Evernest Property Management Blogs

If you’ve been paying attention to real estate trends, you’ve probably heard the term Build-to-Rent (or BTR) a lot lately. BTR is one of the fastest growing strategies in the investing world and is poised to become even more popular in the coming year.

As 2025 draws to a close, the headlines suggest that American homeowners are particularly unmotivated to sell lately. In today’s climate of high interest rates, high asking prices, and slow sales activity, a lot of homeowners seem content to keep paying their low-interest mortgages and stay put until market winds start blowing in another direction. As an investor in need of discounted properties you may be wondering: how are you going to connect with motivated sellers in 2026?

A few decades in real estate investment have taught us a thing or two about wealth creation. We’ve learned from our own successes and mistakes, and we’ve gotten to learn from others in the investment community as well. Over the years, we’ve met plenty of investors who earn a good living, but we’ve also watched others make genuine fortunes.

Searching for the right investment property and finding it harder than looking for a needle in a hundred different haystacks? We’ve been there. Between random properties cluttering your inbox, promises of impossibly cheap rehabs, and wild ARV claims, it can be daunting to sift through it all and find an actual deal. If you bought the wrong house because you didn’t have a strategy for cutting through the noise you wouldn’t be the first investor to do so, nor would you be the last.

If you’re someone who cares about real estate, chances are that flipping houses has crossed your mind once or twice. Seeing a distressed property’s potential, executing a vision that maximizes its value, and turning a big profit is an exciting challenge that requires both business acumen and creativity to pull off. If you have a special interest in design, architecture, or historic buildings, it can be an especially seductive business model.

Have you ever faced a tough market and held onto a property because you didn’t want to accept sub-par terms? Have you ever wanted to sell a rental but hesitated because you didn’t want to lose the cash flow? Believe it or not, there is a strategy that allows you to both sell an asset on your terms and keep the cash flowing for years to come: owner financing.

When most investors think about scaling a portfolio, they often focus on conventional buy-to-let mortgages or commercial financing. However, there is a powerful and frequently overlooked lever that investors can pull when they need to move quickly to secure a great deal: hard money loans. Used wisely, hard money lending can accelerate acquisitions, unlock equity you already own, and create new cash-flow streams.

So, you found a deal—awesome. Now the real question: how are you going to make money from it? You probably already have a plan in mind, but the best real estate investors never go into a deal with just one plan; they walk in with two or three exits ready to go. If you stall with Plan A, Plan B (or C) pays.

Whether you’re talking about birds in the fall or Americans in the twenty-first century, the term “migration pattern” typically evokes movement towards the South. This autumn, however, Americans are breaking with their feathered friends and flocking to a region better known for snow than sunshine.

If you’re looking to build wealth through real estate, one of the biggest questions to consider is the type of real estate you should invest in. Should it be single-family houses? Multifamily apartment buildings? Big commercial properties?