In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, host Yoni Schmidt sits down with Zach Lemaster, Founder and CEO of Rent to Retirement, to talk about investing confidently in any market cycle. They discuss how to evaluate new markets, the power of creative financing in high-rate environments, and common mistakes new investors should avoid. Zach also shares his advice for overcoming analysis paralysis and taking action.
The Rent to Retirement Formula: Investing in Any Market Cycle With Confidence With Zach Lemaster
Zach Lemaster is the Founder and CEO of Rent to Retirement, a leading turnkey real estate investment company that helps clients build passive income through fully managed rental properties across the US. A former US Air Force Captain, Zach began investing in real estate while serving in the military, eventually transitioning to full-time investing. He has since built a diverse portfolio spanning single-family, multifamily, commercial, and new construction properties. Recognized as a real estate market analytics expert, Zach has been featured in Forbes, USA Today, and Fox News. He also educates others on achieving financial freedom through real estate investing.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:37] How Zach Lemaster’s US Air Force experience sparked his interest in real estate investing
- [4:07] Zach’s transition from optometry to real estate through a slow, steady investment approach
- [6:59] The creation of Rent to Retirement to help investors find and manage out-of-state properties
- [10:02] Strategies to find cash-flowing deals despite high interest rates using builder incentives and rate buy-downs
- [15:54] Key factors for selecting investment markets: affordability, landlord-friendly laws, and job growth
- [29:15] Zach’s advice for new investors to overcome analysis paralysis and take action
In this episode…
Investing in real estate can feel overwhelming — especially when interest rates rise and market conditions shift. Many would-be investors hesitate, unsure whether it’s the right time to start or expand. How can you confidently invest in any market cycle without risking long-term financial stability?
According to Zach Lemaster, a nationally recognized real estate expert and seasoned investor, success lies in focusing on fundamentals rather than market timing. He highlights that smart market selection, strong local teams, and long-term planning create resilience against short-term fluctuations. By targeting affordable, landlord-friendly markets with diverse economies and housing shortages, investors can achieve consistent growth. Zach emphasizes the importance of leveraging creative financing tools, building scalable systems, and maintaining a disciplined buy-and-hold approach that compounds wealth over time.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Zach Lemaster on LinkedIn
- Rent to Retirement
- “Exploring New Possibilities in Entrepreneurship” with Chip Gaberino on The Same Day Podcast
- “Revitalizing Communities Through Multi-Concept Restaurant Development” with Elliot Nelson on The Same Day Podcast
- “The Future of Financial Advising: Building Relationships Over Returns” with Morgan Martin on The Same Day Podcast
Quotable Moments
- “Real estate is such a beautiful concept because you get to put a small portion down.”
- “Real estate takes a little bit of planning and preparation, and you should know what you’re investing in.”
- “Invest in a good market with good teams; you’re not going to go wrong.”
- “Real estate investing is a lifelong journey, and when you have someone helping plan, it’s rewarding.”
- “Interest rates are a point in time; you can always refinance your properties in the future.”
Action Steps
- Start investing with a long-term mindset: Real estate rewards consistency and patience, allowing wealth to compound steadily over time.
- Choose landlord-friendly and affordable markets: Investing in areas with favorable regulations and strong demand ensures sustainable cash flow and growth.
- Leverage creative financing options: Utilizing builder incentives and rate buy-downs helps maintain positive cash flow despite higher interest rates.
- Build strong local management teams: Effective property management is crucial for preserving asset performance and minimizing operational headaches.
- Avoid analysis paralysis by taking action: Executing your first deal builds confidence and creates momentum for future real estate investments.
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 00:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Yonatan Schmidt 00:20
Hello. Yoni Schmidt here, hosting today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business and real estate leaders. Past guests include Chip Gaberino, a local restaurateur, entrepreneur Elliot Nelson, Morgan Martin of Merrill Lynch, and many, many more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management, we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. That is why no matter what asset you have single family homes, condos, townhomes, apartments or anything else. We have the management solutions you need go to keyrenterpmc.com or email us at [email protected] for more information.
Today’s guest is someone who truly embodies the phrase live where you want. Invest where it makes sense. Zach Lemaster is the Founder and CEO of Rent to Retirement, the nation’s leading turnkey investment company. A former optometrist and Air Force captain, Zach transitioned from medicine to real estate and has since built an impressive diversified portfolio spanning single family, multifamily, commercial and new construction properties in markets across the country. He’s a seasoned investor, licensed broker, and nationally recognized expert whose insights have been featured on Forbes, USA Today, NBC, and many more.
