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TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST

Hey everyone, welcome to the Investing in Real Estate Show. This is your host, Lex Levinrad. In today’s episode, I want to talk about the changing real estate market. And I’ve got to tell you—things are changing quickly.

I had a Boot Camp event a couple of weeks back, the Buying Rentals and Building Wealth Boot Camp.

We were showcasing some case studies, and one of our students, Manny and Haley, had acquired a property for just $105,000 in Palm Bay. They decided to wholesale and flip that property.

I was actually the buyer—I ended up purchasing that property for $110,000. Now, what’s interesting is when I went to look at the property and the surrounding neighborhood, I saw three houses listed for sale on Realtor.com. One was listed at $270,000, another at $275,000, and another at $330,000.

I looked at the ARV. They told me they thought the ARV was around $210,000 to $220,000. That’s probably accurate. Let’s say $220,000. At my previous Boot Camp, I even pulled this up on the screen and showed everyone how they found the house—by using Driving for Dollars and direct mail. Ironically, this house actually hit two lists: it was both on a tax-delinquent list and a Driving for Dollars list.

Originally, they offered around $125,000 to $130,000, but they negotiated down to $105,000 and the seller accepted. Then they just turned around and flipped that house to me.

So when I hear people saying things like, “You can’t find deals right now,” or “Fixing and flipping is dead,” or “Rentals are dead”—I’ve got to push back. If you’re only looking at surface-level information (what you see on social media or in an article), you’ll never dig deep enough to see what’s really going on.

I actually made a public Facebook post about this about a week ago. I talked about how many investors were buying at the bottom of the market in 2009, when I was buying in Miami. Back then, there were about 300 investors active. Fast forward to the peak of 2022, and according to Redfin data, there were 4,400 investor buyers.

The numbers correlate inversely: when the market was cheapest, the fewest people wanted to buy. When the market was the most expensive, the most people wanted to buy. On the surface that makes no sense, but if you study history, it makes perfect sense.

Back when I worked on the trading floor in Chicago, one of the required books was Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It explains why people buy the most at the top and why no one wants to buy at the bottom.

Think about it: Tesla stock at $200, then $300, then $400, then $500, and people say, “Man, I should have bought it.” By the time it’s at $800 or $900, they finally jump in—and then it crashes back down to $300 or $400. Same story with Bitcoin. Same story with real estate in 2006–2007, when people were lining up all night in Boynton Beach to buy houses.

Why? Because people felt they couldn’t go wrong—it had worked in the past. That’s the fallacy: investing by looking in the rearview mirror. “It worked last year, so it’ll work this year.” But markets ebb and flow.

For example, rental properties are normally priced when they sell at about 100 times monthly rent. At 200–250 times rent, they’re overpriced. At 50 times rent, they’re underpriced.

At the peak of 2022–2023, many deals were selling at 250 times rent—clearly overpriced. During the 2008 financial crisis, we were buying at 30 times rent. We bought houses in Port St. Lucie—three-bed, two-bath homes—for $36,000 or $37,000 that had previously sold for $200,000, and they rented for $975 a month. That’s instant cash flow. So why wasn’t everyone buying then? And yet, when those same houses went back up to $325,000 or $350,000, then everybody wanted to buy.

That’s human psychology.

Fast forward to today: I’ve seen these cycles over 23 years in real estate. We just turned the corner from a seller’s market into a buyer’s market. Inventory is up, prices are down, and sellers are slashing prices. Yet investors are fleeing. Why? Because they’re listening to the noise instead of the numbers.

At my Foreclosures Boot Camp in February 2022, there were only 15,000 houses listed on our local MLS. By February 2023, that doubled to 30,000. By 2024, it was 45,000. Today, it’s close to 70,000. Inventory has quadrupled in just a few years.

At the same time, prices have fallen 15–20% on average, and in some markets like Miami or Kissimmee, as much as 25–30%. That’s a massive pullback. Yet most people still think real estate is “fine.” They don’t realize investors stopped buying in 2022—the hedge funds, Zillow, Opendoor, all the iBuyers—they pulled back first.

The average mom-and-pop investor only started to realize in 2024 and 2025 that prices weren’t going up anymore. That’s why right now, this is a better environment to buy than it was a year or two ago. Deals at 60 cents on the dollar are increasing. But only the real buyers—the ones who understand value—are still in the game.

If you rely on social media or the news, you’ll end up buying at the top and selling at the bottom. If you study cycles, you’ll know when to buy.

We’re in 2025 now. The market peaked in 2022. The average real estate cycle is 18 years: about 14 up and 4 down. We’re about three years into the down cycle, and I believe it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Expect more foreclosures, short sales, and bank-owned properties.

If you want to build wealth, this is the time to sharpen your sword. Learn. Educate yourself. If you buy at the right time, fix and rent houses, and hold long-term, you will become a multimillionaire in real estate.

That’s all I have for you today.

I’ve got a Fix and Flip Boot Camp coming up, so I’ll be focusing on that. I just wanted to get this podcast out and give you an update on the market. Lots of changes, lots of opportunities. Start marketing to motivated sellers, learn how to buy houses at a discount, and I look forward to seeing you at my next training event.

Until next time, I’ll see you on the next podcast.