503: How Decades of Inflation Destroyed Our Dollar, Today’s Rent Trends
Get Rich Education
Introduction
This chapter delves into the effects of inflation on mortgage payments and rent prices, the relationship between inflation and the stock market, and the widening gap between different socioeconomic groups due to inflation, with a focus on the surge in inflation in the 2020s.
We’ve already had more inflation in this young 2020s decade than the entire 2010s.
If the next forty years have as much inflation as the last forty, gas will cost $13.38 per gallon, the average home $1.88 million, and the average rent $59,000 annually.
Inflation impoverishes most people. You can profit from it 3 ways at the same time. Watch the free 3-part video series: GetRichEducation.com/TripleCrown.
The 30-year fixed rate mortgage is a uniquely American construct. It virtually exists nowhere else in the world. I compare this to mortgage terms in Europe, Canada and Australia.
In much of the world, homeowners have had their mortgage payments double overnight!
Trends that won’t soon be disrupted: more inflation, people need to live somewhere, there aren’t enough places to live. That’s so simple! Invest in it.
Rents are increasing the most where little new supply has been added.
There’s a myth that gigantic institutional investors are gobbling up all the single-family rental homes. But they only own 3% of the market. Mom & pops own 80%.
Single-family rents are up 3.4% per CoreLogic. Detached SFHs are up more than attached types.
Property prices and rents are positively correlated. Some people falsely think that they move inversely.
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Complete episode transcript:
Welcome to GRE! I’m your host, Keith Weinhold. Learn how the misery of INFLATION is altering BOTH your quality of life and the return on ALL of your investments…
… also, many people are now having their mortgage payments DOUBLE overnight and IT’S creating pain, then, what are the factors affecting the future direction of RENTS - all that, and more, today on Get Rich Education!
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Welcome to GRE! You’re listening to one of the longest-running and most listened-to shows on real estate investing. This is Get Rich Education. I’m your host, Keith Weinhold - the voice of RE since 2014.
I don’t know if you fully realize how much inflation is steering all of your investments - and it’s emphatic at a time like this when the dollar is down 25% cumulatively just in the last four years. Gosh!
And I’ve got some jaw-dropping inflation fact to share with you soon.
We’ll get to inflation’s RE affects shortly. But here’s what I mean.
In stocks, they keep riding up on a wave of optimism, anticipating a Fed interest rate cut - largely due to future INFLATION expectations. Yes, there’s jobs & GDP and some other factors.
But the stock market - which is a FORWARD-looking market - it moves based on what’s expected to happen 6 to 12 months from now.
STOCK investors know that rate cuts open the floodgates to get us closer to the “easy money” days again.
That’s why - as backwards as it is, the worse the economy looks, the lower that inflation tends to be, and then, in turn, the lower that interest rates can go, which the stock market likes.
So a worsening economy often pumps up the stock market. Soooo backwards.
Just look at what happens historically. Recessions sound bad. Yet what happens is that rates get cut in a recession - because the economy needs the help.
But nearer-term, it’s this ongoing expectation of the rate cut - that’s been looming out there for months but hasn’t happened - which CAN keep propelling the stock market to higher highs. It’s already hit all-time highs here recently. You can make the CASE that stocks should keep floating higher from here… based on that premise.
Before we look at real estate & inflation. Understand this.
Inflation has already widened the divide between the affluent and the deprived. That divide has gone from a gully to a canyon.
But... my gosh! Here’s the stat that I want to share with you. And you’re really going to get a sense for the gravity of what you’re living through this decade.
We've already seen more inflation in the first 51 months of the 2020s decade than in the ENTIRE decade of the 2010s. Already.
This gets really interesting. Let’s look at about the last four decades here.
Alright, in the 1990s decade, America had 34% cumulative inflation. Let’s go ahead and… we’ll associate this decade with President Bill Clinton.
We won’t tie any President to the inflation number because there are lag effects and other factors. A President really can’t take the credit or blame, in most cases. Just marking the era here.
So, 34% inflation in the 1990s.
The 2000s decade saw the GFC and… 29% inflation. Most of those were George W. Bush years.