With a passion for educating others and helping investors design their ideal lifestyle through smart market selection and strategic real estate plays, Zach is here to help us unpack what it really takes to build wealth without sacrificing your time or location. Freedom. Welcome to the show, Zach, and thank you for being here.
Zach Lemaster 02:07
Yoni. What an excellent introduction. That’s fantastic. Thanks for having me.
Yonatan Schmidt 02:11
Thank you. Let’s just dive right in. You started your investing journey while you were serving in the Air Force, which, by the way, thank you for your service. I have tremendous respect for people who are in the Armed Services armed forces. As a veteran of of the Israeli Defense Forces, myself, not a popular army at the moment, on June 6th of 2025.
But tell me a little bit about what sparked your interest in real estate during that time.
Zach Lemaster 02:37
Man, I just wanted to be Yoni, I think in my my young career, because that was the first time I joined the Air Force immediately after graduating from optometry school, because I was on scholarship, which was great. So I was immediately commissioned as a captain, and that was my first, like real, actual paycheck that I received And as I was learning about money, I just wanted to be smart with money. Real estate was something that I had kind of, you know, read some books on. Obviously the Kiyosaki stuff and, you know, just kind of started to get interested about, like, what what can I do with investing? The first house I bought, even which I used a VA loan, I was able to put no money down, which is fantastic.
Was a duplex, lived in half, rented out the other half, and then, you know, that’s where I got the bug. But I just wanted to be smart with my money. Real estate made sense. It’s tangible asset. I knew nothing about stocks.
I wanted to be able to reduce immediately, have an impact, to reduce my like, my expenses and kind of like, chase this, this financial freedom thing from the very beginning. And real estate just made sense. So honestly, that’s it.
Yonatan Schmidt 03:37
Yeah. Love it. Tell us, I guess a little bit about the biggest mindset mind set shift that, you know, it took you to go from being in medicine because optometry is a pretty good industry to be in, as far as I understand, to investing full time in real estate. Right. Did you?
I mean, have some sort of, like, light bulb going off in your head where you were like, well, this makes a lot more sense than being a full time optometrist.
Zach Lemaster 04:07
You know, not not really actually. I mean, I would say it was a slow, a very slow transition, which is which is okay. I know there’s some people out there that are looking to like, I want to be done like yesterday, you know what I mean? And, you know, on that entrepreneurial journey, that journey that wasn’t that wasn’t me. I, I took the slow route, which, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Real estate is a beautiful thing because it very much can be like a, a side hustle for a lot of people where you can do that. And I honestly think that’s the best way to approach it. In the beginning, where you have you can still keep your your job to have income, to be able to qualify for loans, right, and and have stable income and then like, ease your way into real estate. Some people jump off the deep end. I mean, I got pretty heavily invested into real estate.
I never looked back. And, you know, I started investing about 15 years ago. And I always tell people since we bought that first duplex, like every single year we bought real estate. I’m not saying we made money on all of our deals, but every single year we bought real estate. But no, I was fortunate enough where I was able to like slowly over time, reduce because I was Air Force for seven years and then I went into private practice.
I was able to slowly reduce my hours and and optometry as I, you know, increase that and supplemented that with with the real estate investing and eventually about around years like 5 or 6, I like surpassed my income, which was a good income. But but yeah, it was it was a slow it was a slow journey. Although I did you know, there was one point in time where I was like, man, like with optometry, even being a business owner, we own our own businesses and clinics because my wife’s also an optometrist. Like your, your income is kind of like capped or limited. It’s limited on the amount of patients you can see, amount of people you can come through your time in the chair with real estate, it’s like there’s no the sky’s the limit, right?
And it compounds every single year. And we’re just like, that would be cool. So but I was never the situation where we disliked what we did. We’re still passionate about helping people see. We do a lot of humanitarian stuff now.
We’re still licensed. It’s just that, hey, we’re able to not rely on that for income. So that was kind of the journey for me.
Yonatan Schmidt 06:06
Yeah, I love that. I definitely want to go back to what you were talking about in a moment about buying real estate every year, especially in this very tight interest rate environment that is is difficult. I love the fact that you are house hacking, that duplex. In fact, that’s how I started when I was, you know, when I bought my first property in Tulsa, I was house hacking my, my personal residence, and I let two good friends move in with me. So it wasn’t a duplex, it was a single family home.
