seller marketing. I just don’t do it.
But you are saying by doing this direct-to-seller marketing, you’re getting 10 grand off every single deal, which is hugely appealing. So maybe Henry talks about it a lot on the show, but what amount of effort does it take you to do this direct-to-seller marketing? And what amount of money does it take you to do this direct-to-seller marketing?

Nathan:
I don’t spend a lot on the marketing. It’s more for material like postcards, getting list created, stuff like that, AI to generate lists. And a lot of that stuff you could do very semi-cheaply. I mean, postcards, I just put an order in for 500 postcards and they’re very niche, very specific. I design them myself. I do a lot of the work myself actually is the answer. And so I design my postcards, I put all the effort into it, I make the calls, I mail them out, I pay for the stamps. But in regard, the only other effort that’s there is disposition. It’s really just getting the information, calling the lead, having them call you, introduce yourself, and then handing them off to a partner that could do disposition. So really my focus is on less external effort because I’m a growth manager for a large company and I’m very busy doing that.
And also the fact of risk. Flipping would make more money, but it’s risky currently and wholesaling is actually less risky than flipping currently.

Dave:
It is. Yeah.

Nathan:
And it also gives me the time with my kids because I have two very small kids that are in travel sports. And if anyone knows anything about travel sports, oh my God, that’s a lot of work.

Dave:
Taking all your time.

Nathan:
That’s right.

Dave:
So just to prove that, I mean, Nathan’s telling us that this is possible. If you want to go out and get the best possible prices, these are things that you can absolutely do. We’re not going to get too much into the tactics here today, but we have tons of great episodes. Nathan obviously has some good advice. We had a recent episode with Andy Gill who was talking about this. Henry talks about it all the time, but this is just a way that you can absolutely get good deals right now in this current market. It’s absolutely something that you should consider.

Nathan:
Absolutely.

Dave:
Nathan, one last question on this. Have you bought anything recently?

Nathan:
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s two deals. One of them was a property that I got in late fall, and it was the property I was referring to a little bit earlier. It was a four-bedroom house. Rotor was trying to sell it, $125,000. I already had the drive-by done on this property, and I purchased it. And anyway, to praise for about $170,000, 175, which allowed me to immediately –

Dave:
Oh my God. I purchased

Nathan:
It with no money out of pocket. So you’re

Dave:
Just walking into 50 grand in equity on that?

Nathan:
Yeah, like almost 25,000. Yeah, right out the gate. And it didn’t make any money due to the current rent with the tenant, but in the last six months, I have raised the rent twice. That’s very not normal, but I had to start making money on this property. I was losing about $100 a month and he was paying 800, and now he’s at $1,400. So now I’m making about $400 net a month after expenses in a period of six months with no money out of pocket.

Dave:
Is that 1,400 what market rent should be?

Nathan:
So actually it’s lower than market rent. And I’m trying to help the family out. I met them when I walked the house and everything, and they’re good people and they maintain the house. So I told them 1,400 was 200 less than what he would spend anywhere else, and he agreed. And so I left it there. And I didn’t want to lose him. He’s a good, hardworking guy, and I didn’t want to disrupt his family, but I did let him know that obviously this is the pro and economy being an investor. I let him know I have to make money and this is where I need it to be. And he was able to do that, so it worked out.

Dave:
So clearly you figured this out, and these are repeatable things. These are things that really everyone listening to this podcast can go out there and do. Now, Nathan, you mentioned you’re not just looking for new deals, you’re also trying to optimize your business and to make more out of what you already have, which is the name of the game right now. I mean, I always want to go out and buy more, but there’s so many things going on in the market that make it increasingly important to pay attention to your operations. What are some of the strategies and tactics you’re using to better your performance of the stuff you already got?

Nathan:
Shoring up the business is, I would say, one of the top priorities that I had this year and on my board behind me is making sure that my business is running efficiently and that I can maximize cashflow because again, I’m trying to find ways to scale and build. So to your point, I mean, if my rents are $311,000 right now and my net cash flow is 112, well, the math that I did based on these four things that I’m going to tell you that I’m doing to shore up my business will increase my cashflow by almost 30 to $40,000. That’s not a small number. I mean, that’s a lot of money.

Dave:
I mean, if you think of it that way, that’s the equivalent of buying five, eight more houses. Absolutely. Everyone’s focused on acquisitions. Just make your existing stuff do better and you don’t have to take on as much work or figure out the financing or go out and find the deals. So I see the motivation there, 30, 40%. I get it. How are you doing it?

Nathan:
There’s four things that I’ve really been trying to focus on right now. And it was property management, trying to figure out a way to get my costs lower, which at the time I was paying 12%.

Dave:
Oh, that’s high.

Nathan:
But I did move property managers and I saved 4%. So right now I’m

Dave:
Paying

Nathan:
Eight on my portfolio, and I feel like that’s fair compared to everyone in the Louisville marketplace. And so I save 4% on $300,000 of rents. I mean, that’s a huge amount of money.

Dave:
How did that conversation go?

Nathan:
It is a hard discussion in general because it was very hard moving my properties. Let’s be real. It was a major ordeal. And so I earn that extra 4% is the best way to put it.

