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Today's track: The Other Years — Adaline

When a market gets confusing, the people who win are almost never the ones who know a little about everything…even though that is the lane I find myself in, as a super connector. They pick one lane, learn it cold, and become the person everybody calls when that kind of deal shows up. I think right now is a great time to do that in Louisville. Today I've got six lanes for you. Some are hot, some are quiet, and one of them needs a lot of care. I'll tell you what the numbers back up and what nobody has proven yet, because you can't pick a lane off hype.

Union Pacific, the big western railroad, has agreed to buy Norfolk Southern, the eastern one that runs right through Louisville. The deal is worth about $85 billion, and the combined railroad would touch 43 states across more than 50,000 miles of track, according to CRE Daily. Now the honest part: it isn't done. The Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that has to approve railroad mergers, is still reviewing it. Union Pacific's CEO told investors last week he is nearly certain it gets approved, and the company is planning for a close in the second half of 2027, per Benzinga. Even before any of that, the two railroads announced a shared shipping service that starts and ends in Louisville, reported by the Herald-Dispatch. Intermodal just means shipping containers that move between a train and a truck.

Why should an investor care? The people who study this say buildings and land with direct rail access are already hard to find, and so are the fenced lots where companies park trucks, trailers and equipment. That second type has a name: industrial outdoor storage, or IOS. A railroad that reaches both coasts could make both harder to find, CRE Daily reports.

Here's what Louisville's industrial market looks like right now, and I'm going to give you the part that isn't a victory lap. In the third quarter, CBRE says Louisville tenants took in 1.41 million more square feet than they gave back, and new leases totaled 1.65 million square feet. Vacancy did tick up to 5.9%, which is 2.1 percentage points higher than a year ago, because three new buildings were finished without tenants lined up. For comparison, Cushman & Wakefield has national industrial vacancy at 6.8%, and lists Louisville among the markets where asking rents rose more than 10% over the past year. Louisville also has far less on the way than Columbus. Columbus had about 20.3 million square feet under construction in the second quarter, according to Matthews, and Louisville had roughly 5 million, per Commercial Kentucky. Less new supply tends to protect the buildings that already exist.

The reason this corridor works is simple geography. CBRE has pointed out that nearly 30 million people live within 250 miles of downtown Louisville, and UPS runs one of the world's biggest package hubs at our airport. Louisville to Columbus is one long line of warehouses and trucks.

So what's the lane? Pick one slice and learn it: rail-served buildings, small-bay flex space for local companies, fenced outdoor storage lots, or land for build-to-suit. Learn who owns the rail spurs, what the zoning allows, and what a truck needs to turn around. If you want me to send you what's for sale and for lease in industrial, flex and outdoor storage, reply INDUSTRIAL and I'll put a list together for you.

An ARM is an adjustable-rate mortgage, a loan where the interest rate can move. A lot of apartment buildings were bought with the commercial version of that, or with short loans that have to be paid off or refinanced after a few years. Those bills are showing up now. The Mortgage Bankers Association says about $757 billion of apartment loans come due between now and 2028, with nearly $300 billion of it this year, as reported by Connect CRE. Many were made when rates were around 3% to 3.5%. Today's refinance rate is closer to 6%, Propmodo reports. Among apartment loans that were packaged and sold to bond investors (called CMBS, short for commercial mortgage-backed securities), the share that are behind on payments jumped from about 1% in late 2023 to 7.1% this year, the biggest jump of any property type. I went deeper on that pile of loans in The Wall.

I don't want to oversell this. It isn't a collapse. Lots of owners are fine, and the pain is showing up in pockets. But a pocket of stress is exactly where a buyer with a real offer gets a phone call returned. And here's where the 1031 comes in. A 1031 exchange is a tax rule that lets you sell an investment property and roll the money into another one without paying the capital gains tax right away. There are hard deadlines, and you need a middleman called a qualified intermediary, so talk to your CPA first. Picture two people on opposite sides of the table: one owner who needs out of a building before the loan resets, and one investor holding 1031 money who needs to buy something fast. Industrial, small apartment buildings, storage. That's a deal waiting for somebody to introduce them.

Locally, Louisville's apartment market slowed down. Absorption, which is how fast new apartments get filled, ran at less than half the five-year average last year, while Southern Indiana kept vacancy near 4%, according to Marcus & Millichap. And when I pulled the Multiple Listing Service (the MLS) last Friday, there were 146 active buildings with two to four units in Jefferson County, and 62 of those have been on the market since July 25 or earlier. I count anything with two or more units as commercial, so those are commercial properties to me. Click either number and you can see every one of them.

My take: anything that has been sitting since summer belongs to somebody thinking about the holidays, year-end taxes and starting fresh in January. An offer with clean terms lands differently in November than it did in May. Like I said in The Top of the K, nobody rings a bell. You just have to be at the table. If you want to make offers on the long sitters, text or email me and tell me your price range.

