Get Rich Education 577: The Geography of Wealth: Zero-Tax States, Big Returns with Victor Menasce
Keith discusses strategies for amplifying investing returns and reducing lifetime tax burdens through real estate, geography, and industry.
He compares tax burdens by state and explains how investors can leverage low-income tax states and low-property tax states.
Podcast host, investor and developer, Victor Menasce, joins the conversation to highlight the industrial real estate market, emphasizing the demand for warehousing and logistics.They touch on the potential in industrial outdoor storage and the complexities of data center investments.
Reach out to Y Street Capital to learn more about their projects and the real estate espresso podcast.
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Complete episode transcript:
Keith Weinhold 0:00
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, we're talking about how you can use real estate, geography and industry to amplify your investing returns over the course of your life and permanently reduce your lifetime tax burden today on Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 0:21
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Corey Coates 1:34
you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 1:49
Welcome to GRE from Milford, Delaware to Milford, Utah and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education, the voice of real estate investing since 2014 now, what do you think about a multi week government shutdown? That means there's a cut in your service level, but of course, oh geez, there's no commensurate cut in the amount of taxes that you pay. This is the government's version of charging rent on a vacant unit. That's what's happening. That's what we've been looking at in the biggest expense you'll ever pay in your life. It isn't housing, it's taxes. Before I get to how you can reduce the amount of taxes that you'll pay throughout the course of your life, which is huge. Let's pull back, and I guess it's a bit of a real estate geography riddle for you, imagine if there were a place that existed, and this place is within a 15 minute drive of a seacoast, 15 minutes of mountains, within 15 minutes of an urban core of about 300,000 people, and within 15 minutes of an international airport and a decent airport that has direct, non stop flights to Europe. Even, could that place exist all of that? I mean, it almost sounds too good to be true when I put it like that, yes, it does, and it's in the United States. On top of that, this same place with proximity, within 15 minutes of all four of those things, has zero state income tax and zero sales tax. Yes, all this is in the same place, and that's where I am coming to you from today, Anchorage, Alaska. I traveled a good bit, and I can't think of another place in the US quite like it. A quick check of Chad GPT corroborates this, saying that the US places that come closest are Honolulu, Juneau and Bellingham, Washington. They come the closest to that. Now, the biggest downside, in my opinion, is a long, dark, cold winter. Well, that's when I do more traveling, but I spend many months of the year right here in Anchorage. And my guest today, who you'll hear from later, I haven't had him on the show in years, where recently he I and his wife, Natasha, toured Anchorage. I drove them around.
Keith Weinhold 4:29
first, let me tell you about a creative way to pay both a low property tax and a low income tax, and that is no matter what state or province that you live in now, the big three taxes that people pay throughout their lives are income tax, sales tax and a property tax. Those are the big three, and when you combine those to come up with the highest and lowest tax burdens by state, you'll notice that coastal states often pay the most. They generally have the biggest burden, because coasts attract people, and therefore those highly populated areas, they need infrastructure, say, for example, more bridges, and they often have more social services for people, and it costs tax money to maintain all of that. Now, look, will people move to an area specifically because they can get low taxes there? Like is that amenity in itself an attractant? Actually, not so much. No, you do get some people to move to Puerto Rico, predominantly for that reason. But interestingly, the two states with the lowest overall tax burden, that is, when you combine income, sales and property tax, the lowest are Alaska and Wyoming, and yet they have the fewest people living there, under 1 million people each. So the two states with the lowest tax burdens are also the two least populous states. So it is not making people flock there. So where you choose to live? Oh, that has more to do with your overall quality of life. And you know that's probably as it should be. Well, whether you own your home or you rent your home, you effectively do pay property tax, because tenants end up subsidizing the landlord's expenses. Most property tax maps that you see out there, those national property tax maps, they show the average tax bill that a household pays by state, regardless of real estate values. Well, that's not so useful. You might remember that a few weeks ago in our newsletter, I sent you the best and the smartest property tax map that I have by