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Big capital gains tax bills are hitting more home sellers. Exemptions exist for up to $250K single, $500K married. Bad housing affordability means a low home ownership rate, hence, more renters. The homeownership rate has dropped from 66.0% to 65.6% in the last year. I have a hole in the roof of a rental single-family home, with about $10K in damage. Learn how I handle it. Two of the first three income properties that I bought performed poorly. VP of Market Economics at Auction.com, Daren Blomquist joins me. We learn why foreclosure activity is 10% to 20% below pre-pandemic levels. Learn about judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states.   From homeowners surveyed, the top concern about falling into delinquency are rising insurance and property taxes. Auction bidders are confident about the real estate market. They’re willing to pay more, which is 60% of ARV nationally. You can bid on distressed properties with your phone via Auction.com. Opportunity Zones are generally working. Resources mentioned: Nation’s Largest Online RE Auction Marketplace: Auction.com For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:00:00)) - - Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, talking about a lot of housing market problems today. Capital gains taxes hitting more home sellers. Home affordability is still bad. The American homeownership rate is falling. I've got roof damage on one of my own properties. Then an update on American mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. It's mostly bad real estate news today on Get Rich Education.   Speaker Syslo** ((00:00:29)) - - Since 2014, the powerful Get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Reinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform. Plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener. Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast.   Speaker Syslo** ((00:01:06)) - - Sign up now for the Get Rich education podcast or visit GetRichEducation.com.   Speaker Coates** ((00:01:14)) - - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:01:30)) - - We're gonna go from Bavaria, Germany, to Batavia, New York, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich education. There is a large online source of foreclosure and bank owned properties that you won't find on the MLS. In fact, they are the largest in the nation, and their VP of Market Economics will be here with us later today. Home price appreciation. That has been wonderful for the last several years. But one negative consequence is the fact that more home sellers now are getting hit with big capital gains tax bills. Now we'll discuss income property shortly, but when it comes to primary residences, you probably know that if you are single, you won't pay any capital gains tax on the first 250 K profit of your sale. That 250 K exemption. That is only half of what married couples enjoy.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:02:29)) - - They don't have to pay tax on the first 500 K of profit. Yes, a $500,000 exemption on capital gains for married couples. So basically, single people in high priced markets like you often find on the coasts, they get hit the hardest. Married couples in lower priced markets more toward the heartland and in the South. Those married couples, they're more likely to get away without paying any tax on the profit from their home sale. All right, well, just what proportion of homes are we talking about here? Well, last year, 8% of sales had capital gains of over 500 K. All right, well that potentially makes them exposed to the tax hit. Compare that to a couple decades ago. That share was just over 1%. So it's gone from 1% to 8%. These are exorbitant capital gains tax events. And you know what this does. People trying to avoid that it keeps even more homes off the market. Now it's not as pronounced as the well-documented interest rate lock in effect okay. Call this the capital gains tax lock.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:03:46)) - - In effect people avoid the tax by not selling. And it makes some older people age in place. That's part of what's going on here. Because if the homeowner keeps it until they die, then the heirs, they might be able to sell it tax free due to the tax laws and capital gains taxes. Like, what rate do you actually pay that can be as high as around 20% on you for selling your primary residence if the gain exceeds those thresholds? And yeah, those thresholds, they haven't moved with inflation in quite a long time. Now, understand that right now you are living in an era where many Americans, they can't afford to live in the home that they live in right now if they tried to repurchase it at today's prices. So again, it's not the mortgage rate lag in effect here. It's the purchase price paid lock in effect. Now look, yes, overall I am a real estate market optimist. You are too, when you understand how real estate pays you five ways. But as far as anyone saying something like, oh, there is never been a better time to buy, that doesn't make any sense.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:05:02)) - - Now. At the same time, I don't see any evidence that waiting is going to do you any favors, but there have obviously been some better times to buy. In fact, do you know the best year in modern history that I can think of for buying real estate? Any idea it was the year 2013? Yeah, 2013. That's when prices were low because they still hadn't bounced much off of the GFC lows and mortgage rates. They actually were in the absurdly low threes back in 2013. Now starting in 2021 you know I have been on record on this show. I've been on record on television and on our own YouTube channel here and in Forbes and elsewhere. Since then, I've said that home prices, they're not poised to fall, they're going to stay stable or they're going to keep going up. I was perhaps one of the earlier people to point that 3 or 4 years ago that the low housing supply and the government safety nets that won't let people lose their homes, those things keep the markets buoyant.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:06:16)) - - Now, today, I see more signs that prolonged bad affordability will slow down. Home price growth in that part is bad for investors, of course. Prolonged. Bad affordability. That means something good for income centric investors at the same time, sort of like David Stockman and I touched on last week here. Yes. Souring affordability. What that means is a falling homeownership rate that would make sense in the homeownership rate. That means that just what it sounds like, that is the proportion of American homes that are occupied by their owner in the past year. Yeah, the homeownership rate has fallen, but not too much yet because there are some lag effects and other factors to account for. Like, imagine if there are new zero money down loan programs that are made available. You can see how that would make homes more affordable, even if rates and prices and wages stayed the same. So there are X factors out there and lag effects out there. In the past year, the homeownership rate has fallen from 66% down to 65.6%.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:07:33)) - - Not too much of a slide, just 4/10 of 1%. That is a Fred stat sourced through the Census Bureau. All right. So what's that really mean if you're looking for income. Well, what that means is that there are now hundreds of thousands of additional renters today than there were just one year ago. And the number of renters, those that aren't homeowners, that looks to increase in both absolute and relative terms. There's a lot of people expect the homeownership rate to continue to drop from here. Now, no investor conditions are absolutely ideal everywhere you look. In fact, of the first three investment properties that I personally bought in my life, only one of those three went really well. It was that first ever fourplex I bought because it appreciated from 295 K to 425 K in just three and a half years, and it provided some cash flow and even a place for me to live. But the second property I bought, which was also a fourplex, it hardly cash flow because I bought it at 90% loan to value, and I also bought it in 2007.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:08:46)) - - Not great timing, so its value dropped. I was a pretty new real estate investor then, and when its value dropped, it didn't return to the 530 K value that I bought it for for about six years. And then I got wiser and I started buying across state lines, since that's where the best deals often are. Well, this was then my third investment property, a brick single family home that cost 153 K in the Dallas-Fort worth area. And the main reason I bought it is because it was cheap, which was a mistake. It was also in a growing area, but I couldn't keep it occupied, so I soon sold it for about the same price that I bought it for. All right. But even in those far less than ideal beginnings for me, two of my first three properties, they weren't disasters, but they weren't a great experience either. Yet I still got some leverage, a little cash flow. I got tenant made principal pay down all the while, tax benefits all the while, and that inflation profiting benefit.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:09:52)) - - And I did then find myself better off overall. Despite that the appreciation and the cash flow weren't all that great. If you blend those first three properties together and today, perhaps a lot like you or what you want to do. I own properties in multiple markets, and I remotely made as the property managers in those markets. And you know, just yesterday I got an email from one of my property managers about roof damage to one of my properties. It's a rental single family home. It's going to be about $10,000 worth of repair work. Some bad news and the way I'm hailing it is a way that you might think of handling a real estate problem. I sure don't just send off a $10,000 check right away and chalk it up as a loss, and ask myself how many months it's going to take me to make that up. The first thing that you can do in this situation is check to see if you have a home warranty that covers it in full or in part. Whether you bought your property new or renovated, a warranty might apply.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:10:58)) - - It actually does not in my case here. Well, if the warranty doesn't cover your issue, of course, check with your insurance provider and see what your deductible is there. Consider that when insurance premiums have risen sharply in a lot of markets, you need to get something back for that premium that you're paying in a lot of cases. All right. And if those things don't work, then don't just take the first quote that your property manager gives you that they got from the first contractor, which is. Ten K in my case. For a substantial work item, ask your property manager to obtain at least three quotes for you. That's reasonable. And then look at the most competitive of those three quotes. So to review here three ways to avoid paying. For example a full 10-K. In my case it's your warranty, it's your insurance. And if you feel like you must come out of pocket, then get three quotes in order to reduce your cost. And here's the thing you don't do these things yourself.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:12:03)) - - What you do is you ask your manager to do these things and make it easy for you. Your manager should check with your insurance policy and they should check on your warranty. And then you can back it up and take a look at it. If you don't like the answer, they should obtain the roofing contractor quotes for you to. You are paying your manager for this stuff, maybe 8 or 10% in a management fee, and that should not be for nothing. Have them do this stuff that's their job and ask them to do it. Because if you don't just watch, they'd be happy to have you do it for them. Don't. You don't have to. So we're talking about mitigating your out-of-pocket cost in your time expended when you have a real estate issue, like a hole in a roof of one of my single family rentals. Now sometimes you're going to get caught in some snafu. But again, our strategy here is that you're usually not even holding any one rental property for more than 7 to 10 years, because by that time, it's accumulated sufficient equity so that you can make a tax deferred exchange up to another property, keep leveraging that equity, because the rate of return from equity is always zero.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:13:16)) - - Now, that process, that 7 or 10 years, that might be on the slower end. Now though, since the property that you consider relinquishing is going to have a lower mortgage rate than your replacement property, it will. And one other thing to keep in mind here it's about providing America with that clean, safe, affordable, functional housing. What that means is that while roof quotes are being obtained here if needed, and it takes a few works until those roof repairs can begin, what you can do is have a cheap temporary repair done until the permanent roof fix starts. That's pretty common with roofing repairs, and that way not only is any interim damage avoided, but the tenant is not being negatively impacted here either. No slumlords around here. As we're discussing real estate problems today, we're about to delve into what happens when homeowners in real estate investors, when they can't make the mortgage payments on their property, and is that proportion of people going up or is that going down in this low affordability market? We'll also get some takeaways by looking at the bidder activity on foreclosure properties.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:14:33)) - - That can tell us quite a bit about the market and about buyer expectations for the future of the market. And I'll also tell you how you too, if you're interested, you can find opportunities and get a deep discount on a foreclosed upon property. That's all. Next with a great guest, I'm Keith Reinhold. You're listening to get Rich education. 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 4%, you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk. 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, the minimum investment is just $25. You keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back there. Decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know, because I'm an investor, to earn 8%.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:15:41)) - - Hundreds of others are. Text. Family 266866. Learn more about Freedom Family Investments Liquidity Fund on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text family to 66866. Role under the specific expert with income property you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS 42056 in grey history, from beginners to veterans. They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. This is Rich dad advisor Tom Wheelwright. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your daydream. This week's guest is the VP of Market Economics at auction. Com they are the largest online source of foreclosure and bank owned properties that you won't find on the MLS. You can bid on properties from anywhere with your mobile device. We'll learn more about that later. First, we're covering a general real estate market update today, and then we're mostly going to discuss what's happening in the foreclosure market, including just what a foreclosure market even is.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:17:25)) - - Hey, it's been over a year since we've had you here. So a big gray welcome back to Darren Lundquist. Thank you so much. It's great to be back and.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:17:34)) - - Glad to see you, Keith.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:17:35)) - - For listeners in the audio only Blomquist is spelled with just one oh, despite being pronounced. Blomquist and Daren, as we talk about the state of these markets today, it also helps to mix in lessons for the follower and listener that's watching or consuming this. In ten years. And before we discuss foreclosures. Now, Darren, when I look at the residential real estate market today, there are a few ways that it appears rather normalized actually. For example, all price appreciation rates are normal rent growth levels. They're pretty close to historic norms. Interest rates are even near historic norms, which is a surprise to laypersons. But that's three huge measures that are actually normal, and no one else anywhere talks about that. But there are some aberrations in today's market, the most chronic and saddening of which is the lack of housing supply.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:18:28)) - - So with that backdrop, what are your thoughts on today's overall American housing market?   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:18:34)) - - It's really interesting. We have these normal metrics that we look at when we look at how home price appreciation. Now home sales I would say are abnormally low. Right. But home price appreciation is doing well. Some of the other metrics that we look at. But it's coming off of this abnormal what I would say an abnormal period over the last three years or so, mostly during the pandemic when the housing market went a little bit crazy and you saw home prices rise abnormally fast. I would argue too fast for such a short period of time. And so you'd almost expect after a period like that to see a correction in home prices. And we saw a slight correction in late 2022, early 23. Right. But now home prices are, as you mentioned, kind of back to normal actually maybe a little bit on the high side of normal, 5 to 7% home price appreciation that we're seeing annually. And so there is this sense that things look normal.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:19:32)) - - But below the surface there are, I believe I would argue and you may not agree with this, some underlying problems that I think could come back to bite us if, you know, depending on how things go over the next few years. But certainly the underlying fundamental biggest storyline, that's not necessarily maybe as accessible to a lot of people is this housing supply that you mentioned, Keith. And over the last the decade that ended in 2020, we saw, I would guess, based on my analysis, about 4 to 5 million housing units that were not built, that in a sense should have been built. But we were short 4 to 5 million housing units relative to the number of households that were being formed during that same time period. And so that is set us up for this market that we're in now in the 2020s, where we're seeing, despite the fact that home prices are going up and are out of whack with fundamental price to income ratios. In other words, affordability is a problem. Despite that fact, home prices continue to go up because you have this underlying lack of supply and so you have enough demand to fuel rising home prices, given the lack of supply, if that makes sense.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:20:48)) - - Yes. You mentioned the paltry volume of sales, which is really one consequence of this constrained supply. And there are so many ways to measure it. You threw some numbers out there just using Fred's active listing count. They have one and a half to 2 million homes normally available. Inventory bottomed out near a jaw dropping, just fantastically paltry 350,000 units in 2022. And then the latest figure is about 730 K. So really doubling off the bottom, but yet still far below what is needed there in in 2021 and 2022, I started informing our audience that the housing crash of this generation, it's already occurred. It was a supply crash, which hedges against a price crash even amidst a tripling of interest rates. I guess there. And from your vantage point, when will this low housing supply abate?   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:21:46)) - - But I think on the multifamily side, you're seeing signs that we've, in a sense, caught up with housing supply. You're seeing the multifamily sectors start in terms of the builders start to pull back. I think because of that.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:21:58)) - - And one piece of evidence of that is the slowdown in rent appreciation. But then on the Single-Family side, we're still seeing pretty robust increases in housing starts and builders starting housing units. And I was just looking at the latest numbers for April up 18% year over year. And we're at over a million housing starts in April on an annualized basis. You know, it's hard to predict what household formation will be doing over the next decade, but I believe that million number is enough to supply the new households that are being formed and are projected to be formed over the next few years. And so we're kind of at a place where at least we're treading water in terms of housing supply. And I do think there are some demographic trends that could by the year 2030, which may seem like a long ways off still, but by that time we would see this kind of reverse a little bit. And the demographic trends I'm talking about are slower population growth, the birth rates. There's a big article in the Wall Street Journal.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:22:58)) - - If you write, birth rates are surprisingly not really coming back. They dropped during the pandemic have not really come back. And in many areas, including the US or below replacement level in terms of replacing the population at 2.1. Yes. So not to get too deep into the demographics, I'm not a demographer, but I think that combined with these increases in housing starts that we're seeing, we will see that supply in the next five years. Maybe when I'm on next, I'm with you to see that it is a slow moving train. I think we're headed in a good direction in terms of that, that housing supply. And those are already, I would argue, some early signs at 2024 at least. It's still a low supply environment, but it's at least somewhat better, incrementally better than 2023 was in terms of inventory. And we're seeing some more inventory. Come on. One tip I would just say that's I think a long term thing to look for, no matter what environment you're in, is if you look at the inventory, inventory is a great and a barometer of market health.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:24:00)) - - And if you look at inventory numbers by market, which we do, you do see some markets all of a sudden inventory is starting to spike. And that to me is a signal that those markets could be softening in terms of prices and even in terms of sales. So you see some markets in Florida popping up like that. But whether or not we're talking about now or anytime, it's a great metric to look at. For anybody investing in real estate, especially at a market level, is that inventory of homes. You can look at month supply of inventory for sale. Six months supply is a great milestone. If there's six months supply, that's a balanced market. If it's below six months supply, it's a seller's market. And if it's above six months supply, it's a buyer's market. So just a general kind of rule of thumb to look for there.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:46)) - - Sure. We've seen months of supply three months or less in an awful lot of places. However, you alluded to coming potential problems for the housing market earlier.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:55)) - - Can you tell us more about that? Have you already done that with talking about a potential softening with some inventory coming on faster in some markets?   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:25:04)) - - I think you're a thesis about this. The housing crash has already happened and it was a supply crash is very interesting. When I look at price to income ratios over time, you know, home prices versus incomes, we've diverged from that long term mean of that price to income ratio right. In the last couple of years. We saw that during the the bubble of 2004 five six. But it's even more dramatic in the last couple of years where we saw at the peak of this, the actual home prices. We. Nationwide, we're about 30% above what we would expect the price to be based on incomes and that historic price to income ratio. And so I do expect a reversion to the mean at some point. Now, whether that could occur as a pretty sharp correction, although I can't point to a specific trigger that would cause that correction necessarily may could occur more of a stagnation over time, where home prices kind of flatten out and increase less than the median long term average.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:26:07)) - - I do believe that we will see a reversion to that mean eventually, especially as we see more supply coming onto the market. I think it's actually healthy for the housing market, but it could be experienced by many people as weakness in the housing market, because you could see home prices decline a little bit, especially in certain markets.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:26:25)) - - From your vantage point. Darren, you are an expert there in helping people find deals because you really keep a pulse on what's happening in the foreclosure market. Maybe some of our audience doesn't completely understand what the foreclosure market means. Now, Darren, I think of delinquency is that condition means that mortgage borrowers have been making some late payments. Tell us about how delinquency differs from foreclosure. And that will help if you go ahead and define just what the foreclosure market is.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:26:57)) - - Starting with the foreclosure market. I mean, when you can call it the distressed market or the foreclosure market. And that's really where auctions. Com operates. And is this foreclosure market, it's loans that the borrower cannot continue to make payments for a variety of reasons.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:27:12)) - - When you have a home that's financed and the borrower cannot continue to make payments, the recourse for the lender is foreclosure to take back that property by taking back that property and then selling it, recouping or trying to recoup as much of the losses on that property that they can in terms of the loan that was given on that property. Okay.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:27:34)) - - So let's talk about delinquencies here. We're looking at certain levels of severity being 30 days late on your payments, being 60 days late and being 90 days late. And interestingly, we see a big spike in FHA loan types that have had more delinquencies than conventional loan types.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:27:50)) - - That's right. Yeah. So delinquency is kind of the top of the funnel if you think of the distressed market or for leisure market as a funnel, the top of that funnel is someone can't make their payment one month. They miss their payment, mortgage payment one month. That's what this 30 or 30 day delinquency. And when you look at the chart that we're looking at, you do see those 30 day delinquencies rising over the especially on FHA loans, which are, I would argue, the most kind of risky loans in our current marketplace.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:28:19)) - - Yeah, the last ten years, over the last decade. And we see those even from 2021, rising steadily up back to really 2019 highs on the 30 day delinquencies, you also see a slight gradual increase in conventional loans, which are loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as VA loans. But those are the 30 day delinquencies. They're are not back to pre-pandemic levels even on that front. So that's the 30 day. Usually if someone misses a monthly payment, it's not super serious at that point. What really gets more into our marketplace is when we see a 90 day delinquency, or what's known as a seriously delinquent loan alone, that is past due by 90 plus days. And we have that chart here. What stands out to me on this chart is you actually see those 90 day delinquencies continuing for the most part to trend lower, even though the 30 day delinquencies are going up, 90 days are coming down, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But at the end of the day, that means people maybe are getting into trouble, but they're able to get out of trouble before they lose the home to foreclosure in many instances.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:29:29)) - - All right. So in summary, 30 and 60 day delinquencies have risen over the past two years. But over the past two years, serious delinquencies, 90 day delinquencies therefore, are lower over the past two years.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:29:43)) - - That's right. And then if we look at foreclosure starts, which is kind of the next step. So you missed three months worth of payments. That's when the bank starts to think about starting the official foreclosure process. And if you look at foreclosure starts, we are seeing those rise as well. And part of the reason that you see these rising, even though seriously delinquent loans are falling, is because there was a bit of a backlog from the pandemic still. Yeah, loans that were delinquent when the pandemic started that were delayed from going to foreclosure, that are now coming back. So we see this sharp drop off in 2020 when there was a foreclosure moratorium. Those numbers have reverted back, have bounced back. But there's we're still seeing about 60 to 70,000 foreclosure starts, a quarter nationwide just to put some numbers on this.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:30:31)) - - But back in the first quarter of 2020, before the foreclosure moratoriums, we were at 81,000. So we're still at about 80% of the pre-pandemic levels. But foreclosure starts have come back. We're just getting back to what I would consider kind of normal levels of foreclosure, and especially if you look at in the context of what we saw during in 2009, 2010, we were seeing over 500,000 foreclosure starts a quarter back then. Now we're seeing 68,000. So we're paling in comparison to those numbers.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:31:04)) - - As you, the investor, is thinking this through, we're talking about how many opportunities there will be for you here, basically to scoop up a distressed deal, a fixed and flip property. If you're looking to fix and flip one just in the general context, that's what we're talking about here.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:31:21)) - - Opportunities really foreclosure starts are for. Opportunities. If we look at where the opportunities are emerging in terms of those foreclosure starts, we do see a lot of increases in looking at March of 2024. Year over year, a lot of increases in Florida, and foreclosure starts and also Texas in California.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:31:42)) - - So it's interesting. I mean, these are markets that are doing pretty well, pretty healthy. But we are seeing some of those foreclosure starts come back in pretty big percentage wise in those areas. If we look at auction com data, specifically the state level, in the interest of time. But just to look through the lens of looking for opportunities. Auction com resides a step after the foreclosure start. Then eventually it goes to a foreclosure auction where the property either sells to an investor or it goes back to the bank is what's known as an REO. And where we're seeing on our platform the biggest kind of return to normal levels of foreclosure auction volume, where there's that property actually is sold, is mostly in the Rust Belt, Upper Midwest. That's where we're seeing volumes return to normal. And a place like Florida, we're only seeing foreclosure volumes are over 70% below normal, and Texas were 55% below normal. And when I say normal, I'm saying I'm comparing that to pre-pandemic levels. And then in California, we're at about 45% below those pre-pandemic levels.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:32:54)) - - So some of the big volume states, we're still waiting for the foreclosure volume to return. But if you look like at states like Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, places like that, Oklahoma, we are seeing that foreclosure auction volumes have returned to those pre-pandemic levels. So there are more opportunities in those areas, at least relative to their population and their their size of in terms of housing units.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:33:20)) - - So in general, in a lot of these upper Midwestern states, in northern Great Plains states, we see a greater foreclosure volume than we did pre-pandemic, because those levels are at over 100%, 100 being the pre-pandemic level. There is one aberration on your map, for one thing, Darren, and that is in Connecticut, where we have 306% of the foreclosure volume that we did pre-pandemic. That's over three x what's going on in Connecticut?   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:33:50)) - - I'm glad you pointed that out. I mean, that is part of the the issue with Connecticut is you do have relatively low foreclosure volumes there. So the 306% is coming off even pre-pandemic, some pretty low volumes of foreclosure.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:34:03)) - - We are seeing and I can't point to exactly what's happening there in terms of the economy, any other extra weakness in the economy or in the housing market there? But we are seeing definitely that's the top state in terms of where foreclosure volume is back way above, in fact, pre-pandemic levels. That was one of the areas, at least parts of Connecticut where the work from home trend maybe got a little bit out of control, and people were buying homes and willing to pay very high prices for homes that were who worked in New York City. And now we're thinking, well, I can work from Connecticut. In the country. There was probably more of a pandemic housing boom in Connecticut than some other areas of the country, and that may be part of the story that's going on there.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:34:54)) - - We're talking about the most densely populated part of the United States here, the tri state area, which is New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. And what's unusual is that one of those three states, new Jersey, is the antithesis of what's happening in Connecticut.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:35:09)) - - Connecticut has about three x the foreclosure volume than they did before the pandemic, and new Jersey is just 25%. They only have one quarter the foreclosure volume that they did before the pandemic. Are there any other tri state dynamics going on there with foreclosures there?   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:35:25)) - - That's a great observation. And one thing that becomes very important with foreclosures is the foreclosure process is governed by state law. It's not a federal national law that governs how the foreclosures work. And so you do see a lot of variation in the states based on how that foreclosure process works. And then also even how the the legislatures in those states have stepped in in some cases. And that's the case in new Jersey and created new laws even in the last couple of years to, for lack of a better word, stymie the foreclosure process and may put extra barriers in getting to foreclosure. And so, number one, new Jersey is what's called a judicial foreclosure state, where the foreclosure process is inherently longer than many states, including Connecticut. And then on top of that, the new Jersey legislature has enacted at least one law that took effect in January that even creates more barriers to foreclosure.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:36:22)) - - And we probably don't have time to get into the details of that law. But that's really, I think, what's it's less about that new Jersey is a much more healthy housing market than Connecticut. As to what you see there is the effects of the state governed foreclosure process with those numbers.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:36:40)) - - So just some great context for the listener and viewer here. The state jurisdiction in the judicial process has an awful lot to do with foreclosure volume. That's not necessarily indicative of the condition of its housing market.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:36:55)) - - That's right. And it does vary quite a bit. When we look at going forward at risk. We actually asked, so our clients are the banks, the mortgage servicers, the lenders who are foreclosing on these properties. And we ask them what they think is the highest risk of increasing foreclosures in the future. And the the top of their list was rising insurance and property taxes.