About 40% of American homeowners own their homes outright. The Census Bureau puts it at 39.4% for 2020 through 2024, up from 34.4% a decade earlier, in its own report, and a newer estimate puts it at a record 40.3%, per Axios. Rural areas run higher. Edmonson County, Kentucky, is at 60.5%, the Mortgage Bankers Association's newsletter noted.

Why does that matter to you? Because a seller with no mortgage on the property is the only kind of seller who can easily say, I'll be the lender. The buyer pays them a down payment and then monthly payments with interest, the same way they'd pay a bank. The seller gets steady income, often a better return than a savings account, and the buyer gets a way in when a bank says no or when rates make a bank loan painful. Sellers who do this sometimes spread out the tax bill too, so ask a CPA before you promise anybody anything. Cash is already a huge part of the market. The National Association of Realtors says 26% of buyers paid cash in the past year, a record, Axios reports. Terms are the other way to win when you can't out-cash somebody.

A few rules to respect. Federal law limits how many seller-financed deals one person can do before they need a mortgage loan originator license, so have a real estate attorney write it up. And a seller who still owes a bank is a different, trickier situation. This lane is about learning how to ask the question, how to structure the answer, and how to put the paperwork in order. If you want a plain-English walkthrough of making the seller the lender, plus the listings I can find that say owner financing is on the table, reply OWNERFI.

Kentucky was hit harder than almost anywhere by the opioid epidemic. Families here know that. One result is a pile of settlement money, and it has to be spent on helping people. The state has more than $900 million to give out through the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, and this April it made its largest round of awards yet: more than $34 million to over 100 organizations, the Kentucky Lantern reported. The commission's 2026 priorities include supportive housing and recovery community centers, and it says any recovery housing project has to meet state accreditation rules, according to its own application.

Let me be clear about what this is and isn't. That money mostly goes to nonprofits and programs. It isn't free money for landlords. The real estate lane is for the person who understands which buildings work, what zoning allows, and how to lease or sell to a good operator. Think group homes, therapy offices, recovery community centers, and buildings someone already owns that could be repurposed. Quality of the operator matters more than anything. People in recovery are protected by fair housing law, so everybody follows the same rules, and your attorney should read them before you buy anything.

I know an operator who opened a recovery business and loves what they do. If you're thinking about this space, I'll introduce you. Reply RECOVERY.

The appeal is easy to see. No plumbing, no toilets, no tenants calling about the water heater. And the systems have gotten good: online rentals, keypad gates, automatic billing. But storage is a local game, and the national numbers are mixed. Occupancy slipped to 91.5% in the first quarter, per DXD Capital, and asking rents fell about 1.1% in February compared with a year earlier, according to Yardi Matrix. The place where it went wrong was overbuilding. New storage deliveries are expected to drop almost 20% this year, and new supply from 2026 to 2030 should average 1.9% of existing space a year, down from 3.9% between 2020 and 2025, per Trepp. Less new supply is good news for owners who already have buildings.

That's why density is the whole game. Before you buy land or a building, count how many square feet of storage already exist within a few miles, then divide by the people who live there and compare to the next neighborhood over. Yardi's data shows it clearly: markets with a lot of new building are hurting, and markets with little new supply are doing fine. I'll help you run that math for any address in Louisville. Reply STORAGE with an address or a neighborhood.

This one is my favorite because nobody is talking about it here. Garage condos are small, lockable units you can own, usually around 1,200 square feet, with a big door, power, and sometimes a bathroom. Plumbers, electricians, landscapers, car guys and people who just need a shop buy them instead of renting a unit with a landlord. In the Twin Cities, more than 230 sold last year, and new projects are starting around $185,000 a unit, according to The Development Tracker. Upstate New York developers say the same, with demand for contractor flex space keeping them busy.

I couldn't find a clean count of Louisville garage condos, which tells me nobody has mapped it yet. That's the opportunity. Near the airport and the interstates, one fenced outdoor lot I came across was asking about $2,950 an acre per month, which gives you a sense of what contractors already pay to park equipment. Start by asking five contractors you know where they keep their stuff and what they pay. That's your market study.

Don't try to do all six. Pick one that matches the money and time you have, learn it for ninety days, and be the person who answers when somebody asks. I wrote about why going narrow works in Be the Expert in Your Field, and if your lane ends up being the side thing next to your day job, that's Everybody Needs a Second Thing. The world really is an oyster right now, but oysters come with shells. Check the numbers, talk to your attorney and your CPA, and don't buy anything you couldn't hold for five years.

My goal is to get you excited about one thing and talking to people who do it. I can send lists, introduce you to lenders, an attorney, a CPA, and operators, and I can put a property in front of the 70,000+ buyers on OffMarket.deals if you have something to sell. Text or email me with your lane and what you're looking for. Replying to this email works too.

Free tools for Louisville buyers, sellers and investors, no sign-up and no email wall: the investment property analyzer, the DSCR loan calculator (DSCR is debt service coverage ratio, the number rental lenders check first), the capital gains and 1031 exchange estimator, and a lot more on the tools page.

Know somebody who'd like this in their inbox every morning? Send them your personal link. One friend signs up and you get my daily Top Five. Three friends and you get Insider Access.