county. You'll remember that it showed the property tax paid as a percentage of the home value, so that relative basis is what matters more. When we look at property tax paid that way, we can more transparently see that the highest property taxes are generally paid in three US regions. Those three regions with the highest property taxes are the northeast, much of the Great Plains and Texas now a 1% property tax rate is, for example, when you have to pay 4000 bucks a year on a property value of 400k That's that 1% and the lowest are in the Western US and the nation's southeast quadrant, often under 1% we're just talking about the property taxes only here. Now out west, lower property taxes, they still rarely create investor cash flow, and that's because purchase prices are too high out west, and rents don't keep up with them proportionally. But low taxes, they do adequately sweeten the most investor advantaged areas, that is in the southeast Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Hawaii, and a bunch of the Mid Atlantic states. All right, so they are the investor advantaged areas that also have low property tax. The nation's lowest property tax rate is in Alabama. Roll tide, I think I've mentioned that on the show before. All right, so that's property tax, but states have to get their revenue somewhere, so oftentimes, if their property tax is low, well then they have to make up for that. So therefore their income or sales tax can be high. Now as far as income tax, each state has their own of course, the high ones are New York, New Jersey, California and Hawaii. Those are many of the high ones. But there are nine states with zero, absolutely zero, state income tax, and those nine states that are free of income tax are the aforementioned, Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming and Washington gets somewhat of an asterisk that has a little wrinkle in it. That's one of the nine with the wrinkle, you'll pay zero income tax on your wages in Washington. It only applies to high earners, capital gains tax income there, all right. Well, all of that is true for everybody there, every US citizen. But here's the arbitrage that a real estate investor can create. If you live in one state and you own property in another state, you always pay property tax where the property is physically located, not where you live. I mean, any longtime out of state real estate investor knows that. So you can therefore live in a state with little or no income tax, for example, Texas, and then a Texas resident can skirt Texas's higher property tax by investing in a different state that has low property tax, like, say, Alabama or Tennessee. Oh, well, now both your property tax and your income tax are low this way. And congratulations, you have just legally exploited the tax system. Some examples of a low income tax home state where you live and a low property tax investor state where your investment property is, so that you get the best of both worlds. They are, Texas is your home state, and Alabama is your investment property state, like I just described, and then a few other scenarios, so that you can legally use the system to pay both a low income tax and low property tax. Are having Pennsylvania as your home state and Missouri as your investor property state, having New Hampshire as your home state and Tennessee is your investor property state. And then another example, having Washington as your home state and Arkansas as your investor state. Those are just some examples of combinations there about how you can live in a low income tax state and then also enjoy having your investment property in a low property tax state and see perhaps now you're doing this without having to move. Yes, investing in low property tax states. Now, of course, property taxes are set at the county or city level. They're not set federally, but just within one state. Sometimes property tax can vary dramatically, which you probably know, but two of the biggest examples of this are in Illinois, Cook County, which is Chicago, and also Miami, Dade County, Florida. I mean those jurisdictions, they have tax rates that can make wallets cry more than their surrounding counties do, and some states have maximums, legal limits ceilings on property taxes. California proposition 13 famously limits property tax to 1% of assessed value, and then the increases are capped as well. I mean this means the two California neighbors with identical homes can pay wildly different taxes, and Florida is still looking to completely eliminate the property tax. Can you imagine that? I mean, it seems doubtful that that will happen, but you can conceive of how much more desirable that would make Florida properties, and that would probably make all Florida housing values skyrocket now, just because a property has a high property tax rate that doesn't disqualify it as an investment property alone, it's just one consideration that'll show up in your proforma, your cash flow. So the bottom line is that as an income property owner, property tax is mostly passed on to your tenant, but paying a low rate still keeps you more flexible and profitable. So think of a map of states with low property taxes, sort of like a treasure map, but instead of x marking the spot, it marks where your money will go the furthest.