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:37:22)) - - That's super interesting.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:37:23)) - - Yeah, and that's been a hot topic recently. I would put that at the top of my list of risks.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:37:29)) - - Going back to your question about why could the housing market experience weakness in the somewhat near future? I think this is the top of my list of as a catalyst that could potentially trigger weakness in the housing market, specifically home prices. Because of these variable costs of homeownership. You know, your mortgage is a fixed cost. You know what it's going to be every month, but your insurance and property taxes are variable costs. And there are in some states, those have skyrocketed. For some homeowners. This insurers are pulling out of states.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:38:02)) - - This is all such a great finding. Again, Darren's firm asked the survey question how much would you assign each of the following in terms of risk for higher delinquencies between now and the end of this year? And the number one answer is rising insurance and property taxes to Darren's point. That's because these are variable costs that everyone is subjected to. And we need to be mindful that more than 4 in 10 American homeowners are free and clear of their mortgage, so they don't have any payment.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:38:27)) - - So on a percentage basis, when you look at homeowners expenses, when they have rising insurance and property tax problems, you can see how this can increase foreclosures.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:38:38)) - - That's right. That's a great point. A couple other risks that ranked fairly high with our clients. We're rising consumer debt delinquencies so that we do see things like credit card debt and auto loan debt, specifically those two delinquencies on those types of more or loans, not mortgages, are rising quite quickly over the last few quarters. And so that's an area of risk that we're seeing. And then they put rising unemployment is third. But you know right. We're not seeing unemployment rise right now. And unemployment is very low. They put that a little bit lower on the list. Those two things to look out for are those rising insurance and property taxes. If we continue to see that be a problem, that could be a trigger that causes some fallout in the housing market, as well as if we continue to see those rising delinquencies on credit card and auto loan debt that could ripple out as well to the housing market.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:39:35)) - - It's really interesting. Higher property taxes are often a result of a homeowner's property having gone up in value. But if you own a paid off home and you're just going to continue to live there for the rest of your life, that rising property value that really doesn't help you so much, it actually might hurt you in a way, because you will have a commensurate increase in your property. Taxes, making it harder for you to live.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:39:57)) - - Yeah, that's right. It's a double edged sword there with the rising values. And usually it's, you know, property taxes is not an unbearable cost for most people. But when you're on the margins and you're just barely able to make your mortgage payment each month, and if you're in that situation, a fairly small rise in property taxes can make a big difference in whether you're able to continue to make those payments.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:40:21)) - - Yes. And then the rising insurance premiums, they've gone to X to three X on some homeowners in just a few years. It won't go up that much on a property taxes.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:40:30)) - - The insurance is there's been more of the problem recently, but property taxes are kind of layered on top of that. Moving on. I just wanted to land, I think really on getting back to that question of opportunity for investors out there and auction com buyers are typically fix and flip or you know, fix and rent investors. And so what they're doing is they're looking to buy these properties. And it usually takes maybe six months, 90 days to six months to renovate these properties and turn them around and sell them. And so one of the things we look at very carefully is, are the bidding behavior on our platform as an indicator of what's coming in the retail market, because our buyers are they're pretty good usually at anticipating what's going to be happening in their market over the next 3 to 6 months. Our buyers did pull back in their bidding behavior, they got more conservative and were willing to pay less. Back in 2022, when mortgage rates spiked. But it appears now that our buyers have gotten comfortable with this kind of higher for longer concept of interest rates.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:41:36)) - - Yeah, and our bidding behavior on our platform is mostly trending higher, meaning that our buyers are pretty confident that the housing market, despite, you know, I might have sounded a little doom and gloom, but our buyers are pretty confident that in their local market, they will continue to be able to buy these distressed homes at a discount. The metric we look at is what they're paying at auction, relative to the after repair value of the home, the estimated after repair value, and as of March of this year, that was at 59.8%. So they're buying at 60% of after repair value at 40. You could turn that around and call that a 40% discount. That number is, believe it or not, been trending up over the last few months. So they're willing to pay more, which indicates confidence in the housing market going forward. Historically, that's our bidders have been a good harbinger or indicator of what's to come in the retail market when they're more confident the retail market typically does well and vice versa.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:42:39)) - - You know, if we look at that by market, it's really interesting to see where our bidders are most confident about home prices going up in different markets. And we see a lot of confidence actually, the places where we see it's probably coincidental, but some of the places where we see higher foreclosure volume, as we talked about earlier, some of the upper Midwest Rust Belt areas are where we're seeing our buyers willing to pay more than they did a year ago relative to after repair value. So that's where they have a lot of confidence, actually, even out in California and most parts of Florida, they're still pretty confident. And Texas, there are some areas where our buyers are pulling back and and are paying less relative to after repair value. And there's kind of a cluster of markets in on the Gulf Coast, right? You know, in Mississippi, Alabama. And I don't know if that relates to insurance costs. I haven't made that connection solidly. That's an area where there has been rising insurance costs.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:43:39)) - - It varies quite a bit. There are some other markets mixed in across the country. Even though most of Florida, our buyers are pretty confident there is one area where they're they've become cautious, which is Cape Coral, Florida. They've pulled back in terms of what they're willing to bid.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:43:55)) - - Buyers for foreclosure properties still look overall quite confident in Florida. But yeah, like you touched on Darren, it's the lack of confidence to pay more for foreclosure properties in and around southern Louisiana. I know there's been some population loss there. And yes, like you touched on, they are more sensitive to insurance premium rises in Louisiana too.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:44:17)) - - That's right. So the takeaway is there's still the beauty of buying at that auction and distressed properties you are buying at a discount below after repair value. There's still a lot of risk involved because you may not know all that that's needed to renovate these properties, but you do have that. Rather than just counting on the housing market. Home price appreciation to increase to drive your profits, you have this component of added value.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:44:45)) - - So you're buying the property at a discount. And even at the housing, home prices don't go up in the next six months. By adding value to that property, you can still turn a profit because you're selling it for more than you bought it for. We have two types of auction on auction. Com there's the foreclosure auction, which we've talked a lot about, which comes at the end of the foreclosure process. And that's typically on the local courthouse steps. Although auction com in many counties allows you to bid remotely on your phone, we're we're pretty excited about that technology that we've introduced in the last couple of years. And then the second type of auction is if it doesn't sell at the courthouse steps foreclosure auction, it goes back to the bank as an REO. And we do the Ro auctions, which are mostly all online, and you can bid from anywhere. And it's pretty consistent between those two types of auctions. On average, at least over time, buyers are typically paying about 60% of after repair value, so about a 40% discount between after repair value.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:45:46)) - - Now, a lot of these homes need are in need of a lot of repair. But you have that type of discount available. And even though foreclosure volume has not come back to pre-pandemic levels, we're still seeing a consistent flow of that happening. There are certainly many markets, especially if you're willing to go off the beaten path a little bit in terms of markets where you can find inventory and also good discounts on these properties, especially if you're going to markets where maybe other investors aren't as aware of or aren't as interested in.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:46:18)) - - Therein. I wonder about local flavor. For those that bid through your platform on these distressed, foreclosed properties. Here we have a lot of investors that buy properties pretty passively where the property is already fixed up for you, maybe already held under management. And a lot of those investors, they go ahead and buy across state lines, because the best teals tend to be in the Midwest and Southeast and a few other pockets in places. So there are an awful lot of out of state investors.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:46:49)) - - On the passive side, what do you see for a breakdown of local investors in state investors and out-of-state investors through your platform for these distressed properties? I imagine it might be somewhat more localized than what I just described.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:47:01)) - - We do have some investors who are buying out of state, but actually the majority are buying in their backyard. Again, because these properties require their high touch, they require a lot of renovation. And so it's good to be local. It's definitely possible, especially with the REO properties where you can buy online. There is some more flexibility there if you have a crew, if you have boots on the ground in the market where you're buying, where you can do that, actually, the average distance between our buyers and the properties they buy is about 20 miles. I should say that's a median distance. So they're very local. There's definitely some exceptions to that you can buy across the country. But it is harder with these properties. These folks are very local. They know the markets they're operating in, and they know they have the resources in those markets to do the renovations.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:47:53)) - - Our buyers are probably a great resource for your students, Keith, to be able to tap into these types of local investors who have a supply of homes that they're creating, and sometimes they're selling back to owner occupants, you know, they're putting those properties on the market as renovated properties, and those might be good turnkey rental opportunities as well.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:48:17)) - - You know, that makes a lot of sense. And how your platform can help people not just find properties, but maybe network and find some like minded people that have tread where you're trying to go. Well, Darren, is there any last thing that you would like to tell us along with your online platform? Is there also perhaps an auction mobile app?   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:48:37)) - - Absolutely. We have an auction. Com app, and that's a great way to just either on on the website or on the app. You can go on and start searching. There's no subscription fee or anything like that to start looking and seeing where the opportunities are in the markets that you're interested in. You go to auction.com/in the news.   Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:48:57)) - - I actually end up talking to quite a few buyers of our buyers, and we've done some videos where we've gone and visited some of these buyers on location to see what they're doing, how they are operating on a human level. It's very interesting because these buyers are actually doing a lot of good in their communities. Many times by willing to take these down and out properties and down and out neighborhoods and renovate them, but also just on the level of understanding how this all works. That's a great resource. So that's auction.com/in the news and look for those videos featuring some of our buyers. I think that would be a great resource.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:49:33)) - - Well this has been great information to get an update on what's happening in the foreclosure market and where some of the local areas of opportunity might be as well, especially compared to pre-pandemic conditions. It's been valuable and it's been a pleasure having you here on the show. Thank you so much, Keith. Yeah. Good knowledge for foreclosure expert Darren Bloomquist today. It's when borrowers miss three months of mortgage payments.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:50:05)) - - That's that mark, where banks often begin foreclosure proceedings. Another thing that you learn is compared to pre-pandemic levels, national foreclosure levels are 10 to 20% lower today than they were then. And see with those that have a late mortgage payment or two, oftentimes that's not going all the way to foreclosure. They're getting caught up on their payments before it goes to foreclosure. And what's really going on here with that dynamic is that, see, today's homeowners, they are more motivated to stay caught up on their payments if they fall behind. And that's because they usually have a substantial positive equity position to protect. And the other factor is that if you lose your home today and you're locked in at a low pre 2022 mortgage rate, it's often going to cost you more per month to go out and rent somewhere else. So it's cheaper on a monthly basis to live in the home that you own. One piece that you might have learned is that high foreclosure activity in a state or city that is not necessarily indicative of that area's economic fortunes.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:51:10)) - - Instead, it might be tied to its judicial foreclosure process. Nationally, buyers are paying about 60% of after repair value for a foreclosure property. I just talked to Darren some more outside of today's interview, he discussed that foreclosure properties are often in opportunity zones, and if you don't know what they are, are designated distressed areas. That's where there are benefits given to you. If you invest specifically in that zone, you might remember that Opportunity Zones were part of Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. They have those zones in all 50 states. And Darren said that overall Opportunity zones are working next week here on the show. Properties are vanishing. Yeah, it is a real tweak to your investor mindset. Disappearing properties. Tune in next week as I cover. Properties are vanishing here on the show. If you haven't yet on your favorite pod catching app, be sure to subscribe or follow the show on your favorite app. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Windle. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker Blomquist** ((00:52:23)) - - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice.   Speaker Voice** ((00:52:27)) - - Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of yet Rich education LLC exclusively.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:52:51)) - - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

We’re joined by President Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director, David Stockman. He tells us what real estate investors and everyday people need to know. Stockman served as Reagan’s Director of Office, Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985. He tells us to expect higher inflation and interest rates for longer, maybe even the rest of the decade. Don’t expect rate cuts for a long time. The US is moving toward an unsustainable debt situation, with $100T in public debt expected within twenty-five years. We have embedded deficits. Learn why the recession has been postponed. David also reveals what will inevitably pull the trigger to potentially start the recession. Hint: Household budgets. Pandemic stimulus programs gave citizens $3T. Half of it has now been spent. He was also one of the founding partners of Blackstone. David Stockman tells a story about President Reagan’s personal touch with him. You can subscribe to David Stockman’s Contra Corner for free here. Resources mentioned: David Stockman’s Contra Corner For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) - Welcome to our Ivory Coast, Keith Whitehill. There are some dire warning signs for the future of our economy. We're joined by none other than the father of Reaganomics. To break it down with us. Today is late. President Ronald Reagan's budget director joins us. When is this perpetually postponed recession coming? Why? Inflation and high interest rates could carry on for the rest of the decade. And what it all means to your finances and real estate today on get Rich education.   Robert Syslo (00:00:34) - Since 2014, the powerful get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from past real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Wine, who writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener.   Robert Syslo (00:01:08) - Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get Rich education podcast or visit get Rich education.com.   Corey Coates (00:01:19) - 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 (00:01:35) - We're going to drive from Glen Burnie, Maryland, to Glen County, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Reinhold, and you're listening to get Rich education. We're going bigger picture this week before we talk to President Reagan's money guy in the white House. Understand that today's guest was also one of the founding partners of Blackstone, and they are in the real estate business. You're going to get a lot of deep, uniquely qualified insights today. And I'll tell you what's going on around here. Lately, things have been feeling awfully presidential between last week's program and now this week's program. Hey. Stars and stripes forever. Semper fi. Rah! Now, as the greatest detonation in the history of the world, how in the heck are we, as the United States, going to keep financing our debt now, you can think of a treasury, also known as a bond, as an IOU, as we take on debt to fund our government spending programs.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:42) - Really, what we do is issue then these IOUs to the rest of the world and then down the road. We need to pay back these IOU holders, treasuries, holders, whatever we've borrowed with interest on top of that. That's a really simple way to describe how it works. Think of a Treasury as an IOU. Well, we have $9 trillion in treasuries that need to be rolled over at higher interest rates just this year alone. Okay. Well, how does the market look for that sort of thing? Well, a lot like before you decide to sell a piece of real estate, you would want to know how that buyer's market looks. How is the buyer's market for us selling more treasuries, which is basically us issuing more IOUs? How is that world interest level in our treasuries? Well, this is a time when the world is selling treasuries. We're trying to get rid of them. Well, why would they buy more when we keep printing like crazy, debasing the dollars that they will eventually get their treasuries repaid in down the road? Case in point, China is down to just over 700 billion of treasuries that they're holding.   Keith Weinhold (00:04:01) - Well, they were 3 trillion not too long ago, more than four times that Russia and Iran sold all of their treasuries. Other countries are shedding them too, like Japan. It gets even worse than that because the number one holder of our own debt is our own fed. And then it gets even worse than that. Yet, because even our own fed is rolling treasuries off of their balance sheet. So who is going to finance this often irresponsible US spending the 10 trillion or $11 trillion every single year for the next ten years that we have obligations toward already, and it looks like all those are going to be at higher interest rates, too. Now, I am not telling you how to think about us as the United States, for example, sending foreign aid to multiple nations. That's up to you to decide whether it's Ukraine or the Middle East or Taiwan that gets political. And that is beyond the scope of GR. We are an investing show. What I'm saying is that backdrop that I just gave you, that's something that you need to take into consideration, is you weigh those foreign aid decision types.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:20) - Speaking of getting worse, do we at least have competent decision makers today? Now, as we'll talk to the father of Reaganomics here shortly, someone that served in an earlier era. Here's a clip from this era that really went viral lately, but it's apropos to play it here. This is Jared Bernstein today. He chairs President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. How much confidence does this instill? And remember, this guy chairs the economic advisers to today's president.   Jared Bernstein (00:05:56) - The US government can't go bankrupt because we can print our own money.   Voice (00:06:00) - Like you said, they print the dollar. So why? Why does the government even borrow?   Jared Bernstein (00:06:04) - Well, the, so the I mean, again, some of this stuff gets some of the language that the, some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money, which is why the government definitely prints money. And then it lends that money by, by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They they, the.   Jared Bernstein (00:06:34) - Yeah. They, they they sell bonds. Yeah. They sell bonds. Right. Because they sell bonds and people buy the bonds and lend them the money. Yeah. So a lot of times, a lot of times at least to my year with MMT, the, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing. But there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to so, yeah, I guess I'm just I don't, I can't really, I don't, I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking about.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:08) - Well geez. How's that for clarity and confidence from today's major decision makers on our economy? Gosh. Now, in my opinion, back in 2020, our government, they set up the wrong incentive structure to deal with the pandemic. Remember things like the PGP, the Paycheck Protection Program, remember mortgage loan forbearance and the eviction moratorium. See when that type of aid is given, well, then the result is that citizens don't learn that they need to keep some cash handy, and then that behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated in that behavior is handouts.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:53) - And then the expectation for more handouts. 56% of Americans don't even have $1,000 for an emergency expense. Well, see, they're not really incentivized to in the future. If in a crisis, everyone just gets another taxpayer funded handout, but then see those same people that got that handout get hurt in the long run. Anyway, with the longer run inflation that the handout created, don't let there be one day of austerity for the least prepared American, I guess. Instead, bail them out and add on to everyone's debt load, which you know that right there. That seems to be the playbook. Like that is the protocol of the day that is not responsible, in my view. Now, the minutes of the latest fed meeting, they said that some fed officials would be open to raising interest rates if inflation doesn't let up. I mean, that news alone that sent stocks plunging like they were riding the Tower of Terror, giving the Dow its worst day in a while. I'll discuss that more with the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, today.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:01) - It's the kind of episode that can stretch your thinking here. Now, what is Reaganomics? Well, one thing that you should know is that it's committed to the doctrine of supply side economics. You probably heard that term before. And really what that's all about is lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade and what was called the Reagan budget. That's something that his budget director Stockman expected would help curtail the welfare state. And he gained a reputation as a tough negotiator for that. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan today, and it's kind of funny with macroeconomic discussions. You'll notice something here, the word million, that doesn't even come up that much anymore. It's simply a number that is too small. It is more like billion and trillion. And hey, let's see if the term three orders of magnitude above trillion comes up today. Quadrillion, or even the one after that quintillion. Is that where we're going next? We'll see. before we meet David Simon, I've gotten more questions about something, because the national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:18) - And where do you really get a decent yield on your savings, even beyond the 5% in an online only savings account or a CD, which that does not outpace true inflation? For years now, I've reliably been getting 8%. What I do is keep my dollars in a private liquidity fund. You can do this to your cash generates up to an 8% return. The minimum investment amount is just 25 K, and you keep getting paid until you decide that you want your money back. And the private liquidity fund has a decade plus track record, and they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know this because I am an investor with them myself. So see what it feels like to earn 8%. A lot of other great listeners are any investing involves risk, even dollars at a brick and mortar bank. So to learn more, just text the word family to 66866. Learn more about the liquidity fund. Get 8% interest. Just do it right now while you're thinking about it.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:23) - Text family to 66866. Let's meet David Stockman. A Wall Street and Washington insider and Harvard grad. Today's guest is a former two time congressman from Michigan, a prolific author, and he is none other than the man known as the father of Reaganomics. He was indeed President Ronald Reagan's budget advisor. Welcome to the show, David Stockman.   David Stockman (00:11:54) - Great to be with you. And, that was a while back. But I think there's some lessons from that time that we would be well advised to try to apply today, that's for sure.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:05) - Well, it's an illustrious title that you'll never shake. It's a pleasure to have you here. And David is a real estate investing show. At times we need to step back and look at the bigger picture. And now on the economy, one seems to get a different answer depending on who they speak with. You have a highly qualified opinion. What do both investors and citizens need to know today about the condition of the American economy?   David Stockman (00:12:29) - I don't think the outlook is very promising, but I think it's important to understand what that means for real estate investors, because the fact is, if you're in real estate and I know many of your listeners or viewers are very knowledgeable and sophisticated, there's really two ways to look at real estate.   David Stockman (00:12:49) - One is as a property that generates a flow of cash or income that is highly reliable, and that you can count on and produces a rate of return on the invested capital that's attractive. That's one way. The second way is that if you invest at the right time, when perhaps interest rates are falling and therefore multiples or cap rates are becoming more attractive and property values are rising rapidly, mainly because of easy money and lower interest rates, then there's a huge opportunity for capital gains. As another way of generating return on capital. But those are two obviously very different tracks. The capital gains route by old invest, improve flip flop the gain and move on or the, you know, income based rent and earnings based, approach to property. Now, I think the reason I went through this is pretty elementary, of course, is that the macro environment is very different between the first strategy and the second strategy. And therefore, the important thing to understand about the macro environment is which environment are you in and is it conducive to strategy a the income strategy or b the capital gains strategy? I would say right now we're totally in an incomes strategy environment, the first route.   David Stockman (00:14:34) - And that's because as we've gone through several decades of easy money, of rapidly rising asset values, of ultra low interest rates, very high multiples, in terms of property values to income that has generated trillions and trillions of capital gains for smart real estate investors. But I think we're out of that environment, and we're in an environment now where we're stuck with massive public debt and deficits. We're stuck with a, central bank that is, basically painted itself into a corner, created so much fiat credit, generated so much liquidity into the economy that now it will be struggling with inflation for years to come. Which means, notwithstanding Wall Street's constant belief that rate cuts are coming tomorrow, there won't be rate cuts for a long time to come. And what we're facing, therefore, there is likely higher rates for longer. A environment in which property values are flat if not declining, and therefore the capital gains route is not going to work very well. But if you have good properties with good tenants and good cash flows and, rental flows, real estate mine works out pretty well.   David Stockman (00:16:05) - But you have to understand the macro environment. And that's one of the things that I work on daily when I, publish my daily newsletter, which is called, David Stockman's Contra Corner.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:19) - You can learn more about Contra Corner, David's blog, before we're done today. David, you have a lot of interesting things to say. There we are in this environment where rates have been higher, longer. It sounds like you believe that is going to continue to be the. Case is rate cuts will be postponed is a little more difficult question. It's some crystal ball stuff. But can you tell us more about that? What can we expect for inflation in interest rates for the rest of this 2020s decade, which has about six years to go?   David Stockman (00:16:48) - There's going to be high rates for most of this decade because we have so much inflation and excess demand built into the economy. We really went overboard, especially after 2020 with the pandemic lockdowns and then these massive stimulus program, something like $6 trillion of added stimulus, was injected into the economy in less than 12 months.   David Stockman (00:17:16) - That created a undertow of inflation that is still with us. And despite all the hopeful commentary that comes from Wall Street, if you look at it year to date, I don't look at just the CPI because the headline number is somewhat volatile and can be pushed and pulled a lot from a month to month based on nonrecurring conditions. But if you look at something called the 16% trimmed mean CPI, it's just the same CPI, but it takes out the lowest 8%, the highest 8% of price observations each month out of the thousands in the market basket. What it does is basically takes the extreme volatility out of the top and the bottom, and gives you a trend that is more reliable if you're looking like on a quarter by quarter or year by year or even multi year basis, well, I mentioned this is important because the trim means CPI is still running at about 4.3% during the first four months of this year to date. That's not a victory over inflation. That's double what the fed says his target is. And frankly, the Fed's target is a little bit phony.   David Stockman (00:18:35) - I mean, what's so great about 2% inflation if you're a saver and your savings are, you know, shrinking by 30% over the course of a decade, so they're going to have a tremendous wrestling match with inflation, not just for a few more months, but I think for several more years in this decade, I don't see the federal funds rate, which is kind of the benchmark rate for overnight money coming down below 5% very soon, or if at all. And that's because with inflation running at 4% or better, if you have a 5% money market rate, you're barely getting a return on capital, especially if you factor in taxes. You know, it's like it's a rounding error and that doesn't work over time. I mean, you're not going to get long term savings. You're not going to get long term capital investment. If the return is after inflation and taxes are either non-existent or negative, as they've been for quite a while. So even though everybody would like to hope we're going back to the good old days of 0% over 90 money or 1% money, which they got so used to over the last couple of decades.   David Stockman (00:19:55) - It was bad policy. It wasn't sustainable. It caused a huge amount of bubbles and distortions in our economy. But once we finally got to the end of that in March 2022, when the fed had to finally pivot and say, yeah, inflation isn't transitory, it's, embedded, we got to do something about it. People think we're going right back to where we were, and that's the key thing to understand. We are not going right back to where we were, in part because of all this inflation business I've talked about, but also in part because they got so used to borrowing money on Capitol Hill and practically zero interest rates that they are now, you know, they have built in deficits of 2 trillion or more a year. And, we are going to be pushing into the bond pits, massive amounts of new government debt. There's no consensus to do anything about it. You know, if the Republicans talk about reforming the entitlements, the Democrats say you're throwing grandma out the snow. If the Democrats talk about raising revenue, the Republicans talked about, you're going to get slaughtered with higher taxes.   David Stockman (00:21:12) - And then everybody's for more wars and more defense and the bigger and bigger national security budget. And that's all she wrote. If you don't do with revenue, you don't do it national defense and entitlements. The rest of it is rounding errors. And so we're stuck with these massive additions to the debt. Now, everybody knows the public debt. Is 34 trillion. Ready? Yeah. What I'd say they don't understand is that by the end of this decade, you ask about the decade, right? Will we close to 60 trillion of debt. And, if you look at the last CBO, projection they do every year at long term projection, and CBO actually is more optimistic than it is warranted in any way. In other words, their long term assumptions I call rosy scenario. There's no more recessions for the next couple of decades. Inflation is well-behaved, interest rates stay low. Full employment lasts indefinitely and forever. Well, this doesn't happen. Look at the real world. Over the last 20 or 30 years, we've been all over the lot.   David Stockman (00:22:18) - So if you look at the CBO forecast, which is I'm just saying here is exceedingly optimistic. They never are the less are projecting that the public debt and they don't even write this number down in their report because it's too scary, will be $100 trillion before the middle of this century.