But I knew the guys before they actually moved in. But before we touch on how do you continue to expand during tight interest rate environment periods and in this economic environment. Let’s talk a little bit about how did Rent to Retirement come to life. What was the gap that you were trying to fill in the investment space?
Zach Lemaster 06:59
Yes. I mean, this was a and we’ve we’ve just blown up today, you know, because we’ve been we’ve just been focused on helping others do the same thing that we did. Rent to Retirement was really birthed out of I mean, the impetus was us just trying to find our own investment system that worked for my, my, this is my wife and I. We invested locally first, which there’s nothing wrong with that. However, some people are, you know, very limited to not being able to invest locally because maybe they live in an expensive market.
You know, maybe the numbers simply don’t make sense. The tax or legislation doesn’t make sense. I would actually argue that most people, you know, regardless of where you live, there’s probably a better market out there for you to invest in based on your goals. But we basically invested locally and then we were like, hey, we like we don’t want to know. We don’t want to own a bunch of properties where we are living at the time, which was Grand Forks, North Dakota.
I was there for the Air Force. I wasn’t going to be there forever. It wasn’t like this great market. So we started to strategically look at other markets that that did make sense around the country. We made some investments.
They went terribly. And then we improved our our process and our systems of actually being intentional around identifying the markets that have the best opportunity, the best growth, that we’re congruent with our goals, building teams and systems in those areas to scale our portfolio and consistently diversify and then replicate that process in other markets for for our own portfolio. We had a lot of friends and family and colleagues that were like, hey, we see what you’re doing in real estate. We don’t have the time or the knowledge or the expertise, like, can we invest with you? And we just helped them buy properties following the same process that we already put in place.
And so that was really the foundation of Rent to Retirement is just helping people do what what we did for our own portfolio. And of course, fast forward to today, we’re we’re doing thousands of transactions across 18 different markets. And we have a large investor base because we we knew that or we found out that there was a lot of people that would benefit from our services outside of just our own, our own community. So we’ve been very fortunate that, like, you know, we’ve always approached it of like, where would what would we do?
Because we’re real estate investors. And then how do we help other people do the same thing?
Yonatan Schmidt 09:06
Yeah that’s great. So let’s go back to that buying every year because, you know, over the last call it two years, let’s say interest rates have gone up. The economic environment has not been extremely favorable for investors who are looking for cash flow. And I get a lot of phone calls that people say, you know, I’m looking for cash flowing properties. And my answer is always, well, anything with cash flow, with equity in it.
If you buy a house for cash, it will cash flow, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean that your rate of return is going to be the greatest or what? What your personal rate of required rate of return as an investor, you know would be. But you know, how are you guys doing it right now at Rent to Retirement? And how are you finding opportunities that make financial sense?
Is it more about appreciation than it is about cash flow, or am I looking at this all wrong?
Zach Lemaster 10:02
Yeah, I think a lot of people have so much to say on this, so cut me off whenever I can be long winded. But yeah, I know first and foremost I rent a retirement. There are markets that are still cash flowing today, and you’re absolutely right. Sometimes with higher interest rates, like maybe you need to put more money down. Our average investor is putting 25% down on properties.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like that’s just part of the part of the deal. But most people think I think or early investors think that there’s this spectrum of either cash flow or appreciation, and you have to choose either or. And that’s not necessarily true in the right market now. Yes, there’s a balancing act of all these things, but there’s a lot of markets, like for example, in the southeast that we work and we mainly do new construction.
So our main asset class is like new construction, single family house or small multi. So 2 to 4 units in in a growth market average home price is probably 250,000. That’s going to yield an 8% cash on cash return. If you’re putting 20 or 25% down just on the cash flow, right. Not the appreciation and tax benefits, all the things.
So there are markets that we are working in today that still have strong appreciation, and they have positive cash flow even at higher interest rates. However, I would say how to answer your question, how we’re combating a lot of the rates is that, you know, we’ll offer rate buy downs, right? I mean, that’s a common thing a lot of people are doing, especially in the building space, is, you know, just we’ll offer builder incentives to buy rates down where we’re actually paying that into the where people can get rates into the fours or maybe low fives where, hey, it does cash flow and it makes sense and I would take advantage of that. However, my bigger picture philosophy is that like if you’re letting interest rates dictate your investing. You’re thinking about it all wrong and I know you would agree with me.