Keith Weinhold 13:36
And if you want real estate maps like I'm talking about here, and stories and great charts and investment opportunities that I cannot fit onto the channel. Here, you can grab them in my free weekly newsletter at gre letter.com and part of this is because I just cannot adequately describe a map or a chart to you here in an audio format. You get more in the letter free wealth, building insight every week. And it comes straight from me. 1000s of investors read it every week. Don't live below your means. Grow your means. Get It At gre letter.com Again, that's gre letter.com
Keith Weinhold 14:20
something interesting just happened when Wells Fargo released their housing forecast for the next two years. Let's discuss that between today and 2027 they expect the federal funds rate to drop by a full 1% but they don't expect mortgage rates to drop as much only about a quarter point drop over the next two years in the 30 year fixed rate. For next year, they expect home prices to rise three and a half percent, and then the year after 3.7%. looking down the road a couple years here, and this is sorced by Wells Fargo economics and the US Department of Labor and the FHFA and more. All right, so only a small reduction in mortgage rates and a pickup in home price appreciation, although still pretty moderate. Now you gotta take any interest rate prediction with a grain of salt, like I've told you here before. I personally, I do not forecast interest rates, and when you're looking at interest rate predictions, you are squarely looking at a waste of your time.
Keith Weinhold 15:34
Now, a recent Gallup poll wanted to find out what Americans consider to be the best long term investment. That's the question that the pollsters asked, what is the best long term investment? And the findings were that 16% said stocks. I mean, despite the fact that stocks only seem to make insiders wealthy, still somehow 16% of Americans consider stocks to be the best long term investments, a higher share of Americans, 23% said gold. That actually surprises me, that nearly one quarter of Americans say that gold is the best long term investment, when only about 10% of Americans own gold in the physical form, like bars or coins. And part of this could be driven by the recent hype, where the gold price has more than doubled just since last year, and it broke above $4,000 an ounce for the first time in history this month. All right, so 16% said stocks, 23% said gold. And what's number one in the Gallup poll for what Americans believe is the best long term investment? It's real estate. Ah, well, they got that right. That actually gives me a little more faith than Americans there. Now, when it comes to real estate investment, you know, there's this long running mantra or catchphrase out there that I really disagree with. I mean, you've certainly heard this before, but it just does not resonate with me. And that is, appreciation is just the icing on the cake. That's the catchphrase I am not feeling the vibe there. How in the heck is appreciation just the icing on the cake? The presumption, the inference here, is that cash flow is the main driver of an investment philosophy, and then if you just happen to get appreciation too, oh, well, that's a little sweetener. Like the mantra would say cash flow is the cake, the majority piece, and then appreciation since the icing, oh, that's only a little thing. No, that's misleading. You usually get more of a return from appreciation than you do cash flow.
Keith Weinhold 17:56
I mean, on, say, a 400k income property, what if you only get $200 of cash flow? That can happen? That's $2,400 a year. But instead, 5% appreciation on that property gives you $20,000 a year. That is almost 10x. I think what the icing on the cake, curious catchphrase means is that cash flow is important because it controls the mortgage. Well, then I think it's just better to say that appreciation is not an inconsequential thing. It's often the biggest thing. So is appreciation just the icing on the cake? No, it certainly is not. In fact, I'm going to talk more about that next week when I've got something special planned for you here on the show. What I'm going to do then is look at the ways real estate pays you five ways in a slow market, the real estate market is slow. If you look at it on a basis of transaction volume, say that you buy a property today and over the next year, you don't even get what Wells Fargo forecasts say you only get 2% appreciation and zero cash flow. Just break even on a monthly basis. I mean, there's surely some disappointing numbers, but just say that's what happens. Well, next week, I'm going to add up what your total rate of return would be even in this dour scenario, and I think that you are going to Marvel be flabbergasted at how profitable you are if you just got 2% appreciation and zero cash flow. That's next week.