Dave:
But that will pay dividends for years. That’s 12 grand a year that’ll compound for indefinitely. That’s

Nathan:
Right.

Dave:
And most things real estate, I talk about this a lot on the show, you get what you pay for. How has the quality of your property management changed, if it has, since moving to a less expensive provider?

Nathan:
So some things have changed, some things haven’t. I actually feel like they’re doing a really good job at 8%. He’s a local gentleman, has 250 to 300 doors. They’re on top of it. So actually, I feel like I’m getting a lot for my money at this time. There are some different costs that I’m paying currently, but I think they’re doing a really good job in all honesty. And yeah, I do got to do some things outside of it, but at 8%, it’s worth it to me, in all honesty

Dave:
With

Nathan:
You. Yeah,

Dave:
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, is that worth 12 grand a year? That little bit of doing stuff. And it sounds like the answer’s yes. Yes. That kind of sounds like a no-brainer to me. So I mean, that’s a great thing for people to do. Just for our audience listening, audit what you’re paying for property management. Shop around, comparison shop with everything you do these days from contractors to insurance to property managers. Henry and I talk about this. The spread between quotes is astronomical these days. It’s insane. That’s a 50% difference in property management fee from eight to 12%. You’re paying 50% above market rate, and that’s market rate. So you’re even going to a low cost provider. That happens all across the business. Yeah. Stick with us. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the BigglePockets Podcast. I am here with Nathan Nicholson, who’s telling us about the portfolio he’s built in Louisville, Kentucky.
Talked about deal-finding strategies and how he got started, but you said you’ve really turned your focus to just optimizing and making the most out of your existing portfolio. So you said you were doing four things. Sounds like number one is you changed property manager. What was the next thing you did?

Nathan:
The second thing is that even in a market, and so Louisville’s kind of been depressed in rents, and I think other markets may have this scenario happen as well. There’s just less people renting these houses. It’s kind of wild, but Louisville’s one of those markets. So I still had a rent increase at 3%. So on 23 houses at 3%, that raised me up another $8,000 a year right there. We’ve executed on, I think, 14 of them, and the others have leases, and we’re going to be executing on those in the fall, and they’re still all under rented to the market. So the good news is I’m not above the market, I’m below it. And that will actually give me quite a bit of extra equity and capital as well per year. And so if people aren’t raising rents or they feel like they’re under, I always keep mine a little bit under, but the reality of the situation is try to look to raise because rents have to go up.
I mean, taxes are going up, insurance is going up, liability’s going up. People are destroying houses at a much higher rate now for some reason. I don’t know why, but they were destroying your houses. So you have to ask for those rent increases every year and be very stout about it.

Dave:
Raising rents, obviously, if the market will bear it and it’s needed for your business, it’s something to consider, but sometimes the market won’t bear it. You can’t just say, “Oh, my expenses went up 3%, so I’m raising rents 3%.” If there’s competition in the market and someone can find an equivalent property without that rent increase, they might go do that. So it sounds like though you’ve been able to do that without issue.

Nathan:
Pretty much all of them, except for one house is rented at this point. No one moved. The rat house is what I call it, the one that was destroyed. We put a lot of money into it and I tried to rent it at 1,150 for a two bedroom, 800 square foot in Louisville. And it’s not taken right now. There’s a lot of competition, and the house is updated and fully updated. And so I’ve got it at 1,050 and it’s still not going. So that’s a $100 drop in this market on two beds in the last, I’d say four months.

Dave:
Oh, wow. Okay. So

Nathan:
Yeah, the market is not bearing it at this point. Rents are dropping in this marketplace. So I’m being very cognizant of that when I’m asking for these rents. But if a tenant does come back to me and they negotiate, I’m more than willing to negotiate in between. And I generally do that, but we haven’t had anyone really leave due to that because either it’s too much and they say, “Hey, look, if you could take $50 off of the hundred that you’re raising it, I’ll stay and we’ll just accept it.” So that’s something that we’ve been doing to keep people in there.

Dave:
I think it’s something for our audience to keep in mind, but you have to weigh in this market the risk of vacancy with the need to keep up with expenses because inflation is pushing up everything. Repairs, maintenance, taxes, insurance, everything, right? I agree. And as a businessperson, you have to keep pace with that. At the same time, tenants don’t have to pay. They don’t care what your business. They don’t care that your prices are going up. They have a budget, what they can afford, what they value your property at. And that’s why you just can’t be overly aggressive. You have to find the sweet spot. 3% seems very reasonable to me. That’s basically the pace of inflation, so it’s not crazy. But I sometimes hear people say things like, “Oh, my prices went up 10%, so I have to raise rents 10%.” You don’t have to.
And first of all, you probably can’t. There is a limit to what you’re able to do. So you need to really think about how much the market can bear. And that can be through conversations with your tenants, talking to other investors, talking to property managers in your area. But this isn’t just something like, “Oh, I should go raise rents because I want to.” There is a consideration there, and I think you’re doing a very reasonable job with it, Nathan, and what I would recommend for the majority of investors out there.