The 2010s decade saw lower inflation → Just 19%. So that’s under 2% a year. These were mostly the Obama years here in the 2010s.
Little flex there from the former Commander in Chief.
Then the 2020s decade → have seen, like I alluded to, and under Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. - yes, as the oldest sitting president ever, it’s easy to forget that he’s a “junior. In this young 2020s decade, we have, 21% cumulative inflation. Already.
So this figure is after just the first 51 months of this decade, if we’re counting from 2020… and this is largely due to supply shortages from the COVID pandemic.
So 21% ALREADY this decade… and just 19% ALLLL of last decade which was a full decade. That’s the impact.
That’s reflective of what you see in home prices and rent prices and utilities, transportation, labor, and almost every facet of your life.… and what you see in your weekly Costco bill and Trader Joe’s bill.
Who have we left out here? A one-term president, so far? Does somebody feel left out.
Yes, that is the actual person of one Donald John Trump.
Psssshhh!
All of those figures I cited are from the BLS, and I’ve been rounding to nearest whole percent.
But get this! Inflation over the next forty years could make the LAST 40 years seem like a picnic.
That's partly because we're $35T in debt and that figure now grows by $1T every single quarter… every 90 to 100 days. So we MUST keep dollar-printing to help pay it back.
But just, if the last forty years repeats itself, by the year 2064, which is the next forty years, we'll see these prices. Prepare for a future that looks like this:
Gas at $13.38 per gallon
The home price at $1.88 million
Average rent at $59,000 per year
And the average salary at $104,000
That is if inflation over the next 40 years, looks like that last 40 years.
Also, note how salaries don't keep pace with prices. That $104K average salary in the year 2064 doesn’t sound as high-flying as those other figures.
Well, this is all really frustrating for consumers… and even debilitating to one’s standard of living. Remember, this latest wave of inflation brought us the biggest YOY increase in homelessness - based on HUD figures.
and why you need to invest in something that reliably BENEFITS from inflation and pays you an income at the same time.
Look, here’s really, the deal. Dollars are abundant. So then isn’t it a paradox that a major spike in the supply of dollars would create more homelessness?
Well, you know that dollars are there for your taking - because so many more have been brought into existence. Dollars are abundant. So as they cycle through the economy, rather than going through the consumer motions, you can build your diverter. That’s where the world of abundance exists, so get into that flow.
Ultimately, REAL capital is scarce. Your time and energy are scarce. Natural resources are scarce. Labor is scarce.
What’s frustrating is that money ought to reflect that scarcity if it is going to accurately convey the value that enables people to make capital accumulation decisions.
And alas, we’re doing our measuring in dollars and the dollar is not remotely scarce.
The middle class and poor often have wages that don't track inflation, yet they disproportionately suffer the higher consumer prices.
The investor class owns assets that float up with inflation. And GRE listeners will do even better than that.
As income property owners with mortgages, we're winning three ways at the same time with the Inflation Triple Crown. That’s your dollar diverter.
Alright, so that’s longer-term inflation. I’ve been talking in terms of decades - both the past and with an extrapolation into the future to 2064 there - and it’s really rather sobering.
Well, what's the more CURRENT inflation situation? The situationship? Ha! What’s the situationship now?
In trying to quiet it down to their 2% target, the Fed has run into so many hurdles that you'd think they were training for this summer's Olympics in Paris.
After it peaked over 9% two full years ago now, inflation’s been bouncing near 3-and-a-half-percent for a year and they just keep having trouble getting it lower than that.
Hmmm... would we say that this could turn into Jerome Powell's three-quarters life crisis? We’ll see.
Rising inflation is one of the key factors that brought down the Roman Empire. They famously experienced hyperinflation after a series of emperors lowered the silver content of their currency, called the denarius.
Today, some lament that the dollar isn't backed by gold, silver, or anything else.
But it is.
It's backed by the world's most powerful military, strongest economy, reserve currency status, international trade agreements, and you also… must pay your taxes in dollars.
Dollars are still liquid and useful… but perpetually debased, so get them and then transition out of them.
