How to Refinance Your Mortgage in 2026 (Step by Step)

Today's guest was on the show before, but what's happened since then is where the real lessons are. Because buying the deal is one thing, refinancing it in this market, that's a whole different game. So if you've ever wondered what actually happens after the episode ends, after the Instagram posts, this is the behind the scenes of how a real estate investor navigates a refinance in today's lending environment. This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And today we're welcoming back Danielle Daly. She's previously been on our show talking about her investing journey. And now she's back to catch us up on what's changed. And we're going to go deep on a refinance you just completed. Danielle, welcome back to the show. You are now a two-timer on The Rookie Podcast. Happy to have you back. Hello. I feel honored. Not sure how I got here, but you know, second time's the charm. Thanks for having me. You've also been on the BP Rookie panel at BP Con several times too, also. So a familiar face to the rookies. But for anyone who didn't catch your first episode, give us the 60-second overview of who you are and kind of what you've been working on since we last spoke. Yeah, 60 seconds. Oh man, I will do my best. Hello, everyone, who I do not know. My name is Danielle Daly. I currently work at BiggerPockets on the advertising sales team. And I'm also an investor. So last time, if you saw me on the Rookie Podcast, I had just bought my first property. I am now on property number three. So since then, I've been maintaining co-living strategies. And I'm also living in my house on my own. So my first two properties are now fully rentals. But I've really been working on getting a property per year since we last spoke. So the first two properties were house hacks. And this third property, you're not house hacking. So I'm sort of house hacking. I'm not. That's the easiest house hack. Yeah, it's the easiest house hack. But I did go into this without wanting to house hack. And then he decided to move. So it worked out great. But you know, I just hit a point where I think I'm kind of not wanting to have roommates anymore. So that's the status. Go back really quick. That's the shift in strategy. Besides the house hacking element, have you done any kind of short-term rental, long-term rental? Or has it just been kind of the co-living, having roommates in the extra bedroom? Yeah. So I've only done co-living right now. So it's long-term strategy, co-living. I'm looking at leases anywhere between six and 12 months. I am considering diving into midterm rentals as the market does sort of shift, which I'm sure we'll dive into during this episode. But yeah, I've only done long-term as of right now. As your portfolio has kind of shifted and grown, Danielle, you actually just kind of hit on that. Hold on. Let me see. There's a different question that I want to ask too. No, I think you hit actually both of those. Actually, let me ask one follow-up question. So now that you've turned your first two properties into true investment deals, give us the quick numbers. What was it doing when you lived there and what are both of those properties doing now in terms of cashflow? Yeah. So when I was living there, I'll just go each property at a time. So the first property, I was making about $250 a month. So it was pretty minuscule, but I also lived for free. So that was my first house hack, lived there, rented out the rest of the rooms. And then my second property, between having now two at that point, living in the second house hack, renting out the rooms, I was breaking even. So between both properties, still paying nothing. There was no cashflow, but I was not paying anything to live. So the first two properties. What would you have had to pay if you were renting a room very similar? If you rented your room to yourself, how much were you saving in rent? There's two ways to look at that. If I was going to go rent a room in someone else's house hack, call it about $900 on average in the Denver Metro. If I was going to go get an apartment, that's a different story. That could be upwards of $2,500 to have a one-bedroom apartment within Denver. So big range, obviously, but definitely saving at least, call it $800 to $900 a month at the low end if I was renting just a room in a house. And you're making $250 cashflow and you're building equity in a property that is appreciating and your tenants are paying down the mortgage. Exactly. Yeah. It is a no-brainer. Absolutely. It was an amazing thing to do. It's gotten me to where I'm at today. What has been one of the biggest lessons that you've learned through this experience that you've done so far in your investing journey? It's a great question. I think there's a couple of different lessons. The first one is you should have reserves. I am all for being a little bit risky. It's just me. I don't have a family yet, so I'm all for it. However, I think I got lucky with my first property where the entire year, nothing went wrong. Literally nothing. I think I maybe called a plumber once in the first year. So I'm like, oh, real estate's easy. This is great. I'm making $250 a month living in this property, living for free. This is awesome. I think that reality hit me when I got the second property. So the second property, love it. It's a great property. So this is not a complaint. However, the things that went wrong were almost funny, for lack of a better word. I was like, this