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:41) - That's a.   David Stockman (00:22:42) - Trillion. Yeah. Now, if you ask people today who are market savvy, I like a lot of your viewers. Where are the Treasury bills, notes and bonds today? Well, if you average it all out, it's about 5%. I don't think it's going to come down much. It'll vary a little bit up and down over time, but let's just say it stays at 5%. That means the carry cost of the public debt of a couple decades will be 5 trillion a year. The interest okay. It's staggering. That's almost as much as the whole federal budget is spending this today at, you know, about 6.6 6.7 trillion. So that's where we're heading, a massive debt crisis because they built in a structural deficit that the politicians and I call it the unite party.   David Stockman (00:23:33) - They fight about silly things, but they agree on the big things which are leading to this outcome. The unit party has no ability to do anything about this structural deficit or the march from the 34 trillion that we're at today to 60 trillion by the end of the decade, and 100 trillion of public debt by mid-century. Now, for a real estate investor, that's probably the most important number you're going to hear. You know, at least this week or maybe this month or even this year, because what it means is that the amount of new government debt flowing into the bond pits, that'll have to be financed and that can't be monetized by the fed anymore because there's too much inflation, is going to put constant, enormous pressure upward on interest rates. And of course, higher interest rates mean lower property values. That's just basic real estate math. That's the environment we're heading into, which means good properties with good income and good rental flows are really the only way to go.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:55) - Yeah, well, there's an awful lot there.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:57) - And with this persistent higher inflation that you expect, the way I think about it is the higher the rate of inflation, the more that moves a person's dollars out of a savings account and instead out onto the risk curve. Well, David alluded to a problematic economy. We're going to come back and talk about more of those warning signs and what you can do about it. You're listening to Get Resuscitation, the father of Reaganomics and Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, I'm your host, Keith Reinhold. Role under this specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256 injury history from beginners to veterans. They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge. Personally, they'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com.   Speaker 7 (00:26:06) - This is author Jim Rickards. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:26:23) - Welcome back to Get Ready. So we're talking with the father of Reaganomics. His name is David Stockman, President Reagan's budget advisor. David, you've been talking about a problematic economy and places we can look and the outcomes that that can create. Why don't we talk about some more of those where we're here in a period where we feel like it's an official recession postponed, for example, are there other places that we should be looking? Is it the sustained inverted yield curve that we had for almost two years, the longest one ever, and a Great Recession predictor? Or is it that we're on the precipice of implosion from a debt to GDP ratio that's at 122%. It actually spiked to 133% when Covid first hit. Or for example, is it something and you've already touched on it a bit, is it more of that federal spending on our debts, interest payments alone each year, which had almost $900 billion for that interest line item that now even exceeds the massive $800 billion that we spend each year on national defense, or should we be looking at somewhere else? So what's out there that's really problematic and what's overblown?   David Stockman (00:27:28) - Okay.   David Stockman (00:27:29) - That's great. And all of those things you mentioned you should be looking at, it depends on your time frame. But I think on the initial question, where is this postponed recession? Why hasn't that happened? The place to look is somewhere that I think most Wall Street analysts aren't focused on, but they should be. And that's a series published by the Federal Reserve that tracks household balance sheets, in other words, liabilities and assets. But there's a particular series that I think is critically important to look at, and it's basically bank deposits, checking account savings accounts plus money market funds. This is all the liquid cash accounts of the household sector, not long term investments in real estate or stocks or bonds, but the short term money. It's the spendable money that households have now, what happened during the pandemic and lockdowns. And then the 6 trillion Is stems that were injected into the economy, like some kind of fiscal madness was going on in Washington, created a total aberration in the amount of cash in the economy, in the household sector, in these accounts that I just mentioned, normally right before the lockdown started and the stimulus was injected, you know, the level of cash accounts was about 12 trillion.   David Stockman (00:29:00) - Within two years it was up to 18 trillion. And normally that cash balance grows about the same rate as the economy. In other words, as incomes go up, people save a small share of their income that goes into various bank accounts. There tends to be a lock step relationship. But what happened during that two year period was there was so much extra cash sent out to the households with the $2,000 checks in the $600 a week extra stimulus money, and then the, trillions that went, you know, for things like the Small Business Administration loan program, which was all forgivable, was about almost upwards of $1 trillion. You know, we could itemize all the others. But this enormous government, unusual cash flow into the economy added to these bank accounts enormously. And then something else happened. The geniuses in Washington, led by Doctor Fauci, decided to shut down half of the service sector, the economy. I'm talking with restaurants and bars and gyms, malls and movies and and all the rest of it.   David Stockman (00:30:09) - So all of a sudden, the normal money that people would have been spending on the service venues, which is a big part of total spending, was stopped. It was kind of forced into artificial savings, sort of government mandated savings. Now, if you put the two together, there was about 2 trillion, extra transfer payments sent out to the public during that two year period. And there was a little over a trillion of normal service spending, restaurants in, etc. that didn't happen because there was a closed sign on the door, compliments of Doctor Fauci, or people were scared to death to go out because, you know, they created all this fear that Covid was some form of black death, which it really wasn't for 95% of the population. In any event, if you put the extra free stuff from the government, 2 trillion and the for savings because of these lockdowns, trillion, you have 3 trillion of unusual cash that flowed into the economy on top of the normal production. Income and profits and spending that would have otherwise gone on.   David Stockman (00:31:26) - Now that 3 trillion temporarily ended up in this account, that I'm just talking about the cash balances of the household sector and its peak, there was about 2.8 trillion extra compared to what would been be the normal case in a regular economy. In a normal economy, that money has been slowly spent down by the household sector, even as the fed has tried to put the screws to the economy. In other words, there was so much extra cash in the system that even as the fed raised interest rates from 0 to 5% and did their darndest to slow things down, all of that excess that was built up during the pandemic period was available to spend. It was spent. And here's the key point. About half of it is now been spent. In other words, there's only about a trillion and a half of the nearest 3 trillion left. Now that is what's delayed the recession. If that big, massive 3 trillion nest egg had been there and the fed began to push rates up as it normally did in a normal cycle, we would have been in recession months ago.   David Stockman (00:32:41) - But what has delayed or deferred the recession is this, cushion, this huge macro piggybank of cash that the government inadvertently or adversely is the case may be generated, during the pandemic period. So that's new. See that? Nobody looks at that because normally it's not a factor. You know, the cash balances are a pretty, prosaic, neutral part of the economy. They're not where you look for the leading edge of where the cycle was going or where new developments may turn up tomorrow. But this time, because of this total aberration of what happened to government transfer payments plus the lockdowns, we have a, X factor, let's call it in the macro picture that is confusing people. It's leading a lot of people to abdicate this no landing scenario. In other words, you know, there's not going to be a recession. We're just going to go on to bigger and better things. And, the fed will get inflation under control and then we can be back to happy times again. No, they're missing.   David Stockman (00:33:56) - The elephant in the room is this massive aberrational unusual one time cash balance that was, generated by these policies. And that still has a little ways to go now. I think at the rate it's being run down, you can almost calculate it a couple hundred billion dollars, a quarter sometime next year, all of that extra cash will be out of the system. And then people will be back to spending only what they're earning. And frankly, earnings they're not. I'm talking about wage and salary earnings, are advancing barely at the inflation rate at the present time. So when we get back to about zero real growth in earnings, we're going to finally see the recession.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:45) - I think one of the big takeaways here is that all these artificial economic injections really take time to unwind.   David Stockman (00:34:56) - Exactly. You have to look at, you know, they always say, well, when the government changes policy, fiscal policy, you tighten or you loosen or monetary policy they raise or lower interest rates. They got QE or they got cute putting money in or taking money out that there's lag and lead times in all of this.   David Stockman (00:35:18) - The problem is, none of the great economic gurus who talk about this really know whether the lag time is 12 months, 25 months, 50 or 5, and it varies. I mean, the circumstance has changed so much in a world GDP of 104 trillion, a domestic economy with 28 trillion of GDP, and all the complex factors that are moving back and forth in today's world, especially as it's enabled by technology and global trade and the internet and all the rest of it, nobody knows the lag times. And as a result, it's very hard to predict when the, brown stuff is going to hit the fan, so to speak. On the other hand, you don't have to know the exact date. You really need to understand the direction, the flow of things. And if you're in an environment that isn't sustainable because you're borrowing like crazy or interest rates or artificially. Low or stock price multiples are way the L2 ie or cap rates on real estate or you know, abnormally low. Then what you have to say is we're going to a different state.   David Stockman (00:36:35) - It's not going to be as conducive as the current state, and we have to be prepared for it, even if we are not sure whether that's 12 months from now or 24 months. But it's going to change. So one thing you can be sure of, there is a famous economist back in my day when I worked on Capitol Hill earlier on, he was Nixon's chief economic adviser in the early 70s. And he famously formulated an aphorism, I guess, which said anything that is unsustainable tends to stop. Okay, that's what I know about the lag times. We're in unsustainable financial, fiscal and monetary environment. And the trends that it has given rise to are going to stop and and not in a good way.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:24) - He even fed Chair Jerome Powell has confessed as much as that. This situation is indeed unsustainable, the exact word that he used. Well, David, this has been great in winding down as Ronald Reagan's budget director. Can you share any anecdote, story or quote from you spending time personally with Ronald Reagan? And the reason I ask is because he is perhaps the most revered president of the past few generations.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:52) - That might mean a lot to our listeners here.   David Stockman (00:37:54) - He should be revered, and not only because he was a great president and a great communicator, and did a lot of important things in policy. Some of them got implemented, and a lot of them were frustrated by Washington and the politicians and the Democrats and everybody else. But also, he was a great human being. And my story about that was when I was budget director, in the fifth year of the Reagan administration, we had our first child, and my wife was in the hospital. At that point in time, President Reagan was in Europe on a very important big international, series of meetings. But, somebody in the white House told him that our daughter had been born. And so he took the time out of his schedule for a call from Germany, the hospital where my wife was, and said he would like to talk to her and, congratulate us on our new arrival. But my wife was in a room with another, a new mother.   David Stockman (00:38:53) - She the other person answered the phone and she said to my wife, there's some joker on the phone with President Reagan. And sure enough, he was there. and he took the time to congratulate my wife. And, so that's the kind of, person he was. He really was a great human being.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:13) - Wow. Yeah. That really shows that he can still be warm and heartfelt, even while doing some key international negotiations there. Potentially. Well, we mentioned it earlier. I can tell you, the audience, that David is a regular author and contributor to his Contra Corner blog and letter, and you can get access to that for free. This is information coming from the father of Reaganomics to you. If you think you would find it a value. David, tell us how our audience can connect with you there.   David Stockman (00:39:44) - Just Google David Stockman Contra corner I publish, I have a website, issues a newsletter every day. It comes automatically in the email. I also have a Substack version. You can sign up for either one, the email from my site or from Substack.   David Stockman (00:40:02) - And every day we try to publish something on these issues that we've been talking about. One day it might be Wall Street, another day it might be Capitol Hill, another day it might be, you know, the war in Ukraine. All of these things matter. All of these things influence the environment that investors have to function in. So we try to comment on a variety of those issues based on, you know, the long experience that I've had, both not only in Washington, but also I was on Wall Street, for about 20 years. I was one of the founding partners of Blackstone, for instance. And we were in the real estate business in a major way, even then.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:44) - Well, we absolutely love that. And I sure am appreciative of your time. It was great connecting with you. And thanks for being on the program today, David.   David Stockman (00:40:53) - Very good. Enjoyed it.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:01) - Yeah. Deep insights from the father of Reaganomics. Stockman thinks we'll be struggling with inflation for years to come.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:08) - There won't be rate cuts for a long time. He sees real estate values as flat or declining, so have good tenants with steady income streams. Of course, in our favoured real estate segment here, residential 1 to 4 units where you can get 30 year fixed rate debt. Higher mortgage rates tend to correlate with higher prices, just like it has for the last three years and almost every period before that too. But there could be more pain for the commercial sector then, and assets that are tied to floating rate debt. And if you're aligned with David Stockman on that, you might want to look at your helocs, because after a fixed rate period, their rates tend to float along with the fed funds rate. So be cautious with Helocs and ask David for specifics. He doesn't see the federal funds rate coming down below 5% anytime soon, and you probably know that is the interest rate that a whole bunch of other interest rates are based off of. And that rate is currently at about 5.3%. By the way, there is projected to be more than 100 t more than $100 trillion of public debt before the middle of this century.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:22) - That's less than 25 years away. I mean, these figures just become unfathomable sometimes. Pandemic wrought inflation that really occurred due to this greater supply of dollars that was introduced chasing a reduced supply of goods. And there were fewer goods because people got paid to stay at home not producing anything. Plus, what had been produced often could not be shipped either. David discussed the 16% trimmed mean CPI, and I've got to say, as much as I am a student devotee in studying inflation, I had never heard of that from his vantage point to find recession signs, look at household balance sheets and what's delayed the recession is that those pandemic measures put an extra 3 trillion bucks into households, and households still have about 1.5 trillion left to spend, which could further delay a recession. He projects that it's sometime next year that all of that extra cash will be out of the system. When you talk to how many people got this recession predictions so horribly wrong? Back in October 2022, Bloomberg Economics forecast a 100% chance of a recession by the following fall, which is almost a year ago now.   Keith Weinhold (00:43:48) - Well, a 100% chance that left no room for anything else to happen. And they really whiffed on that one. Now, you know, I've got to add something here. A personal note if I can, but I'll give you a lesson along with it. And that is that at times like today, where I found myself one degree of separation from one of the most revered presidents in all of American history, I sometimes have some difficulty understanding how I keep having the opportunity to share time with people like today's guest. Now, I'm certainly not a PhD economist. And in fact, on the flip side, I've also never been a person that's been so poor and destitute that I was dying of hunger. But I do come from a modest place. When I flew the coop and left my parents home, I rented my first pathetic place to live a $325 a month pool house in the back of my landlord's property at 852 Spruce Avenue in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Yeah, a pathetic little pool house right next to the landlord's swimming pool.   Keith Weinhold (00:45:04) - I mean, I was living really pathetically there for a while as I was struggling just to do things like find gainful employment and figure out the world and find a steady income. Yeah, it was 325 a month plus electric and the one small heater that was there, it was electric and it was really expensive to run. And on the coldest days, it wouldn't even adequately heat my pathetic little pool house that I ended up living in for 18 months. And just because I couldn't figure a way out of that situation for a while, I mean, I was too ashamed to ever bring a girl back there to that sad pool house. It was just one sink for the whole place. Combined kitchen and bathroom sink in the bathroom. I mean, most of my friends, they got their driver's license at age 16 and they soon had their own car. I didn't own a car until I was aged 22 or 23, and it's not because I lived in an urban area and walked. Everywhere use public transit there in Pennsylvania.   Keith Weinhold (00:46:02) - It just took me a long time to afford a beater car and pay for insurance. I really needed a car and couldn't afford one. So really my point here is that sometimes I have to wonder how I got here from there. And I think what it is is taking an interest in real estate and investing. And despite just having a humble bachelor's degree in geography, it's really about becoming an autodidact, meaning self-taught. And it's easy to teach yourself when you find what interests you. And let me point to two other things besides adopting an auto didactic ethic to help me turn the corner into being in a place where I can have conversations like the one that I've had today. It was getting around aspirational friends. Like I've mentioned before, that showed me how I can start with a bang buy with little money. On my first home, I could put a 3.5% down payment on a fourplex, live in one unit and rent out the other three. And I will give myself some credit for doing those things. And then really, the third thing is that stroke of luck element, like just 4% of world inhabitants have been.   Keith Weinhold (00:47:15) - I was one of that 4% that was born in the United States. And then I had two great, married, stable, supportive parents to cultivate the right environment for me. And well, today was just one of those days where I sort of nudged myself and I'm glad that it happened. Most importantly, I trust that you got value from today's show and that you do every single week here. Check out David Stockman's Contra Corner. Next week, we'll look for signs of distress in real estate as we delve inside the foreclosure market and how you can find discounted deals there. Until then, Idaho's Keith Wayne hold don't quit your day trip.   Speaker 8 (00:48:02) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively. The.   Keith Weinhold (00:48:30) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building.   Keith Weinhold (00:48:34) - Get rich education.com.

Inflation is soaring in the 2020s, impacting gas prices and home values, but homeowners in other countries face even bigger mortgage hikes. Single-family rents are up, disproving the myth of institutional investors dominating the market. Investing in real estate is a stable option amidst rising rents and property prices, with a focus on leveraging mortgages for wealth building.

You can get financially free twice as fast with the BRRRR Strategy instead of buy-and-hold. But it’s less passive. BRRRR stands for: Buy, Rehabilitate, Rent, Refinance, and Repeat.  You can get an infinite return this way, by generating yield with none of your own money left in the deal. Learn how to obtain BRRRR financing from Caeli Ridge, President of Ridge Lending Group. The LTVs are 70%, 75%, or 80% depending on the property and financing type. RidgeLendingGroup.com specializes in helping investors buy income property. Resources mentioned: For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. The real estate BRRRR strategy is a shortcut to growing your wealth. But it's less passive than buy and hold with a property manager. Learn what is the Burr strategy and then about some of its pros and cons, mistakes you must avoid and financing programs available, and how it can generate infinite returns for you today and get rich. Education.   Robert Syslo (00:00:28) - Since 2014, the powerful get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Reinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener.   Robert Syslo (00:01:02) - Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get Rich education podcast or visit get Rich education.com.   Corey Coates (00:01:13) - 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 (00:01:30) - Welcome from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Bridgeport, Texas, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get Rich education. Let's Do Good in the world and abolish the term slumlord profiting at the same time by providing housing to others. It's clean, safe, affordable and functional. This is where, you know, on this show, we often tell you how to become financially free through real estate investing in the next 5 to 10 years without having to be a landlord or flipper. We're going to talk about how to shorten that timeline in a moment, but I have a couple resources to share with you. First, one, late breaking development at GRI marketplace that's been popular is in Florida with new builds, brand new construction for plex's duplexes and single family rentals with points paid a 4.25% mortgage rate.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:28) - Yes, 4.25%. You can pay fewer points and still get a 4.75% rate. Also, some good low interest rate deals for foreign nationals. Go ahead and connect with a great investment coach and learn about those at great marketplace.com. For a 4.25% mortgage rate. If you're a Spanish speaker or have Spanish speaking friends, check out get Rich education.com/espanol to see my free video course on how real estate pays five ways in Spanish. It's pretty interesting how our team here has applied AI to show me speak it in Spanish. Again, you can see that at get Rich education. Com slash espanol. Now the BR real estate investing strategy is popular because it can reduce your out-of-pocket expense for property substantially. Let's break it down here. That is the b are are are are. There are four hours after the B which stands for the first B is buy. You buy a distressed property that needs to be fixed up. Then the R's stand for rehab, then rent, then refinance at that higher value, then repeat. More of you have been buying BR property through GRE marketplace.   Keith Weinhold (00:03:52) - Yes, we help you find not just buy and hold properties here, but properties optimized for the BR as well. There are properties that need some work and they are not turnkey, not ready to go with little or no money. In less than three years, you can have a portfolio of 10 to 20 properties with the BR strategy. That's a shortcut, but that does take some work. It's less passive. You're buying distressed property that needs to be fixed up, and you have to be sure that the contractor is getting the work done on time, on budget, and of adequate quality standards. And vetting contractors and dealing with contractors is not easy. I'm going to have a few tips to help you deal with that today, but if you get it dialed in, BR lets you pursue an infinite return strategy where you buy property at a low price, renovated, get it rented, and then refinance it at the higher value. And at times you can get all of your invested cash out on that refinance.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:04) - Well, because a return on investment formula is simply your dollars returned divided by the cash that you have invested in the deal. Well, therefore, if you have no money left in the deal anymore, your return is infinite. Listen carefully. If our guest doesn't do it, then what I'll do is introduce an example here in our conversation for you to get you to help understand the BR. And if this is new to you, this will stretch your thinking somewhat. And then after our break, I'm going to come back and we'll discuss more about any changes to conventional loans for buy and hold investment property. And there's one place that's created more financial freedom through real estate than any other lender in the entire nation. It's time for a big welcome back to their leader, Charlie Rich.   Caeli Ridge (00:06:02) - Hey, Keith. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:05) - Well, you know who she is by now. She leads Ridge Lending Group. They're an investor centric lender, and she does such a good, concise job of explaining what real estate investors need to know in optimizing your loan positions.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:18) - And that's why she's here with us again. And, Charlie, rather than just learn about conventional buy and hold loans or refinance loans like we've covered in the past, let's talk about lending for the BR real estate investing method. BR is a method for buying distressed property at a discount. So not turnkey, not fixed up property. Here in BR stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance and repeat. Now for these loans. Is the lender looking more I guess Charlie maybe we should start with are they looking at the property strength or more at the borrower strength for BR loans?   Caeli Ridge (00:06:54) - Well, first of all, I would say that BR is one of my favorite strategies for real estate investors, especially if they're getting into diversifying their portfolio. I think BR is a very lucrative way to achieve the returns that people are after, not only in appreciation but also in cash flow. You can get some really great leverage in these ROI and ends up being better if you find the right properties. So I'm a big fan of the BR, but to your question, Keith, it depends on what product they're going to elicit for the end loan, for that refinance loan, if we're talking about a conventional loan, Fannie, Freddie and the qualifications are still about the individual and their debt to income ratios, etc. if we're going to put this on a debt service coverage ratio, which it can apply to both, or can, I mean, the strategy does not obligate them to one or the other.   Caeli Ridge (00:07:39) - So we can go conventional where it's still going to be about the individual. Or we can look at more of a debt service coverage ratio, where it's about the income of the property in relation to the mortgage payment.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:48) - And before we go on, of course, identifying a deal is a key here in the BR strategy. Is there any guidance you'd give with identification of that property. Because you might know more from the lender perspective on what's going to be lendable.   Caeli Ridge (00:08:03) - Well, as long as it's habitable, we can lend on it. I would say that you really want to pay close attention to a couple of things. From a lender's perspective, the ARV, right? The after rehab after repair value is the linchpin to all of this. And if you're out there getting your comps from whatever sources, the agent or Zillow or Redfin or whatever it is, the more data that you can gather, the better. But just keep in mind that the ones and zeros that you're probably gaining access to don't necessarily have the components that show all the rehab work that you're putting into it.   Caeli Ridge (00:08:34) - So if you're getting a value of a property like kind property in the area or vicinity that the property is located, it's not always going to attest to what extras you put in, whether it be the hardwoods or square footage or whatever it may be. Just keep in mind that you may not be on point there, and real estate agents, I would want you to have or be working with one that really understands the BR method, aka investor models, to make sure that you don't get caught in a scenario where you're expecting a value of x that comes in at Y, that can be very devastating to the BR methodology, especially for new investors.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:09) - It was more about coming up with the ARV because with a conventional loan on a conforming property, that value that you're lending against is typically the appraisal.   Caeli Ridge (00:09:21) - Correct. And the appraisal is going to take into consideration those rehab pieces. But it's not dollar for dollar. And while I don't know that we want to go down the appraisal rabbit hole, I will tell you that if you've got $50,000 of rehab into the property, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get a full 50,000 in extra value.   Caeli Ridge (00:09:38) - A lot of it has to do with what you paid for it. Like Keith, you said at the top of the podcast here, distressed property. A lot of times when people are getting into BR, they're finding under market value property to begin with, that's already worth more. They're putting in some real value adds, maybe cosmetic, maybe a little bit more, and then expecting quite a bit more in value. So there's definitely a science to it. But just make sure that for all intents and purposes, you're gathering as much data as you can. And the agent, if you're using a real estate agent to help with MLS listings, etc., that they have some basis of background within this, this particular philosophy.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:12) - Okay, so we are projecting an RV in after repair value here, and then we need to lend against a percentage of a certain value. So clearly since in this case the property is distressed, well then if the property is the lender's collateral and that collateral is a little, you know, why don't we call it damaged, if you will? Well, then I'm going to speculate that is that lender probably not going to give you as favorable loan terms as they would on a conforming property.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:39) - So tell us more about how those bur loan terms look.   Caeli Ridge (00:10:42) - So you might be surprised. Again, as long as the property is habitable the LTV is going to be the same. The value of the property. It is probably what you're going to notice more than what the lending side is going to allow for in the loan to value. So on a single family residence, if it's habitable, we're going to give the individual up to 75% of that ARV. Now, I don't know if we're ready to go down this road. I think we should talk about it at some point. The ARV and how we want to maximize and not leave any money on the table. We want to discuss the purchase price and the acquisition. I think we'll come to that. But to answer your question, habitable 75% single family or 70% on a 2 to 4 unit is going to be the maximum loan to value using the appraisal. When we talk about a cash out refinance of an investment property, which may be different if we get into a rate and term refinance as a purpose of Bur, which will probably touch on as well.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:36) - What I think for the listener benefit here, maybe it's good to jump into an example if you want to apply some real numbers here to a bird deal, and then let's walk through that with the financing and more.   Caeli Ridge (00:11:48) - Let's start with cash out, because it is different than a rate and term. So cash out simply to clarify means that the individual is going to get cash in hand. We are not simply paying off an existing hard money loan. That is a rate and term refinance. So we want to start with cash out where the cash to acquire the property was the individual sourced and seasoned funds. And let's assume that the scenario looks like this. They paid $100,000 for the property. And then there's $50,000 in renovation with the expectation. Or let's just say that we get an appraisal for 200,000. So at 200,000 and it's a single family residence, 75% of that is 150,000. Okay. So that pretty much covers their total acquisition costs. But then we've got a recommendation.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:28) - Cost is quite.   Caeli Ridge (00:12:29) - Covered. But we have to account for closing costs tax and insurance.   Caeli Ridge (00:12:31) - Let's just make it around ten grand. So the individual is going to end up with 140,000 from their 150 total acquisition cost. If you divide those two numbers, you're probably going to be at what? So 140 divided by 150,000. Yeah, 93% overall leverage. You've got ten grand skin in the game. And when you look at it from that perspective, 93% over all loan to value or leverage of this property is very, very high. If you can get a deal to work like that, you're doing very well.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:59) - And you can see why people like this and why people are attracted to this. So go ahead and tell us more about this. Because really, when we talk about lending for a bigger property, we're probably talking about two different loans, right? We're talking about the purchase price upfront and then the refinancing later on.   Caeli Ridge (00:13:17) - Right. So let's going back to my example. If you paid cash for the property, if that 150,000 was your sourced in season funds. And if you want Keith tell me later and I'll go into what source and season it is.   