Yet, at the same time, we're also the greatest debtor nation in world history. The easiest way to pay it all back is to simply print more and inflate more.
So that’s why it's almost inevitable that dollars will keep being worth less... and BTW, the two words “worth less” sound awfully close to the word “worthless”. Ha!
That’s where we keep heading.
Until you can send a Venmo request to the Fed to compensate you for your loss in purchasing power, we need to actually do something about this.
And the dollar that you had when you started listening to me today could very well now only be worth 99 cents. Ha!
We can either have our standard of living degraded by inflation or we will decide to profit from it.
So, if you haven't yet, check out GetRichEducation.com/TripleCrown.
Rather than impoverish you, learn how you can make inflation CREATE wealth for you three ways at the same time with that free, 3-part Inflation Triple Crown video series. Good learning there.
It’s free & easy to watch, again, at GetRichEducation.com/TripleCrown
Inflation seemingly seeps into everything.
Inflation took down the commercial sector - Apt buildings & offices. Apts are down 30-40% in the last two years. It’s all because inflation made the Fed panic and jack up those rates.
If that’s not jaw-dropping enough. Office values are down 80%+ in the last two years. 80%+, 90%+ in some cases.
Of course, office RE got the double-whammy of the inflation-induced interest rate hikes AND the Work-From-Anywhere movement.
That leaves residential 1-4 unit properties in good standing - and still impacted by inflation, but LESS impacted by inflation.
Yeah, your 1-4 unit RENTS are up - and I’ll talk more about rent later in the show today.
inflation also jacked up your expenses like insurance, utilities, maintenance & repair cost and more.
But as we move away from the inflation conversation now, of course, one big reason that 1-4s have stayed resilient is the American privilege of LTFIRD - and the fact that it’s 30 years for most US properties.
In fact, in 2022, 89% of homebuyers applied for the 30-year.
I think that you’re about to get more appreciation for this… perhaps than you’ve ever had.
The 30-year FRM is a UNIQUELY American construct.
And, BTW, some people don’t seem to know what the word “unique” means. You’ve probably heard people misusing this word all the time.
Unique does not mean something that’s sort of different.
Unique means “ONE of a kind”. Unique means something that does not exist ANYWHERE else.
What do I do here on this show? Besides giving you the occasional geography lesson as a side dish to your real estate, I do this with vocabulary, grammar, and syntax as well, don’t I?
Even though my own is surely imperfect.
Anyway, the reason that the 30-year mortgage can exist is due to our deep financial markets - especially our secondary market for mortgage-backed securities, where your loan gets packaged up and purchased by a bond investor - a bit like Ridge Lending Group President Caeli Ridge & I touched on last week.
The reason that mortgage-backed securities are attractive to investors in the U.S. and across the globe is because their government sponsorship makes them safe investments over long periods of time. They also provide a fixed payout to the MBS holder.
And see, the rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage tracks closely to 10-year Treasurys because “U.S. real estate is almost as good an investment as a U.S. Treasury bond.”
They’ve got Fannie & Freddie insurance.
And that entire MBS process now has more guardrails in it than we had before the Global Financial Crisis.
We’re talking about the foundation here - really - of where you get your big lumps of money from - the 30-year FRM and its uniqueness.
Compared to the world, the US has very little variable rate debt.
Less than 4% of American mortgage borrowers have debt that’s on rate terms of a year or less. Over 96% of US debt is LTFRD, defined as 10 years or more.
That is virtually unparalleled worldwide. To compare us to some other developed nations, mortgage borrowers in Germany - just 47% of them have long-term fixed debt - and none of them can get 30-year debt.
Long-term debt, again, defined as ten years or more,
Is little to ZILCH for mortgage borrowers in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and other developed nations like them.
In Canada, the most common mortgage terms reset to the prevailing market interest rate every five years.
In Finland, their mortgages reset annually or faster. Gosh, can you imagine if your mortgage rate reset every year like it does for the Finns?
Sheesh, that's more often than some people lose the remote control or rearrange their furniture.
OK. So what's this really mean?