It’s just like that’s that’s such a that’s such a. A newbie approach to thinking about real estate because you’re just taking such a, a linear, singular view of, of how real estate really operates. It’s like, look, interest rates are a point in time. And if you think interest rates are high now, like look back into the 80s where interest rates were at like 18 and 20%. Right.
And people are still investing, then interest rates are a point in time. I never encourage people to buy negatively cash flowing properties. I’m personally buying a lot of properties that are break even, because I know that rents go up every single year. I’m getting huge tax benefits from buying real estate. I’m still using leverage, you know, and I’ll do things like cost segregation, accelerated depreciation.
That’s not the average investor, but that’s also coming into play. But just generally speaking, real estate is like you can always refinance your properties in the future. It’s highly likely that at this point in time, in one of the next 1 to 3 years, rates will likely be lower. But what happens when rates go lower? There’s more buyers, there’s more competition.
You know, prices go up. You don’t want to buy during those times, right. Like you want to buy now, where you can get better deals to be able to even if you have a higher interest rate, that you can potentially refinance in the future, that you can get a better deal on now. Right? It’s all about, you know, if you know, no stock investing with dollar cost averaging like not not the exact same but kind of the same with the idea of buying real estate.
Like be consistent in your portfolio and optimize it every year from a debt perspective. So I don’t know. Again, you better cut me off. I could go on so many tangents.
Yonatan Schmidt 13:17
No, I, I agree there’s a saying, right? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next best time is probably today or yesterday. So yeah, I definitely agree and I would say continue to buy real estate even in high interest rate environments. Be creative about it. You know, I have seen a lot of people shy away from, you know, investing in real estate where the rate of return is lower than your cost of capital, because then you’re in a negative leveraged debt situation, which isn’t optimal.
But again, over time, if you can hold on to it and it is a long term play, you can refinance.
Zach Lemaster 13:56
Well, it’s pretty hard to not make those. And just to continue on on that point real quick, it’s pretty hard to to be in that scenario that you just, you know, outlined if you truly understand how real estate works, right. Like once you factor in even a modest even like removing cash flow in your cash on cash return, if that’s zero, just owning an asset that you get to put a portion down like real estate is such a beautiful concept, right? Because when you’re using leverage, especially leverage just makes everything that much better using leverage responsibly. But if you’re let’s say, I mean, if you have $20,000 to invest, you throw in the stock market, it has a 5% return, you have $1,000.
At the end of the year, you had a true 5% return. Now you have $21,000, right? Real estate. You put $20,000 down. You leverage it to buy $100,000 house.
You have the same 5% appreciation. That house is now worth $105,000. That’s $5,000 worth of equity. 5000. Now you have $25,000 worth of equity, $5,000 divided by $25,000 to 25% return.
That’s just a modest appreciation. Then you have the debt pay down, right? The tenant is literally paying off that loan for you, and then that adds another return on investment. Then you have the tax benefits, which everyone gets just as a normal investment. That adds an additional return on investment.
Right? So there’s all these things that compound like, yeah, time is to your advantage the longer you own real estate. But real estate is such a beautiful concept because you get to put a small portion of money down if you have 100% of the income and the benefit from owning an asset, that you 100% control, that you borrow money from someone, I either bank the majority of the money to acquire it, that someone else pays that loan off the tenant. Right? So it’s just this you get this because you have, you know, five decades of family experience in this.
But that’s that’s my rant.
Yonatan Schmidt 15:36
Yeah. And people often forget about the principal pay down when they’re calculating the return, which is a forced form of savings, if you will. You know, look at it like that. Let’s talk about evaluating new markets for investment. What metrics matter to you the most.
Zach Lemaster 15:54
And this is our formula. We really just it’s not it’s not secret sauce. It’s not overly complicated. We really try to adhere to the fundamentals of real estate because this is what works and has is what has worked for centuries in our country, right? Real estate investing is like one of the oldest forms of investing because you’re investing in human necessities.
Housing. Housing has always been a necessity, right? And since since we’ve had housing, there’s been landlords. There is. So for us, we want to be in growth markets.
