Brendon Meyer, who has accumulated about 50 doors in the multifamily space with his partner before they both hit their mid-30s, has been sitting on the sidelines in the past year.

“We’ve been very conservative the last couple years and we’re kinda chomping to do something,” said Meyer, whose properties are concentrated in the Tacoma, Wash., area. “It’s been tough because interest rates are making it a lot more difficult. And everybody wants a lot for their property.”

He and his partner, and former 2nd-grade classmate, Rane Schaub believe the real estate market is plagued by high borrowing costs and elevated property prices. They did purchase a commercial space a few months back in downtown Tacoma that is rented out to a law firm. He also closed on a property in October in Olympia, about 70 miles south of Seattle that has a 2,000-square foot log cabin, an oversized garage on about 30 acres bordering a private lake.

He and his fiancee haven’t decided if they are going to move there full-time from Seattle, but he did say the spread “would make an awesome Airbnb” if he ever decided to go that route. He’s generally not in favor of that strategy, and feels a lot of the online hype for short-term rentals masks some of the problems in that sector.

Meyer has been working on contract for Wispr, a site where real estate agents can connect for off-market deals. But he feels antsy, and is starting to think he and his partner’s next opportunities might lie outside the Tacoma area, where rents have “backslid” in the last year. His partner has been living in Maryland, and traveling back to the Tacoma area once a month to manage his family’s tire stores.

“We’ve been talking for years about expanding into other areas,” he said. “Back East might be the way to go.”

These are two guys who graduated into the teeth of the 2009 recession, and Meyer was selling used cars while Schaub was changing tires at the family tire shop when they scraped together enough for a down payment on a single family in Tacoma, what Meyer called a “crappy house.”

“We did all the work — scraped the popcorn ceiling and sanded the floors, and hung drywall,” he said. “We stayed in it for two years while we fixed it up, and we probably invested $50,000 plus our own labor.” They bought the house for $164,000 and sold it six years later for $435,000. 

They were on their way, but the ride had some bumps. They bought a 5-unit multifamily in 2012 in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma.

He quickly realized that they were in over their heads.

“As we pull up to the building, two cop cars pulled up and said we need to talk to you and they gave us a breakdown,” Meyer told proptext last year, and the police told them about drug dealers and prostitutes who were living there. 

An officer handed them his card and said: “It’s not if you have problems, it’s when. Just call me.” 

The neighborhood was notorious for its gang activity and drug sales in the 1980s and 90s, and has since gradually gentrified.

“We never managed tenants and we didn’t know the law,” Meyer said. “We needed two of the five units to be rented out to pay the bills. It took us a year to get the problem tenants out.”

The police stepped in at one point and evicted a drug dealer. Eventually, they had a tenant roll that included students from the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus. They bought the building for $227,000 in 2012 and sold it for $689,000 in 2017, after making a number of improvements. 

The strategy they have pursued over the years is to find properties where they can add value, buy and hold for five to seven years and then trade up. “We always roll the capital gains over into new properties and trade up with a 1031,” Meyer said.

Although they have been mostly focused on multifamily, they do own one self-storage facility, which has struggled, though is now on a better track since they hired a new property manager.

The lesson the partners learned there is that all their children need some love.

“There is increased competition in the area and we have not put the time in,” Meyer said. “It was something that took a back seat to other priorities.” 

They did not want to sell the property because they had tapped its equity to finance other purchases, and would have been forced to sell at a loss. Currently, they are looking to sell a single-family residential property in Tacoma where they thought a rezoning would allow them to increase the number of units, but the change did not pass.

“We should have some dry powder soon, so we’ll be looking to make a deal,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tacoma passed new rent regulations in May that are more tenant friendly, including a ban on rent increases in the first year and a maximum increase of 7-10%.

Meyer said the new rent regulations, and new inventory that has come on the Tacoma market, have impacted his portfolio, and they have not had the rent growth they expected so the properties are not worth as much.

“We’re not looking to sell, and we’d love to buy but prices are too high,” he said. “Our real strategy is to start looking outside Washington because we’re looking for opportunities.”

Meyer credits a course at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego for firing his interest in real estate. Taught by George Fermanian, a Point Loma alumni who became a big developer in San Diego, the course was hard to get into but Meyer had an advantage because he played soccer and Fermanian was a fan of the team.

“He was a massive inspiration for me,” he said. “He would take us on field trips to development sites and show us how to fix leaking toilets.”

When proptext interviewed him last year, Meyer offered this advice to those in the real estate game, or thinking about getting in: 

Number one, it’s tough to go alone. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a team. With my partner Rane it works well because our skills and knowledge are very complementary. Number two, just do it. Don’t wait. If you put yourself in the right position you will make money over a long period of time. One thing Rane has always pushed me on, actually he’s hammered me on — there’s never a bad time to get into a piece of real estate if that asset is correct and is at the right price.

Beyond that, he harkens back to his days selling used Toyotas, the only job he could get when he graduated in the midst of the Great Recession.

“We’ve always tried to be the Toyota Camry of rental properties — safe, reliable and clean,” Meyer said.

Homeowner equity decreased about 2.1% in the last year, falling by $373.8 billion, which translates to an overall net equity to $17.1 trillion for homes with a mortgage, according to a report by Cotality, the property information data solutions provider. Homeowner equity peaked at close to $17.7 trillion in Q2 of 2024 and has since ranged between $17 trillion and $17.6 trillion. Homeowners across the U.S. lost an average of $13,400 in equity in the last year, but 10 states in the Northeast and Upper Midwest (and Wyoming) saw equity gains while the rest of the country saw declines.

Enough with the jokes about Buffalo, that snowy northwest corner of New York. Buyers and investors are seeking out “refuge markets,” according to a report from Realtor.com, where homes are affordable and owners can expect to see steady appreciation. Buffalo qualifies as one, as does Grand Rapids, Mich., Milwaukee and Cleveland. Buffalo’s median list price of $259,900 in November was an increase of 4.0% from last year. The city’s price per square foot rose 3.7% year-over-year, and since 2022, price per square foot has climbed 17.2%

Zillow shares fell more than 9% on Monday, driven down by the prospect that it could soon have a ruthless competitor: Google Search. Google appears to be testing how to include real estate sale listings into its search results, allowing users to see a property's page, request a tour and contact an agent — similar to what Zillow's portal offers. Wall Street analysts pointed out that Zillow's exposure to organic search is fairly small, limiting the impact as more details around Google's product come to light. Zillow shares rose 2.47% in trading on Tuesday. 

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