is crazy. This is like a movie. I had a couple of flooded bedrooms that happened in that house, dude. That was a whole other story in itself. Had a lot of plumbing issues. Had to get a new AC unit. Ended up having to get an entire HVAC unit for one of the houses. It was just like thing after thing that popped up. So it made me realize like, wow, okay, I need to have reserves. And the reason that is a huge learning lesson is when I got to the third property, my TTI, my debt to income ratio was actually a little bit too high. So I was not even able to get a loan for that HVAC system that was quite expensive. So I would have been in a little bit of a tough spot if I did not have reserves to be able to pay that in full. So definitely have reserves. And then the second thing is I have to remind myself, and for all of you listening, definitely keep this in mind. This is the long game. We're playing a long game here. This is, for me, houses that I plan to hold for the next at least 30 years. So I have to remind myself when expenses like CapEx do pop up that, okay, we're in it for the long game. This is part of the expense of owning a home. This is just part of the process. And if I can just hold on, I will be completely set for retirement with just these three properties. So those are my two learning lessons. Daniel, you talk about reserves. How much do you feel is maybe a baseline? And then, Ashley, maybe even a question for you too, how much is too much? Because I also think you can get to a point where maybe you've got too much sitting in reserves if you just always kind of continue to collect that. So how did you kind of set a threshold for yourself, Danielle, on what the minimal amount of reserves are that you want for a property? That's such a good question, Ashley. I definitely want to hear from you after in terms of the too much because, Tony, this is a quick side note. I really love that you asked that because I'm actually diving into just setting myself up in terms of investing outside of real estate, making sure I'm diversified. So as I've gone down that rabbit hole, I realized if you have money sitting there, it's wasting away due to inflation. I don't want it just sitting in my account. So for me, I'm trying to figure out how much do I need for real estate versus how much do I want to allocate to other investments and potentially more real estate. So for me, that number is about $10,000 per property. Let's say $15,000 per property if you really want to be a little bit more risk averse. But I would say at least $10,000. So for me, $30K, having it cash, liquid, or in a high yield savings, something that I could just pull out very easily so that I have it in case something like that pops up. Because I don't think something crazy would pop up in all three houses at the same time, but you also never know. So that's my number, Ashley. I would actually love to hear what you think is too much. Yeah. And mine fluctuates. Oh, we're going to buy a house. Okay. Let's pull money out of reserves and let's use it to buy the house. And then we're going to pay it back when we're financing. So it's constant money management moving, but baseline is between $30,000 and $50,000. I keep in a savings account. I would say it probably never drops below that $30,000. And I have about, I think I'm at 20 properties now, but also small. Single family homes are 1,100 square feet. So my roof replacement costs, my HVAC replacement costs are not as large as... What are you buying? Four, five bedroom homes? Up to six. In Denver. Yeah. In Denver. So my CapEx expenses are way lower per property. But one thing that I also do is I have $200,000 line of credit. So I also keep my line of credit for if I ever needed to pull off of it. So when I do do the no-no and pull money out of my reserves to pay for the down payment on a new property or something like that, I have my line of credit still, but then I work to replenish my reserves. But I used to think that I needed a lot more, but I'm definitely not as conservative as I used to be. Kind of knowing in my head, okay, not all of my HVAC systems are going to need to be replaced at this single moment in time. So I've definitely am not as conservative as I used to be too. But I think having the line of credit as kind of a backup has really helped me with that. But as a rookie, I recommend being super, super conservative. And I also have other income streams that I can pull from if I needed to put cash in. But I'm also keeping, besides my savings, just my actual property accounts. I usually leave a pretty healthy amount of cash just sitting in those too, just from the cashflow building up in there too. Yeah. For me, it's slightly different, right? I mean, because A, we have a lot of different partnerships that kind of infiltrate our business. So I can't have just like one large bucket. So we actually do have a separate reserves account for every single property. And the goal for us, again, it depends on the property. For our bigger properties, we try and get closer to maybe like six months of reserves. And then on the smaller part, like tiny homes that are less than 400 square feet that were built in 2022. I'm not super concerned about having a lot of money in reserves for those. So maybe it's three months of reserves for those properties. But we do have our separated out by property. And the reason that it's a little trickier for me is because if property A has an issue, I can't necessarily tap into the reserves for property