Caeli Ridge (00:13:28) - But you have 150,000 in on this property. The key to getting up to the maximum of 150 back. Or in our example, you ended up with 140 back because we accounted for ten grand. And in closing, cost is to make sure this is wildly important. And a lot of people get this wrong the first time they go down the Burr road. Make sure both the purchase price and the acquisition costs are listed on your final CD, aka Closing Disclosure. A closing disclosure comes to you at closing, where it's a document, a form that illustrates all of the line item pluses and minuses of the buyer and the seller and what everybody netted at the end. The CD must have the total 150 listed on there, and just one number is fine. It can be broken up into two numbers, whatever. But as long as both numbers are listed on the CD, you as the borrower, our client, her guidelines are eligible to get up to that much back. So the guideline states that the individual cash in hand cannot exceed a maximum of what the total acquisition costs listed on that CD is.   Caeli Ridge (00:14:28) - So what the common mistake is, let's just keep using our 100,000 purchase in our $50,000 renovation. The common mistake that people make is, is that they pay the 100,000, the seller is made whole. And then the day after closing, they are officially now the owner of this property. They send the 50,000 out to the contractor. Seems obvious, right? Well, in doing it that way, you've left 50,000 on the table and now you're going to have to wait 12 months per new guideline to have 12 months of ownership, seasoned ownership for Fannie Freddie to get the total 150. So make sure that the total 150 is on that CD. And the way to do this, just one more little detail. You want to be working with an escrow company that provides something called an escrow hold back. Because a lot of times when I give this advice, people say, well, I don't really want to release $50,000 to the contractor before they even started any of the work, right? That makes sense to me.   Caeli Ridge (00:15:16) - And most escrow companies do this in escrow. Hold back says that the hundred grand goes to the seller. The 50,000 is earmarked for the general contract, you've gotten your bids, etc., but the escrow company will then deliver the 50,000 upon your approval as draws to the contractor as work is being completed. And that kind of absolves that extra layer of risk. But now you've done the appropriate thing for the financing to get maximize your cash out, and you're not leaving yourself in a weird position to frontload 50 grand before you know they've even started on whatever repairs there are.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:49) - Yes. How much motivation does every contractor have if they've already got their 50 K for 50 K worth of work before they do their work? And it works this way a lot in the contracting world, where progress payments are made intermittently as the contractor performs their work. So tell us more about what we need to know here. Clearly, especially when it comes to the Bir and loans, because you just gave us a great mistake to avoid there.   Caeli Ridge (00:16:13) - Kind of keeping on that theme. And then let's talk about a rate and term refinance. You know, some of the pushback that I'll get when I have these conversations. Well, you get your bids. Okay. We'll start talking about the 50,000 renovation per hour example. And you probably get a low and a high and middle. Maybe you go with the middle. It's been my experience personally and just through conversations that the bid is 50,000. If you don't have the upfront conversation to say, I'm not going to pay a cent over the 50,000 and or you negotiate to say, okay, what is our variance here? Because a lot of times the contractor is not going to be pigeonholed to 50,000. They're going back and say, no, I'm not going to sign anything that says that it will not exceed 50,000. There are costs and things that are out of my control, blah, blah, blah. Then coming up with, okay, fine, 55,000, 50, 2000, whatever that margin might be, including that in there and then having the conversation that says, okay, fine, because you don't want to leave that money on the table.   Caeli Ridge (00:17:03) - So let me take a step back. 50,000 becomes 55,000. And if you didn't have it on the CD, that $5,000 is not eligible to get back. So if you increase the amount that's on that CD, per the conversation with your contractor, make sure one of two things that if it isn't spent, that it's coming back to you and assuming if it is, then everybody is on the same page and it's just going to be part of the expense and part of what you have potential to get back. So just food for thought there. Then moving into the rate and term refinance. Now this is something totally different. This means that you went out and got a hard money lump, some kind of a private bridge loan, which by the way, Ridge does. We have bridge loans that can help fund the purchase and the renovation. We can talk about that if you like. But if you went out and got a hard money loan, this is no longer a cash out refinance unless the value is so high that based on a 75% LTV for cash out, that there's enough money on the table that you don't want to wait the 12 months.   Caeli Ridge (00:18:00) - I'm going to pause on that for a second and just say that the numbers work for a rate and term refinance, where we have an existing loan. Let's say you've got a hard money loan for 150,000. A rate and term refinance lets us go to 80% loan to value on a single family, 75 on a 2 to 4. If you recall a minute ago it was 75 and 70. That's cash out. Refinance rate and term refinance rules when you're not getting any money in hand, were simply paying off existing liens plus closing costs. They increase the LTV allowances. So 75 2 to 480% on a single family residence. So if we can go 80% on the 200,000, what is that one? I can't do mental math, Keith. So 80% of 200,000 is 160. So in that case think about this. So let's just keep going back to our example. You've got 150 into it. We've got 10,000 of closing costs okay. 150 is a hard money loan that we have to pay off. And the 10,000 is what the new refinance closing costs are going to be.   Caeli Ridge (00:19:00) - The value came in at 200,000. 80% of that is 160,000. That's no skin in the game. You have completely covered the hard money loan paid for the closing costs. I mean, you can't get better than that. That's 100% leverage, right? You're not getting cash back. Now let's take that and say that the value came in at 250. And that's a lot of money. In that case, you may want to wait for the 12 months to get that cash back, because you're going to be limited if you use leverage to acquire the property versus your own cash, that's when you're going to have to wait that 12 months. Or if you're cash acquisition, the numbers work out where you'd get an exponentially more amount than what you put into it. You may want to wait there, too. It really just depends on what that RV is going to be. That's why it's the linchpin that'll make you decide whether you're going to wait the 12 months, or if you're ready to rock in in the immediate terms with a rate and term refi.   Caeli Ridge (00:19:53) - No seasoning. If you're not getting cash back, I don't care. We can do it immediately or a cash out refinance. As long as you're not getting more back than what you paid for it. And we can show that the dollars to acquire all in the CD and they came from, you know, seasoning.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:07) - All right. So it's the BR strategy with the cash out refinance and then the burr strategy with the rate and term terms there, if you will. Is there anything else that we need to know about either one of those.   Caeli Ridge (00:20:19) - Really a lot of people always want to say what are the rate differences? And I would say that, you know, overall they're going to be roughly the same when we start talking about those LP's. Again, Keith, low level price adjustments there, pluses and minuses that have to do with risk. A cash out is a higher risk than a rate and term, a rate and term at 80% versus a cash out at 75% might offset that. So relatively speaking, they're probably going to be within an eighth to a quarter percentage point if all the other variables are equal.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:44) - Now, clearly, I think of a hard money loan is something that allows. You to put both the purchase price of a property and the projected rehab cost, and roll those all into the loan at closing. That's what I think of as a hard money loan. Is there any difference between a hard money loan and the other things that you're describing to us?   Caeli Ridge (00:21:04) - Not really. I mean, it's probably a cat of a different name, right? I mean, a hard money loan, a private money loan, a portfolio loan, a bridge loan. I mean, you could use the same thing, depending on the context of the sentence, to mean the same thing, maybe something different. You're probably right in this context. It's going to be the same, I think.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:21) - Well, I want to talk to you more about conventional loans and any mortgage industry trends that have been taking place lately. But before we do, do you have any last thing to tell us about the Burr strategy, where really someone can accumulate maybe 10 or 20 properties in just three years with little or no money, but more work?   Caeli Ridge (00:21:39) - Yeah, a little bit more work.   Caeli Ridge (00:21:40) - I would say get to know your market, have your team. That contractor. Man, I think you alluded to this. I think that that's the piece that most people struggle with is finding the right contractor for one of the things that tends to work well, if you have established a relationship, is kind of getting in with some kind of a JV with the contractor, right? They've got skin in the game. Maybe if your numbers work out, they get a 5% bonus on the end, whatever. Just to kind of not keep them honest but keep them honest, if you know what I mean. So making sure you've got a good contractor that you can trust if you're going to be doing this out of state from where you live, even more so, doubly so you really want to have the right team. And that includes the general contractor, the escrow company, your lender. Everybody's got to kind of be on the same page if you're going to continue to do this as a rinse and repeat.   Caeli Ridge (00:22:23) - And then finally I would say bring it to Ridge. Let's just make sure if you're new to doing this, I want to make sure you're not leaving that money on the table, that we're structuring it appropriately so that we're maximizing the loan to value, we're maximizing your dollar, and that you're not leaving money or leaving money for some period of time longer than what you would have wanted to, because this is a rinse and repeat, right? If you don't do it right the first time, you could be stuck tying up 30 grand for 12 months that you would have otherwise been able to capitalize on. If we looked at it in advance of you pulling a trigger.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:52) - Yeah, that's correct. In fact, that last R in the BR strategy is to repeat it. And yet, to your point about contractors, I like to think about what contractor motivations are and what my motivations are. And in times I have incentivized contractors with giving them a 5% bonus if they finish things ahead of schedule or a 5% penalty if they finish things behind schedule and putting that in the contract as well.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:14) - You're listening to get versus a case. We're talking with Ridge Landing President Charlie Ridge about getting loans for the BR strategy more when we come back. I'm your host, Keith Windhoek. Role. Under this specific expert with income property, you need. Ridge lending Group Nmls 42056. In gray history from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your prequalification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns, or better than a bank savings account, up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:29) - How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.   Speaker 5 (00:25:06) - This is our Rich dad, Poor dad author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Wayne. All scripture data.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:25) - Hey. Welcome back. You're inside. Episode 502 of gray. I'm your host, Keith. Y'know, we're talking with the president of Ridge Lending Group, Charlie Ridge. She talked to us before the break about her financing strategies and the things that you need to keep in mind in order to optimize your returns there. It's only now back here on the conventional side, we talk more about conforming loans for properties that are already fixed up.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:48) - Or maybe people call those turnkey. What about some of those hurdles that investors often have in there? For example, I know that the DTI one exceeding their debt to income ratio threshold when they try to qualify is sometimes a problem. So can you talk to us about some strategies with that? For example, sometimes a person might have a $500 a month car payment, but they only have four or more payments to make for their $2,000 principal balance. And it just makes more sense to pay that off. And then that drops off the DTI calculation. Are there any other thoughts you have with regard to that?   Caeli Ridge (00:26:18) - There's so many in this. I mean, we probably have our own episode for all different ways on debt to income ratio and to move that needle. Just to go back to your example, just FYI, if the car loan is financed, not leased, and there are ten months or left reporting on the credit report automatically per guideline we had, we can exclude that if it was at least with ten months or less, we have to keep it in the ratio.   Caeli Ridge (00:26:39) - But if it's a finance car, ten months are left are showing on the report. It's automatically reduced from the liability section of DTI. The other things that we're to look at just obvious things. Can we gross up any kind of income. Right. Are there bonuses or commissions or Social Security or veterans benefits or whatever that allow us to gross those up, making sure that we've got all of the applicable income that they gather? Sometimes people will forget to say, oh, I get this. You know, child support or alimony or whatever it may be that I didn't think to disclose. We want to make sure that we have that in there. And then we talk about liabilities we want to look at here's kind of a good one. Student loans let's say that either cosigned or you have your own student loans. Fannie and Freddie have different. And maybe they're in deferment. Okay. So when we pull the credit it shows zero as the monthly payment. While Fannie and Freddie have different rules about what we have to hit them for.   Caeli Ridge (00:27:25) - And I could be getting these backwards, but I think that Fannie is 1% of the outstanding balance, whereas Freddie is a half a percent. So depending on some other variables, we may elect to say, okay, DTI is really tight, we're going to take this and make this one of Freddie, assuming that they fit all the other boxes so that we're only having to hit them for that half a percent. Otherwise we look at maybe paying off revolving debt, get those payments down if they're small enough, maybe there's a $3,000 balance that has a $300 payment that's really screwing things up, and they can afford to pay that off. So certainly we can look at those kinds of things, adding in a co-borrower, putting more money down, buying the interest rate down, maybe finding slightly cheaper insurance, right. At least for the purpose of the loan. And then if you wanted to get higher insurance or lower deductibles or higher deductibles later, you could certainly do that. So there's so many different variables that we can look at to really it's not a one size fits all.   Caeli Ridge (00:28:13) - And DTI is kind of a slippery slope. And there's lots of different ways in which we can get that down into check. And if it doesn't happen today, we can help them plant the seeds for what to do tomorrow and making sure that we get them there.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:24) - Wow, that was fantastic. I hope you, the listener, are listening closely because Charlie just gave so much packed, nutrient dense information about what you can do with your DTI. And for starters, I think a lot of people think about reducing their debt to improve their DTI. But is all your income being credited as well? Hopefully you caught that part which said that. But when it does come to reducing the debt portion, of course student loans have very much been in the news with all these plans for forgiveness. Is that impacting DTI substantially?   Caeli Ridge (00:28:53) - If they had the right documentation? Sure. Yeah. If they're on there and we have the right documentation that shows that they are forgiven, but they just haven't caught up with the system, then absolutely.   Caeli Ridge (00:29:00) - Otherwise, if they don't have the supporting doc, the letter that says and it's on the credit report, we're going to have to hit them for it, whether there's a payment there or a zero deferred. And then we have to figure out the 5.5 or the 1%. It'll have to be in there. Just depends on what they can deliver in terms of that forgiveness in paper trail.   Keith Weinhold (00:29:18) - You do with mortgages every day in there. That's what you specialize in for investors. Are there any just overall mortgage industry trends that really specifically impact real estate investors that have occurred? Or amid.   Caeli Ridge (00:29:31) - The rates? Everything is going to come back to the rates. As much as I impress upon people, it really shouldn't be about the rate. And I understand the psychology. Listen. But if they're not doing the math, they're really doing themselves and their future investment a disservice. The shelf life, you guys of an investment property mortgage is five years. Whatever the rates are today, you're not going to have that interest rate almost certainly in 5 to 7 years.   Caeli Ridge (00:29:54) - So kind of looking down the forecast of where rates we think they're going to go, the appreciation of the property, harvesting equity, pulling cash out. Keep those things in mind when you fixate on the interest rates. I would say that that's usually what it's top of people's minds. The most recent inflationary data came out. It was hotter than we expected. However, shortly thereafter, if you're watching closely the unemployment rate and the jobs report, I think it offered 175,000 new jobs and the projection was to something. So that's good news. And listen, you guys, you can't have it both ways. We're in a hot economy. I guess it depends on who you're talking to and who you're asking. I understand, but for all intents and purposes we've got inflation is is down. It's not down where the Fed's wanted that 2%. The unemployment rate is very, very low. So in that regard we're doing very well. So interest rates are going to be higher. Unfortunately it balances this way. The worse the economy does the better the interest rates do.   Caeli Ridge (00:30:48) - Finding that equal balance I think is the key. And don't ask me, I'm not going to try and predict how to do that. But do your mouth be prepared for refinancing when it comes. Sitting on the fence is usually not going to be to your advantage if you're waiting for interest rates to come down, and that coupled with house values, come down a little bit too. And you may have played yourself out of the refinance anyway for the purposes that you wanted to pull cash out. So just be educated. Call us. We can kind of walk you through some of that stuff. Interest rates, I think, are going to be higher for longer unless we see some real significant data trends, because there's a lag. And what we get from the Fed's and I think they try to put that in there, but who knows what's going to happen. What are they going to see us again June, July. We'll see what happens. If jobs reports keep being light, then maybe we start to see a little bit more reprieve in the interest rates.   Caeli Ridge (00:31:32) - But we're still we're what, seven and a quarter, seven and a half for investment property I think in most cases. So if that's too high to cash flow, find a short term rental. Find a mid term rental. There's other ways in which to accomplish your variety of variables. Even in the seven and 7.5% interest rate environment.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:49) - Well, there's so much I can say about the fed and the interest rates, but I think you said something very important earlier that the average shelf life of a mortgage loan product is about five years. It's exceedingly few people. Well, less than 1%. They're making their 360th monthly payment ever at a 30 year fixed rate loan. Charlie, I want to ask you what. Maybe it's becoming sort of known as the Charlie Ridge question. I like to ask you this almost every time that you're on the show, because it gives us a temperature of the market, because you see so many loans and so many appraisals come in there, what percent of appraisals are coming in above value? What percent are coming in on value, and what percent of appraisals are coming in below value?   Caeli Ridge (00:32:26) - We don't see as many low values.   Caeli Ridge (00:32:28) - I think that there was a period of time where that was rampant. It was really frustrating for a lot of people, especially on the Non-owner occupied side. The vast majority are coming in on point, and I think a lot of that has to do with 0809 regulation. Appraisers are kind of scared of their own shadow and overvaluing properties. So I think that they do very everything they can to hit the mark. And I don't see too much over an occasion. We'll see a little bit over. It's more likely to see it over than under these days. I would say, okay, percentages under 10% on the mark 8075 and then over. We'll give it.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:03) - 1515. Okay, a few more over than under, but pretty close to right on value there. You do loans in almost all 50 states. And these are the states where the property is located, not where the borrower lives. Right. So it's every state except a few.   Caeli Ridge (00:33:20) - Right? We're not in North Dakota and we are not in New York.   Caeli Ridge (00:33:22) - Otherwise we are lending in all 48 states where the property is. That is correct.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:27) - Yeah. And you specialize in loans for investors. Like I said earlier, what other loan types do you offer investors and others in there because you do a few primary residence loans too.   Caeli Ridge (00:33:38) - We do lots of primary. I would say, you know, it's 7030 probably. We're very capable, full service direct lender. What that means is we fund on our warehouse line, we underwrite in house, but we don't service these loans. So we bundle them up in mortgage backed securities and we resell them on the secondary market to aggregators. You guys will know this as servicers. Any Mac, Wells Fargo, whoever is going to be the end servicer of the loan. And I've worked really, really hard to create an environment specifically for investors, not exclusively, but largely so that we're not a one size fits all. So I really appreciate the question and being able to articulate to your listeners, we really do everything. It's very uncommon that we don't have a loan product to feed the actual need.   Caeli Ridge (00:34:17) - The one thing that I would say we don't have or don't offer is going to be a lot bear lot loans we don't fund on just bare land, but we can do the Fannie Freddie's bridge loans. So for the fix and flip or fix and hold the BR, we do non QM. This is just non QM is kind of everything outside the Fannie Freddie box. If you can't quite fit into the rigors of Fannie Freddie you're going to be in non QM probably where debt service coverage ratio lives. Bank statement loans live, asset depletion loans live. We have commercial loan products for commercial properties. For residential properties we have. Ground up construction. First line Helocs for relationship clients we have second line Helocs. We had second line for everybody when we pulled back just for relationship clients for reasons that we'll discuss on one on one if anybody's interested in that. What am I forgetting, Keith? You get the point. There's a lot. If you think that you're trying to get financing for residential or commercial properties, please email us and we'll take some information to let you know what we can do.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:10) - Well, yeah, to my point, you provide such a great service in a wide palette of options. It's somewhat easier to describe what you don't do. Yeah. And what you do offer to people. And of course, I've done my own loans in there at Ridge and my own refinancings in there. And yes, I usually end up getting a servicer. That's one of the big banks that you've always heard of over the long term that I make payments to. Where does one get started to get things rolling with Ridge or just to ask some questions.   Caeli Ridge (00:35:36) - Call us 855747434385574. Ridge, you'll get someone immediately. We don't have any call trees. You'll speak to me if I'm available at the time. Our website's got a lot of great information. Ridge lending group.com email info at Ridge Lending group.com. All of those ways will get you on the books with me, if that's what you like. Or assign you to a loan officer in the company. And we look forward to serving you.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:00) - You have given our longtime listeners more good, timely mortgage information than anyone in the history of the show here, and we're all better for it.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:09) - Charlie Ridge, thanks so much for coming back on to the show.   Caeli Ridge (00:36:11) - Thank you Keith.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:18) - Let's review some of what you learned about Bir and their loans today. Once your property is renovated and rented, which are the first and second are the third are. Is refinance for a cash out refinance type? It is a maximum of 75% loan to value on single family and 70% on a 2 to 4 unit, and then for a rate and term refinance, which means when you don't get any money in hand after closing and you're simply paying off existing liens plus closing costs, it's 80% loan to value on single family and 75% on a 2 to 4 unit. And you learn to be sure that both the purchase price and the acquisition cost are listed on your final closing disclosure. You know what I think is interesting with originating mortgage loans today? Overall, it's one question that I've been thinking about, and maybe we'll do a poll on this question. If we do, I'll share the results with you. And that is, do people care more about the mortgage interest rate than the purchase price of the property itself? Sometimes it seems that way to me.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:29) - Now your mortgage rate definitely matters, but not as much as the purchase price. I mean, later months or years down the road. After you purchase a property, you can often renegotiate the mortgage interest rate, like if rates fall, but your purchase price stays fixed, that part never gets renegotiated. And like I mentioned last week, low mortgage rates don't create wealth. Leverage does. And to put a finer point on that, consider that in 1971, the mortgage interest rate was 7.3%. Back there in 1971, if you had waited for interest rates to go down, you wouldn't have purchased a home or an income property until 1993. You would have waited 22 years for rates to go down. And meanwhile the price of real estate quadrupled, and many people expect mortgage rates to stay higher, longer. Whether you're interested in the BR strategy or already renovated income, property or even primary residence loans, I invite you. You can get loans at the same place that I have myself for years. That's it.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:41) - Ridge lending group.com. Until next week. I'm your host, Keith Winfield. Don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 6 (00:38:52) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:20) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

In this episode of the Get Rich Education podcast, host Keith Weinhold explores the current state of home pricing and the housing market.  He examines whether homes are overpriced or underpriced by comparing them to historical values, gold, and bitcoin, and discusses the influence of inflation and financing on affordability.  The episode features insights from Danielle Hale, chief economist at realtor.com, on the challenges for young homebuyers, housing supply issues, and mortgage rate effects.  The conversation also covers the build-to-rent trend, investment strategies, and the importance of increasing housing construction.  Weinhold concludes by offering free coaching for building real estate portfolios. Resources mentioned: For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Welcome to GRE! I’m your host, Keith Weinhold. Home Prices Aren’t Really Up! Brace yourself. A mic drop moment on real estate costs is coming.  It’s an unmasking - a reality check on property prices. Are homes actually still priced too LOW today? How could that POSSIBLY be true at all? On Get Rich Education. _____________   Welcome to GRE! From Belgrade, Serbia to Belleville, Illinois and across 188 nations worldwide. I’m Keith Weinhold and you’re listening to Episode 501 of Get Rich Education.   We’ll get to “Are homes overpriced or underpriced today?” shortly.    But understand this…   I successfully acquired something at a young age. And you can too. That thing that I successfully got ahold of was not millions of dollars… because I came from average means.   What I intentionally and successfully acquired was millions of dollars in debt.   Yes, obtaining millions in debt from a young age… is what led to me quitting my day job while I was young enough to enjoy it.   You, the longtime listener, COMPLETELY understand and appreciate what I just said. If you’re a newer listener, that sounds unusual or even irresponsible. Well, come along for the ride.    Also, a layperson - or a newer listener - would respond with, “No one talks that way, thinks that way, or does that.” - taking out millions in debt and calling THAT aspirational.   But using that debt as leverage is how you ethically take funds from the big banks - take Chase Bank’s money, take Bank of America’s money, take Wells Fargo’s money - learn how to use it, be a responsible steward of the funds, provide good housing for people and prosper.    That means you get the return on both your down payment - and the entire amount that you borrowed from those banks. That all goes to you. And both your tenants and inflation pay the debt back - not you.   Look, I know one person. I personally know a guy - Greg. Greg makes $80K a year from his day job. Good guy, married guy, one kid.    And his NW increased by $2M just in the COVID run-up. He has a modest salary but his NW is up $2M just since 2020.   First of all, do you think that any of Greg’s co-workers experienced that effect? No, he’s really going down my path. You soon get unrelatable to co-workers and even some of your peers.   Well, what makes it possible for a good family guy - or anybody - to go from a middling salary to obtaining life-changing wealth?    It takes leverage. He borrowed for bank loans. That way, he could acquire 5x as much property than if he paid all cash for his rental properties.    That way, he had 5x as MANY properties… and properties all appreciate at the same rate regardless of how much equity you have in them.    See, if he had paid all cash, he’d only have a $400K capital gain. Not bad, but $2M is life-changing. Thanks to leverage.   Everyday people obtain life-changing wealth this way. It’s so substantial… that it won’t only affect Greg’s life. If he continues on this way, it’ll take care of his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.    And you know, maybe this is why, one of the most recurrent guests we’ve had here in the history of this GRE, Ken McElroy, he says:   “The best investment in RE is the one that appreciates the most, not the one that cash flows the most.” That’s Ken McElroy. And now you can see why he says that.   Leveraged appreciation creates wealth the fastest. Cash flow is important and it CAN boost wealth but that happens more slowly. Principal paydown doesn’t create it - it enhances it… and it’s the same with tax benefits.   Deferring your tax on a 1031 means that you can re-leverage a greater amount.   Low interest rates also don’t create wealth. In fact, I bought my first ever income property with a 6⅜% mortgage rate and my second income property with a 7⅝% rate - that second one had interest-only payments.    But I borrowed the maximum amount that I could without OVERleveraging. Overleverage means losing control of the mortgage and operating expenses.   The lesson here is… get the leverage.   And… case in point. Here we go…   Speaking of appreciation, the LATEST Case-Shiller Home Price Index figure came in. The US currently has… 6.4% YOY home price appreciation. Now, their index is only based on 20 cities but that gives you a pretty good idea.    In fact, that is the fastest rate of increase since 2022.   Now, if you’ve let equity build up in your properties to the point that they’re half paid off, you had 2x leverage, meaning the 6.4% appreciation just gave you a 12.8% leveraged return on your skin in the game.   And, of course, if you leveraged with a 20% down payment a year ago, that 6.4% means that you just got a 32% return.   And as we know, these returns I just told you about are from one of just one of FIVE ways that you’re expected to be paid simultaneously.   But yeah, a 6.4% higher is merely a DOLLAR-DENOMINATED price. That’s what that is. Why do I say that carefully?    Well, there are a few reasons that home prices are 6.4% higher - inflation from dollar printing could be why, the value - not price - but some properties have a greater VALUE, distinctly separate from inflation.   What’s the distinction there - how does this happen? What’s one difference between an INFLATED price and a greater value?    Well, say that a local economy is hot because there are more high-paying jobs there now than there were last year - say an influx of medical jobs or AI jobs or chipmaking jobs.    Well, even absent inflation, a property that now has PROXIMITY to better-paying jobs - that’s now a property that’s more desirable.    Someone is more willing to PAY MORE FOR - and simply CAN pay more for. Again - that phenomenon is ABSENT inflation.   What’s another reason that home prices rise - and rose 6.4% YOY in this case?    If better PHYSICAL AMENITIES are in new homes than there used to be - say bigger garages or new communities with pickleball courts, well, people are more willing to pay more for that.    To review, there are three reasons that home prices go higher: inflation, appreciation from value creation - like how the same home is now located closer to more high-paying jobs, and thirdly, better built-in amenities.   All three of those increase dollar-denominated price or value. They all increase the nominal price.   Now, let’s pivot into the fact that “Home Prices Aren’t Really Up”.    I’ve covered this a little before, but I’m going to go deeper today in giving you the most comprehensive look at home prices today - compared to the past - perhaps than you’ve ever had in your life.   Some might say, “C’mon. How can this be? Homes cost, perhaps 40% more than they did just four years ago.”   Well, I’ve got a mic… drop… moment… coming.   - Home Prices Aren’t Really Up.   We need a good measuring stick to see what home prices are doing. So we’ve got to stop pricing homes in dollars for a minute. It's a poor long-term value measure.   Ludicrous inflation means the dollar has lost over 25% of its value just since 2020, and 97% of its value since 1920.   Let’s use a commodity and money that has been valued for five millennia - and its physical properties have not changed one bit in allll that time, and its valued across continents and cultures - that’s 50 centuries of value! That’s gold.    We’ll get to a more modern measure soon. But first, gold is the best one.   Now, I don’t know who to credit, but for a while, there was an image floating around out there that GRE got ahold of.    It showed that 10 kilos of gold would buy you an average home back in 1920… and also, that 10 kilos of gold would still buy you an average home today… total… mic… drop… moment. Wow! Is there any better evidence that home prices are NOT up - but higher prices reflect that the dollar is down?   Actually, yes, there is a little better evidence. We ran the numbers here and learned that - it’s even more astounding than that!    