First Door Investing News 10-13-26

First Door Investing News is published daily by Fourth Wall Capital, a multifamily real estate investment firm based in Maryland. Learn more at fourthwall.capital

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Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Today's lesson explains bonus depreciation, the tax break that lets real estate shelter income for the passive investors in a deal. Also inside: nearly half of home buyers are now getting concessions as a Fed official says prices must fall, BlackRock bets big on a 3D printed home builder, a credit score shake up that could help millions qualify to buy, and why a third of pandemic era buyers regret their purchase.

Real estate investing doesn't have to be complicated. Every day we bring you one market update, one practical lesson, and a few stories that help you understand what's happening in the housing world, in plain language, without the jargon. Let's get into it.

Equity Multiple — This is the total amount of money a deal aims to return to you over its entire life, both the cash paid along the way and your share of the profit at sale, divided by what you invested. A 2.0x equity multiple means you would get back twice what you put in, so a $50,000 investment returns $100,000 in total across the hold. Understanding it matters because it shows the full size of a deal's targeted return, which you can weigh beside the yearly cash flow and the IRR to judge both how much you might earn and how fast.

Every First Door edition includes one foundational concept explained clearly. Today: bonus depreciation.

Depreciation is the tax deduction that lets a property owner write off the gradual wear and tear on a building, lowering the taxable income a property reports even while it is actually making money. Bonus depreciation supercharges that benefit by letting owners deduct a large share of certain property components in the very first year, instead of spreading it across decades. For a passive investor in a syndication, that deduction is passed through to you, often creating a loss on paper even while the deal pays you real cash in distributions.

Here is why it matters to you. That paper loss can offset the income the property distributes to you, and in some cases other income too, which means part of your cash flow can arrive with little or no tax attached. It is one of the quiet reasons many wealthy investors favor real estate over assets that throw off fully taxed income. The benefit tends to be largest in the first year or two of a deal, which is why sponsors often highlight it early.

The honest caveat is that bonus depreciation defers taxes rather than erasing them. When the property sells, some of those earlier deductions can be recaptured and taxed, so the benefit is partly a matter of timing, not free money. The rules also change over time, and how much you can actually use depends on your own situation, so treat any projected tax benefit as a reason to talk with a tax professional before you count on it.

Read more at Investopedia

A new report finds about 44.7 percent of recent home sales included a seller concession, a discount or credit the seller gives to close the deal, even as a Federal Reserve official said plainly that home prices need to come down, per BiggerPockets. Concessions this common are a sign sellers are losing their grip on pricing while buyers slowly regain a little leverage. For a new investor, it is a reminder that a softer sales market can still support steady rental demand, because would be buyers who hesitate keep renting.

Read the full story at BiggerPockets

Icon, a leader in 3D printed homebuilding, just raised $200 million from backers including BlackRock and Baillie Gifford at a $1.4 billion valuation, a vote of confidence that printing homes could lower the cost and speed up the pace of building, per CNBC. The technology is still early, but big institutional money is wagering it can help narrow the gap between how many homes exist and how many people can afford one. For a new investor, it is a glimpse of how construction innovation could ease the housing shortage that underpins long-term rental demand.

Read the full story at CNBC

The Federal Housing Administration is moving to let lenders use VantageScore, a newer credit scoring model, alongside the traditional FICO score, a change that could help millions of would be buyers who were invisible to the old system qualify for a mortgage, per Realtor.com. Analysts warn the shift could also admit some borrowers who look stronger on paper than they really are, adding risk for lenders. For a new investor, it is a reminder that the rules deciding who can borrow shape how many people compete to buy versus rent.

Read the full story at Realtor.com

Realtor.com reports that nearly a third of people who bought during the pandemic frenzy now regret the decision, often because they rushed, overpaid, or waived inspections to win a bidding war, per Realtor.com. The lesson is less about those buyers than about the danger of making a high stakes decision under pressure instead of on the numbers. For a new investor, it is a useful reminder that the discipline to walk away from a deal that does not pencil out is a skill worth building before your first purchase.

Read the full story at Realtor.com

"What tax benefits is this deal projecting for me, and are they built on a cost segregation study or just an estimate?"

Bonus depreciation can meaningfully lower the tax you owe on a deal's income, but the size of that benefit depends on real analysis rather than a hopeful guess. A sponsor who can point to a cost segregation study, the engineering review that identifies which parts of a property qualify for faster write offs, is showing you the projection rests on something solid.

A note from Fourth Wall Capital

Today's lesson on bonus depreciation points to something we value at Fourth Wall Capital, that real estate can reward investors with tax advantages few other assets offer. We treat those benefits as a real part of the return, but never as the reason to do a deal, because a purchase that only works after the tax savings is a purchase that did not work to begin with.

That same discipline shapes how we read a market where sellers are handing out concessions and a third of pandemic era buyers now regret rushing in. We would rather underwrite to the rent a property earns today, and let any tax benefit or future upside be a bonus, so your capital rests on numbers we can measure now rather than a market no one can control.

Learn more at fourthwall.capital

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