Is Your Real Estate Strategy Outdated? Lessons from Dave Meyer Keynote

Michael Zuber (0:01)

All righty, folks, we're going to talk about Dave Meyer from BiggerPockets and his keynote speech at BiggerPockets 2026 Because I think Dave Meyer built on what Morgan Housel said day one, really talking about the real estate market, the real estate industry being built on a couple of things. And we're going to obviously review this method, Matt, the Lumberjack Landlord. Matt, how you doing, buddy?

Matt (0:23)

I'm doing super awesome. Congratulations on what I heard was an amazing talk at BiggerPockets.

Michael Zuber (0:28)

I appreciate that. Room was full. Yeah, it was standing room only this time. So again, I think hopefully a lot of people got out of it. And if you are in my community, I will be giving that speech this Sunday in our school community. And you can stop and ask questions and all that good stuff. So if you didn't make it to BiggerPockets, but you are a part of school, you will see it Sunday morning. But I want to go back to Dave Meyer because I think he brought up something that I've been thinking about, something that you and I have at least toyed with. Maybe we didn't put as succinctly as he did. And he basically said, real estate over the last five years has brought in all kinds of pretenders and grifters and charlatans and people out for a quick buck. Now, if you don't know Dave Meyer, Dave Meyer is a very nice man. He is not nearly as direct as me. And by that happenstance, clearly not as direct as you. So I expect you and I to get pretty spicy on this because Dave Meyer is very, very kind. I like Dave Meyer. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. So he basically said there is and has always been two approaches to real estate, which I think is interesting. OK, you got my attention. What are they?

And he called them, you either build to leave or you build to last.

So I will talk about each of them. And then you and I will go in. So he called build to leave.

His bullet points in there, four of each. He says, large and immediate returns. To me, that's quick buck, quick money. Sure. Number two, scale fast. Really don't put in a foundation. Just go, go, go.

Matt (2:07)

Yep.

Michael Zuber (2:07)

High risk, high leverage.

And then grind hard, then retire. Now, he did a much better job of spinning that. Because again, it is a right approach for some, in my opinion, if you get lucky, because on this strategy, Matt, you've got to get in at the right time. Yes. And also get out at the right time.

Matt (2:30)

Yes.

Michael Zuber (2:31)

Yep. So again, we'll start, we'll stop there. Build to leave. How does that hit you?

Matt (2:37)

I mean, I think, you know, that's where you see, you know, with a lot of like lower end or mid tier flippers, you know, they are, they'll take hard money at 13 percent. They'll promise away this amount of profit. They'll sell off equity like by hook or by crook. They're getting into that property. And whether and if everything goes perfectly, they do okay. If everything doesn't go according to plan, never happened in real estate ever before. You know, they end up with minimal profits. You know, the number of things that we see, it's kind of interesting because with some of the big talking heads, Graham Steffen and Caleb Hammer, Caleb's a guy I watch all the time, religiously, because I think he's finally starting to come around to it, that not everybody's created equal when it comes to money and their ability to understand it, right? Like some just choose to be ignorant. And so what I mean by that is as we look at some of the flippers and things like that in these markets, they very often do what's needed, not what's best.

And that's the difference of the asset, right?

Michael Zuber (3:44)

Yeah. When I think about build to leave, and again, I thought about this a lot, because I knew you and I would be talking about this today.

I think about how I started. And again, my whole journey was four rentals, and then I retire at 65

You almost couldn't get more long-term focus. That was a 35-year horizon. And then I go back and talk to all the flippers, the wholesalers, the syndicators, the Airbnb arbitrage, all of these people that came out of the woodwork the last four years, all of them, all of them to the man were talking about scaling fast and making millions of dollars. None of them could think past tomorrow, let alone 35 years from now. It was all about active income. It was all about debt. It was all about go, go, go. And I joked with Dave after his session, I saw him at dinner. And I said, this is what I said, see if you would have said this. I said, Dave, I think you spelled fail wrong. You said build to lead, but I think you misspelled fail. It should have been built to fail.