B because they're two separate partnerships. So we really do have to make sure that each individual property is funded appropriately. So Danielle, let's start. Why did you even decide to refinance your property in the first place? Well, I've been wanting to refinance at least one of my properties since buying all of them. Unfortunately, I missed the wave of the 2020 through 2021 crazy interest rate era. So unfortunately, all of my properties. And Danielle, I don't want to pour salt on the wound, but Ash, what's your lowest interest rate right now? I didn't buy anything when interest rates were low and I didn't refinance. So my lowest interest rate is, I think, a 4.25. Got it. My lowest right now is a 2.65%. Oh my gosh. So every time you do bring this up on an episode, Tony, it is... I'm pouring salt on your wound too. Yeah. I don't want to pour salt in the wound, but I'm going to do it anyway. That is half of mine. My lowest is, what is it right now? I think it's actually 5.1, so it's pretty good. But my second property is a 6.6. And then my third property that I bought was a 7.1. I say was, because that is the one I decided to refinance. Rates basically got down to, I mean, they're around six right now, but they were down to like 6.2, 6.3-ish when I went to refinance. And I have a really great lender who helps me watch rates. And he actually reached out and said, hey, this could be a good time to look at doing a refinance. So I decided to move forward with it. And we'll get into the numbers, I'm sure. But it just was something for me to reduce my monthly mortgage, because that's what I care about, is having the lowest expenses possible over the long-term. And as of this recording, I just saw this news earlier this week, but rates dropped below 6% for the first time in, I think, like three years. And I just pulled it up right now. And the 30-year fix is at 5.98%. So we're just under six. I think six was like... And just based on people who are much smarter than me, what a lot of folks are saying is that there's the psychological barrier at six. And once we get below six and that number swaps from a six to a five, that starts to change the buyer psychology. And hopefully, we'll get more people coming back into the market and building up the real estate industry again. But with that, as more buyers come in, so too does maybe the competition. And we put some more upward pressure on prices. So I'm really curious to see how rates and supply and buyers play out for the rest of this year, because five, we haven't been here in so long, it feels like. So yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah. And even... That's a great point too, Tony. On that note, there's also, I think, for rookie investors, who are just getting started, who have their first or second properties, you want to figure out, one, how much reserves do you have on hand? How much is your income? How much money do you have to be able to spend on a refinance? Because it does cost money, right? So for me, we ran the numbers. It was a pretty low cost. I'm in a position where I have the extra cash. And so I wasn't going to sit here trying to time the market. I kind of had a feeling we would get below a six at some point this year, but I also knew I can always refinance again. That's number one. Technically, you're supposed to wait six months, but some lenders will work with you. You could just do it again. But two, it was a low cost for me because of a few different factors, which we can dive into, but it was a low cost. So for me to have savings for my mortgage moving forward, it was worth it to me. But I think it's more of like a personal thing at that point of someone trying to wait and time the market versus being okay with the savings that they could lock in now. Now, Danielle, the thing I think of is refinancing is like, oh my God, all the closing costs I have to pay again. The fees, the commitment fee, all of these things. Can you break down before we actually get into the loan amount and things like that as to what were the fees like for the refinance process and how did you decide that it would be worth it to go ahead and refinance? Yeah. So the closing costs, I should have had them pulled up right in front of me, but they roughly ballparking it, there were roughly about 8,000 for closing costs. So it's pretty similar to closing a normal loan when you do a refinance. The lender I work with, because I've consistently worked with him on all three properties, he offers a little bit of a discount. So it's typically in credits. So it was, I think roughly maybe like 2,500. Do not quote me on these numbers in terms of the discount that I got for those closing costs. No, we're going to fact check you at the end of this episode, please supply the document. We'll never know. Even if they're way off, we'll never know. Totally be off here. But yeah, between his credit and then another thing is the timing that I closed on the loan. It was earlier this year back in, I think it was January, like late December, early January. Because of that timing, I actually didn't pay. You basically skip a month that you have to pay for your mortgage. And so my mortgage was at the time already at roughly 3,400. So that's another 3,400 towards closing costs that I basically, like you pay it over the course of the loan. But considering, you know, as our mindset should be as an investor, I don't really care about like an additional payment towards the end of the loan because I expect tenants