Ya gotta… pour one out for most mortgage borrowers in the rest of the world.
They can’t lock in their mortgage interest rate for the long-term. So with rates doubling or tripling, starting from 3 years ago, it's totally ruined a lot of foreign homeowners.
Look, what if you're middle class and your monthly mortgage payment soars from $1,893 on Tuesday up to $3,415 on Wednesday?
That's what's happening elsewhere. It can go up 50% overnight and nearly double overnight in Australia, Europe and elsewhere.
But in the mortgage-advantaged US, we're safe.
If we buy at an 8% mortgage rate on a 30-year fixed amortizing loan today—just the plain, vanilla loan:
If rates rise to 10% later, you're happy to be locked-in at 8%
If rates fall to 6% later, you'll refinance
Note that I refrain from saying "just refinance". I don't like the word "just". You'll still need hours to provide documentation and your credit score will be checked. But it's worth it.
You won’t “just refinance”. Ha! You’ll refinance.
So think of it this way then, you can alter your deal with the bank whenever you want—and usually with no prepayment penalty. Yet the bank can't alter it on you.
What did Darth Vader say to Lando Calrissian in the “Empire Strikes Back?”. I am altering the deal, pray that I don’t alter it any further.
Ha! We better not play that clip here. I don’t know the copyright laws with LucasFilm or Disney there. Ha!
But you’re not a dark lord of the Sith for doing it… for altering the deal on the bank. You’re playing within the rules.
This is almost an unfair advantage for Americans.
The bottom line here - with this unique American advantage, is that, as rates change, you get to play both sides of the game. And that’s why we add smart properties with loans.
We turn that into wealth, with compound LEVERAGE.
Now, mere compound interest, that’s a vehicle for you to rely on more for your shorter-term funds, your cash or what you’re keeping more liquid.
Long-term wealth is build through compound LEVERAGE.
Short-term funds - that’s for compound INTEREST.
And… your bank is getting rich off of YOU. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.
If your money isn’t making about 4-5% today, you’re losing your hard-earned cash to inflation.
What I do, is keep my dollars in a private LIQUIDITY FUND. You can do this too.
Your cash generates up to an 8% return with—COMPOUND INTEREST—year in and year out instead of earning less than 1% sitting in your bank account - or even 4-5% elsewhere.
The minimum investment is just $25K.
You keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back. This private LIQUIDITY FUND has a decade-plus track record - and they’ve always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. I would know… because, I'm an investor with them myself.
See what it feels like to earn 8%. A lot of other GRE listeners are. To learn more, just text the word FAMILY to 66866 to learn more about Freedom Family Investments' LIQUIDITY FUND. Get 8% interest! Just do it right now, while you’re thinking about it. Text FAMILY to 66866.
More straight ahead, including what’s happening with rents. I’m Keith Weinhold. You’re listening to Get Rich Education.
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Welcome back… you’re listening to Episode 503 of Get Rich Education. I’m your host, Keith Weinhold.
We’ve got a poll result, from our Get Rich Education Instagram Page.
The poll question was simple. “When buying property, what’s more important?”
The purchase price or the mortgage rate.
71% of you said the purchase price. 29% of you said the mortgage rate.
Of course, both are important, but I think that the PURCHASE PRICE is the best answer - because your purchase price stays fixed for the life of your ownership period, and you can CHANGE your fixed mortgage rate and make it malleable… whenever it suits your needs.
As we talk about where the OPPORTUNITY is today, though multifamily apartments are going to bottom out sometime and therefore, at some point, they’ll make a wise investment - who REALLY knows - maybe the time for larger apartments is now…
… one opportunity is… giving good people OPTIONS during a housing affordability crisis.
And what’s going on right now is that… let me put it this way… when people have a hard time affording their own home today, basically (ha!) people are having a hard time transitioning from resenting their landlord to bickering with an HOA.
Ha! That’s kind of how the world works.
Seemingly everyone would rather be bickering with an HOA rather than resenting their landlord.
A lot of renters want to be buyers… they can’t… and that isn’t expected to change anytime soon… as prices will likely stay elevated… and mortgage rates are staying higher, longer too.