You run how many dollars per ounce gold is worth, that 35ish ounces are in a kilo and you look at home prices then and now and we discovered that - it’s even more of a jaw-dropper…   … because in 1920 - which I’ll just call a century ago - you could buy an average home for 8 kilos of gold and today, you can buy an average home for just 6 kilos of gold.   So if you want to know how much home prices have changed in the last century, they are down 25%.    They’re 25% cheaper today in terms of gold - clearly a more stable value indicator than horrendously diluted dollars are.   And also, GRE made a new image that shows this - 8 kilos for an average home a century ago, 6 today. I sent you that image in our newsletter about ten days ago and that image got shared a LOT of times. Your first reaction to this whole thing could be: "Wow! That's wild. The dollar really is sooo diluted." Alright. What about home prices in terms of a popular, nascent asset that only arrived fifteen years ago, bitcoin? 2016: Average home cost $288K, or 664 bitcoins. 2020: Average home cost $329K, or 45 bitcoins. 2024: Average home cost $435K, or 7 bitcoins. So, eight years ago, a home cost 664 bitcoins and today it costs 7.  That means that home prices are down 25% in terms of gold in the last century. But they’re down 99% in bitcoin over just the last 8 years. And the dropped mic keeps reverberating through the stadium. Today's homes are cheaper in gold and drastically cheaper in bitcoin.  See, it takes real world resources and proof of work to create real estate, gold, and bitcoin. None of these things are required to produce a dollar - none of them. That's why its value is approaching zero. But let’s go deeper. You need more answers - you are part of a really intelligent audience.  Because you might be thinking: "Wait a second. Some other things have changed too." For real people - everyday people - aren't home prices actually more out of reach than this? That's because since 1920, home prices have risen faster than incomes. That puts them OUT OF REACH for more people. Something else has changed. A home's lot size is smaller today too - the land that comes with the property has a smaller area. Let’s understand too - homes also use some cheaper materials today. For example, heavy, milled raw wood doors - the interior doors - of yesteryear have given way to molded particle board today. This is beginning to build the case - evidence - that homes SHOULD be cheaper than they are today.  Let’s keep going, because there’s more to consider. Mortgage rates themselves - just rates in isolation - they don't put homes out of reach at all. The long-term average is 7.7%, per Freddie Mac, on the 30-year FRM. That average goes back to 1971, when they first began tracking them.  Oppositely, you can make the case that U.S. homes should cost even more than they do today. In many advanced nations, homes are way more pricey. Even next door in Canada, they cost about 20% more than U.S. homes. Canadian salaries are lower than US salaries too - yet their home prices are markedly higher. On some levels, you're getting more "home" today in the US.  A 1920 home would feel savagely uninhabitable to you if you tried to live in one now.  Here’s what I mean… In 1920: 1% of homes had electricity and full plumbing. Today: 99% of homes have electricity and full plumbing. What I mean then, by savagely uninhabitable, is enjoy walking to the outhouse in the middle of the night when it's 35 degrees. Then there's size: 1920: The average home had 242 sf per person. Today: The average home has 721 sf per person. Because today, family sizes are smaller and homes are way larger too. Today's amenities would be unthinkable in 1920—walk-in closets, roofs with R38 insulation, double-paned thermal windows, smart thermostats, voice-controlled lighting, quartz countertops, and Kitchen Aid appliances. Maybe even a security system. They’re all things that homes have today. Gosh, even the fact that you have a garage - a HEATED garage even, finished basement, air conditioner and modern washer-dryer would leave 1920 homeowners dumbstruck with their mouth agape—maybe even flabbergasted. Those old folks from yesteryear wouldn’t believe all that you get with a home today. Yet that 1920 home would have cost you more in gold, than today’s more sizable homes with all their plush amenities. Now, when it comes to - though home prices aren’t up, are they more “out of reach” for the average American?” Over the past five years, they ARE - because home prices have now risen faster than incomes over THAT stretch. But another BIG reason that homes are SUBSTANTIALLY more affordable today than they were in 1920 is… financing terms.  Today, you can make a down payment for between 3% and 20% on a home. Do you know what loan terms were like in 1920? You had to make a 50% down payment and then had to pay off your mortgage in 5 years.  Can you IMAGINE if that were the case today? How many people could put 50% down on a home today and then pay off the balance within 5 years. Virtually nobody. That’s why homes are more within one’s grasp today. Overall, you can see that there are a lot of countervailing factors here… tempering that it took 8 kilos of gold to buy a home a century ago, and it just takes 6 kilos today.  The bottom line here is that, long-term, real home prices aren't up. Dollars are down because they've been printed like crazy.  From today, nominal home prices could keep rising for years.     Dustin on social had a funny comment about this - “How many baconators from Wendy’s would it take to buy a home today?” Ha!    I don’t know. I guess that’s a hamburger - I don’t go to Wendy’s. Maybe then, a home costs 60,000 baconators today.    Coming up straight ahead - what will happen first - a $750K median-price home, $100K bitcoin, or $5K gold.   Also, what’s perhaps the biggest trend in real estate investing that not enough people are talking about - and how you can make money from it… and more… all next - I’m KW. You’re listening to Get Rich Education.  ______________   Welcome back, to Get Rich Education. I’m your host, Keith Weinhold.   On our latest GRE Social Media Poll, we ran this question.   What will happen first?   The median home value hits $750K. Bitcoin hits a $100K price. Or… Gold hits $5K.   I’ll give you the result, but what do you think? Again, which one of these three things will happen first?    The median home value hits $750K. Bitcoin to $100K. Or… Gold hits $5K.   The results across both LI and IG were pretty similar - sometimes you get differences there, as LI is a more professional audience.    One voter in the poll also commented - it’s syndication attorney Mauricio Rauld, who we’ve had here on the show before.    Mauricio said: I think assuming Bitcoin doesn't collapse, it probably makes a run to $100K in the next few years (who knows, could be next few months). But with the median home, at 10% a year, it would take 6 years to hit $750K so that is a decade away. That’s his thought - sounds reasonable.    The poll RESULT is: Bitcoin will hit $100K first. That was most likely, with 57% of you answering that. That makes sense since its volatile and close to striking distance.   The median home value will hit $750K finished 2nd. 26% of you said that.   And gold up to a $5K price got just 17% of the vote. That makes sense since gold prices would have to about double from here.   You can always join along in the conversation and polls. We are really easy to find - because on virtually every social platform - Facebook, Instagram, LI, YouTube - we ARE: “Get Rich Education”.   Over on the Get Rich Education YouTube Channel, I recently covered how the Fed is overseeing a “Tug of War” between inflation and a recession. They don’t want the game to end. The Fed is trying to keep the game going.    They don’t want participants on either side falling into a pit in the middle of the Tug of War game between inflation and a recession. They don’t want either side to win. If one side wins, the Fed loses.   This “Tug of War” game is really a great way to understand how the Fed works, how they control your money, and what their motivations are. A video about that is on our YouTube channel - where you get the visual of the Tug of War game between inflation and a recession.   That’s just one example of how that content is often different from what you’re hearing now. Get more… on our YouTube Channel… called “Get Rich Education”.   The homeownership rate just fell again a little, quarter-over-quarter, increasing the number of renters and rental demand, which I expect will only continue. From CNBC, Realtor.com’s Chief Economist Danielle Hale tells us more. Let’s listen in. It’s about why the housing market is pretty dire for young Americans, then I’ll be right back with some key commentary on this. Yeah, there in Economist Danielle Hale’s interview - if mortgage rates go higher, inventory pulls back and we tend to see modest HPA. Most agree that if mortgage rates go lower, we’ll see RAPID HPA.   She also just keeps exposing what we all know. “We need to build more housing”.   A brand-new home constructed with a renter in mind, sold to an investor, is known as build-to-rent housing. You’ll see it abbreviated BTR. It's usually single-family.   Some abbreviate it B2R. These must be the same people that say H2O instead of water.    It's become massively popular.   Despite an overall housing shortage, last year, a record 27,495 BTR homes were completed.    That's up 75% from the prior year and up an astounding 307% since pre-pandemic deliveries back in 2019.   So what's driving the build-to-rent trend? Locked into low mortgage rates, existing homeowners won't sell. So, instead, new inventory must be constructed. More overall housing demand than supply. Wannabe first-time homebuyers cannot afford homes today. Renting a BTR is next best. National BTR occupancy is over 96%. BTR operates similarly to apartment buildings under property management, yet offer a single-family living experience.   Some of these communities have: leasing offices, pools, and fitness centers.   The homes themselves often have: luxurious modern finishes, garages, and fenced backyards.   What's in it for investors? How do you make money with BTRs? 5% mortgage rates* (I’ll get back to that in a minute) A long-term ownership focus, generating revenue over time rather than immediately Tenants have a house-like feel. Expect 3+ years avg. tenancy duration. Mgmt. fees are low because all houses are the same and all in the same area too BTR purchase prices are HIGHER than resale property. You will pay more. Expect better appreciation than resale property The rent range is often $1,500 to $3,500 You can expect low maintenance. It's new. Builder home warranty So there are a ton of factors that give build-to-rent investor appeal. Really, 5% mortgage rates? Yes. Here at GRE, we can introduce you to some BTR homebuilders that will buy down your rate for you. One is lowering it to 4.75%.    I encourage you to get that incentive now, because when mortgage rates fall substantially, I don’t expect these national and regional homebuilders to keep giving you the rate buydown.    Sorry J-Pow. This kinda makes your next Fed rate decision… seem pretty irrelevant.   It's a great rental model to pursue and an amazing time to do it with the rate buydowns. I wish BTR would have existed when I began as an investor.   You really didn’t start hearing about BTR at all until about ten years ago.   Now, I appear as a guest on other business and investing shows. Quite a few times, the host asks me where the REI opp is today.    The answer that I’ve been giving is that it’s with build-to-rent properties and these rate buydowns.   An income-producing asset is like your employee that’s working for you—but without the personality problems. The property is also working for you 24/7.    Besides just helping you find the best BTR deals today, we can help set up an entire real estate investment portfolio plan for you.   -We can help build an income-producing RE portfolio for you with our free coaching. Truly free.    Now, if you’re new here, you might think that we’re trying to sell you something - and we aren’t.    The way it works elsewhere is that some people get attracted to the free thing and then once you’re on the phone or Zoom or free live, in-person event, they’re going to try to sell you their better PAID coaching or some online course for a fee.   We don’t even sell coaching or sell a course. This is free no-strings, no upsell, no catch coaching.    OK, it’s sort of the opposite of your auto dealer calling you about your extended warranty - an overpriced item that you don’t want. Ha! If you want to buy something from GRE, you can’t because we don’t even have anything to sell you. We are here to help!    Also, I have no problem with companies selling paid courses or paid coaching - not at all. Some courses are worth paying for. It’s just not what we do or have EVER done here.   But see, buying real estate that you own directly is still not as simple as just finding a keyboard and pressing: Ctrl, alt,  Deal.   So that’s why our Investment Coaches help you learn your goals, and navigate the process. Then you’ll want to keep in touch with your coach because the best deals are often changing.    For example, you might think that you want to buy income property in, just say, Alabama, because its prices haven’t run up as much as they have in Florida.   But we keep regular lines of communication open with build-to-rent homebuilders nationwide… and say there’s a new community, in, Florida, where the real deals are going to be for the next few months…    …and though you still like Alabama, you like how Florida is growing faster so you end up going there.   Or there’s better cash flow with some BRRRR strategy properties in say, Ohio, that we have that your coach informs you about.    So, I encourage you. Get & maintain a line of communication with your GRE Investment Coach.   To review what you learned today:   Leverage is THE most powerful wealth creator.   You can make the case that homes are NOT overpriced today. Home prices aren’t up; the dollar is down.   No one knows the future. But there is ample room for more home price growth.    Build-to-Rent property keeps increasing in popularity… and investors can get mortgage rates on them as low as about 5%.   To contact an investment coach, it’s free, start at GREmarketplace.com.   Until next week, I’m your host, KW. DQYD!

Explore the significance of time management and living an extraordinary life. Discuss implications of eternal life on Earth's resources. Blend of motivational content, wealth-building advice, and philosophical musings on life's finitude. Reflect on the value of seizing the present moment and achieving financial freedom through real estate investing.

Other people study one real estate group’s enormous success. Go behind the scenes to learn how they pulled off “The Memphis Miracle”. Terry Kerr and Liz Brody from terrific turnkey property provider, Mid South Home Buyers of Memphis, TN, are back on the show.  Here’s what makes them different: junk in the backyard rather than a dumpster, property addresses viewable on their website, no tenant application fees, no maintenance upcharges, no materials upcharges, no earnest money, investor cancellation allowed, specific kitchen & bath renovation, and tenants bring their own appliances. Memphis has such a robust renter culture that tenants bring their own appliances. Hundreds of GRE followers have purchased income property from Mid South Home Buyers. They’re such a popular provider that there’s an investor waitlist. For GRE followers, you can reserve up to two financed properties or three all-cash properties all at once. They offer in-person tours to see the properties. Start at MidSouthHomeBuyers.com Resources mentioned: Mid South Home Buyers' Website: www.MidSouthHomeBuyers.com Liz Brody’s e-mail: liz@midsouthhomebuyers.com For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:00:00)) - - Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Today we're going to visit one of my favorite real estate markets. We'll talk with an operator there that is so successful and different that other companies actually study them. And our listeners have loved them for almost ten years now. Today on get Rich education.   Speaker Syslo** ((00:00:23)) - - Since 2014, the powerful Get Rich Education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Wine, who writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform. Plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener. Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast.   Speaker Syslo** ((00:01:01)) - - Sign up now for the get Rich education podcast or visit get Rich education.com.   Speaker Coates** ((00:01:08)) - - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:01:24)) - - Welcome to GRE! From Sandy Creek, New York to Walnut Creek, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold and this is get rich education. Some call Memphis, Tennessee the best place in the entire United States for income producing homes. And in past shows, we talked about all of those reasons on why that's true the economic, the geographic and the cultural. So all that I will add to that is, did trends like the era of Covid and this nascent sea of I did that change the advantageous Memphis economics over these past? So 3 to 5 years? No, not really, because this distribution hub market, air barge, rail and truck is still really the center of the most powerful nation on Earth when it comes to distribution. If you're moving a package from New York to LA, you're going through Memphis.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:02:24)) - - The reason that really matters is that those distribution jobs are not transient. It's tough to outsource that activity to Thailand. Lots of things make Memphis well known Memphis barbecue, Beale Street, Graceland Elvis the birthplace of both rock n roll music and blues music. The Mississippi River, the Fedex hub. What we're doing today is going deep inside an enormously successful real estate group there in Memphis. They provide properties to investors. This is going to get rather interesting, because there are just so many things that make them different things they do that no one else that I know of does in the industry. In fact, during our discussion, if you miss any of these differentiators, all summarize them for you at the end. Today, other companies study these people. For example, their properties are totally viewable by the public. You can easily see them physical address, proforma and everything right there on their website. It's just one of a number of things that makes you say, gosh, why don't more people do things the same way that these people do? Now? When I visited Memphis with today's guests, we looked at properties in all different construction stages.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:03:48)) - - At one, there was a giant pile of junk all over the backyard, and that is exactly according to their plan because we were touring a property mid rehab and they don't put a dumpster out on the street like everyone else does. Why is that? Because renting a dumpster is costly and it makes the neighborhood look blighted for a while. They just put all the refuse in the backyard and come by and have a junk collection day for their properties later. And then, oppositely, I also saw other beautifully finished homes where the real hardwood floors shined so much that I wondered when I could move in myself. Now, when you add a property to your real estate portfolio, you can do things like get a property inspection and check out that property today, and maybe even learn about your tenant before you buy a property. But one thing that you don't know is what kind of tenant could this property attract in five years? Well, in Memphis, as you'll see, it is a complete renter culture there. In fact, with the provider that we're about to talk with today, when I visited Memphis and this was quite a while ago, I was driving around with them and they were showing me their sample properties, and I asked them about appreciation in the areas where they buy.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:05:12)) - - I asked what about appreciation? And they began talking about rents. They thought that I meant rent appreciation. No, that's not the way that I talk. Appreciation means capital price to me. But that fact right there is just indicative of the renter culture that they have there. Let's learn more about it and take a trip to Memphis. Today. It's like the return of two longtime terrific friends. It's Terry Kerr and Liz Brody from Midsouth homebuyers in Memphis. Welcome in.   Speaker Brody** ((00:05:50)) - - Hi, Keith.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:05:51)) - - Hey, Keith. Thanks so much for having us again.   Speaker Brody** ((00:05:53)) - - Always love to be here.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:05:55)) - - Oh, yeah. Now, I've never heard sticks, bricks and mortar talk, but if they could, they would probably sound like you two. And that's because you really are the figurative voice of properties that so many of our followers, probably hundreds, now, have bought over the years. So I just think it's reassuring for us to hear your voice here on great every couple years. And, Terry, this really all began with you 22 years ago.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:06:20)) - - You found that you simply enjoyed fixing up houses. Then you found that others like your ability to renovate property for them, and then you began doing it at scale, placing tenants, starting your own warehouse, which I was inside when it was new. You brought in property management and more. And now that you lead a team that's done thousands of rehab properties and you've even added new build, we'll get to that later. You're still Memphis based. But six years ago you branched out to little Rock, Arkansas, two hours to the west. But with all that, Terry, back from the start, when you began rehabbing Memphis houses, at what point did you learn the fact that, oh, now you just happened to be from an Investor Advantage City, where you get high rents in proportion to a low purchase price? Like, when did that epiphany occur? I tell you what, I'm the luckiest guy I know.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:07:12)) - - I was born in the right city at the right time, and was able to cultivate an incredible team of pros to help me run this business.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:07:22)) - - Obviously, Liz has been here for 15 years running and gunning with me, but I would say when I realized that we were super fortunate to be in Memphis, Tennessee with all the awesomeness that it provides for cash flow, it was probably right in the middle of the credit crisis when it became real obvious that even though there was, you know, blood in the street, if you will, there was a ton of opportunity. And it came from a buddy of mine who had about ten houses that he had fixed up himself and was managing, and he started buying from us. And I asked him why, and he said, because as the leverage of time, I can buy them from you already fixed up for the same price that I will have in it, if not more, when I'm spending my own time. And that's when really and truly, the idea became crystal clear that passing bargains on to bargain hunters was where we were going to focus.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:08:20)) - - You surely found your niche, and in being from Memphis and finding that right niche and finding the right properties, most people find in that sense that buying super cheap homes looks attractive on the surface to go fix up, but it often doesn't work because you're in blighted neighborhoods.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:08:40)) - - And then in the opposite end, you don't want to go to high end because the rents really aren't that good for the higher purchase price. And both Terry and Liz, you can feel free to chime in on this, but let's talk about the formation then of your go zone versus your no go zone. So we're really talking about sweet spot discovery here.   Speaker Brody** ((00:09:01)) - - I always kind of love your origin story a little bit. As far as maybe buying a little bit too low. Right. feeling the pain. Yep. Having to protect the materials you're putting in the renovation. Overcorrecting swinging up to the pretty stuff. That kind of sounds nice at the cocktail party, but shelling out a bunch of money for very little return. It has never made sense. I have a lot that I prefer about working class renters over a class renters, if you will, for so many reasons. They stay longer. It costs money to move a class. Renters are more litigious. They're going to go be homebuyers. It's a lot.   Speaker Brody** ((00:09:36)) - - If you're paying tip top rent, you're going to call on a work order because your door handle is loose. And at the end of the day, the lower your rent is, the more people can afford your property. You want to talk about being recession proof. Being in that working class area really, really helps. So there's a lot to it.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:09:54)) - - There is. And, as of this morning, our, occupancy rate was 99.17. It'll dip down into the mid 90 eights around the holidays. Liz, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, where you want to operate in the zone where you can have the highest occupancy rate. And, although a class properties that may look nice, but folks don't stay long because they're more transient, they end up buying a home for themselves. So in the beginning, we did things the wrong way a lot. And we, you know, scraped our toes and scuffed our knees. And we're just fortunate that we were able to figure it out and then work it to scale.   Speaker Brody** ((00:10:28)) - - And another thing I think that is really neat and powerful about our roots as a company that I always love is so, so Terry, realizing that he wanted to, you know, pass on bargains to bargain hunters, he'd been buying and creating these homes. For himself. You were building your own rental property portfolio, as people do, but there was a doctor that we had sold a number of houses to, but Taylor was not managing them, and they were out at dinner and they were comparing notes, and Terry's properties were outperforming the doctors. And they were identical. They were identical rehabs, identical everything. And the difference was Terry's management doctor said, I'm not going to buy any more houses from you unless you will manage my properties too. And you'd known the day was coming. He'd been thinking about it anyway. But we had a property management company. It just managed Terry's properties and so much about how we manage properties. And that really is feeding into that 99% occupancy rate came because Terry designed his property management company as an owner.   Speaker Brody** ((00:11:30)) - - One thing we've talked on about here before is how we don't charge application fees to renters. That's because when Terry was standing in the front yard of a house that he had spent his life savings, his nights and weekends renovating, he didn't care about $50 an adult head from an application fee. He wanted to get the best human being possible in his home. And to this day, we are the only property management company I know of coast to coast. That is a no application fee at all times. Company not up charging maintenance, not charging materials. There's so much that is unique about how our property management company operates, because if Terry didn't say, I'm going to manage your properties differently than I manage my own, I just think that's a really important foundational forming sort of a factor for how we manage.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:12:17)) - - You do so many things differently there that you're really interesting to study, and your primary business is renovating homes and selling them to investors like me and our followers that want to hold them with a tenant in it for the long term production of income and leverage and all of that.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:12:35)) - - The neighborhood. It wouldn't matter to you as much, probably, if you're just doing in and out fix in flips where you don't have any future ongoing relationship with that buyer of your rehabbed property. Therefore, in that case, you would have less neighborhood concern. But now, of course, the neighborhood, it really matters to you because you are managing what you sell.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:12:58)) - - Absolutely. And that's why not only is it the neighborhood that matters in managing what we sell, but it's also why we like to buy the houses that are in the worst condition. Because the worst condition of property is when you buy it, the more things you can replace, right? And so we're proud of the fact that we're taking the ugliest house on a street that was owned by a local investor who maybe bought it 30 or 40 years ago, managed it, his or herself, retired, and is then at a point in their life where they want to sell it. Typically there's tons of deferred maintenance, and we're proud to be able to buy those houses and pay a little more than the market, because we have honed our skills at taking these houses that are in super bad shape and bringing them all the way up to the best house on the street.   Speaker Brody** ((00:13:45)) - - And Keith, you hit the nail on the head. We're not just walking away. Our acquisitions team actually passes on about 25 houses. For every one that we put an offer in. You can actually look at our inventory on our website. And so when you go to the available property section of Midsouth homebuyers, those 50 or 60 houses you're seeing, each one jumped through 50 or 60 hoops to become a Mid-South homebuyers house. One thing I always tell folks is, as you know, Keith, we have a short waitlist for our properties, but my acquisitions team is not out there thinking about me and my waitlist. It is actually a mandate from Terry that we do not pass on a property to an investor that he would not probably own in his own portfolio, and we have no one wants to manage a problem property. Nobody wants to manage a property in a neighborhood that can attract a quality renter. If you get approved with our property management company, that means you would be approved anywhere in town within the limits of your income.   Speaker Brody** ((00:14:43)) - - That's the way of stating, essentially, that our renters have choices and options about where they live. People with choices and options don't put their families in unsafe neighborhoods, let alone environmental factors. Being close to a corner store that gets too much foot traffic, highway noise, just little things like that. And we're built on repeat and referred business. And frankly, our profit margins are really slim per house. So there's just no reason to buy a house that is less than and risk a repeat buyer risk or problem, something that's harder to manage.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:15:18)) - - Yeah. So we're talking often about rehabbed single family homes here. Your price points seem to be between 95 and 160 K for that. And sometimes you have duplexes and other more expensive properties. And these are good houses in pride of ownership neighborhoods that I have been inside with each of you. So that's what we're talking about here. But you. Another differentiator. There is something that makes you guys different, and that's the fact that you do publicly put your physical addresses out there for anyone just to see easily on your website.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:15:50)) - - That's something that a lot of companies don't do. Can you tell us why that is? Why do you make this so publicly available and that few others do?   Speaker Kerr** ((00:15:59)) - - So our philosophy has just been we want to be the easy folks to work with. Whether it's our investor partners are bankers, contractors, subcontractors, internal employees, closing attorneys, whatever it is. And and so we also wanted to make it easy for folks to learn about how to shop for a turnkey seller in any market, whether it's us or anywhere in the US. And we want to make it easy for folks to go in and check out our properties, see what we have under contract to sell and use those properties, kind of as a litmus test to kind of get used to what's going to be coming down the pipe for them if they hop on the wait list. So we don't want to make our potential investor partners jump through hoops so we can grab their email address and give them the hard sell. We pride ourselves on being able to communicate what a turnkey seller can do to provide value and operate from an educational standpoint.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:16:54)) - - And and in the same vein, it's the same reason, like Liz was mentioning, that although we do all the same background checks, credit checks, employment verification, we don't charge our residents for that. And it's the same way, like when we sell houses, we do not require earnest money. So someone puts a house under contract with us, we've never required any earnest money and someone can cancel for any time for any reason. Because if life happens to someone during the contract process, we are not going to hold their feet to the fire. And one of the other little example of us really working hard to be easy to work with is property management. Most property management companies, you sign a contract and you're locked in for this period of time. If something happens to someone for some reason and they like, have to put their parents into a nursing home or their kid doesn't gets into a college, it's really expensive and they need to sell or whatever it is. Like there's no oh, you're locked into a contract.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:17:50)) - - So we're just looking to be easy to work with and operate from an educational standpoint.   Speaker Brody** ((00:17:58)) - - I don't want you to be popping champagne at the closing table. Or confetti if you don't drink. If the wind change directions for any reason, if you want to take it to Vegas, we understand one of the fun things about our business model is the house's cash flow for us as well. They really do make money and so we're able to approach it from that. And personally, as I educate folks about us, you know, Mid-South is one of the most formulaic businesses that especially in real estate, where there's such a wide variety of things that I have ever encountered, almost going back to acquisitions and how picky we are on the houses and how they have to jump through so many hoops. One thing I like to tell investors, as many people know, I buy directly from the company. I pay full price. There's no employee discount on a house. I pay 10% management until I got to a portfolio size and so on.   Speaker Brody** ((00:18:47)) - - And what I tell folks is when I get my down payment saved up, I'm ready to buy my next Mid-South house. Keith, I've found that house in 3 to 4 weeks because there's nothing to hold out for. There's nothing to wait and see. There's not that one special deal. And so going back to the houses being all on the website. So there's kind of a two pronged thing there. So our leasing team, we often take a deposit from a renter before we're even done with the rehab. Just like we get a lot of investor referrals, we get a lot of renter referrals. We are the only turnkey that I'm aware of as an example, that does all new kitchen cabinets every single time. Nothing wrong with painted cabinets. I've lived in houses with painted cabinets, but we all know kitchens and baths rent houses and they sell houses. And that's like my leasing team is showing these renters the all new tile shower surround, the all new kitchen. I am able to show investors. Since we do have we're grateful to have more investors and houses, and we do have kind of that short, maybe 90 day wait time before they can get houses.   Speaker Brody** ((00:19:50)) - - I say jump on our website, have a pretend shopping trip, pretend every one of those houses is available today and you're going to write a check today. And the 4 or 5 that you kind of start to identify as ticking your boxes if you're like in 320 Maple Street today, I am going to have 490 Maple Street for you. Same zip code, same cash flow, same price to rent relationship. And that means it makes sense for you to join our short wait list because you're going to see that same thing. And so it's very helpful. And I think most other people's approach and there's nothing wrong with this, but you're going to have our friendly competition. There might be a five year old water heater and a 20 year old roof, and this house has a new water heater, but an even older roof. And the price and the relationships are kind of all over the map. And they'll say, well, it's because of area and this and that. And again, back to me being able to pick out my Mid-South house within about three weeks of having decided I'm going to do it.   