Nathan:
Absolutely. All

Dave:
Right. So those are the first two. What’s the third thing you’ve done to help your business perform better?

Nathan:
So I’ve been focused on paying houses off to increase my capital that I could use to buy houses off market. And wholesaling and stuff of that nature, you obviously have to be prepared to have cash. And so obviously the third thing is trying to find ways to pay off rentals quicker. And so what I’ve been doing right now, I actually wired $56,000 to the bank, and I’m paying off a property on Lees Lane that will net me about $600 a month. So if you do the math on that, that’s another 7,200 to $8,000 a year right there to just pay a property off. And generally what I do is I target the ones with the highest mortgage with the lowest cost to actually pay off. And so when I do the math on paying off Lees Lane, it’s going to return right around 10%, which is a really good return.

Dave:
Wow.

Nathan:
And that’s why I’m paying that one off. So that’s the third thing that I’ve been really focused on.

Dave:
Tell me a little bit about just the strategy here, because what you’re saying makes sense. I agree with this approach entirely. But at the same time, you’ve also talked a little bit about how you want to maximize the money you have for investing, right? Correct. And so where’s this philosophy shift? Is it just market conditions? You’re not seeing enough that you want to buy, so you have a little bit extra capital and you’re like, “Where do I get the best return right now?”

Nathan:
So the reason why this makes a lot of sense for also helping me in investing, say, wholesaling or having cash to do that is because when I pay this house off, immediately I’m going to add it to my line of credit. So not only do I get a paid off house that saves me $600 a month, but I’m also going to put it on my line of credit and get an extra $100,000 in capital added to my line of credit, which would be right around a million dollars at this point once I add that. So it gives me twofold. It allows me more purchasing power to not have to crowdfund and just self-fund this myself, but it also allows me leverage to make money while it sits there as well. So it’s twofold.

Dave:
Makes a lot of sense. And you can always refinance it later if you want to either use a HELOC or whatever.

Nathan:
Or sell it.

Dave:
Exactly. So that’s three out of the four. We talked about your PM costs, raising rents appropriately, and paying off some rentals. What’s the fourth thing you’ve done?

Nathan:
My main focus this year is to wait for rates to drop in the five and a half range on either commercial or traditional financing or DSCR. Yavi’s a great place. I mean, Calvi’s a really good company. They do a really good job, and you could use companies like that as well. But the thing is, if you could refinance your houses, say 23 houses, 10 of them are paid off, and I could actually refinance 10 of them. And I have so much equity from the appreciation that’s been happening that I could take that appreciation, pay off another two or three that are free and clear, and still net an extra 100 to $500 a month in cashflow with doing that. That is a huge proponent to what I’m trying to do right now. And if I do that and I do it smart, I should be able to pay off two houses and also save probably about $1,000 a month on that refinance.

Dave:
And

Nathan:
I think that we’ll be in a position to do that.

Dave:
Even if the rate’s higher.

Nathan:
Yeah, even if the rate’s higher, for instance. Yeah, exactly. I think the rates will be in the five and a half to six and a quarter range, but if you buy it down a point, you should be in the realm that you need it, which is about 5.75, give or take to six. All

Dave:
Right. Well, yeah, if you could buy it down, you’re more optimistic than I am about getting into the fives. I’m not so sure about that. I’ll average a little bit more than. I hope you’re right. I hope I’m wrong. Yeah.

Nathan:
I hope we can get there. We’ll see what the market. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are causing issues in the marketplace right now, but the goal that I’ve heard was a 1.5% Fed rate. And so we’re at a 3625, and I’m in the mortgage industry, so this is what I know very well. And so if we’re at a 3625 and we need it at one and a half, I mean, if the rest of the world is at one and a half, we have to find a way to get that Fed rate down. And so they’re really focused on that. So I am really leveraging my gambling hand here to say within the next hopefully 12 to 18 months, that’s conservative. Okay. 12 To your point, if we could hit six, I think you would see a huge amount of people trying to refinance their properties.
And I think that would be very smart for them to do that in all honesty with you.

Dave:
Yeah. I mean, if we get to that rate, that makes a lot of sense to me. We’ll just have to see if we can get to that rate. Maybe 12 to 18 months. I’m not as optimistic this year, about 2026 at least. Yeah,

Nathan:
This year’s rough.

Dave:
Well, Nathan, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for catching us up here. People want to connect with you, where should they do that?

Nathan:
Yeah, I mean, obviously you could find me online. It’s RealEstateNate. Buy, Sell, Rent Coaching is my business in Louisville, Kentucky. You could find me on social media too under the same exact search term. So I’m on social media, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on everything that you could possibly think of, and also on Google search and stuff of that nature.

Dave:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here, Nathan. We really appreciate you. And thank you all for listening. Again, if you want to check out DSCR loans, some of the things Nathan was talking about and you’re BiggerPockets Pro member, go to biggerpockets.com/pro and check out the discounted rates we have for you and we’ve negotiated for you through Kiavi. Also, if you want to learn more from people like Nathan, make sure to subscribe to the BiggerPockets Podcast or follow us on YouTube so you never miss an episode. Thanks again for watching. I’m Dave Meyer, and I’ll see you guys next time.