Keith Weinhold 19:36
As far as today, I'm about to bring in a super smart guest that hasn't been on the show here in a few years. He's usually a fellow faculty member on the real estate guys invest or summit at sea. But he wasn't there with me this year, so we met up in Anchorage. Instead, we're talking about changes to commercial real estate that market, and the opportunities that you might be able to find there from Industrial land, an activity that well generates noise, like Bitcoin mining operations and growing data centers with the increased use of AI. And as you listen, see if you know what I mean about how he feels professorial in his approach, and I mean that in the best possible way you can learn from him. He's from Ottawa, Canada, an international conversation coming up next. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Episode 577, of get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 20:34
If you're scrolling for quality real estate and finance info today, yeah, it can be a mess. You hit paywalls, pop ups, push alerts, Cookie banners. It's like the internet is playing defense against you. Not so fun. That's why it matters to get clean, free content that actually adds no hype value to your life. This is the golden age of quality email newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor. It's direct, and it gets to the point, because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter takes less than three minutes to read, and it leaves you feeling sharp and in the know about real estate investing, this is paradigm shifting material, and when you start the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video, course, completely free as well. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be simpler to get visit gre letter.com while it's fresh in your head, take a moment to do it now at gre letter.com Visit gre letter.com
Keith Weinhold 21:46
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Tarek El Moussa 22:19
what's up? Everyone. This is hgtvs Tariq al Musa. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.
Keith Weinhold 22:27
Hey, it's great to welcome back a longtime industry friend. He's a senior partner at y street capital. He owns a development company that's active in nine US states and two Canadian provinces, and he's the host of the real estate espresso podcast. Hey, it's great to have back. It's been a few years. Victor Menasce, great to be here. Keith, well, you know what's different? I mean, we were together doing some sightseeing around Anchorage, Alaska. You I and your wife here just a few weeks ago. That was great to have you. And then you had a nice Alaskan cruise after that. It was lovely. It was great to spend time with you in person, where you and I have spent time together at conferences all around the nation. So thank you for that. Yeah, it was great to do some fun stuff and like, Oh, hey, this guy knows a world outside of just talking about cap rates all the time. So Victor, the commercial side is pretty dynamic, and it sure has been lately with all the changes that we've had in the world, really starting with the pandemic almost six years ago, now, that includes the industrial space and how the need for warehousing and storage has changed. So from a real estate perspective, tell us about what you're seeing there.
Victor Menasce 23:41
We're seeing a lot of changes. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty that's been injected by the current administration in Washington in terms of international trade. But even if you put that aside the flow of goods from wherever they're manufactured to the end customer, that flow is still there. It's one of these things that often creates inefficiencies, especially as you start to think about really optimizing the overall cost. You know, if you think about what inventory costs you to have on a retail floor where you might be renting that retail space at, I don't know, 55 $60 a square foot, and it's occupying very, very expensive real estate, if you can instead put that in a warehouse that's maybe at 10 to $15 a square foot. Oh, but wait a minute, you've got a 27 or a 35 or a 40 foot ceiling height, and you're stacking it seven to nine levels high. Really, the cost of that inventory has gone way, way down because you're putting it much less expensive real estate, right? Okay, so here is one of the efficiencies of a retailer doing e tail instead of brick and mortar retail, absolutely. And you know, we often see situations where the last mile, you know, we want to get that instant gratification as a consumer, but we don't necessarily want to be having to drive to that retail space. And we don't that's. Supplier doesn't necessarily want to pay Amazon for warehousing that particular product. So often, the fulfillment is done locally, that last mile Logistics is extremely important. That's putting a lot of pressure on this category of product that has traditionally been called Flex industrial. These are those places in the industrial park that you might see an electrician or a landscaping company or a plumber or anyone like that that has an office at the front of 14 or 18 foot Bay at the back and a bit of inventory. A lot of that product right now is being pulled off the market for many different reasons. Some of that's just disappearing and that land is getting repurposed for residential. Some of it's disappearing because people are putting gyms and pickleball courts and things like that and those types of products. Some of it's disappearing because people with