to be paying that off. So that was also part of the savings, so to speak, of what I didn't need to pay. And then I might be missing something there, but whatever it was, it basically came down to me paying like a couple thousand dollars for the refinance, right? Like out of pocket. So it wasn't really a huge cost to me. And then I ended up saving about $250 a month on my mortgage. So if you do the back of the napkin math on that, that's taking you, what, a couple of years, I think, to get back to pay off basically what you paid for the refinance. Yeah, probably even less. Yeah, even less than that, right? Like for me in the position that I'm currently in, that was worth it, right? For me to lock something in, to know I can always refinance again, but to spend a minimal amount for me to be able to lock in a lower rate, especially considering I also have a 2-1 buy-down to complicate things even further, that was worth it to me, right? For some people, it might not be at that point in time. It wasn't a super reduced rate. It went from a 7-1 to a 6-6, right? So it's something, but for me, it made sense at this point in time. Daniel, were you able to wrap any of those closing costs into the actual loan itself? That's a great question. Actually, I'm not 100% sure. Well, I guess, did you take more? We could kind of get into that piece, Tony, as to if she took more. I guess the way to answer that is did you write a check at closing? Yes. Okay. Because I refinanced my primary residence when rates got super low, right? I was able to get, I think when we bought our house, this was in 2018, we were like a 4.7 or something, a 4.8 or something like that when we bought. And when rates got super low, we refinanced, we got down to a 3. And I just looked it up while you were talking through your numbers and our total closing costs were 11 grand. But we had zero out-of-pocket costs for that and it just got rolled into the new loan. So we were able to refinance without actually spending anything out-of-pocket on this deal. And every lender is slightly different on how they allow you to do that, but that was the benefit for us. I have a question because I've never refinanced a property that had escrow. So is your escrow money rolled over to the new loan or is part of that closing cost you pre-paying for another year of insurance and property taxes? That is a good question. And I'm looking it up here. I don't consider that really a closing cost because you're going to pay that anyway. So that would even reduce the amount of fees that you're paying. Yeah. So that was actually separate. So I did have to pre-pay some of the insurance and property taxes, but that 11,000, that was the appraisal, the origination fee, which is the majority of that. And then all the other escrow fees. What was the origination fee on that? It was $8,800. Oh my God. Wow. My small local bank charges like $1,000. That's crazy. Then I had another 500 for the appraisal and then another $1,800 in escrow fees, but zero out of pocket. I wish I had that. Definitely. Okay. Tony, let's just wrap up your example real quick. So you paid that money or that money was wrapped into your loan. How did your payment change and how much were you saving each month? Yeah. Gosh, I would have to look up what my original principal interest in taxes payment was, but after this refinance, it was $2,900 was the principal interest taxes and insurance. Before that, we were definitely, I don't know, I think it was like 35, maybe 36, if I recall correctly. So it was a pretty big reduction in our actual monthly payment. So you recouped that money in the same, like less than two years. Yeah. Easily, easily, easily, easily. And we locked in this 30-year fixed three-percent rate. Well, really, you didn't even have to pay it out of pocket. There, right? That was like a no-brainer for us. That's substantial. Yeah. I wish we were in that kind of market. Unfortunately, my numbers are not as impressive. Different times, different times. Definitely different times. Yeah. Now, Danielle, let's go over the numbers of your house. What was the purchase price, your original loan balance? What did it appraise you and what did you take actually at the refinance? Yeah. So my original purchase price, this was a year ago, roughly a year ago. It was December 25th or sorry, December. That was not a year ago. December 24th. I originally bought it for $565,000 and it did actually appraise at the same value. Again, only a year later. The loan amount before the refinance was $528,000 and it was $524,000 after that year. Since most of it has gone to interest versus principal, most of my payments, unfortunately. Which is so depressing to look at when you look at it. It's so sad. I paid off $4,000 in principal in a year. That's like one mortgage payment. Great. But hey, progress is progress. And I didn't pay most of this because of my first two rentals, more than half of this mortgage. So there's that. For the numbers in terms of rates, the rate was initially 7.1, but I actually did have a 2-1 buy-down. So the 2-1 buy-down being you're locking in that 7.1 rate, but for the first two years, you basically have a rate that is a point lower each year. So for example, year one was a 5.6 rate that I paid at that house. It was about, or at this house, it was about $3,400 a month that I was paying for the mortgage. And then year two, it was structured to be a 6.6, which would have been about, call it almost $3,800, a little bit under that for the