We want to be in areas that are landlord friendly, that are legislatively, you know, favorable to to landlords might be in areas that are tax favorable, both from an income tax but also from a real estate tax perspective. We work a lot in the Midwest and the southeast because of this. We want to be in areas that are below the median house price point and the US, which is roughly 400,000. So we want to be there’s a huge affordability issue in the US. We want to be in areas and deficit of housing.
Right. We have a deficit of like 7.5 million houses or whatever. So we want to be in areas that are below the median house price point, below, in areas that have an undersupply of housing. We want to be in areas that have a diversity of industries, not not just in areas, say, reliant on automotive or oil and gas or as a main employer or government. We want to be in areas where you see population and economic growth.
So and these are all like there’s check boxes for all of these, but there’s a lot of other things to consider as well. Like we want to be in an area where the rental price ratio is attractive enough to have positive cash flow. So we’ll work in areas like Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and the Midwest. We’ll work in areas in Tennessee, southeast a lot with Alabama, Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Texas, even though property taxes are high there. So those are some of the areas that we try to focus on.
And then we have on a microeconomic scale, we have people attending city planning meetings, seeing where the new jobs and, you know, transportation. We would like to be sometimes in the what we call secondary markets, like suburbs around a large metro area like outside of Orlando, for example, is a perfect area where there’s good affordability, good cash flow, less regulation and and still high demand versus like we’re in Orlando proper when it works. So I mean those are just some of the things we’re looking at.
Yonatan Schmidt 18:01
Yeah. Nice. Thanks for sharing that. Tell us I guess about maybe a little bit about the evolution of your own portfolio. What have you learned scaling across different asset classes?
Because I myself am only in residential, but I know that you guys do more than just residential.
Zach Lemaster 18:18
Yeah. So as Rent to Retirement we mainly focus on residential. And I think that’s the best starting point for everyone. Again, it’s the most sustainable asset class in real estate, less volatile And just most predictable, again, because you’re providing housing for people and it’s a huge need. However, over time, we’ve we’ve personally scaled a lot to own a lot of commercial.
The majority of our holdings today is in commercial retail and multifamily. However, about 30% is still and always will be in residential. And then we’ve also owned a lot of bought a lot of like high end short term rentals. And we’re having a lot of fun, fun with those because those are like lifestyle assets, you know, that we also get to use and we run cost segregation studies and accelerate the depreciation on all of those assets. That’s a big idea behind purchasing those.
But it’s just and that’s really been accomplished, you know, through 1031 exchanges and like scaling up. Right. We started in single family. And this is out of all the people I’ve talked to that are super successful in real estate. Like this is just the the typical stepping stone path, right?
They usually start in residential and and again, most people do still maintain a strong portion of their portfolio in residential. And then they as they scale, they’ll just trade up. You know, the monopoly game or they trade up into larger asset classes. 1031 exchange reset some depreciation and maybe kind of try out these other things as well, which is the same process for us.
Yonatan Schmidt 19:47
Yeah. That’s cool. I’m working on a little short term project right now, so I’m excited to see how that helps with accelerated depreciation. Tell us, I guess a bit about the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen people make when they invest in turnkey real estate.
Zach Lemaster 20:07
And just to define turnkey for the audience, because this is kind of a buzzword out there. And so just to be clear and intentional on what we mean when we say turnkey is first we identify markets like we just talked about that fit fit our buy box, and where we see predictability and scalability over time and where people can make smart investments. And then when we were talking about either a newly built majority of what we do, like 80% new construction or fully renovated house that’s leased and managed by our team in a growth market. Like that’s what we mean as turnkey. It doesn’t mean it’s completely hands off.
It doesn’t. It doesn’t mean it’s risk free. And so one of the biggest issues that I see with newer investors, I mean, Turnkey Taylor’s towards a lot of different types of investors, but it does tailor towards new investors that have never bought property, which is great because it’s an easy stepping stone for them to get in where it’s not a huge risk. It’s not a huge time suck. It doesn’t require significant amount of capital.
It also fits for people that live in expensive markets. Their local market doesn’t make sense. Or busy professionals that love real estate. They don’t want to. They don’t want to manage their properties.
Right? Like just like with you guys. I’m sure you cater to a lot of those same investors, but sometimes a newer investor comes in and thinks they see a pro forma for year one. Pro forma is always year one expectations or analysis. And they say like, oh, this property is going to perform forever.