Speaker Brody** ((00:20:46)) - - And I know this isn't very scientific. I go on like trying to curb appeal within my price range, because Mid-South has hammered out every other floor and they get so interchangeable. And so the web that having all of our properties, even though they're under contract to investors at the top of the wait list available where everyone can come and see that is so helpful.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:21:06)) - - Yeah, because of course it's about making the right upgrades when it's going to be a rental property. Words like opulence and extravagance really don't make a lot of sense here. I mean, adding a wine cellar with mahogany finishes and marble floors to might boost the price. 40 K and not only would you over improve the neighborhood, but your target tenant, they might only pay $25 more per month for that. So it's about making those right upgrades like you touched on.   Speaker Brody** ((00:21:34)) - - I always say, every dollar we spend is either to defer maintenance or to attract another dollar in rent. And if it doesn't check those two boxes, it doesn't make sense. So an example would be if you were going to sell something retail to an owner occupant, maybe an eight foot wooden cedar privacy fence might make sense for a rental property over a chain link.   Speaker Brody** ((00:21:56)) - - It does not get you $1 and you're that was going to, you know, rot and so on. And so that's our approach on everything. But there is money you can spend that does attract another dollar in rent. And that's when we spend it.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:22:08)) - - Now there's something really interesting going on in you guys. Is geography both in Memphis and out in little Rock. When we talk about those physical amenities inside a property, and that is with appliances rental demand in Memphis, and little Rock is so high that tenants bring their own appliances. Tell us about that.   Speaker Brody** ((00:22:27)) - - Actually, little Rock is more like the rest of the country. It's one of the things that we I kind of use that website for. So it's one of the few differences you'll see between our houses is if you're looking at the kitchens and the Memphis houses, there's no appliances. If you're looking at the kitchens in our new construction properties, because it's at a rent point or that kicks in in our little Rock properties, you're going to see brand new black or stainless steel GE whirlpool appliances in there, but about 80% of our inventory is going to be renovated properly.   Speaker Brody** ((00:22:57)) - - In Memphis, where you will not see those appliances and is Terry knows I came to him 15 years ago from a different market and about ten years in property management, and he casually and calmly told me to remind the renters to bring their own appliances. I had come in from the leasing side and I thought, I'm working for a lunatic. I am about to get laughed off the phone. Oh my gosh, am I even? I'd been there a week. I was like, oh man, what are we doing? And literally the first Mrs. Smith, if you will, that I spoke to on the phone, I kind of softly whispered with trepidation for the backlash, don't forget to bring your appliances. And she was like, oh yeah, of course. And she actually paused and said, they're not in there, right? There's nothing in there because she owned her own appliances. Our average renter is coming to us from another single family home. One of our many rules is you have to pay rent yesterday.   Speaker Brody** ((00:23:53)) - - We want a lot of folks will take two years. Landlord history, and it's okay if you've lived with your mom for a year. There's a lot of ways that our criteria is just a little bit more stringent. Our typical renter is coming to us from another single family home. They have a lawnmower. They own their stove, they own their fridge, then they own their washer dryer. And it is just a subtle perk. You don't repair them. You don't replace them.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:14)) - - Yeah. That's interesting. I'm a geographer. I often think about and love maps. Maybe I need to do some research and make a range map of where tenants travel with appliances. Does that happen up in Missouri or out in Oklahoma? Or just where do the limits of that map and you're listening to it versus occasion? We're talking with the voices of Mid-South homebuyers Terry Kerr and Liz Brody. When we come back, I'm your host, Keith Windle. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256 injury history from beginners to veterans.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:53)) - - They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns, or better than a bank savings account, up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:26:11)) - - Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.   Speaker 6** ((00:26:23)) - - This is Rick Schrager, housing market intelligence analyst. Listen to get rich education with Keith wine old and don't quit your daydream. He.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:26:42)) - - Welcome back to get Rich. We're talking with Terry Currie and Liz Brodie of Midsouth Homebuyers based in Memphis, Tennessee, because they do so much volume and through their operational efficiencies like they've been describing, you can see why it's attractive to both tenants and investors. If a tenant can pay the same rent or 3% less rent and get a 12% better property, that's why they have such high occupancy. And although your bread and butter, sort of where you started out as doing renovated properties in Memphis, you've joined in and really help give the nation what they need. And that is new build property to help deal with the national housing shortage. So can you tell us more about what you're doing with New Build?   Speaker Kerr** ((00:27:23)) - - We heard from our investors for a long time, and we found out very quickly that residents also like the new construction director for rental and typical fashion, you know, we stuck our toe in, we made sure our foundation was built and we were ready to handle it.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:27:37)) - - And we slowly but surely started doing new construction in little Rock with just small developments, 130 unit development, another 30 unit development with lots of scattered lot. And now in Memphis we're doing the same thing. And we have got what Liz 1215 going right now. new construction going in Memphis. And we are definitely continuing with our bread and butter rehabs, but we're really happy to be able to offer new construction director rental properties that are built specifically for rental with ten year transferable slab warranties, PEX plumbing, hip roofs, the whole nine yards just to make them just darn near maintenance free on the exterior. And they are just flying off the shelf with renters and investors alike.   Speaker Brody** ((00:28:26)) - - It's been just fantastic. You can see them on our website. They have a special new construction label. And the we have a really cool IRR calculation on the website. And we have turned up the appreciation ratio for the new construction. It's the only way any house is calculated any differently than any other house. And I think there's just a really neat value to that in that when that investor is going to go sell that house for a profit in 15, 20 years, though, plenty of folks are leaving them to their kids, and this applies as well.   Speaker Brody** ((00:28:58)) - - You're selling a 15 year old house. That's kind of cool. It's just been really neat and one of the best things. Keith, I know you know, that our wait times had gotten and we are grateful because we were doing over 400 houses a year. But at one point our wait times were over a year.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:29:13)) - - We're talking about your investor.   Speaker Brody** ((00:29:14)) - - Waitlist investor wait time. Thank you. Yes, the amount of time if someone called me and wanted a house today that they would have to wait as I got houses to everyone ahead of them in line. We now have a faucet and it's the new construction faucet and we can turn it on. And that additional, I believe that we provide an extra 70 houses in the last 12 months from new construction has our wait times down to 90 days or so for a financed investor, and about 45 on a cash buyer side, 45 days. And so we're just thrilled we're able to work with folks doing 1030 ones in a way we never have before. And it's just great to be able to kind of meet some of that demand.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:29:57)) - - And you really get in there and work closely with investors that have 1031 exchange timelines to meet, and you can more easily do that now with that increased faucet flow with your new build.   Speaker Brody** ((00:30:08)) - - Absolutely, I love it. And so because for so many years, and we've always been so grateful for the demand, but I got calls. I'm selling $1 million property in California, I'm selling a $2 million property in New York. And I was so much fun to disperse with you. And while it is still just one at a time for finance buyers, so I've been doing case by case exceptions for that and for get Rich education listeners. I want to make that as just a permanent exception, that they can do two financed properties at a time. Right. And then cash folks can do three at a time. But then we are now able to have a 1031 program where if you reach out to me and we're going to discuss the date of the sale of your subject property, what your needs are. That way I can make sure my wait times that I'm quoting to other investors are accurate.   Speaker Brody** ((00:30:51)) - - We're going to make sure you're meeting your 45 day timeline. As you might know, you can do you could identify actually before the subject property is sold, which I find some people don't know, we're able to, even with all the demand for our properties, help people avoid those taxes and do the 1030 ones.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:31:09)) - - The tax deferred exchange for people with all the accumulated equity in the Covid run up. And just real quickly, of course, this is going to change if you're listening to this five years or even one year into the future. But what are the interest rates on the buy downs that you're doing on the new build properties for the investor?   Speaker Brody** ((00:31:27)) - - So that's one of the coolest things. So and I really think Fannie and Freddie that they're doing this right. As you know, Keith, and as you talk about there is a housing shortage. Nobody loves higher interest rates. But they cooled the. Market, I think, in the way that they wanted to, but they're still encouraging new construction. And so we are able to do called a forward commitment, but we pre buy down the rate for the investor.   Speaker Brody** ((00:31:51)) - - And as people deep in real estate may know, the sellers can only contribute 2% of the purchase price to a buyers closing cost. So your average buyer can only buy their rate down X amount. What we're doing is buying it down ahead of time on these new construction properties, and you still have all the range to buy it down more on top of what we've done. So that really is a big difference. And so right now on our new construction properties, folks can get as low as 5.75.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:32:19)) - - That's really attractive.   Speaker Brody** ((00:32:20)) - - Yeah, it's really great. You walk in the door at 6.3. I see folks out there running their numbers at 8%. And it's really fun to tell them, oh no, no no that past that. So yeah, it's been wonderful.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:32:32)) - - That's really some of the best news. Well, the two of you have always done things differently. You've been really fairly innovative in a number of ways, in my perspective. In fact, when I visited your office back in 2015, I still remember when you had the electronic status board of your properties up there.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:32:51)) - - This is at a time when most companies were using a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and all that. So you're always engineering in efficiencies to the things that you do in winding down here at. Tell us a little bit more, including the investor tours that you offer so often because you're so proud of what you've got there.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:33:10)) - - Liz rolls around. Any investor who wants to come visit with us once a month, we have a tour. We've got a sprinter van that we roll around. lately the sprinter van that holds 12 has not been doing it, so we've had to rent another van. But Liz tours folks around, she shows them our facility, introduces them to some of our team members, and then goes and shows them a before a during rehab and a finished rehab so they can see everything during the process and just really rolls out so folks can see a visual of exactly how we do and why we do it.   Speaker Brody** ((00:33:48)) - - Yeah, it's so much fun. So about 95% of our investors have never set foot in Memphis or Little Rock.   Speaker Brody** ((00:33:53)) - - If your goal is to do it from your living room, have no fear. We are set up for you to do everything from your living room, but it will push your confidence through the roof to come out. I can't tell you what a happy, chill vibe our office has. Terry happens to be an amazing guy to work for. We have a lot of long term employees. I've been with him 15 years. But you'll meet Nia. That's been with us for ten years. Matt, our property manager. He's been with us for 12. Nia is kind of the me on the other end of closing, even your renters actually hear a smiling voice within two rings. That's a leasing agent that's been with us for eight, nine years. You're going to get to meet those folks. You're going to get to see the warehouse. I'm no CPA, but for most people, that trip's going to be a tax write off. But we're also going to give you $500 towards your closing cost on your first house as a thank you for coming out, particularly Keith.   Speaker Brody** ((00:34:44)) - - I love it because so many of our investors are from high cost of living areas where you cannot get renovated house in a peaceful neighborhood for $150,000. And I just love, you know, the birds are chirping. There's no foot traffic. No, there's no it's just quiet because that whole neighborhood's at work and there's no trash and there's no graffiti. Not to mention letting folks bang on the cabinets and kick the the tires, so to speak. And so if people are listening to this, when our new website is up, there will be a full tour list for the rest of the year available online. If they're listening to this when it comes out, they can reach out to me for the next dates, but we'd love to sign them up.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:35:25)) - - If you'd like, you can fly in on a Thursday. The tours are Fridays and I took a look the upcoming tours on May 17th, June 28th and July 12th, but you can see how often they're doing them there. Terry. Liz. Rarely, if ever, have I heard bricks and mortar have so much personality.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:35:43)) - - Income was such a thing. It's amazing that this happened here. Tell us any last thoughts and then how our listeners can learn more about you.   Speaker Brody** ((00:35:51)) - - For last thoughts. I think what I want to tell people is that if you feel intimidated about investing, if you feel like there is jargon, if lending is confusing to you, please don't hesitate to reach out and jump on the phone with us. We have incredibly experienced investors that own hundreds of apartment buildings, but one of my favorite things is to just help a first time investor get their feet under them. I understand the nerves and the butterflies that can come with it. I know how hard people work to save up these down payments, and we are there for you for the questions, the granular questions, and it's okay if you're really new. I have helped folks in LA and New York that are renters, and this is actually their first. Purchase, because literally buying anything in their local market is 2 million bucks. And so if you have never bought a house before, please don't feel intimidated to email or to call because we've got you and you're going to plug in to man, I've been vetting the best lenders for 15 years, ID title companies, insurance, and the way that we keep our finger on the pulse of who's giving the best service, who's giving the best cost for even just the rest of the team that's going to get you closed.   Speaker Brody** ((00:37:07)) - - Is that and then for how to find us miss South homebuyers.com and I am Lisette. Lisette for anyone that wants to give us a shout that way. Quick side note there is a video on the home page of our website and that's true whether you're seeing the one that's out right now or the one we've got coming. But it is a video version of that tour. You can see our warehouse, you can see our offices. You're going to see houses in some different stages. We actually just one of our investors was like, you should put a GoPro helmet on your head for this tour. And that's about what we did. And so for those of you that may not be able to come right now, check out that video. As we mentioned, go look at the houses, go look at the kitchens. Go look at everything and let us know.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:37:50)) - - Well, this has been amazing to hear a new piece of Terri's origin story. And then I think you, the listener, can feel the passion in the willingness to help in Liz's voice.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:37:59)) - - It's exactly what she expertly does. Terri and Liz, it's so great having you back on the show.   Speaker Kerr** ((00:38:05)) - - Thanks so much, Keith.   Speaker Brody** ((00:38:06)) - - Thanks, Keith.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:38:12)) - - Yeah. Such uniqueness. Their elucidation from Terry and Liz. Now, in real estate, you hear the term buyer's market and seller's market will. Memphis is a landlord's market when it comes to tenants traveling with appliances. In talking with Liz Sommer, it's because as this vibrant tenant and renter culture has evolved, landlords really haven't had to compete with each other. That's why that is getting a little anthropogenic here, Here are some of the attributes that make Mid-South different, perhaps even unique. There's no tenant application fee, so they get a greater renter pool. They don't mark up maintenance and materials. They put addresses of their properties on their website. Like we mentioned, they don't require investor earnest money. Investors can cancel for any reason, and tenants bring their own appliances. Those are some differentiators. And there are more. I mean, the tenant has a favorite Maytag dishwasher or whirlpool refrigerator.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:39:21)) - - Well, a tenant might very well use that in more than one home during their lifetime. We didn't talk numbers much today, but again, you can see the properties on their website. You can come on in with your rate. Currently bought down to 5.75% on their new builds. And that's really kind of about what they will do for you. Now, the gray listener, it used to be that after you made it to the top of the investor wait list, you could buy one property, and then you'd have to go back on the bottom of their wait list in order to get your next one, but no longer for you, the GRE listener. You can reserve two finance properties at a time and three at a time. Cash. You can get started at Midsouth homebuyers.com. Until next week when I'll be back with episode 500. I'm your host, Keith Wines, a little bit. Don't quit your day. Drink.   Speaker 7** ((00:40:17)) - - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice.   Speaker 7** ((00:40:27)) - - Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Speaker Weinhold** ((00:40:45)) - - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

If properties are empty from population decline, they’ll lose value and rent. If this happens, then what’s the timeline? Richard Vague, the PA Governor-appointed Secretary of Banking and Securities from 2020-2023, joins us.  US and world birth rates keep declining. As population declines, per capita GDP often increases. Richard believes that inequality will widen. Most models show the US population increasing for several decades. A median model is 342M today up to 383M in 2054. Opposite of what the Fed thinks, Richard believes that lower interest rates can quell today’s persistent inflation. The US has had 9 instances of high inflation. It’s often spurred by wars, which create shortages. I tell Richard about GRE’s Inflation Triple Crown and ask his opinion. Real estate values rise as debt-to-GDP rises. I point-blank ask Richard if an economic crisis is imminent. Resources mentioned: Follow Richard Vague: Join.TychosGroup.org For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) - Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. The phenomenon of population decline is spreading throughout the world. Will that come to the US and obliterate real estate then? A bit of a debate on the affliction of inflation and what this all means to real estate today on get rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info. The modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are. At no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple. Text GRE to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Day dream letter and it wires your mind for wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:18) - Make sure you read it. Text GRE to 66866. Text GRE to 66866.   Corey Coates (00:01:30) - 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 (00:01:46) - We're going to drive from Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin to Mono Lake, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get Rich education. Real estate is obviously a strong, proven store of value. Now, what's interesting is that most economists agree that money should be three things a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Well, please don't take offense here. This can sound a little crude, but there's one thing to call those that use dollars as a store of value, and that is poor. How is a dollar a store of value when you've had 20% plus cumulative inflation over the last three years alone, the dollar is a poor store of value. We're going to get into inflation with our other esteemed guest and gubernatorial appointee today. He has some opinions on inflation, and you may very well feel that I poke him on this topic today.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:58) - I'll also get his input on our inflation Triple Crown concept, where real estate helps you win with inflation three ways at the same time. But first, he and I are going to discuss the specter of population decline. And well, it's not always a specter to people because some feel that the world is better off with fewer people, environmentalists and others. Japan's native born population is falling at a rate of almost 100 people per hour. Yeah, you heard that right. Well, is that coming to the United States and how bad would that be for real estate? Before we go on with those discussions about population decline and then inflation, here's something cool. Is your first language Spanish, or do you have any Spanish speaking family or friends? If you do, you're in luck! I'm proud to announce that our real estate Pays five ways video course is now available in Spanish and it is free. Yes, all five course videos leverage depreciation, cash flow, ROA, tax benefits and inflation profiting. All broken down by me in Spanish.   Keith Weinhold (00:04:15) - You can see those five videos. And again they're free at get rich education. Comment espanol tell to familia e amigos. That's all right there on the page at get Rich education. Com slash espanol. And hey, if you're a business owner or decision maker and would like to advertise on our platform, well, we'd like to check you out first and look at this slowly. Oftentimes I use the product or service myself. Get rich. Education is ranked in the top one half of 1% of listened to podcasts globally, per lesson notes on air every single week since 2014. Some say that we were the first show to finally, clearly explain how real estate makes ordinary people wealthy. For advertising information and inquiries, visit get Rich education.com/ad let's get rich education compered. Today it's the return of a terrific guest. This week's guest was with us last year. He's an economic futurist, keynote speaker, and popular author. He's the former secretary of banking and securities for the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Today, he runs a group that predicts financial crises called Tycho's.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:40) - That's really interesting. Joining us from Philadelphia today. Hey, it's great to welcome back Richard Vague.   Richard Vague (00:05:47) - Thank you so much for having me. It's real privilege.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:50) - Vague is spelled vague u e just like it sounds. If you're listening in the audio only. Richard also has a YouTube channel where, among other things, he discusses topics like population decline and inflation. Two things that we'll get into today. But before that, Richard, how exactly do you get tapped by the governor of Pennsylvania to have been appointed his banking secretary? Anyway? How does that really happen?   Richard Vague (00:06:16) - Well, I served under Governor Thomas Wolf, a superb governor here at Pennsylvania. We kind of were both very familiar with each other, and I had already written a number of books on banking crises, including The Next Economic Disaster and A Brief History of Doom. And he had read those, and so much to my surprise, he showed up in my office one day and asked me if I'd consider it.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:40) - Wow, that is really cool.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:42) - All right. You kind of led with your writing in your books for making that happen. Richard, here's a big question that I have for you. At 8.1 billion people today is Earth's overpopulated or underpopulated?   Richard Vague (00:06:58) - Well, there's a lot of very valid points on both sides of that. You know, there are a number of folks who decry the level of population we have because of its destructive impact on the environment. And there's a lot of folks that note that it's population growth that really has made our economic growth so vibrant. So there's a real contention on that issue. We tend not to take a position, but what we do know is as world population growth is slowing, which it clearly is, that is going to make economic growth much more challenging in a whole lot of places around the world, some of which you're actually starting to see population declines, like China.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:46) - I want to get to that slowing growth in a moment. We talk about overpopulation versus under population. Some in the overpopulation camp thinking the world has too many people they're referred to as Malthusian, was named for Thomas Malthus, who in 1798 he said the world would exceed its agricultural carrying capacity and there was going to be mass starvation.   Keith Weinhold (00:08:09) - Malthus was wrong. He didn't consider technological advancements. So I guess my point is the future can be really difficult to predict.   Richard Vague (00:08:18) - Yeah. Without question. You know, the big innovation came in the early 1900s when we figured out how to synthetically manufacture of things like fertilizer, which allowed arable land area to increase dramatically. It kind of took them out of this equation off the table.   Keith Weinhold (00:08:36) - Yes. With the mechanization of harvesting and the engineering of foods, there sure have been a lot of advancements there to help feed more people. And yeah, Richard, you talk about population decline. Of course, the world population overall is still growing, but its rate of growth is declining. So before we talk about the United States, you mentioned China. Why don't we discuss population decline more in global terms, where even nations like India are already struggling to exceed the replacement birth rate of 2.1?   Richard Vague (00:09:10) - Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomenon that, you know, we haven't faced or perhaps even thought of for a couple hundred years because population growth accelerated so dramatically with the Industrial Revolution.   Richard Vague (00:09:22) - We've really not known anything but rapid growth. And frankly, it's easier to grow businesses. And the economy is old. But now we're seeing places like China, Japan, Germany that are facing population declines in places like India, which, as you said, is comparatively a younger country. Nevertheless, facing this prospect as well, then in 1980, the average age in the US was 30. Today it's 38. In Germany I believe it's 48. So the world is getting old in a way that it had not previously in the industrial revolutionary period.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:03) - I think a lot of people are aware that many parts of Europe, Japan, South Korea are in population decline or they're set up for population decline. But yes, some of these other nations that we think of as newer nations or growing nations, including India, are not forecast to. Grow in, Richard. Are we really down? Of course. There are a number of outliers. Are we down mostly to Africa that still have the high birth rates?   Richard Vague (00:10:29) - As the world has become more urban, the need for more kids has declined.   Richard Vague (00:10:35) - It's in an urban environment, become an expense rather than a benefit. So that alone accounts for the deceleration. And then you have folks that are getting married later, having kids later, and you simply can't have as many kids when those two things are true. So it's a combination of events, and there aren't that many places left that have higher birth rates. And even in Africa it's declining or decelerating. So the world's just moving in that direction.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:06) - Yeah. It's really once we see the urbanization trend in a nation, what lags behind that are slowing birth rates, oftentimes birth rates that don't even meet death rates in some places. It kind of goes back to the Thomas Malthus thing again, if you will. When you don't have a family farm, you don't need nine kids to milk the cows and shuck the corn and everything else like that. You might live in a smaller urban apartment.   Richard Vague (00:11:33) - But we're all just has it been thinking about this issue? And it's upon us now, and it's going to change everything from governments to handling debts to infrastructure to growth itself.   Richard Vague (00:11:48) - So we need to start thinking about this issue much more deeply than we have.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:54) - Is there any way that an economy can grow with a declining population, and how bad will it get?   Richard Vague (00:12:02) - An economy will obviously struggle to grow if the population is declining, but the per capita GDP and increase as population declines. And in fact, we might see that early on in a population decline situation. I think that's actually been true in Japan over the last few years. The population is down, but GDP per capita is actually increasing slightly. So I think it's longer term. When you talk about trying to service the debt that we have amassed with the smaller population, that we're really going to have issues.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:41) - Talk to us more about that. The servicing the debt part of a declining population.   Richard Vague (00:12:48) - The debt doesn't shrink on its own, you know, so it tends to grow because, you know, it's accruing interest.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:54) - It always seems to go one direction.   Richard Vague (00:12:56) - It always pretty much only goes in one direction. So it's pretty simple.   Richard Vague (00:13:00) - If you have growing debt and I'm talking about public debt and private debt, and you have a declining base to service that, you have more people in retirement who are not paying as much in the way of taxes. It's going to increase the challenge, and it may in fact, increase it considerably. As we look at a few decades.   Keith Weinhold (00:13:21) - We need productivity to pay down debt that's more difficult to do in the declining population. We talk about technological advancements, some things that we cannot foresee. Did you sort of lead on to the fact that some of this might help us be more productive, even in a declining population, whether that's machine learning or robotics or AI? What are your thoughts there?   Richard Vague (00:13:45) - That's something that's been predicted for quite some time. You know, if we look back not too far ago, economists were wondering what we were going to do with all of our free time, right? Because, you know, automate. And this goes back to the 20s and 30s and 40s what we do with all our free time.   Richard Vague (00:14:01) - So we again have conversations along those lines. You know, it's not inconceivable that we could all be sitting there, you know, sipping our Mai tais, and the machines could be doing all the work for us. And servicing debt might be easy in that scenario, I doubt it. I don't think that's what's going to happen.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:19) - The more technology advances, the more complex society gets. That continues to create jobs in places where we cannot see them. I mean, case in point here, in the year 2024, we're more technologically advanced than we've ever been in human history, obviously. Yet here in the United States, we have more open jobs than we even do people to fill them.   Richard Vague (00:14:39) - Yeah. And I think one of the things that all of this does is increase the march of inequality. You have folks that master the technology become engineers, software engineers and the like that are going to be the huge beneficiaries of these trends. But folks that don't have the skill sets aren't going to benefit from these trends.   Richard Vague (00:15:01) - And even though in aggregate, we may continue to see per capita GDP increase, our track record over the last few decades would suggest that inequality will increase just as markedly as it has in the past, so we'll have some societal issues to face.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:19) - That's concerning as inflation. Continues to exacerbate inequality simultaneously, which we'll talk about later. But population decline is of concern to us as real estate investors because of course, we need rent paying tenants. So this could be pretty concerning to some. You've probably seen a lot of the same models that I have, Richard, let me know. In the United States, population is projected to increase for several decades by every single model that I've seen, maybe even until or after the year 2100.   Richard Vague (00:15:53) - The projection is by 2050, we'll have about 380 something million people, and today we're at 330 million people. So clearly the population is going to continue. It's just kind of the relative portion of those populations. And what I think we're seeing, and you as real estate investors would know this better than I, is a shift towards the type of real estate out there.   Richard Vague (00:16:19) - Right? So instead of new homeowner development, it's retirement development that I think is going to be the higher growth sector with the real estate industry.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:31) - And we're surely going to see fewer offices be built, something that may never come back. And then when we talk about things like birth rates and population growth rates here in the real estate world, I sort of think of there as being a lag effect. It's really not so much about today's births in the United States, because people often rent their first place in their 20s, and then the average age of a first time homebuyer is an all time record high 36. And all those people are going to need housing into old age as well. So to me, it's sort of about, oh, well, how many people were born from the 1940s to the 1990s?   Richard Vague (00:17:10) - Well, there's a very useful tool that's pretty easily available called the Population Pyramid. You can find that on the CIA World Factbook site for every country and including the United States. And it shows exactly what you're talking about, which is the number of folks, you know, between 0 and 10 years old and into 20 years old and so forth.   