Real estate investors often focus on the volatile coastal markets, tracking booms and busts. However, Jerry Larkowski, Managing Broker at ESQ. Realty Group, LLC in Little Rock, Arkansas, suggests that the more compelling opportunity lies in a market that barely moves at all. “If you’re on one of the two coasts, the prices go up and down,” Larkowski says. “Here, it’s more like a healthy heartbeat.”
The distinction between a pendulum and a heartbeat is crucial. A pendulum swings forcefully in both directions, while a heartbeat maintains a steady rhythm. Over nearly seven years and more than 180 closed transactions in the Little Rock and Hot Springs markets, Larkowski has observed this pattern. Comparable sales from years ago still hold as comps today. Prices increase gradually, rarely spiking or collapsing. For investors, this steadiness translates into fewer surprises. A property bought based on today’s comps is unlikely to appear wildly mispriced eighteen months later, unlike in coastal boomtowns.
Larkowski calls Arkansas part of the heartland, sometimes dismissed as flyover territory. This geography is becoming an asset. Several national organizations have relocated conventions to central cities like Dallas and St. Louis due to shorter travel distances from both coasts. Little Rock sits about four hours from Dallas, a metro area some analysts project will become one of the largest in the country by 2030. While Texas draws attention for having no state income tax, Arkansas has been steadily reducing its own. Property taxes in Arkansas remain well below the national average. These factors may not generate headlines about growth rates, but they significantly impact an investor’s carrying costs.
Larkowski also points to something less quantifiable: pace. Central Arkansas still retains traces of an agricultural economy, which moves more deliberately than the technology-driven markets on the coasts. He does not see this as a weakness. “That may force us city folks to slow down just a tad,” he says, half joking. For real estate, a slower-moving local economy tends to produce a slower-moving housing market, which is precisely the point.
For buyers and investors, this steadiness is attractive. Larkowski’s long-standing advice is that there is never a bad time to buy or sell a house, only better times and worse times. In a market that behaves like a heartbeat rather than a pendulum, this advice carries more weight. Buyers are not trying to time a bottom that might not exist. Investors are not bracing for a correction driven by speculation that never took hold. For out-of-state investors, this predictability is as important as price per door and cap rate. A market that rarely swings hard is one where today’s underwriting assumptions are more likely to hold up next year. To learn more about Larkowski’s background as both a broker and an attorney, visit his about page.
