Showdown of The Century (Round 6): Investing in Big Cities vs Small Towns

In this episode, Tom and Emil battle it out in the hotly debated question of whether to invest in a big city or in a small town.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co hosts,   Tom: Tom Schneider   Emil: and Emil Shour   Michael: And today we're gonna be having another showdown episode, we're gonna be doing big city versus small town, which do we like better for our remote real estate investing. So let's get into it. Real quick before we get into it, I ate pizza for dinner last night, and it was really hot when I came out of the oven, and I just burned the roof of my mouth. Is that ever happened to you guys where it's just like so raw?   Tom: Definitely. I'm very risk averse. When it comes to heating food. I just played safe my microwave. I programmed it to not go for over 30 seconds and if it's something that takes five minutes, I just stand by plugging in 30 seconds and then it's just safer that way. Mouth pain is terrible, like teeth. tooth pain, anyways, yes, that sucks when you burn your mouth.   Michael: I'm just an adult baby like, you don't break your mouth.   So for those of you who don't know, or who have never listened to a showdown episode, what we're gonna do is we're gonna debate big city versus small town. And then we're going to swap sides. And so the person who took small town is going to have big city and vice versa. So we get to hear the CO hosts pro and con argument for both big city and small town so we get the full viewpoint and vantage point for how they think about these things. And I can see them both frivolously I don't know if that's the right word writing down notes. copiously taking notes.   Tom; I'm not doing it for those frivolously.   Michael: Frivolously!   Alright, so Emil, are you taking big city or small town first?   Emil: I am going to take big city. And when we talk about big city here, before we get into it, let's define that for audience. What are we defining as a big city? Are we talking a Los Angeles and New York, a Chicago? Are we talking secondary cities, tertiary cities?   Michael: I'd say secondary and tertiary cities.   Tom: I'd say big cities, let's say the 10 biggest cities in the United States. So like, I'd say, Atlanta, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, New York, LA, those ones, what do you guys think? I mean, I'm just kind of shooting from the cuff here work. But the little cities got to be little, little cities. You know, I think the middle middle ground is off the table.   Michael: I don't want to have ever heard of the cities that you're talking about.   Tom: Indianapolis, you're not in this debate.   Emil: So we're not going to go into like which city in particular, but just in general, in general, like big population cities. So the top 10 are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego. That's interesting, Dallas and San Jose. So that's the top 10 markets. And then we'll cover the other end of the spectrum where you're just talking about like, you know, a small town in Michigan or something, for example, right?   Michael: Yeah, yeah, perfect.   Emil: So I'll take a large city to start perfect, Tom, you're on small town.   Tom: Beautiful.   Michael: And Emil I want to give you the floor first. So tell us why you are such a big fan of big cities.   Emil: I'm not a big fan of big cities, but I'm gonna pretend to be for this show.   Michael: So for the debate for the debate.   Emil: To me, there's three that really stand out. So those three are population, rent growth and appreciation potential. So in bigger cities, you have a lot of people, meaning you have a lot of tenants, which is good. As a residential real estate investor, I want to know my tenant pool is large, that's a good thing. For me, that means I have a lot of tenants. Good to know. The second one I mentioned is rent growth. So typically, in larger cit