exotic car collections want to use that space for a man cave. There's many different things that are demanding that particular product, and there's very little of it getting built. So that's another area right now that is under a lot of pressure. On the demand side, not a lot of new supply and rents are going up much, much faster than they otherwise should be. Talk to us more about the industrial space from the supplydemand perspective, what do people want and what do people need? It varies widely. There are companies that are in manufacturing, they will often look to refresh their investment in equipment. They may not have the capital, so they will sometimes do a sale, lease back of their building, of their facilities, so that they can then repurpose some of that capital onto into the equipment side, so that they can maybe modernize their manufacturing. That's another area where we see significant shifts happening. In industrial we also see a lot in logistics, where the most efficient way to move goods is a 200 year old technology called rail, and it's still alive and well. I mean, if you think about the cost of shipping a container across the country, you're going to spend about two cents per ton mile to move that by rail, or about 10 cents per ton mile to do it by truck. So that's a five times difference in price. That means a container from Los Angeles to New York is going to cost you about $1,400 if you're moving it by rail, or about $7,500 if you're moving it by truck. But if you're now part of the rail system, there's now logistics that you have to worry about at either end. And so if you want to make all of that work, those transfer hubs become extremely important, and there's just not a lot of them,
Keith Weinhold 27:38
okay, so it might only cost 1/5 as much per ton mile to move a good over rail as it does road. But you're sort of talking about the logistical challenge of, oh, getting it that last mile from the rail Terminus to the end user.
Victor Menasce 27:53
absolutely. And there can be a lot of cost associated with that last mile. So if you can solve that problem for the logistics companies and lower their cost for that last mile. That's got significant value, and that's another demand for industrial land. And very few cities are adding industrial land to their master plan. You know, warehouses don't vote, so they don't tend to take other land and zone industrial In fact, if anything, it goes the other way. There's a lot of pressure to take land that was zoned industrial and rezone it for commercial or for residential. In fact, we see that in a lot of cities.
Keith Weinhold 28:30
Now, you the listener, if your entrepreneurial wheels are turning, you can see the opportunity for, Hey, can I get in and help solve the problem in that last mile demand creatively. How do I think I could get in? How do I think I could do that, as long as that demand is sustainable? Victor, when we talk about industrial real estate, like we are here as real estate investors, one of the things that we often think about is site selection. Tell us more about that through the industrial lens
Victor Menasce 28:58
I think there's a couple things that matter. Number one, you can't pay too much for it. It's got to be at the right price. So you've got to be thinking about, you know, we always do what's called residual land value analysis and and that happens in residential, commercial, every single asset class, everyone works backwards from the answer to the question. So the answer is, here's how much profit I need to generate. Here's my capital cost. Here's, you know, you keep backing up and you say, well, now what's left over? That's what I can afford to pay for the land. So you always gotta be working backwards from the answer to the question. And this is no different. We do this in industrial as well. So you gotta make sure that that situation where the numbers work. Number two, you've gotta make sure that there is the right supply, demand dynamics. Got to make sure that the property itself is not contaminated. That can be a liability. If that was once a heavy industry site, then there could be contamination. You want to make sure that that's somebody else's problem, not yours, or if it is your problem, that you can mitigate it where the cost is bounded. So you got to. You know, look at all of these things together. And then, of course, there has to be good connectivity, good access to freeways, to major arterial roads, good access to rail. If you can get a Rails per on the property, even better. But even if you can't, as long as you have good access to major roads. You know, I always look at this through the lens of product design, where you're designing a product for a very specific customer. And so it's really, it starts with the end customers need in mind. And it's not a speculative process. It's really understanding who that customer is designing a product for them and making sure that you're delivering it at the right price. So it's always, always working backwards from the answer
Keith Weinhold 29:43
nowwhen we think about site selection and geography of where we're putting this real estate cities are often located on a body of water, like a bay or a river, often runs through a city, but yet you think of industrial use. Land is not your priciest land, but yet you think of a city center as your priciest land. Oftentimes, where do you put the industrial real estate with regard to the city center? I usually think of it as far outside of that. But are there other trade offs or nuances there?