These things are ALMOST “knowns”. It’s often wise… to invest in trends that are known. Nothing’s completely predictable, but when you’re looking for a place to park your investment dollars, a few other things… are known… right now.
And AI is not expected to change what I’m about to tell you… anytime soon.
VR - virtual reality is not about to change what I’m about to tell you anytime soon.
AR - augmented reality isn’t either. Machine learning won’t imminently disrupt this.
And that is, that… everyone expects more long-term inflation. At what rate, no one knows.
People will need to live somewhere… and there are not enough places to live.
Those three facts, right there, are so simple. I love simple. Ha! One reason I love simple things is that I can remember it.
So many investors - investors in all types of things, say, from tech EFTs to junior mining stocks to crypto - you can make money there.
But, at times, investors will unnecessarily go out on the risk curve and GUESS and speculate… at a future trend.
Some are right. They’re often wrong, and adopting too much of that approach… that’s exactly when your risk-adjusted return goes down throughout your investor life.
Instead, you can get great returns - real estate pays 5 ways-type of returns - in these trends that I just described that are near certainties.
Why guess? When instead, you can almost be certain.
Often times, the certain thing is right… there.
It’s often easier, like I think I brought up on the show once before, inspired by Jeff Bezos - don’t ask what will change in 10 years.
The more insightful question and profitable question that fewer people think to ask is actually - “What will be the SAME in ten years?”
Well, when we talk about rents and the fact that tenants WILL keep paying you to live somewhere ten years from now, the trend that’s taking place here in the mid-20s decade - here in the mid 2020s, is that…
Rents are increasing the most where there hasn’t been enough new supply added - up 5-6% in parts of the Northeast including New York and Boston - Seattle too… and parts of the Midwest. Detroit and Honolulu rents are each up about 5%.
Rents are decreasing the least, and even declined - where they’ve added lots of new supply recently, like Austin, Texas and Miami, where they’re down 3% or more in each. New Orleans is another major city that’s down - at minus 1%.
But among the larger cities, Austin, Texas is the WORST performer in the nation right now.
If you’re listening to this either this week or you’re listening to this ten years from today, if you want to know future rent trends, look at where they’re adding supply.
Especially in apartments. But all these new apartments will fill up and nationally, they’re building fewer apartments this year than last year’s apartment-building boom.
When we talk about rents and who owns SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES, there are a few myths that I want to help bust for you here.
There seems to be this misconception or misinformation that GIANT Wall Street firms are buying up all the SFRs. That’s just not true.
Now, there is more participation from the big firms than there has been historically, but those that own 1 to 9 SFRs… which is our definition of mom & pop investors here… constitute 80% of the SFR market.
80% own one to nine units. Now, you might own more than 9.
In fact, 14% are in that next tier up, owning 10 to 99 SFRs. Then 3% - known as small national investors own between a hundred and a thousand.
And, what’s left, the big institutional investors - those that own 1,000+ SFRs - and you’ve heard of some of these companies - Invitation Homes, and another is American Homes 4 Rent.
Progress Residential, Blackstone, First Key Homes - all those big players own just 3% of the market.
So again, 80% are the small ones - the mom & pops… a highly fractured market.
There are a total of 82 million SFHs in the United States. Out of all of them, do you have any idea what percent are OOed and how many are rentals?
It’s 83% OOed and 17% of the single-families are rentals. So about one-sixth of SFHs are rented out.
Now, here’s the thing. Some people tend to think of mom and pop single-family rental operators as unsophisticated charity case workers who never raise rents.
That’s part of the perception out there.
But that narrative has never really been true, and, in fact, the COO of American Homes 4 Rent - his name’s Bryan Smith - recently brought up this key point on their recent earnings call.
He said that while historically mom and pops hadn't always priced directly to market because of a lack of market data, "they've migrated into a strategy that's closer to ours."
How is this and why is this? Anymore, why ARE mom & pops raising rents just about as aggressively as the big institutional players.