And I’m going to receive a check in the mail with never no issues, ever. And then, you know, they own the property and some people do for many years. But the reality is, is like at some point you’re going to have issues, right? At some point you’re going to have management, you’re going to have or manage or tenant issues where you need to do maintenance and, you know, tenant repairs or vacancy or evictions like those things are real. That doesn’t mean you have to deal with them.
But like some people just lose sleep over the uncertainty around that. So setting right expectations with people is very important. Other mistakes would be that, you know, maybe people don’t go through proper due diligence or they don’t like you got to learn real estate. Even if you’re investing in a somewhat passive approach, like you still need to have a plan, you need to have a strategy. And that’s what we try to work with our investors on.
You need to understand the tech side. You need to understand the financing side, the lending. You have to qualify for loans. And so, you know, just just preparation. Some people want to be too like too complacent, like they’re invest.
They’re used to investing in the stocks where they just in, you know, whether it’s their manager or them just, you know, doing index funds or whatever, and then just never thinking about it. Like real estate takes a little bit of planning and preparation. And you should write, you should know what you’re investing in. So those are probably some of the mistakes that a lot of early investors make.
Yonatan Schmidt 22:35
Yeah. Tell us, how does Rent to Retirement support clients after they, you know, have purchased a property? Because all of those pieces that you just mentioned, you know, come into play, there’s maintenance, there’s deferred maintenance, there’s management, there’s rent collection, evictions, leasing, renewals. I mean, there’s so many moving parts to property management that people often forget about. And when you really want to learn real estate, I think one of the best things to do is to get into property management, because you’re learning about all aspects of real estate.
But what do you guys do to support your clients once you know closing has happened and a new client now owns a property?
Zach Lemaster 23:18
Yes. And just to be clear, and, you know, hats off to you for being in the management business because that is a tough man. That is a tough business to be in, right? You’re dealing with tenants and owners and sometimes they’re both unhappy and you’re in the middle. Yeah.
Yonatan Schmidt 23:31
And the vendors too, that are of course, you know, supporting us, but with which we’re nothing without good vendors, we are absolutely nothing.
Zach Lemaster 23:40
And you can probably attest to this. You only like good management. Is everything right for the performance of the assay? You can be in the best market in the world, but if you don’t have good management in place, and I would argue to everyone, do not self-manage, right. Some people want to start.
They want to self-manage. It’s not the best utilization of your time. You’re not a professional.
Yonatan Schmidt 23:58
I don’t even I don’t even self-manage. I don’t have property managers in our office here that are managing my own properties, and I don’t want to self-manage.
Zach Lemaster 24:06
It’s about systems. Yeah, it’s about systems because the best utilization is your time is, you know, how do you scale or a lot of people get into real estate because they want to buy more time back. It’s like management does the opposite of that. So anyways, the yeah, to answer your question about, you know, how we support people so we don’t do management, but we do partner and vet local managerial teams in each market that we operate in. We also just like you mentioned, we personally use them so you don’t have to use them.
These are just teams that we recommend. But we we certainly stay involved with investors to help them build out their strategy over time. If they do have issues with their local management team, who’s overseeing the day to day operations? You know, we obviously have influence and leverage over them and we can get involved if needed. But a lot of times I found it’s just about education, about all right, this popped up.
How do we deal with this if it’s an issue or the bigger picture? Conversations are like, cool, I bought, you know, properties. I’m out of cash. Like, do I sit around and wait until I save up enough money as a down payment or, you know, or what? What are my different loan options?
Right. A lot of it’s just coaching and mentorship. We have lenders that will offer 5% down loans on true investment properties. You can buy true investment property and there’s no PMI on those. Those are portfolio loans held with credit unions 30 year loans.
You can put 5% down. Now those are hard to make cashflow with only 5% down. But that may that may be a good fit. Or talk about partnerships or helocs or 1031 exchanges or self-directed IRAs. It’s a lot about, you know, the strategy and planning and building long term relationships with people to really help them scale over time, which is the name of the game.
But I love working with investors because real estate investing is a lifelong journey, you know? And and when you have someone that you’re helping kind of plan out their financial future like it’s it’s a long term relationship. Right. And so that’s that’s the way we approach it. We have our whole academy program, which is, you know, people don’t have to participate in that.
But it’s it’s an educational and mentorship program where we actually help you build out that plan. It’s a lifetime membership thing. So again, we try to stay involved with our investors and people. No one retires off of just one house, you know. So.
Yonatan Schmidt 26:14
Right. Yeah. Love that.