mortgage. And then I would have been locked in for years three through 30 at that 7.1 interest rate, which would have been a little bit over $4,000 a month for the mortgage. So that's what it was. I basically locked in a 6.6 rates, but because I was only halfway through the 2-1 buy-down, I'm currently paying at a 5.6 rate. They still honor the 2-1, even though you... Really? Wow. Yeah. So it's kind of cool. I'm right now paying about $3,500 a month. So pretty similar payment to what I was paying. Or sorry, now it's at a 6.6 because I'm in year... Or no. Yep. No, 5.6 because they honored it. And then I locked in a 6.6 for years three through 30. So they're honoring being able to stay within that 2-1 buy-down. I was just going to say, Danielle, I actually never knew that when you refinanced it, if you were on a 2-1 buy-down, that the new loan would be able to honor that original buy-down. I've never heard of that before. So I just learned something new. So for all the rookies that are listening, that's a question to ask. If you did buy something and you're refinancing and you've got some sort of buy-down, ask if they can honor that going into the new loan. Because imagine if you went from a 7.1 to like a 5.98, what we just saw today, and you still got that buy-down. Now you're in the fours, which is crazy. Exactly. And that was kind of what made me want to do this, is that they still honored that. Because in theory, I'm in year two of the buy-down at a 6.6. So if they didn't honor that, there wouldn't be a huge sort of upside because I could have saved another year of money during that 2-1 buy-down. So it made sense for me. But it is worth noting, I still paid a little bit out of pocket. It just, in my situation, made sense. And if I get the chance to do another refinance, I probably will. If it makes sense at that time. With this, when you switch loans, did you stay with the same loan company? And is that part of why they honored it? That is another great question. No. So my lender, he was with a specific company, and he actually switched companies, but he's still someone that I love working with. So now I have a loan that is with a different provider versus my other two loans. But realistically, at first, I'm very kind of detail-oriented and sort of OCD, where I'm like, I want them all in the same place. And I know that sounds like such a small minute detail. No, trust me. That would be so nice. I have a couple of loans with ShelfPoint, and their dashboard is like, here's this loan, here's this loan, here's this loan. I'm like, if only all of my loans could be, and then one just got sold, of course, to somebody else, and now it's a new dashboard. Business idea for whoever wants to create that, right? Like some sort of consolidated platform where you can see all your loans and just access it through one platform or dashboard. That'd be great. Good idea. But yeah, I just have basically two different loan providers now. But it's simple. I mean, it's the same. The dashboard is the same. It's just two different logins. Which seems minuscule, but it actually gets annoying. Well, Danielle, walk us through the actual process for the refinance. From the moment that you decided to, hey, I think I might want to refinance to actually sitting at the closing table. What were those steps in between? Yeah. So it was actually very simple, and it really replicates buying a house. It replicates the loan process of just a normal purchase, aside from it being, one, a little bit more simple. Two, you just already kind of have experience. So I already had the documentation and the paperwork ready of what was needed. And three, I was actually able to close virtually, which I would assume you might be able to do that maybe with a regular loan as well. But with this, I was able to just have a notary online and just be able to sign it, and everything was done virtually. So it was much more simple, but realistically, it was a very similar process as buying a house. In terms of the paperwork that's needed, it takes a few weeks. You're working with your lender just to kind of get what's needed, but it was really simple. It's just basically providing a bunch of paperwork and making sure that you run through the numbers with your lender and you understand what you're committing to. And what kind of loan was it? Was it like a traditional conventional loan or some other type of super secret refinance weapon? I'm not that cool yet. I'm not that experienced. Just a conventional. This was standard conventional. Was it still your primary at the time that you got to refinance it as a primary, or did you have to refinance it as an investment loan? Yeah. So this luckily is my primary. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. That's a great point, just to call out, is that my first two properties, if I ever want to go refinance that, those would be investment loans. I don't know if that's the proper word for it. But having an investment loan means a little bit of a higher rate. So with my primary, that's another reason that I felt not at all pressured, but I felt like this was the right time to do it while I lived here, just to not even worry about the market. Don't really care if interest rates go up or down. Obviously, we don't want them to go down. But if they don't, let me lock it in now. And that's what I mean by not caring what happens in the future. I don't want to time things while I'm living here since I potentially will move again. This isn't like my forever home necessarily. I wanted to just be able to do it now while I had that lower rate of a deep primary. And then after that, you've got to get a HELOC before you move. So you have the HELOC on the property. Hey, get all those in place. Yes. That's on my list. I'm actually going through a HELOC process right now in my primary. And they don't even do a true appraisal on the property, just like a virtual kind of desk appraisal where they just do a quick summation of what they think the value is. Was it the same process for the refinance or did they actually do a full appraisal? So what's interesting is originally they weren't going to have to do an appraisal. I don't remember the exact reason, to be honest, offhand. I just know my lender was like, we're good. We don't have to do one. We'll be able to get away with it, probably just because it was so soon that I bought the property. And unfortunately, that actually changed throughout the loan process. And so this is one thing worth noting. So because of the relationship I have with my lender, the appraisal would have cost, I think like 800 bucks or something. It's somewhere between five and a thousand bucks to do an appraisal that I would have had to pay out of pocket. And my lender ended up covering that cost just because originally I was presented with not having to do an appraisal. So that would have been slightly frustrating to be like, all right, hang on. I was told one thing. So he was great about just covering this cost for me, but we did end up needing one. And then what was the timeframe from start to finish to actually get the refinance done? Was it a typical 30 day timeframe or was it maybe faster because it wasn't as involved? Great question. It was a little bit less. It was like three and a half weeks. So very similar to a normal timeframe, but faster by a few days. Tony, for the HELOC, I've never actually gotten a HELOC on my primary residence, just investment properties. But what is the timeframe looking for that, especially if they're doing just a desktop appraisal? I would assume that it would be an even shorter timeline. Let me, I'm going to tell you right now, because it's moving pretty quickly. I want to say, and I'm like looking up when I started that application with them. And I want to say that I started that 10 days ago and I've already got a conditional pre-approval. I'm like in the final stages of underwriting where there's some final documentation. But it looks like potentially next week we should be at a point where we're closing. So we're talking start to finish, potentially less than three weeks, which is insane. I wasn't expecting it to move that quickly, but it is. Now, part of that, I think too, is that I've been just super on top of it. And much like you, Danielle, just being a real estate investor, you tend to have a lot of those things that they request just already dialed up and saved in a folder that you can upload quickly. So I would get an email about like, hey, we need this. And I'd have it up to him same day. So I think me really being on top of it has allowed it to move more quickly. But I mean, yeah, less than three weeks and we're able to tap into all that, all the equity. Are you using the same like bank or lender that you have your mortgage with for that property? No. I didn't know maybe like, because they already have a lot of the information. No. Yeah. It's my bank where I have like my car loans with them. And they're just like a super easy to use credit union. And I just called them and was like, hey, what do you guys have? And it ends up working out great. What's your, did you get an introductory rate? I did. And it was like five points, something. You have to like put a certain amount on it to start with, but I'm like, yeah, I could probably swing that. And then it's like five something, I think for the first, however long. So it's pretty, pretty solid. All right. We're back with Danielle. And now that you've gone through this refinance and you're at this kind of next phase of growth in your investing journey, what does the next version of Danielle as a real estate investor look like? And what are you intentionally doing differently this time as you go into your next deal? That's a great question. And just to be completely transparent, I am not looking for a deal right now. I'm on a little bit of a pause from buying my next property though. I love real estate and absolutely plan to buy more, but I think I'm just transitioning from co-living. I want to kind of take a pause on that and potentially get into multifamily in the future or something that is not co-living. And I love co-living, so don't get me wrong. Love it. It's been fantastic. Let me ask you, why shift away from that strategy if it's worked well for you? Not necessarily co-living in the sense of like co-living plus house hacking, but just strictly co-living. Renting by the room. Yeah, just renting by the room because we actually have a lot of investors that we've interviewed who have leaned into that strategy. And I think about the Nossums in the Pacific Northwest who buy four bedrooms and turn them into eight bedrooms. There is, I think, a lot of momentum in that strategy. So what for you specifically is making you lean towards something else versus where you already have some experience? Yes. It's a personal decision, right? Co-living is an amazing strategy. I absolutely make more cashflow objectively by renting by the room versus renting to a family. But I think totally, Tony, you