Victor Menasce 31:11
it can be. You know, it's a question of whether you're doing a greenfield project or an infill project. If the land was previously zoned industrial and you're now just redeveloping it, that can make a lot of sense. If it is a greenfield project where you're looking to build new then, yeah, it's probably going to be in the outskirts, because that's where you're going to get the best land cost. And then, of course, you got to be thinking about what the end product is, and it what's it going to cost you to get it where it needs to be. Most of these projects are built slab on grade, which means that the surface has to be suitable for that sort of building. The land might be cheap, but if you've got to bring in half a million yards of gravel to get the site where it needs to be, it might not look cheap anymore, because you could import so much material. So you have to think of the cost of the land in a shovel ready context, because you can spend an awful lot of money moving dirt, moving gravel, things like that that will be necessary for an industrial project. So when we look at land for that product, we're always looking at it through the lens of, is it in a floodplain? Is it high enough ground? Is it drain? Well, all of those things that come into the cost of preparing the site to accept that kind of a building.
Keith Weinhold 32:23
Now, when we think about what goes on in an industrial space in your mind's eye, you might think of an asphalt plant, or you might think of the noise in some rumbling concrete trucks. With regard to that, what are your thoughts about nimbyism? Do you see much, not in my backyardism among communities with industrial real estate.
Victor Menasce 32:44
Oh, absolutely, without a doubt. And oftentimes that's one of the reasons why industrial land often gets pushed out away from those residential zones. So once you're outside the radius of people who can object, then there's no objection. So that's one way to solve it, and often a good way to solve it, by the way, but you also have to be mindful the fact that if there is potential contaminants coming off of that site, you don't want to be near a body of water that can carry it down into an aquifer and so on. So you've got to be thinking through containment issues. You've got to be thinking through noise propagation issues. There's been, in fact, a lot of issues with data centers, where the air handling and the the air conditioning systems right generate a lot of noise, and that noise often carries over very large distances. And you know, we're talking noise levels that would be very offensive to most homeowners. Some people have had to move because the noise levels have just been so continuous.
Keith Weinhold 33:42
I like the way you put that Victor. It's sort of like, yes, industrial parks are built outside the radius of the loudest objectors. That's right where they're going to go. But that's really the way that it is sometimes when we think about more contemporary uses for how we use industrial real estate today. You touched on data centers, also Bitcoin miners, you know, these are some of the things that generate noise. So what are some of the considerations with those two?
Victor Menasce 34:06
If you're looking at a data center, they consume a lot of power and they generate a lot of heat. The most efficient way to get rid of heat is with water. And that sounds a little bit strange, but you think about it this way, if you heat a molecule of water by one degree. I'm going to actually give you the textbook definition of a calorie. You take that water and you heat it by one degree, that'll consume one calorie of water. That's the definition of a calorie. And if you take it from the liquid state to the vapor state, just that phase change at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, or 100 degrees centigrade, that phase change is going to consume 500 calories. So you're getting rid of tremendous amount of heat by evaporating water, and that's why data centers consume so much water, is because they evaporate the water. That's the way they get rid of the heat. They evaporate it into the atmosphere. And that's how they get rid of the heat. It's the most efficient way to do it, but it consumes a lot of water resources. And then, of course, you've got to have the power to get into the data center, and a lot of places don't have the electric infrastructure to provide what's needed on a sustained basis. So you need not just good power, you need good power redundancy. So if there's a power failure here, you've got maybe redundant paths. So if one transmission line goes down, you've got alternate paths to keep the data center running. And you need the same thing also with communication, so multiple redundant fiber pathways in and out of the data center. So all of these things come into site selection. And then if you got all of that right, you got to overcome the neighborhood objections.
