Chad Carson’s 2 Deals/Year Strategy That Makes You a Rental Millionaire
June 24, 2026
AI Summary
5 min read“Most people are just not even getting to this iteration stage because they’re listening online and saying, ‘Oh, this is not a good real estate market.’ Those are amateurs.” Chad Carson has been in the business 23 years, and he says the investors who have been around for 50 or 60 years are “rubbing their hands together” while everyone else makes excuses. The difference? They treat every market as an experiment.
Carson, a South Carolina investor who pioneered the “small but mighty” strategy, joined Dave Meyer and Henry Washington on the BiggerPockets podcast to explain how to buy one or two great rental properties per year even in 2026. The core insight is psychological: the biggest advantage small investors have is the ability to iterate quickly with low stakes, and the biggest mistake is trying to compete with lazy, established investors on their own terms.
The iteration mindset: marketing before property
Carson argues that the most important investment you make is not the property itself but the marketing strategy you use to find it. In a normal market where you cannot buy retail and make the numbers work, “something’s got to be low”—either the purchase price or the financing. The way to find low prices is to experiment with different off-market channels until you discover what works in your micro-market.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Market Context & Chad's Current Strategy** - Chad explains how he's adapting his portfolio in 2026 by buying only 2-3 properties per year and pruning underperformers.
- 2 (03:00) **The Lean Startup Approach to Real Estate** - The hosts compare investing to startup methodology: maximize your rate of learning by failing fast on small experiments.
- 3 (05:57) **Low-Cost, Unscalable Deal-Finding Tactics** - Chad and Henry argue the best edge for new investors is doing the work that lazy, established investors won't do.
- 4 (08:36) **Real Example: Tracking Down a Seller Through Relatives** - Chad shares a story of buying a property no one else could get by skip-tracing and calling the owner's cousin in Ohio.
- 5 (10:18) **Foreclosure Auctions & Pre-Foreclosures Are Back** - Both investors highlight the resurgence of distressed deal channels that have been quiet for years.
- 6 (12:39) **Hard-to-Pull Lists: Probate, Evictions, Code Violations** - Chad explains how to find deals by manually accessing public records that automated systems miss.
- 7 (14:44) **The "2 Deals/Year" Playbook** - Dave crystallizes the episode's core strategy: all you need is to find two great deals per year.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Is buying rental properties still worth it in 2026?
There’s no denying that rising interest rates, sluggish rent growth, and other factors have taken the shine off many properties that would have been home-run deals only a few years ago.
But this is real estate we’re talking about. Buy-and-hold investing tends to reward people in the long run. It’s just that, to buy in this market, you’ve got to adapt.
Chad “Coach” Carson believes these market conditions heavily favor the “small and mighty” investor—the person who isn’t looking to buy at a massive scale but actually handpick one or two great assets every year. But there’s one caveat: you must have the time, grit, and hunger to go out and find real estate deals that the more experienced, “lazy” investors can’t be bothered with.
And Chad’s about to show you how to do just that. He shares how his own buy box has evolved in the last 12 months, his favorite strategies for buying off-market properties today, and what every investor can do to slowly and steadily build a rental portfolio that provides the lifestyle they want—no matter the market.
In This Episode We Cover
The two biggest ways to win as a “small” real estate investor in 2026
Why getting a strong cash-on-cash return today isn’t as important as you think
The new investor’s superpower when looking for off-market properties
Chad’s 3-2-1 strategy for building a portfolio with new construction homes
The number one mistake most investors make shortly after buying a rental property
The exact blu
More from this podcast
BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast →