Why Waiting for the “Perfect” Property is Costing You Wealth

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Your idea of a “dream home” or “dream investment property” is stopping you from building wealth and taking steps toward financial freedom. Don’t believe us? Today’s guest proves it. Mitra Kalita lives in her dream home today, but it’s only because she bought a house FAR from what was her dream back in 2002. With her family moving often, she was accustomed to packing up and making somewhere new her home throughout her childhood. So, when it was time to buy her first property, then later move, settle in, move again, and repeat, it was nothing new. This has now led to her dream home, but it only started because she made a move on that first property. Mitra went through the 2008 housing crash as a journalist, seeing what actual loss looked like for everyday Americans. However, even with memories of the last crash, she still owns real estate and hopes the new generation of first-time homebuyers can do the same. Today, we’re talking with Mitra about the impact 2008 had on the housing market and society at large, why your “dream home” often comes after your first home, and why working while investing is a superpower that most Americans are missing. In This Episode We Cover Why you should ditch the “dream” home/property idea and buy now instead How the 2008 housing crash changed America forever and still affects today’s buyers Is buying a house still worth it, and if so, will most millennials ever get their chance to buy? Why combining real estate investing and a strong career can be a wealth-building superpower And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1130 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Your first house doesn't need to be perfect.
0:02.2	It just needs to be the right property for you right now.
0:05.5	And this is true whether you're buying a house to live in yourself
0:09.0	or a pure investment property.
0:11.2	And it's an important mindset shift that you can make today
0:14.9	if you're struggling to buy,
0:16.1	and it'll empower you to take one step towards achieving your goal.
0:21.2	And that's really all that you need to do.
0:23.3	Just take one step at a time.
0:30.9	Hey, everyone.
0:31.9	I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets.
0:34.9	I've been buying rental properties and pursuing financial
0:37.9	freedom for 15 years. And on this show, we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through
0:42.8	real estate. Our guest in the show today is Mitra Kalita. She's a journalist and the CEO of
0:48.5	URL media. Mitra bought her first home back in 2002 and has been thinking deeply about real estate ever since.
0:56.4	She's covered the 2008 crash as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and more recently launched a newsletter called Escape Home.
1:04.6	In my conversation with Mitra, we're going to talk about how making the right real estate investing decisions could be a secret key to unlocking
1:13.1	success in pretty much any career you want to pursue, whether that's in real estate or something
1:17.9	else. Whether Mitra sees any echoes of 2008 in today's real estate market and the advice
1:23.2	she gives people all the time about how the first house you buy or even the third house or the fourth
1:28.4	house is probably not going to be the last one. And so you don't need to plan everything out
1:33.0	perfectly. You can't plan everything in life. So you just need to make the best decisions that
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 8 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BiggerPockets, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BiggerPockets and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.