Richard Vague (00:17:32) - So you can kind of make reasonable projections about the near term based on the data that the CIA World Factbook is kind enough for by I believe the UN has this data as well, so you can make informed judgments about the very thing you're talking about here, which is how many folks are in their 20s to over the next ten years versus the last ten years.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:54) - Yeah, that's reassuring to real estate investors to know that we expect several decades of population growth in the United States. However, it may be slowing growth. So we talked about births, I mentioned deaths. Well, you tell us a bit more about immigration, something else that can be very difficult to project here in the real estate world that we have a popular analyst called John Byrne's research and Consulting. Their data shows that we had 3.8 million Americans added to our population last year, much of it through immigration. That's a jump of more than 1%, an all time record in our 248 year history in one year alone. So can you tell us, at least in the United States, a bit more about immigration in the calculus for population projections? Richard.   Richard Vague (00:18:42) - Immigration is a huge factor in the demographics of every country in the US, from a pure population growth standpoint as benefited by in-migration, including illegal and migration. That is a positive comparison versus a lot of countries that are either more restrictive art is desirable destinations for immigration and the life. So it has benefited us from a pure population standpoint. But what we clearly see is there are cultural ramifications that are difficult for us to deal with. We have the percent of folks that are in the United States that were born in another country. It's the highest it's been, I think, at least in a century or more and perhaps ever, that is really difficult for the general population to absorb. We see this in the headlines every day. We see it the concern, we see it in the political rhetoric. It's a real issue. So you have a very real conflict between the economic benefits of immigration versus the cultural divisions that that immigration creates. And that's not going to be easy to digest or to resolve. I think we probably end up continuing to compromise, but it continues to be a political lightning rod right into the foreseeable future.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:14) - And there are so many factors here. Where's our future immigrant diaspora? Is it in places in Latin America like Guatemala? In Honduras, in Colombia. And are those people going to come from there? So there are a lot of factors, many of which aren't very predictable, to take a look at our future population growth rate in the United States. We're talking with economic futurist, author and Pennsylvania's former secretary of banking and Securities, Richard Moore, and we come back on the affliction of inflation. This is general education. I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Role under this specific expert with income property, you need Ridge lending Group and MLS 42056 in grey history, from beginners to veterans. They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns, or better than a bank savings account, up to 12%.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:44) - Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.   Speaker 4 (00:22:33) - This is author Jim Rickards. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:49) - Welcome back to get Rich. So we're talking with economic futurist, author and Pennsylvania's former secretary of banking and securities. His name is Richard Vague. And Richard, before the break we talked about how many more people are there going to be on this earth.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:03) - We know for sure that there's also the growth of the number of dollars in this nation. So we're talking about inflation here. You talk an awful lot about the affliction of inflation and the history of inflation. And I think a lot of people when we talk about the history of inflation, maybe we should begin chronologically. They don't realize that inflation wasn't always with us. Since the birth of this nation.   Richard Vague (00:23:30) - We haven't had that many episodes of inflation. We look at it pretty hard. We see nine what we would consider nine instances of high inflation. Most of those have come with war. So we certainly had that. The Revolutionary War right of 1812 and the Civil War and World War one and World War two. But inflation has been brief, contained and rare in the history of Western developed nations. We had our bout in the 1970s that related to OPEC and the constraint of the oil supply. It normally relates to the decimation or constraint of the supplies and the supply chain. We saw it again with Covid.   Richard Vague (00:24:17) - A lot of folks consider it to be a monetary phenomenon. We just don't see that in the data.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:24) - So we talk about what causes these bouts of inflation. You talked about nine of them. Well, he talked to us more about why wars often create inflation. Of course we're trying to create a lot of supplies during wars, but they tend to be only certain types of supplies.   Richard Vague (00:24:40) - World War One is a great example. Probably, you know, two thirds of the farms in Europe were decimated. So for a couple of years, there simply weren't the kind of crops that are needed for nutrition being grown in Europe, we Corps and the like. So the US had to, frankly, export something on the order of 20% of its crops to Europe to prevent starvation. Well, it's pretty easy to see that if the US if the supply has been decimated in Europe, we're having to ship, you know, a huge chunk of our crops to Europe, that the price of wheat and corn would go up.   Richard Vague (00:25:21) - And that's exactly what happened. It's also pretty easy to see that as those farms came back on stream and began growing crops, that the price of wheat and corn would drop. And that's exactly what happened. So you have this relatively short lived period of 2 or 3 years where the decimation of supplies caused inflation, and that's fairly typical.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:45) - Supply falls, demand exceeds supply and prices rise much like what happened with those Covid shortages, as you mentioned, what are the other major causes of inflation other than supply shortages that have caused these nine bouts of inflation?   Richard Vague (00:26:03) - Well, let's talk about major developed countries, which I would include Western Europe, the United States predominantly. That's pretty much the only thing that has brought sustained high inflation is supply constraint. We don't see instances of high government debt growth or money supply growth ever causing inflation. Now when you get to smaller countries where they are borrowing in a foreign currency, where they have a trade deficit and where they yield to the temptation of printing too much money, and I don't mean by printing, we use that term in the United States, and it's absolutely a fictitious term.   Richard Vague (00:26:50) - We don't print money in the United States. We have it printed money since the Civil War. So in a third world country, they can actually go to a printing press and start paying with cash for government supply needs. And you can see it very clearly when it happens and it very quickly leads to high inflation. You know, this is in places like Argentina and the like. So that would be the big issue in these countries. It's they borrow at a foreign currency. They have a trade deficit. They yield to the temptation of actually printing currency. It can get out of control pretty fast.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:26) - It feels immoral. As soon as more currency is printed, it dilutes the purchasing power surreptitiously of all those people that are holding that currency. What about Richard? The government printing. And we can put printing in quote marks, say, $1 trillion to fund a new infrastructure program. A technically that is inflation if we. Go back to the root definition of inflation, inflation being an expansion of the money supply.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:54) - But talk to us about how something like that does or does not dilute the purchasing power to fund, for example, a big infrastructure program.   Richard Vague (00:28:03) - Well, it just never happens in Western developed economies. And one of the reasons it doesn't happen is the government issuance of debt does not increase the money supply by a nickel. If the government issues debt, it actually withdraws or shrinks the money supply because folks like you and me would buy the government security that reduces the number of deposits in the system. The government immediately turns around and spends exactly that amount. So the size of the money supply from government debt projects remains exactly the same. It doesn't increase.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:42) - Does that act, however, increase our total absolute amount of national debt, which is currently $35 trillion?   Richard Vague (00:28:51) - Of course it does. Absolutely. But the increase in our debt is money largely played to the households. So what normally happens is when the government's dead increases, household wealth increases by that amount or a greater amount. So take the pandemic. In a three year period, government debt increased by $8 trillion, which means its net worth declined by $1 trillion.   Richard Vague (00:29:18) - Well, households were the beneficiaries of that household net worth in that three year period increased by $30 trillion. So, you know, net net, of course it increases their debt, but it dollar for dollar typically increases household wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:29:33) - That wealth effect can feel great for consumers and families in the short term. But doesn't increasing their income substantially in a short period of time drive up prices and create this debase purchasing power of the dollar?   Richard Vague (00:29:46) - If we got our little green eyed shades out and went to try to find examples of that, we got a database of 49 countries that constituted 91% of the world's GDP. We just wouldn't find examples of that. And in the US, it's very easy to measure that. The number you're looking for is GDP. And we don't really see big cuts in GDP. You know, a wild swing in GDP would be 3.5% versus 2.5%. That's not a factor in any observable way. And what happens in inflation.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:19) - Richard, the term that I think about with what's happened the past few years in this Covid wave of inflation is the word noticeable.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:27) - People don't really talk about it. Consumers, families, they don't talk about inflation much when it's near its fed 2% target until it becomes noticeable. And now it's so obvious with what you see at the grocery store. So it's really infiltrated the American psyche in a way that it didn't five years ago.   Richard Vague (00:30:45) - Inflation, even moderate inflation, is a highly consequential thing to the average American consumer. And two things happened to increase our inflation. Covid supply chains decimated supplies and kicked up prices. And then a second thing happened that was even more consequential. And that is Russia invaded Ukraine. And you had two countries that were, if you add them together among the largest providers or suppliers of oil and wheat, and almost instantly the price of oil and wheat and other goods skyrocketed. It was those two things, Covid, plus the invasion of Ukraine that drove our inflation up to 9% in June of 2022. Now, in July, it dropped to 3% and it stayed at 3% ever since. But we had already driven prices up in the prior year or two.   Richard Vague (00:31:49) - And those prices even though the increases have moderated, those prices haven't come down right.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:55) - Nor will.   Richard Vague (00:31:55) - They. Now we have, you know, the threat of war again. So, you know, the price of oil just touch $90. Again, I would argue that, you know, it's going to be hard to see inflation come down. Much for like that 3 to 4 range because of the geopolitical situation. And one other thing that I would suggest is holding up inflation. And that's the Federal Reserve's interest rate. You know, if inflation is a measure of how expensive things are, high interest rates make things more expensive, right?   Keith Weinhold (00:32:27) - It's an irony.   Richard Vague (00:32:28) - It's almost exactly the opposite of what the orthodoxy at the Federal Reserve studies or believed. For whatever reason, if you're at an in an apartment in the apartment owner has leveraged their purchase of the apartments by 50 or 70 or 90% and their interest bill goes up, guess what? They have to. Charge you higher rate. I think some meaningful component of the stubbornness of inflation relates directly to the Federal Reserve's persistent interest rates.   Richard Vague (00:33:00) - I think the best thing they could do would be to pull interest rates down 1 or 200 basis points.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:07) - Well, that's interesting because the fed funds rate is pretty close to their long term average, and we still got inflation higher than their target. So tell us more about what you think is the best way out of this somewhat higher inflationary environment that we're still in Richard.   Richard Vague (00:33:22) - Well two things. I think the geopolitical impact on oil prices is you. And I think the interest rate impact, particularly on real estate prices, is huge. Those are the two things holding up inflation. So if you wanted to improve inflation, you'd lower interest rates and then you'd run around the world trying to calm down these hot spots. And you'd have 2% inflation.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:47) - Coming from some people's point of view, including the Fed's. If you lower interest rates you would feel inflationary pressures. So then go ahead and debunk this because the conventional wisdom is when you lower interest rates. Oh well now for consumers, you don't incentivize them to save as much because they wouldn't be earning much interest.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:06) - And if rates to borrow become lower, then you're incentivizing more people to borrow and spend and run up prices in fuel the economy. So what's wrong with that model?   Richard Vague (00:34:16) - Well, there's no empirical support for it. In 1986, when inflation dropped to 2%, interest rates were in the highest interest rates had been coming down by, you know, almost a thousand basis points over the prior 3 or 4 years. Money supply growth was 9%. So the two things the fed says are most the biggest contributors to rising inflation were both amply present when inflation dropped to 2%. So I just can't find any data to support the Fed's theory. And by the way, that data is not esoteric. That data is really readily available. You and I can go look at it. It's not a complicated equation. But over the last 40 years, in what at the age I call the great debt explosion, aggregate debt and the economy in 1981 was 125% of GDP. Today it's 260% of GDP and almost that entire 40 something year span.   Richard Vague (00:35:21) - Inflation and interest rates went down. Somebody, somewhere is going to have to show me the evidence for me to believe what the fed is canonical, which is almost a sacred balloon.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:33) - Well, that's a good look at history. In fact, something I say on the show often is let's look at history. And what really happens over having a hunch on how we think that things should proceed. You mentioned some inflation figures there. Why don't we wrap up inflation? Richard was talking about today's inflation measures. We've got the producer price index, the PPI, the widely cited CPI, which I recognize what you were stating earlier. And then of course there's the Fed's preferred measure, the core PCE, the core personal consumption expenditures. Richard, it's also funny to me when any measure is called core, it's core when they remove the food and energy inputs because those things are said to be too volatile. And of course, not only is food and energy essential, but what's more core than that? So perhaps the core rate should be called the peripheral rate.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:22) - But in any case, do you have any comments on the measures of inflation that are used today?   Richard Vague (00:36:28) - It's like you say, it's everything you just mentioned and more, because they're not just core inflation. There's something called super core, which I think is probably even more peripheral. Right. And I like your terminology better than the Fed's, but there's a lot of things to look at right now. They're all kind of coalescing around this at a low to mid 3% range. We got a new number coming out. It'll probably, you know here in the next few days. And it'll probably be a little bit higher than the last number, but we're talking about the difference to a 3.3% and 3.5%. And to me there's no difference between those two numbers. We were at 9%, as we just said, in June of 2022. And we're at a moderate level of inflation now after having suffered a rise in prices. It's not going to disappear. It's not fun, it's not comfortable, but it's moderate rabble.   Richard Vague (00:37:22) - It's not a big drought.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:24) - What's the right level of inflation in your opinion?   Richard Vague (00:37:28) - Okay. Anything fundamentally wrong with the the 2% number that the fed saw I think, you know, at 3 to 4% were probably on the high end of, of what might be considered acceptable. But again, it's not the fact that it's 3% that's the problem. It's the fact that it was 6 to 9% for a couple of years. Yeah, that's the problem. It'll get take a while for everything to adjust to that. In the meantime, you know, with all bets are all that you know, there's if these wars get further out of control and we see 90, $200 oil prices again, we're only about we're 50% more efficient users of oil today than were were in the 1970s. We're still a little bit over dependent.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:11) - Here at gray. I espouse how in everyday investor they can do more than merely hedge themselves against inflation, much like a homeowner with no mortgage would merely hedge themselves. But you can actually profit from inflation with a term that I've trademarked as the Inflation Triple Crown.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:27) - I'd like to know what you think about it. The inflation Triple Crown means that you win with inflation three ways at the same time, and all that you need to do in order to make that happen is get a fixed rate mortgage on an income property. The asset price increase is the inflation hedge. The debt debasement on your mortgage loan, that's an inflation profiting center. Is inflation debases that down while the tenant makes the payment. And then thirdly, now rents might only track inflation, but your cash flow is actually a profit center over time too because it outpaces inflation. Since as the investor your biggest monthly expense that principal and interest stays fixed and inflation cannot touch that. That's the inflation triple Crown. It's available to almost anyone. You don't need any degree, your certification or real estate license. What are your thoughts on that? Profiting from inflation the way we do here I think you're absolutely correct.   Richard Vague (00:39:22) - And I think you put it very, very well. And that's not just a trend at the individual property level.   Richard Vague (00:39:28) - We studied macroeconomics and we look at aggregate real estate values. And frankly, real estate values rise as debt to GDP rises. The more money there is, the more my dollars are chasing real estate and the higher real estate prices will go. So it's absolutely been the gin to put it into numbers in 1980 household. Well, this a percent of GDP was about 350%. Today it's almost 600% most household wealth that in the form of just two things real estate and stocks in somewhat equal measure, that's 80 or 90% of also. Well, so if you wanted to make money over the last 40 years and presumably over the next 40 real estate, one of the two places you could go.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:24) - Well, Richard, as we wind down here, you run a group that predicts financial crises. So I'd be remiss to let you go without asking you about it. We've had a prolonged inverted yield curve, and that's been a terrific track record as a recession predictor. Is a financial crisis imminent? Tell us your thoughts.   Richard Vague (00:40:41) - No, it's not. The predictor of financial crises is a rapid rise in private sector debt in ratio to GDP. We saw it skyrocket in the mid 2000 and we got a crisis in zero eight. We saw it skyrocket in the 1980s and we got the crisis in 87. We saw it skyrocket in Japan in the late 1980s. And you got the crisis of the 90s. We saw it skyrocketed in the 1920s and we got the Great Depression. That is the predictor. You know, we've studied that across major economies over 200 years. There really are exceptions to that as it relates to financial crises. Our numbers right now on the private debt side have been very flat, and they've really been very flat since 2008. They actually got a little bit better in that period, and they've been very flat over the last few years. We're not looking at a financial crisis in the United States. Other parts can't say that China is looking at a they're well into a massive real estate crisis there. We see companies there crumbling, declaring bankruptcy.   Richard Vague (00:41:53) - That's because they've had runaway private sector debt in China for the last ten years. And there's a few other countries that are facing that as well.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:02) - A lot of Chinese overbuilding there during that run up to, well, if you, the follower, are into using history over hunches to help you predict the future, Richard Baig really is a terrific resource for that, as you can tell. So, Richard, why don't you let our audience know how they can follow you and learn more?   Richard Vague (00:42:22) - You're so kind to say those words. We hope we provide something of value. You can get our weekly video if you go to join Dot Tycho's group.org and Tycho's is spelled E, ICOs, ICOs group. Or we send out a weekly five minute video because if you're like me, you have a short attention span and brevity is the soul of wit. I also have a book that came out recently called The Paradox of Debt. Yeah. Which, you know, covers a lot of the themes we've talked about here. You know, it'd be an honor to have anyone to pick up either.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:58) - Well, Richard, it's been a terrific discussion on both population decline and inflation. It's been great having you back on the show.   Richard Vague (00:43:05) - You have a great show. It's a privilege to be part of it. Thank you very much.   Keith Weinhold (00:43:15) - Yeah, big thanks to Richard Vague. Today he hits things from a different angle. With population decline perhaps not taking place in the US until the year 2100. Of course, we need to add years to that. Real estate investors might not have falling population growth in that crucial household formation demographic age. Then until the year 2125, well, that would be 100 more years of growth from this point. And yeah, I pushed him on our inflation chart somewhat. Richard isn't the first person, though I have heard others maintain that lower interest rates also lower inflation, where most tend to believe that the opposite is true, including the fed. In any case, wars drive inflation because they create supply shortages. That was true over 100 years ago when World War one and today with Russia, Ukraine.   Keith Weinhold (00:44:17) - I mean, is there any one factor that drives price increases more than supply shortages? The short supply of real estate itself is what keeps driving prices. And Richard asks us to look where some don't. That is that real estate values rise as debt to GDP rises. In his opinion, there is no financial crisis imminent. We need to see a rapid rise in private sector debt in proportion to GDP first. And you know what's remarkable about this economic slowdown or recession that still hasn't come, but it's been erroneously predicted by so many. It's the fact that recessions are often self-fulfilling prophecies. People have called on a recession for the last year or two. And that mere forecast alone that tends to make real estate investors think, well, then I won't buy the property because my tenant might lose their job in a recession. And businesses don't hire when everyone says a recession is coming. That's exactly how a recession becomes self-fulfilling. And despite two years of that, it still hasn't happened. That's what's remarkable. Anyone sitting on the sideline keeps losing out again.   Keith Weinhold (00:45:37) - You can follow Richard. Big Tycho's is spelled Tycho's. Follow a joint Tycho's group.org. Richard and I talked some more outside of our interview here, and he had a lot of compliments about the show. In fact, more compliments than any guest has given in a while. He had not heard of our show before last year. I'm in Philadelphia somewhat regularly and I might hit him up the next time I'm there. We'll get lunch or something. Check out Gray in Spanish at Get Rich education comma. Espanyol. Thank you for tuning in today where our episode was Bigger Picture education. Next week's show will be substantially more hands on real estate. I'm Keith Wayne a little bit. Don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 5 (00:46:24) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold (00:46:52) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

No one gets wealthy from a high salary. Wealth is acquired by owning things. But how can you own MANY things without much money? I discuss it. Learn how to use major banks (Chase, Wells Fargo) to fuel your wealth and retirement when you’re young.  Debt is like fire. Kids will burn down the house with fire. Adults will use fire (debt) to produce prudent leverage and outsized returns.  High salaries don’t create wealth due to: lost time, no leverage, few tax benefits, and entrapment due to sunk education costs. I sat down with a conventional financial advisor. Things got interesting.  Learn why Western US homes cost more than Eastern US homes. This fact confounds most real estate pros. I break down 8 reasons. Resources mentioned:  Show Page: GetRichEducation.com/497 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript: Welcome to GRE! I’m your host, Keith Weinhold. Don’t make this giant wealth mistake - understand why a high salary does NOT create wealth. Learn what does instead.  See how to get deep pocketed-banks like Chase & Wells Fargo build wealth for YOU.  I recently sat down with a traditional financial advisor - this got interesting. Then, why do WESTERN US homes cost more than EASTERN us homes? All today, on Get Rich Education.   Welcome to GRE! From Port Jervis, NJ to the Port of Bellingham, WA and across 188 nations worldwide, I’m Keith Weinhold and you’re listening to Get Rich Education. Welcome in!   When I grew up, I thought that people got wealthy from high salaries. I figured that I could get wealthy if I got a high salary too.   And then adulthood has proven to me that… they don’t.    People don’t get wealthy from high salaries. They get wealthy by OWNING THINGS.   Let’s break this down.    People DON’T get wealthy from high salaries.    In fact, have you ever seen THIS happen? I haven’t. I worked as an employee in both the public sector and the private sector, and I’ve been a longtime real estate investor and entrepreneur.    In fact, how would anyone even GET wealthy from a high salary?   If you’ve got a job… you’re trading your time for dollars and selling your time for money.    I used to do that too… and I actually think that everyone might get some perspective by having a taste of that. Most get that taste.   And say you’re even entrenched in the game of climbing the corporate ladder, to a higher and higher salary.   Well, first, in my experience, many job promotions get you perhaps 10 to 30% more in salary, but 2x to 4x the responsibility - that’s 200% to 400% more responsibility.     Even if there’s an edge case here, in your situation, in climbing the corporate ladder - where does that even get you in the end?   Look at your supervisor and their lifestyle. Is that what you want to be?   Look up higher at your supervisor’s supervisor. What’s their life like? Is that the life that you REALLY want?    Is that what you aspire to be - and expend so much of your most precious resources to get THERE - time, time away from your family, energy, skill, potential. Is that really it?    The answer is right in front of you!   People don’t get wealthy from high salaries. People get wealthy from OWNING THINGS. We’ll get more on how - if you have average means - on how you can OWN MANY THINGS shortly.    But first, let me address any more hangups you might have if you still think that high salaries can create wealth.    We won’t even look at, sort of, common jobs like an IT specialist or a systems analyst or a plumber.    Let’s take an edge case - a classically, high paid profession - a doctor, a surgeon, a specialist even. Highly compensated - several hundred thousand dollars in salary each year. I know some of them.    I also know a bunch of RESIDENT doctors too and I talk with them - they’re basically, finished with their formal schooling and are doctors-in-training.    They are repaying loans deep into the six figures after undergrad pre-med and after a few more years at medical school - often it seems to be $300K to $400K in debt that they have to pay back in the case of these resident doctors.   But that’s besides the point. It’s common for these specialist physicians, once they start working, to work as a doctor for, say, 58 hours a week… or 71-and-a-half hours a week.    Now I said that high salaries don’t create wealth. How wealthy are you, if after undergrad, med school, and three years of low paid residency, you finally get out, you’re in your 30s or older, and you’re working 60+ hours a week.    60+ hours a week is not MY idea of wealth and freedom at all.    You know what else, when you’ve pursued a specialty track like that, which often comes with loads of debt, you are in so deep - you’ve invested so much time & energy & chapters of your life… and DEBT into that field you CAN’T pivot to another career, even if you wanted to.    You’re trapped. Entrapment is the very opposite of wealth and freedom.     Understand, I just went out and gave an example of perhaps the highest salary type of person that I can think of… to help prove my point. Where’s that leave you?   And you’ve probably heard… the “end game” trope… about climbing the corporate ladder by now.    Yep, you spent the best years of your life climbing the corporate ladder… only to find at the end… at the top… that the ladder was leaning up against the wrong wall the whole time.   Because high salaries don’t make people wealthy, then how do people get wealthy from OWNING THINGS?     There are two main ways:   #1 - You can launch and own a business. #2 - Real estate.   Now, launching and owning a business takes a ton of entrepreneurial ambition, risk, and you’ve got to have a novel idea - a NEW idea - that creates value for the world.   This can be a worthwhile venture… and successful entrepreneurs create value for the world with their own business. It’s terrific! It’s capitalistic! It’s turning lower use resources into higher use resources.   But unless you have your own money, you’re going to have to be scrappy and resilient for a long time. Because it’s really hard to get loans for a new business.   If you hire anyone to help you, you need to quickly produce enough income to have leftover profit - paying your overhead expenses, software subscriptions, paying your help… and having enough leftover to fuel your own lifestyle.   Household names like Apple and Facebook are one-in-a-million. You don’t have to be an Apple or Facebook. But it’s tough.    The first way is by owning a business. The second way is by owning real estate.    New businesses are unproven. Real estate is proven. Like I say, wealthy people’s money either starts out in RE or ends up in RE.   But how do you OWN much real estate? Because RE is expensive, and wealth is created by OWNING things.   With prudent loans. Because RE is proven, banks will GIVE you loans. Lots of them. Have good credit, be credit worthy.   And… being credit worthy should be an innate trait in any virtuous human being. Because it shows that you repay the debts that you owe.    I think that when it comes to debt, debt is like fire. Don’t let a little kid play with fire. They’ll burn down the house.    Leave fire to adults. They’ll use it to HEAT the house.    Leave debt to the adults. Use debt to fuel your lifestyle, fuel your ambitions, and fuel your opportunities. To the scarcity mindset of “all debt is bad”, here at GRE we say, you’re an adult. Grow up.    Learn… that debt is Leverage… and your debt isn’t paid back by you at all. Tenants and inflation both RELENTLESSLY and INCESSANTLY pay it down for you, until they pay it OFF for you… if you want.     So then, who’s really funding your wealth, enabling you to own things?    Who really funded my wealth from nothing, enabling me to own things?    Who funded my retirement? Leverage… from Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and other banks. They all give you the opportunity to let THEM fund your wealth for you.    Now, I’m going to explain a core GRE principle here. But so that this isn’t repetitive for the longtime listener, I’ll use a NEW analogy for you, here.   Look, let’s say that you’re a kid. You don’t know how to responsibly use fire or debt. In fact, you’re still just 4’ tall.    But learning about leverage is like… seeing the light.   Now, with the sunlight, a 4’ tall kid can now cast a 20’ tall shadow. You look like a giant now.   5-to-1 leverage made you, not just grow up, but grow into a giant. You suddenly wield the power of a financial giant thanks to the banks.    Because with your 20% down payment, you're only putting up one-fifth of the property price.   How then, do these big banks make you a giant?   Let’s say that’s your $40K down - on a $200K income property, when the property appreciates only 4% - like RE did last year per the NAR number - you just got a 20% return.    How? Because you got a 4% return on both your $40K down… and you got a 4% return on your $160K borrowed.    Yep, the return from that $160K of borrowed bank money didn’t go to Wells Fargo, it won’t go to Chase Bank, it won’t go to Bank of America.   It ALL goes to you - because you leveraged them. That’s how you beat the banks. That’s how you build wealth.   Two years ago, when property appreciated 10% that year, you got a 50% leveraged return.   And it gets better than that. You can make income property down payments even lower than 20%, like I did when I began.   A 4’ tall kid then, that sees the light, can cast an even taller shadow than 20 feet at 5:1 leverage. A bigger giant.     Any GRE devotee knows that leveraged appreciation is one of just 5 ways you’re paid. We’re only talking about ONE here.   Sounds amazing. Some think, “There’s gotta be a catch.” There is, but it’s manageable. Leverage amplifies losses, just like gains.   Though it doesn’t happen often, RE can go down in value.    Even in a downturn, look at what happens. Between any ten-year period, nominally, you won’t find any loss of RE value in modern history… and you must manage cash flows.   So, no. This is not a 6-month plan. It’s to build wealth durably with a reliable vehicle in more like five to ten years.    It gets better. As your equity grows, harvesting it out through a cash-out refi maintains your… magnification into a financial giant, to stick with the analogy.   And every cash-out refinance that you do… is a tax-free event. Not tax-deferred. Tax-free.   You can make tax-free cash grabs, separating it out from your properties along the way, since the IRS doesn’t classify debt windfalls as taxable income, and you have a pro PM handling all the day-to-day for you, if you prefer.   Now you really know WHY, wealth is not created from high salaries. It’s created from owning things.     And you need to be more than creditworthy. You need to be strategic in building your portfolio with the right properties in the right markets.    Set up a time with one of our GRE Investment Coaches… and they help you do exactly that for free.   