Yonatan Schmidt 26:16
Where do you see greatest opportunity for new investors right now?
Zach Lemaster 26:21
I would say that there’s a plethora of opportunity. And what what I would say as well is that just because I think there’s opportunity in, in a particular market does not mean it’s the right opportunity for everyone. Because real estate is such an individualistic thing, and that’s what makes it exciting, is that every single person has different goals, criteria, strategies, resources. They have different. They have different, you know, unique creativity they can bring and that they where they can create opportunity, where other people may not be able to because of their skill set or, or, you know, influence.
So but in general, I think a lot of what we talked about previously, with the market being what it is today, we’re in our third year now. It’s been three years since we’ve seen elevated interest rates, and we haven’t really seen that much relief. Now we’re all anticipating that we likely will. I think we can also bank on 100% bonus depreciation coming back. That’s huge.
Even though it hasn’t officially happened yet. But right now we’re seeing the retail market still being relatively slow. However, I will say that Q1 and 2025 has been the most progressive sales market that we’ve seen over the past three years. So I think it’s starting to shift back to a seller’s market very slowly, but it’s still a buyer’s market. That means you should be able to negotiate better deals.
There’s plenty of markets, especially, like I said, in the markets that we specifically focus on. We still see double digit appreciation both in rents and home prices every single year. It’s just about supply and demand, whereas an under that’s the biggest interest rates don’t drive economics. It’s supply and demand. Where is the biggest deficit of housing?
Where are people moving. Because if they need housing and you’re you’re you’re in those affordable price points that we are like that’s going to be the biggest indicator. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity, especially on the new construction space where people can come in and negotiate good deals. You get builders to buy your rates down to I mean, sometimes we see down to like 3.99% on a 30 year fixed loan. Like that’s huge, right?
Or you can get cash back like some of the builders we work with will do 10 to 15% either equity or cash back. So that’s true equity where you can actually have part or potentially all of your down payment paid. Those things won’t last when we have lower interest rates in a more of a, you know, there’s less competition to sell inventory. So again, I encourage people to look for the opportunity that fits your goals and take action now regardless of interest rates, because there’s always opportunity. The most successful investors, Yoni, are the people that are investing in any market and cycle and finding ways to be successful, not letting the market dictate when they’re investing.
Yonatan Schmidt 29:00
Right? Yeah, you may have just answered that. My my next question by, you know, giving that little tidbit there. But for someone who’s listening, who’s on the fence about starting. You know.
What is your biggest piece of advice for them to get moving forward?
Zach Lemaster 29:15
Yeah, stop. Stop being in the, you know, perpetual analysis paralysis mindset. You know, of reading and listening like go out and do it. Your first property is not going to be the most important one financially, but it is going to be the most important one mentally and emotionally. Or maybe it’s your first one out of state, or maybe you’ve had a bad past experience with real estate.
Or maybe it’s just been a few years and you don’t know what to do. There’s plenty of deals to be had right now. There’s plenty of excellent deals to be had. Go out and do it right. Just stop thinking about it and do it.
Real estate’s a holding place, you know, for for money. You know you’re not going to lose your shirt. You’re not in, you know, buy smart. And if you’re if you’re adhering to the fundamentals of real estate, which is, hey, at the end of the day, this isn’t rocket science. People invest, invest in a good market, have a criteria, have your buy box, invest in a good market with good teams.
You’re not going to go wrong, right? Like invest for the long term. You’re not trying to flip out. Well, maybe some people are flipping houses, but like, what we’re talking about is good old buy and hold rental real estate.
Yonatan Schmidt 30:16
Buy and hold.
Zach Lemaster 30:17
Yeah. Yeah. And if you can, if you can buy good markets with good teams that generally fit your goal, like buy it and forget about it. Let, let let time do what it does over time. But just get in the mindset.
Force yourself to do that. Set yourself a goal. Say buy your next property in the next 90 days or less. There’s plenty of opportunity, I’m sure. Yoni, you guys have plenty of opportunity, as do we, to help people take that next step.
Yonatan Schmidt 30:39
Yep. Love it, love it, love it. Thank you so much, guys. You’ve heard it from the expert Zach Lemaster. From Rent to Retirement.
The CEO Zach, thank you so much for being here today with us. Really appreciate it.
Zach Lemaster 30:53
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Yoni.
Outro 30:58
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