📊 Yesterday's poll, which one sounds most like you? Three answers tied at about 27% each: I already own an Airbnb or short-term rental, I own a midterm or long-term rental, and I'm here for the tax part. About 13% were just reading, and about 7% want to buy their first furnished rental. So more than half of you already own a rental, which means more than half of you should be asking your CPA one question this week: did we ever do a cost segregation study? If not, a look-back study can catch up the depreciation you missed on this year's return, no amended returns needed. Reply "TAX" and I'll introduce you to my CPA.

Today's poll — pick your lane. Tomorrow I'll show you where the crowd is heading, and the lane with the fewest votes is the one with the least competition.

1031 Watch: if you sold an investment property and you're doing a 1031 exchange, you get 45 days from the sale to name in writing what you might buy, and 180 days to close on it. Miss either one and the tax comes due. That clock is exactly why the apartment owners in lane two and the 1031 buyers need each other. Start with our 1031 exchange guide for Kentucky, and if you've found the property before you've sold yours, read up on the reverse 1031. Clock running? Text or email me the date you closed.

🏆 New here? Every morning I screen the whole Louisville MLS and rank the five best deals and the five most ripe for a lowball, with the number I'd offer. Commercial too. I can't blast other agents' listings to a list, but I can send them to you personally. Reply "FIVE."

With Enthusiasm,
Rob Bergeron

Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty: (502) 305-8915
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company

Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.

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PS: If you own a building with a loan that's coming due, text or email me before the lender sets the timeline. There are more options on the table early than there are at the deadline.

PSS: Anyone looking for a turnkey rental, great deal! Here are 48 homes and buildings that already have a tenant paying rent, cheapest first. 27 of them are under $200,000, starting at $50,000. You collect rent from day one instead of hunting for a tenant. Pick two, text or email me, and I'll pull the rent, when the lease ends, and what it cash flows at today's rates.

PSSS: Here's a number that should get every renter's attention. A new study from the Center for Responsible Lending, covered by NPR and Louisville Public Media, found a renter household earning the median income now needs about 16 years to save the down payment and closing costs on a starter home. That's double what it took in 2019. Middle-income households, roughly $50,000 to $120,000 a year, need about 12 years. Police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers need 10 to 13. Depending on the city, it runs from 11 years in Houston to 24 in Los Angeles.

Here's why Louisville is different. The study counts a starter home as 80% of the median sale price, which nationally comes out to $335,574. Run that same math here: the median single-family home in Jefferson County sold for $285,000 in September, so a Louisville starter home is about $228,000. That's roughly $107,000 less. The 3.5% down payment on an FHA loan (a government-backed loan built for first-time buyers) works out to about $8,000 here versus about $11,700 on the national number, before closing costs. If you rent and want to know what your number actually is, text or email me and I'll connect you with a lender who'll run it for free.

PSSSS: Here's where I'd shop right now, and how. Open a list, pick three that jump out, and text or email me the addresses. I'll pull what similar homes actually sold for and tell you the number I'd offer. Then we send all three a letter of intent (LOI, a one-page offer that starts the conversation before any contract). Every one of these is clickable, so go be curious.

325 Jefferson County homes cut their price in the last 7 days — here are the 200 that cut the deepest, biggest drop first. The typical cut was about 4.5%. The biggest went from $1.925 million to $850,000.

63 multifamily buildings just cut their price — duplexes up to a 12-unit, 59 of them in Jefferson County, biggest drop first. That's about 4 out of every 10 multifamily buildings on the MLS right now. Two or more units is commercial to me, and these sellers are blinking.

67 homes with 4 or more bedrooms under $200,000 — Jefferson County, cheapest first, starting at $53,000. The middle one is $159,900. That's less than half the national starter-home number above, with room for a family, a house hack or a rental with a lot of bedrooms to rent.

9 sellers who said it out loud — Jefferson County listings where the listing itself says "motivated seller," "bring all offers," "investor special" or "quick cash offer," from $35,000 to $269,000. Seven of the nine are under $110,000. They told you. Believe them.

186 homes selling as-is under $150,000 — Jefferson County, cheapest first, middle price $95,000. As-is means the seller isn't fixing anything, which is exactly where flippers and BRRRR investors make their money. Pair it with the rehab cost estimator.

533 Jefferson County homes have sat 150 days or more — here are the 200 that have sat the longest. The middle one has been listed about 341 days, counting every time it was pulled and relisted. These sellers are ready to hear a number.

All 17 Winner Realty listings — ours, every price point, active and under contract.

And the bigger commercial stuff: KCREA, Kentucky's commercial property search, has 145 multifamily buildings for sale right now, about 122 of them around Louisville. KCREA won't let me share a filtered list, so here's the 20-second version. Go to kcrea.com/listings, set Type to Sale and Use to Multifamily, then sort by Sale Price, low to high. Want a price-per-unit cap? Open All filters and scroll to Multifamily.

See something? Text or email me and we'll go look. Want lists like these built around exactly what you buy? Set your buy box and they'll come to your inbox.