touched on most of the reason that I think I'm going to make a switch is that it's becoming pretty saturated. A lot of people are in the market in this co-living or a lot of people are doing this co-living strategy now. So it's getting to the point where it's a little bit saturated and really competitive on pricing to where you have to list rooms for a lot cheaper. It's like when I first, this is just a very basic example, but when I first listed my first property, I got about $950 per room. I, for that same house, am listing rooms for $850 or lower, between $850 and $850. So rent, I'm not saying rent has necessarily fully gone down as a whole in the Denver Metro, but specifically with house hacking, it's just really competitive, right? So rent is slightly reducing in multifamily and that pushes downward pressure on renting by the room to be a cheaper option. And then when you have more people doing that, you have to be more competitive in order to make your room stand out. So I think that's why I wouldn't necessarily want more, but I do continue or I do plan to continue maintaining my co-living properties as co-living strategies. I don't plan to convert those yet because the numbers would not make sense. The second thing to note on co-living is if you are not self-managing, it is more expensive to hire a property manager. So call it anywhere between what, like is it 10 to 12% maybe to hire a typical property manager, a ballpark, it would be closer to that, like 15 to 18% to do, or call it 15 to 16 or 17, I've seen on the high end to manage a property that is co-living. So I eventually would like to be hands-off. That is my next phase. My next version of Danielle is to be a little more hands-off with my properties. I've been so hands-on. I manage literally everything. So that is part of why I would want to not necessarily purchase more of those. I just, I think that that would either A, be more work for me, right? Or two, it would be more money taken out of my cashflow versus me just having a family in there and then having them pay utilities and having a property manager be a little bit cheaper. So that's at least my thought process. I think there's a lesson in this story and is that you can build a strong foundation with something like you have with co-living, but then you also have to be flexible to pivot as the market changes, as your strategy changes. And I think that's exactly what you're doing. You know that, you know, this strategy has worked great for you, but it's also time to pivot and not, you know, and maybe even like diversify a different market, a different strategy, things like that. And that's such a great attribute to have is to recognizing when it is time to pivot and change your strategy into something else. But Danielle, before we wrap up here, you are self-managing, you have a full-time job. What tools are you using to help you manage these properties? So I only use a couple tools at the moment, but they've been absolute lifesavers. I work, or I use RentReady, right, to kind of work through all my property management needs in terms of managing tenants, running background checks, applications. My tenants pay rent through there. It's made it really, really simple for me. So love that tool. I also use Baseline, which is a newer tool. I just started using this actually. I hit the point where spreadsheets are just becoming complex and I now have a CPA and she does not like spreadsheets. You know, it's just something that it's like, all right, let's like get a little more advanced here. Let's make this a little more professional. So Baseline is sort of like a banking tool where you can basically have a debit card for each of your houses to be able to transact and have everything be super organized for bookkeeping. So I personally only use those two tools right now, but it's been a total game changer because the organization is key. And I was 100% working on a spreadsheet for the past three, over three years. So it's been really helpful to start feeling like, okay, I'm running a business. I'm not just doing a little side thing with one house. And it's mentally allowed me to be a little bit more hands-off. Like, of course, I'm still managing the property when things come up, but having systems, processes, tools that I'm using, it makes me feel like I'm running a business. So I think I've actually handled situations that occur with the houses in a more professional and business minded manner because of using these tools, if that makes sense. So yeah, those have been great for me. And Danielle and I both love Baseline and me specifically their bookkeeping aspect. And if you are a pro member, you also get Baseline smart bookkeeping. So all you have to do is log in to your biggerpockets.com pro account, and you have access to these features and so many more as a pro member. So you can go ahead and check this out at biggerpockets.com. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information? So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just go ahead and look up my full name, Danielle Daly. You can also reach out to me on Instagram. It's Danielle F Daly, D-A-L-Y. Feel free to reach out. I'd love to connect if you're in the Denver metro area, but those are probably the best ways to reach out to me. Well, thank you again for taking the time to join us and share your experience and also the refinance journey for yourself. I'm Ashley, he's Tony, and we'll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.