Keith Weinhold 35:45
Yes, that's right. We're doing a little science here with Victor Menasce, experienced international developer, and Victor when we think about industrial real estate, and we're here on an investing show. You know, maybe an investor sees potential in data center real estate or something like that. So for the individual investor, what can they do? Can they do anything individually? Are there funds to invest in, to either avoid or be attracted, to tell us about how the investor can get in?
Victor Menasce 36:15
We're not active in data centers. We're active more on the industrial side. I know the existence of data center funds. I know, for example, Kevin O'Leary, very famous Shark Tank, is a major investor in data centers. If you look him up, there might be some potentials there. Many of the major players in artificial intelligence, Oracle right now is taking on a boatload of debt to build data centers for open AI, so they're going to both build and operate those data centers. And I don't know where they're getting their capital, but they're getting a lot of it, or at least that's what's been announced publicly. Data centers require a lot of at least at that scale, require tremendous amount of infrastructure. We're talking hundreds of acres. We're not talking a small warehouse here that might be a million square feet. We're talking big, big acreage for those scale projects and for more localized projects. Yeah, there are smaller data centers, but they're not that economical to run. So it's usually the large ones that are the most cost efficient.
Keith Weinhold 37:16
Well, two things Victor is there anything else about industrial real estate? Our listeners should know maybe something I did not think about asking you and then tell our audience how they can learn more about what you're doing.
Victor Menasce 37:27
We see opportunity in particular. We think of it almost like a covered land play. We're very active in the industrial outdoor storage space where there is need for things to be stored outdoors. It might be landscaping companies that want to buy materials by the truckload. It might be car dealerships that have an excess of inventory. It might be boat and RV storage. There's many different uses for secured outdoor storage, and these are products that are designed very specifically for customers that have those needs. And as a covered land play, frankly, some of the best returns that are available in the marketplace. We've looked at a number of different things, and this is where we're placing majority of our energy right now as a development company is in that space, because we see it as an underserved segment of the market where there is not a lot of institutional money that's come into the play yet, so we're very active in that space.
Keith Weinhold 38:22
And how can our audience learn more about what you're doing
Victor Menasce 38:25
best is to reach out to us at y Street, capital com. Be happy to have if folks want to learn more about our projects. There's a place where they can sign up on the website to get more information. And love to have you as guests or as listeners to the real estate espresso podcast, and that's a daily show, seven days a week, so love to have you as a listener for that show as well.
Keith Weinhold 38:46
And that's the letter Y, Y Street, capital.com,Victor Mesance, it's been enlightening as always. Thanks so much for coming back onto the show.
Victor Menasce 38:55
Thank you so much.
Keith Weinhold 39:02
Oh yeah, good stuff from Victor as always. Another thing that he, I and his wife did in Anchorage when he was here recently is visit, well, it was not an AI data center, but we went to a mint that sells gold bars, nuggets and bullion. I really just looked. It was fun to look with Victor and actually pick up and hold gold nuggets, something that you cannot do online. I didn't have any intent to buy anything with the run up in precious metals prices. I made my last purchase of those in the middle of last year. So a year and four months ago today, I hear about lots of people rushing to buy precious metals. Now, amidst this big price run up and the run up might still have a ways to go, but no, the time to buy was like a year and a half ago or more. It's not now getting caught up in the euphoria this sort of exhaltation where you're paying double the price.
Keith Weinhold 40:03
next week here on the show, I've got more that I want to share with you on today's opportunity in new build rental property. How real estate pays five ways in a slow market, which is just fascinating. And I've got a GRE live event to tell you about next week as well, and more, lots of intriguing wealth building material here in future weeks, and then sometime after that, my own right hand assistant here at GRE is going to come out of the show and ask me some of your listener questions. It's the first time you'll hear her voice on the show. But more importantly, get my answers to your investing questions. If you'd like your question answered on a listener questions episode down the road, as always, you can write into us at get rich education.com/contact, that's get rich education.com/contact, until next week, I'm your HOST. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.
Unknown Speaker 41:02
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Keith Weinhold 41:30
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