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MortgagePoint ยป Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 34 May 2025 C O V E R S T O R Y S P E C I A L F O C U S Real Estate Investment INVESTING BEYOND YOUR BACKYARD Zach Lemaster of Rent to Retirement explains how rental strategies can help investors scale smarter across U.S. markets. B y DAV I D W H A R T O N Z ach Lemaster is the Founder & CEO of Rent to Retirement, a turnkey investment company. Lemaster is a seasoned real estate investor and licensed broker with a large portfolio of rental properties across multiple markets, including single-family, multifamily, commercial, and new construction. Lemaster started investing in real estate while working as an Optometrist and captain for the U.S. Air Force. This eventually allowed him to retire early from his career in medi- cine to become a professional investor by strategically investing in markets that maximize cash flow, appreciation, and equity. Lemaster went on to build a successful wholesaling, flipping, and management business working across multiple markets, which led to the foun- dation of Rent to Retirement. Q: What is the mission and focus of Rent to Retirement? Lemaster: Our mission at Rent to Retirement is to make the best invest- ment opportunities across the country accessible to everyone, and that was a function of my investing experience. When I started investing in real estate over 15 years ago, my wife and I started locally, but we quickly found out that we wanted to strategically invest in different locations throughout the country that fit our goals better, that had better return profiles, that were just better invest- ment opportunities both for diversifi- cation and to achieve a better return on investment. We proactively sought out markets to invest in based on those criteria and then established local teams and systems in these areas to be able to scale our portfolio in the markets that offered the best returns. What we quickly found is that there are a lot of people out there interested in investing in real estate that don't have the time, don't have the experience, don't have the knowledge to build out their own teams on their own end. There were many people that approached us about investing with us, following the path that we did for ourselves, strategically investing in loca- tions that offered us return profiles. Q: What trends are you observing in the rental investment landscape right now? Lemaster: It's been a crazy market over the past five years, with COVID-19, post- COVID-19, and interest rates increasing, which we've dealt with for the past two and a half years. There have been tax structure changes, and we're likely to see a lot of that in a positive way for in- vestors this year as well. Obviously, with the new administration and questions around the economy, that's still causing some question marks. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we focused on the fundamentals of real estate investing, which is buying good properties in good locations that have an undersupply of housing, and we work with good teams in those areas to manage the properties. That doesn't change. There's still an affordability crisis in the United States. We try to benefit the community and the econo- my by providing affordable housing in locations that have a deficit of housing D A V I D W H A R T O N , Editor-in-Chief of MortgagePoint, has 20 years' experience in journalism, having worked for the Five Star Institute since 2017. Wharton has an extensive and diversified portfolio of freelance material, with published con- tributions in both online and print media publications. He can be reached at David. Wharton@thefivestar.com.