It’s really increased transparency on the rents that landlords are asking… through internet listing sites like Zillow.
It's not that mom and pops didn't increase rents before. (I mean… just look at what happened with rising rents in the 1970s and 80s before institutions were in the sector.)
But when there's a lack of rent amount transparency, it takes longer for operators to discover and adjust to market pricing-- especially for smaller players in a deeply fragmented market.
That's the part that’s changing.
But see, increased transparency works both ways. It’s good for you and bad for you as a property investor.
This information helps tenants too. In upswing markets, operators may push rents faster than they would otherwise.
But in a downswing market, operators may cut or keep rents flat faster in order to lease the unit.
Because tenants can easily see what other LLs are charging and compare features. When you price too high, units sit vacant and generate no income.
Since renters benefit from increased transparency too, if they see two similar homes, they're usually picking the better deal.
And increased transparency is why NEW lease rent growth is cooling off.
In fact, CoreLogic just released their latest SF Rent Index report last week. It showed that, nationally rents are up 3.4%, which coincidentally, happens to be the same as the latest CPI inflation number.
Detached properties are seeing more rent growth than ATTACHED ones - like townhomes. If you think about it, that makes sense. Townhomes are in less demand now.
Because the homeownership dream, is when one moves out of the apartment & buys a detached house.
And since that’s so unaffordable to buy here in the 2020s decade, that’s why more people are willing to pay more for to rent the detached type.
Note that SFR rent growth has moderated since mortgage rates spiked-- further dispelling the sticky myth that rents boom when home sales fall.
Remember - when homes price growth is really hot - like it was in 2021 and 2022 - near 15% - rent growth tends to be hot too. It was ALSO near 15%.
And when home price growth is moderate, like it is now, well, rent price growth is moderate too.
Prices and rents move together. They’re POSITIVELY correlated. Some people think they move inversely… and we’re looking at history over hunches again - what REALLY happens here.
So though you’re almost certainly going to get nominal rent growth over time, it’s not a good thing for you to count on it in the short-term - it NEVER is, in any era.
The time for you to push rents is, of course, in any market, when you go for NEW leases. A new lease with a new tenant is going to be higher than a renewal lease.
It’s the ol’ - this has been a good tenant for three years, so I don’t want to push the rent too hard & lose them.
To review what you’ve learned today, inflation is affecting ALL of your investments, 30-year FRMs are a UNIQUE American advantage…
…it’s wise to invest in future trends that are KNOWN, if you want to know what is going to happen with rents in the near future, look where they’ve added supply.
Less new supply correlates with more rent growth… and large institutional investors own just 3% of SFRs.
If you enjoy the show, please, tell a friend about it.
Isaiah on LI had the most flattering comment. Over there, he wrote and called GRE “The best podcast on the planet.”
I… really don’t think that I can take credit for that, though… I’d like to think we’re a good resource for building your wealth through REI and regularly informing you, giving you ideas that you’ve never thought about before that add real value to your life.
You’ve heard of Bidenomics. The first portmanteau type that I ever heard about a President’s economic policies is REAGANomics, though it was a little before my time.
Here on the show next week, with us, will be none other than “The Father of Reaganomics”.
Yes, late President RONALD REAGAN’S Budget Director will be here next week. Basically, he was Reagan’s “Money Guy”.
His name is David Stockman and he often met with the President in the Oval Office, advising Reagan on economic affairs.
I have asked David Stockman, if besides talking about the condition of today’s economy next week, he’ll also discuss real estate - and he agreed to do so.
That’s “The Father of Reaganomics”. You can look forward to he & I together next week here on the show.
You might be one of the listeners that’s been here every single week since 2014 - just like I’ve been here for you.
A new podcast is published every Monday. If you want more our DQYD E-mail Letter is published and sent about weekly, that’s typically been on Thursdays lately. Then, there are many new videos published each month over on our Get Rich Education YouTube Channel. Those are the main three places that you can find us.
Until next week, if you enjoy listening, I really appreciate if you would told a friend about the Get Rich Education Podcast.
Until then, I’m your host, KW. Don’t Quit Your Daydream!
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