Either that or you can just keep believing that high SALARIES create wealth. Ha!    Now, a few weeks ago here on the show, I told you that I’ve had a sit-down meeting coming up with a conventional financial advisor - a retirement planner type of guy.    I’ve been getting their e-mails and dismissing them, for 8 or 10 years, but I always stayed subscribed.   This is from when I used to work at a State DOT - Department of Transportation.    So I finally responded & we set up a 1-hour sit-down. We did it virtually on web conferencing.    I prepared by having some things ready for him that he asked for - like my monthly cash flow statement, net worth worksheet, and he also asked I have my Soc. Sec. statement pulled up, so I had that ready.   Now, this is not the forum for espousing GRE’s proven wealth-building formula to him. No PROS-il-uh-tie-zing. proselytizing.    And, he told me that… I’m in really good shape.   He didn’t dig in with questions on my backstory, like, how were you able to retire at such a young age… or how did you amass all this?   And yes, I could retire now. I could have a while ago. I think you know that.    He was interested in knowing what the cash flow from the rental properties was. In fact, that was his first question about them. Good first question.    Interestingly, he really wanted to know how long I have to pay on my rentals. Like, when would the 30-year mortgages be paid off?    Well, gosh, they all have 20-some years to go. Most of them are clustered around 27 years to go.    He could see that I COULD pay many of them off quickly, now, if I wanted to. But he didn’t tell me that I should. Of course, I wouldn’t want to lose the leverage.   You know the most interesting question that this conventional financial advisor asked about these properties that I have all over the place, in different states and even nations?   He asked, “Do you plan to LIVE in any of these areas?”  No, I don’t plan to live in those properties or even in those areas. I pick investor-advantaged areas for investments, and live where I want to live.   Now, he encouraged me to import my financial info into their retirement portal. When I say, they, he works for a private company that administers the DOT’s retirement plan.   You know, I had previously been reluctant to do that and share all my financials with another party.    But, I’ve got to say, I’ve reconsidered and MIGHT enter it in there. It does some pretty impressive modeling and scenarios.    For the properties, you enter the address and they use Zillow estimated values.    It looks at how the graphs change when you get to the age of where any pensions and soc sec & all that enters your life.    All-in-all, maybe you thought I’d bust this guy's chops for being scarcity-minded or not about passive cash flow. But he was pretty good. It was an hour of my time well-spent, I would even say.    And again, the reason that I was able to be positioned this way comes down to… relying on compound LEVERAGE, not compound interest - casting the shadow of a 20-foot tall giant compared to when you’re a 4-foot tall child.   BTW, I do NOT consider myself retired. I remote “asset manage” my REIs and I produce this show, produce videos for our YouTube channel, write our newsletter, and write for Forbes and more… on material that is interesting to me and helps others.   Coming up straight ahead, why do homes in Western US states cost more than homes in the East?   This fact makes zero sense to most people, because areas east of the Mississippi River are more densely populated.    In fact, nearly 2/3rds live on just over 1/3rd of the land, suggesting the East should clearly be pricier.    Then how could it be opposite? It might seem weird. That’s coming up shortly.   You’re listening to Get Rich Education podcast Episode 497. That means we’re just three weeks away from a special, milestone, Episode 500.   I’ll tell ya. I sure know how to put the performance pressure on myself, don’t I? Ha!    Something here that we don’t often talk about or offer the opportunity for…   … if you’re a business owner or decision maker and would like to advertise on our platform, well, we’d like to check you out first.    Often, I use the product or service myself first.     Get Rich Education is ranked in the Top one-half of 1% of listened-to podcasts globally, per Listen Notes.    On air EVERY single week since 2014, some say that we were the first show to finally CLEARLY explain how RE makes ordinary people wealthy.    For advertising information and inquiries, visit, GetRichEducation.com/Ad. That’s GetRichEducation.com/A-D   More next. I’m KW. You’re listening to Get Rich Education.    A little tribute and melodic swan song to Russell Gray there.   Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I’m your host, KW.    Before returning to real estate, let’s do a quick first quarter asset class review.   It’s coming a little later than usual here. But it’s good to see what the rest of the world is doing.    Almost everywhere you look, asset prices are up, up, up.   In real estate, as housing intelligence analyst Rick Sharga & I discussed in detail here in each of the last two weeks, prices & sales volume are both up.   The S&P had its best start to a year since 2019, up 11%   The yield on the 10-yr T-note was up 26 basis points. Remember that mortgage rates move closely along with that.    Gold was up 8% to an ATH over $2,200. And gold even touched $2,300 here in Q2.   In the first quarter, oil was up 15% to $83.   Bitcoin was up 68% to $70K   And the biggest beneficiary of AI hype, Nvidia was up 88% in just the first quarter.   And this is even wilder - a little wild card for you here - for the first time ever, cocoa prices briefly surpassed $10,000 per metric ton, making the confectionary commodity more valuable than copper.   That’s what’s goin’ in the TOTAL investment world.   Why do homes out West cost more than homes in Eastern states?   This fact makes zero sense to most people, because the East is more densely populated.    According to the US Census Bureau, 64.4% of Americans live east of the Mississippi River. That’s on land that's barely more than one-third of the US - because the Mississippi doesn’t run right down the center, it’s a little to the east of center in the contiguous states.   So this means that nearly 2/3rds of people live on just over 1/3rd of the land, suggesting the East has GOT be pricier.    Well, it’s strange to many that it is, in fact, just the opposite. The West is pricier.   Now that pandemic migration and RE prices have settled, we’ve taken a fresh look at prices and this trend - which is curious to many - continues.   Let me demystify it for you.    And you saw a beautiful, colorful map that brilliantly demonstrates this. I sent it to you a few weeks ago if you’re a DQYD Letter subscriber.    Now, there are some notable exceptions to "the West is pricier", like New England and south Florida. Housing is expensive in densely populated northeastern cities.   New Mexico is an outlier as a cheap western state.   No, the West is not pricier because The Kardashians' lavish $200M total portfolio of California real estate skews the entire nation.   Here's my more, I suppose, scholarly breakdown.    Yes, one of my degrees was in Geography before I became a real estate investor.   The first reason is - NEW: The west has more new-build homes.   Higher costs of land and labor, then, had to be priced in. Eastern homes are older because it's closer to Europe's (die-A-spruh) diaspora, where the US' early immigration was heaviest.   Then there’s the factor of - the FEDS: No, not Jerome Powell’s Fed.    It’s that over 90% of federal land is located out West. No building is typically allowed here, and that makes developable land more scarce.   This helps explain why when you see huge swaths of undeveloped land when you fly over the West and think there’s boundless room for growth and sprawl, often times, there… is… not.   3-D: Maps are 2-D. The world is 3-D. Western housing is expensive because you have scenarios like port cities surrounded by mountains and high desert.    So developable land is more scarce than it seems, making demand exceed supply in more places out West than what one might think.    San Fran is confined by the bay and hills. Seattle is confined to an isthmus. Salt Lake City is next to the Wasatch Range. Alaska looks enormous, but nearly half it’s state’s population lives in the biggest city of Anchorage, which is sandwiched between water, mountains, and that aforementioned federal land.   The fourth reason, is CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'. Despite recent domestic OUT migration and The Kardashians aside, California REALLY DOES help tilt the balance.    People are attracted to SoCal's Mediterranean climate such that nearly 1-in-8 Americans are still coolin' in Cali, with a median home price of $737,700. That climate desirability drives up prices.   Much of CA also has… these layers - just myriad - codes and limits and regulations like, for example, solar panels on new construction that can add $25K to a home's cost alone.   The next reason western homes cost more than Eastern home is, what I’ll call…   DOWN BY THE RIVER:    [Play insert]   Ha! Famous classic comedy sketch there, with the late Chris Farley.    The East has the Great Lakes and more rivers.    It costs 1/12th as much to transport goods and housing materials over water than land.    That is a fact that has been stated on this show previously. It was first brought up a few years ago when we had geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan here to discuss the “geography of real estate” with me.    A river city like Memphis is a GIGANTIC transportation hub, for example. This keeps down the costs for all kinds of consumer goods and building materials, making for a lower cost of living and, in turn, property prices.    QUAKIN': There's more seismicity out West. It costs more to BUILD to those construction standards.    For example, CA and WA are 20%+ more expensive to build than many Southeastern states. There are more fires in the Western US, tornadoes in the middle, and hurricanes in the East.   JOBS: It takes more high-paying jobs to attract new residents and get them to uproot and move to the faster-growing West. Higher incomes buy pricier homes.    The East has tons of jobs going for it too. In fact, the northeast might be the world’s most productive region - NYC, Boston, Philly, DC.    But out in Appalachia and elsewhere, there are some waning business sectors like various heavy industries and coal. But most of the ones that were going to move out, already HAVE moved out, decades go. Much of that downdrain is overwith.   The last reason is…   I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW: The West has mountain and desert VIEWS. These can be seen from farther away than Eastern… forest and flatter areas and piedmont landscapes. The East has a lot of lake and river view properties though… and…    There they are—8 reasons why Western homes cost more than Eastern homes.   Now you know why West Virginia has million dollar homes so big that you can get lost indoors.    And in coastal Cali, it seems like a million bucks gets you little more than a ramshackled pool house.   Of course, at times, I've had to make gross generalizations about such a vast nation of 340 million people and so many variables.    Otherwise, this episode could be a few hours long. As I discussed those, you sure could think to yourself at times, “I believe there’s an EXCEPTION to that criterion.”   I want to tell you why this all MATTERS TO YOU shortly.    Yes, there is some irony here though. The western US has lands that are arid, inhospitable, and what some describe as wastelands, like four deserts.   Well, the invention of the air conditioner made those places more livable.    The West also has the most beautiful national parks, and hey, some find places in the East INhospitable, like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in March.   Now, I like a change in seasons, coming from Pennsylvania like I do, but some don’t. You’ve got to serve real estate to where people want to own and rent.    Florida has not been thought of as a mosquito-infested swamp since last century. Today, it’s livable and desirable to many.    Now, there are some other factors in addition to the main 8 reasons I’ve mentioned, on why Western US homes cost more than Eastern US homes, from a slavery legacy to unionization and more. I’ve been hitting the big ones here.   Real estate has made more ordinary people wealthy than anything else.    When you're on our website, GRE Marketplace, and hover over the blue "INVEST" button, you'll notice that most long-term rental investor markets are in the East.   There's a reason.   Rents are strong relative to this LOW PURCHASE PRICE that I’ve discussed here.   And now you know more of the “whys” behind the Eastern US’ lower property prices. And maybe, today, I hope it's the BEST understanding you’ve ever had for why that’s the case.    We buy in strategically chosen GROWTH areas that tend to be more East than West.    And, that’s really part of the progression of this show. We began in 2014 with this podcast and other real estate investor education. We still lead with that.   But next, listeners wanted to know where they could FIND PROPERTIES conducive to our wealth-building strategy, and we added that at GRE Marketplace.    Yet, that still wasn’t enough because I noticed that some of you that wanted to build your wealth with real estate, needed to make it easier to have your questions answered, or find a lender, or insurer, or find just the right property in the right market that fits your goals.   So starting more than two years ago, we added Investment Coaching - it’s still free like everything else that we do here.    Our coaches are real people and real, direct, real estate investors just like you are… and just like I am. Our coaches simply have more EXPERIENCE doing it than most people do.   Because knowledge is not power, but knowledge plus action is power, I often like to leave you with something actionable… that’s really going to help you at the close of the show.    If you didn’t already know, you can find properties and a coach, at GREmarketplace.com   Until next week, I’m your host, KW. DQYD!  

Get our free real estate course and newsletter: GRE Letter Apartment construction is falling. It’s not because banks are pulling back from lending. Projects aren’t feasible for builders. Housing market intelligence analyst Rick Sharga returns to discuss the real estate market.  We discuss: real estate price movement, affordability concerns, expected mortgage rate changes, migration, price reductions, new homes vs. existing homes. Can anyone even find a new-build $225K detached SFH today? They’re nearly extinct. Homebuilders are still buying down mortgage rates for you into the 4%s and 5%s at GREmarketplace.com. America needs more SFHs, especially at the entry-level.  Apartment rents have declined a little. SFH rents are up about 3% year-over-year.  Delinquency and foreclosure activity remains low. These have a strong correlation with unemployment rates. The volume of homes sales should increase this year, but only by perhaps 10%. A recession is still quite possible later this year and expected to be mild. Every region of the nation is currently experiencing residential RE price growth.  When mortgage rates fall, more new buyers than sellers are expected, pushing up property prices. Resources mentioned: Show Page: GetRichEducation.com/496 Inquire about business with Rick: CJPatrick.com Rick Sharga on X: @ricksharga LinkedIn: Rick Sharga For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Tons of new apartments were built last year, but that's abruptly going to change going forward. You'll learn why. Then a housing market intelligence analyst and I break down what's happening in the real estate market and the future direction of rents, prices, foreclosures, interest rates, and a lot more today on get Rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info. The modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are at no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple. Text GRE to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:16) - It's called the Don't Quit Your Day Dream letter and it wires your mind for wealth. Make sure you read it. Text GRE to 66866. Text GRE 266866.   Corey Coates (00:01:34) - 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 (00:01:50) - Welcome to grow from Alexandria, Egypt, to Alexandria, Virginia, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, holding your inside get rich education. I'm grateful to have you here. A few weeks ago, I discussed all the apartment buildings that were constructed last year. One thing that you'll often hear out there today is that apartment construction is now falling because banks are pulling back on construction lending. But no, it's really not quite that simple. In fact, that's not even the top reason for construction delays now and going forward with apartments. The number one reason for the delays today is that the project is not economically feasible at this time. That's what the NMC tells us. All right. So what does that really mean? Well, it means that projects aren't penciling out.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:44) - In other words, apartment developers, they can't generate the returns that they need to justify the project to their capital partners, those that are funding the building. And this is, by the way, not about greedy developers, because contrary to some of the noise, it's the fact that developers do not self-fund their projects. They get the money from others. So yeah, it's the developer's job to convince investors and lenders to inject that capital. And that is just harder to do right now. Despite developer's best efforts and higher rates are obviously still contributing to the problem. It's not so much that the construction financing is not available, because for residential, it's often there. It's available. The thing is, is that apartment mortgage terms and rates are way less favorable than they were a couple of years ago, as we all know. So developers, I mean, they're paying a higher interest rate then. And you therefore need higher rent to cover that higher interest rate unless you can cut a lot of costs elsewhere and in apartments, you're also getting a lower loan to value ratio.   Keith Weinhold (00:03:55) - So that means developers, they therefore need to raise even more equity in order to cover that gap. And what's happened is a lot of the equity that's shifted away from brand new ground up apartment development, and instead it's gone over into chasing potential lease up distressed deals, properties that are already out there and are having some problems. So that's where the apartment money is moving right now. Not so much to new developers and builders also aren't building many apartments this year because construction costs remain a problem. Some materials got cheaper, others didn't. One bright spot is that construction labor that is getting easier to find. But yet the actual labor cost that really hasn't dropped. Property insurance is higher too, so these rising expenses, that means apartment projects are not penciling out for builders and then apartment rents. They're just not rising that much. That doesn't help. So it's hard for it to rise, since so many were built last year and the year before. They're in the apartment world. But obviously the long term demand is for just about all residential housing.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:11) - That demand. Is there loads of long term demand for apartments, condos, single family homes, co-ops, modular homes, mobile homes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplex container homes, row houses, farmhouses, penthouses, outhouses. I think you get the idea. The demand is there. Residential is the resilient spot, and it's all about where you want to get in. And speaking of homebuilders and finding a smart place to get in, it's important to share with you the good news that homebuilders are still buying down your interest. Right for you. Now the third year rate, it hit 8% last year. And Non-owner occupied property costs a little more. So it was nearly 9% on income property. It's come down off that as we know it's been around seven lately. But see here at GREwe work with builders that are still buying down your interest rate into the fives and sometimes still into the fours on new construction, single family homes, up to four plex and sometimes larger in Florida, Alabama and elsewhere. I mean, that is just the best deal going for you today to have an income producing new build property in the path of growth at 4 to 1, leverage to 5 to 1 leverage and.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:46) - Your mortgage in the fives or less, and we'll help you find the real deals within that. To connect with a great investment coach at great marketplace.com. I think you'll be glad you did. Now, today, if somehow I could use a time machine to write a letter back to my 2020 self and inform myself about what's going to happen in the housing market for the next 4 or 5 years? And I had to keep this note to myself short. I would have written that everything is going to shoot way up, rents up, prices up, interest rates up, expenses up, inflation up. Well, now that nearly all of those run ups have settled into place, we can draw a clearer picture of where we think the real estate market is going to be positioned in the future. Our guest has just freshened things up and he's got the latest in the property market all updated for us. I do two with my own research. You'll like this. It's our housing intelligence analyst guests and I. Straight ahead.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:55) - I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to get Rich education.    You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns, or better than a bank savings account, up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to 66866. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256 injury history from beginners to veterans.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:15) - They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge. Personally, they'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com.   Kristin Tate (00:09:42) - This is author Kristin Tate. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:59) - Hey what has not been a very long goodbye. Just like last week when we discussed the economy this week we have the return of the C.J. Patrick Company's Rick Sharga, an extraordinary housing intelligence analyst, as we more specifically cover the real estate market. And if you're on video, you'll have the benefit of seeing some charts as well. Rick. Welcome back. Good to be back, Keith. Long time no see. Yeah, it hasn't been so long. What are your overall thoughts with the housing market? Last week we largely talked about a resilient economy potentially with some headwinds. Yeah we did.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:32) - And I think we're one of the things we left off on was the impact that the Federal Reserve had had on the mortgage market and the housing market. We probably start there. When you look at what's gone on, and just to show you how random all of this can feel sometimes this is a snapshot of mortgage rates from March 12th. And mortgage rates were trading at about 6.92% for a 30 year fixed rate loan.   Rick Sharga (00:10:56) - The most recent number I saw was about 7.1%. And as I mentioned to you and your listeners last time, I expect until the Federal Reserve makes its first fed funds rate cut, we're going to see mortgages trade right around 7% between 6.75 and 7.25%. This has made a big difference in the market because it has limited affordability for literally millions of prospective home buyers. That's makes for a difficult situation for people looking to buy or sell homes, but it also presents millions of rental property opportunities because these people need to live somewhere and they've voted themselves off the island temporarily. They just can't afford to buy a house.   Rick Sharga (00:11:41) - And you see that in terms of the reduction in number of mortgage applications that are being made. So if the Mortgage Bankers Association tracks the number of people that apply for loans, if you went back to December when mortgage rates dipped just a little bit, we saw a run up of loan applications, and as soon as they went back up to seven, we saw that number fall off. It's a very, very rate sensitive market. We'll talk a little bit about some of the implications of that as we move ahead, Keith. But the weak affordability, the higher interest rates, the continuing high home prices led to a very, very weak year in 2023. In terms of overall home sales, we ended the year with about 3.9 million existing homes sold. That's the lowest number of homes sold in a year in a quarter century. Yeah, even lower than we saw in the Great Recession. And December was the 28th consecutive month where we sold fewer properties than we sold the year before.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:39) - So a contraction in the number of sales, although prices appreciated last year.   Rick Sharga (00:12:44) - Yeah, we'll talk about that this year. I'd been hopeful that we'd be a little bit of a better start. January and February were both up in terms of home sales on a month over month basis, but continued this trend of lower sales on a year over year basis. We're looking at 30 consecutive months where we sold fewer properties than we sold the prior year. As a result of this.   Keith Weinhold (00:13:05) - Supply crash, that really began about four years ago.   Rick Sharga (00:13:08) - It's partly supplied as partly costs, that affordability. We really can't overestimate the impact that affordability has had. But you're right in terms of inventory and in fact, a good segue, it's almost like you'd seen this before, Keith. Inventory is up significantly from last year, about 24% higher than it was a year ago, according to some data from Altos Research. But it's still only running about half of 2019 levels. So in a normal market, we would have about a six month supply of homes available for sale in our market today, we're looking at somewhere between two and a half and three months supply.   Rick Sharga (00:13:44) - That lack of supply with some pent up demand is one of the reasons we have seen prices continue to be very healthy, and we haven't seen the the price crash that all the snake oil salesmen on YouTube comments. As of mid-March, about 513,000 homes available for sale, again, about 24% higher. Than last year when the numbers were just dismal. We normally do see more inventory coming to market this time of year. We'll not get anywhere near where we were back in, you know, years like 2019, 2020. But it wouldn't be a surprise to see a little bit more inventory coming to market.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:21) - Now, Rick, for existing properties, we have the very well documented interest rate lock in effect. I think a lot of people understand that. But as far as bringing more supply onto the market, do you see anything from the builder side? You know, costs are up for builders and builders feel this lack of affordability from the buyer market as well. So therefore that motivates them to build somewhat less.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:43) - And they're also building smaller properties, some shrinkflation with new construction property to try to help out with that affordability. So what are your thoughts with builder motivations this year and next year?   Rick Sharga (00:14:54) - All that thought is we're going to get to new homes in just a couple of minutes. So keep that right forefront in mind. But let's just kind of wrap up on existing sales. I do want to point out to your listeners that the inventory growth is actually outpacing the number of new listings. So new listings are only up about 14% year over year, whereas overall inventory is up 24%. The reason for that is it's taking longer to sell homes once they get to market. So once those properties are listed, they're staying in the inventory numbers a little bit longer than they were last year or even a few months ago. So that's one of the reasons the inventory numbers look a little bit better than they did. You talked about the rate lock effect. It's still very real. About two thirds of everybody with a mortgage has a mortgage rate of 4% or less.   Rick Sharga (00:15:43) - And this is not home sellers being picky or having a psychological problem. This is math. If you sell a property today and buy a new one for exactly the same price as the one you just sold, you've now doubled your monthly mortgage payment and most people simply can't afford to do that. So the properties being listed or by by people who feel like they need to sell, there's a death in the family or a birth in the family. There's a divorce or there's a marriage. There's a job loss or job that requires a transfer, maybe some financial difficulties where the borrowers in distress so they feel like they have to sell the home, or somebody's been retired for a long time, has a lot of equity, and just says, oh the heck with it. It's time for me to downsize. But the people who would normally be making a decision that maybe I'd like to sell, maybe I'd like to look at a move up opportunity. Those people are sitting on the sidelines and rather than seeing a price crash, which is what people are breathlessly trying to sell you on YouTube, the most likely scenario, something we've seen play out in the 80s and 90s and is likely to play out again in the 2020s, which is several years of kind of lackluster sales volume and modest price growth.   Rick Sharga (00:16:54) - And it takes a few years to reset the levels so that all those people with the Sub4 mortgages gradually, slowly work their way out of inventory and are replaced by people with mortgages that are closer to today's rates. And we've seen that happen, like I said, in the 80s and 90s, and it's a very normal occurrence when you have a sudden shift in either mortgage rates or home prices, that's much more likely to happen than a 2030 40% drop in home prices to make things affordable. And I would just ask anybody who's skeptical, if somebody approached you tomorrow and you didn't have to sell, but they said, hey, sell me your house for 40% less than market value. How interested would you be in having that conversation?   Keith Weinhold (00:17:36) - Wouldn't last long.   Rick Sharga (00:17:37) - No. And then home prices are up in every region. You mentioned this, Keith. Across the country I'm sharing for people that can see it. I'm sharing data from the Fhfa, which is the entity that controls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So all of those 30 year fixed rate conventional loans and a year over year basis, we saw prices go up 6.3%.   Rick Sharga (00:17:56) - They were up in every region of the country. And that's a little different than the prior year when the Pacific region was actually down. But every region of the country is seeing price growth right now. And whichever price index you look at Case-Shiller,, Freddie Mac, the Fhfa index, National Association of Realtors, everybody showed similar numbers were every region was up. But importantly for your listeners and I emphasize this enough, local results are very different than national results. So even within markets where we're seeing prices go up, there are going to be neighborhoods where prices are going down and vice versa. So it's much more important for you to understand what's going on in your local market than to listen to a lot of these national trends. I will tell you that some of the markets that overheated during the pandemic, as people were moving out of high priced, high tax or highly congested areas, are seeing a bit of a clawback. So places like Boise, Idaho and Saint George's, Utah and Austin and Phoenix and Las Vegas, we're seeing those markets with the prices clawing back a little bit, a lot of price growth continuing the southeast.   Rick Sharga (00:19:04) - So and surprisingly now in the Midwest as well. So we are still seeing a bit of a migration from high price, high tax areas into lower priced markets. I tell folks, Keith, I have two adult kids living at home. My son's getting married in September. He's a teacher. His fiance is a lawyer, and they took me aside recently and said, hey, you follow this stuff. What states should we be looking at outside of California to move so that we can own a house?   Keith Weinhold (00:19:31) - Wow, that is really, really interesting that that would dictate their decision on where they live, if they have that much of a preference to own rather than rent. Recently, a lot of us in the industry learned that the average age of the first time homebuyer is now 36, older than ever.   Rick Sharga (00:19:48) - Yep. And these are two kids with good heads on their shoulders. They know there are benefits to homeownership, and they also know that the median price of a home sold in California last month was almost $800,000, and the First National Bank of dad ain't financing that acquisition.   Rick Sharga (00:20:02) - So I'm sure these conversations are happening in New York, in Chicago, in Miami and in San Francisco, and it's just the reality of today's marketplace. We talked about prices going up. We are seeing slightly more homes having a price reduction before they're sold. That always happens somewhere along the lines of 30 to 35% of homes listed wind up with a price reduction before they're sold. We're up to about 31% now, so we're still in the normal range, but we're a little higher than we've been in recent months.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:35) - This is interesting, a statistic we don't talk about very much, the percent of homes experiencing list price reductions.   Rick Sharga (00:20:42) - And it peaked in 2022. The highest number we've seen in quite a while was over 40%. And that was right after interest rates doubled. And so it's probably not a huge surprise. People were anticipating they were pricing based on the prior market. And I think we're seeing more rational pricing today. But again, that combination of prices just being as high as they are and interest rates being as high as they are, are creating some affordability issues.   Rick Sharga (00:21:05) - And for people that have to sell, they're taking price reductions. Now, keep in mind these price reductions are often very, very minimal. In California, for example, the average price reduction is less than a percent. So it's not a huge reduction, but it's still a reduction from what the list price was. You asked about new homes. So now I'm going to make you happy. We'll talk about new homes. New home inventory levels are increasing. We normally want to see about a six month supply of existing homes for sale. The new home inventory is usually between 7 and 8 months. And we're back to that number right now. Some of those homes available for sale are still under construction, but they are nonetheless available for sale. And we've seen that inventory improve over the last year as supply chain disruptions have minimized as builders are now more able to find laborers for construction. Those are two huge holdups they had over the last couple of years, and we've seen new home sales increase. And one of the reasons for that is they're available.   Rick Sharga (00:22:05) - So if you're a builder and you put a home in the market at the right price, you're going to sell it because there just aren't that many existing homes available for sale. And to your other point, Keith, new home prices are actually down 15% from peak. Existing home prices are up, new home prices are down. And in fact, if you look at the most recent new home pricing data put up by the Census Bureau recently, new home prices are at the lowest level since June of 2021. So they've really come down pretty significantly and are not that far away from existing home prices in many markets. So that median price of an existing home and the median price of a new home for sale are closer than they've been in years, partly because the builders are building smaller homes, partly because you're using less expensive fixtures. And the other thing that the builders have been doing, and this price is a lot of people, but it's brilliant on their part, is they're coming to closing with thousands of dollars and they're paying down mortgage rates.   Rick Sharga (00:23:01) - They're buying points and dropping the mortgage rate for their buyers. I spoke to a group in Denver recently where there was a local builder advertising mortgage rates of 4.99%. So think about that.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:13) - We have providers we work with here that are doing similar things. We're still seeing the rate buy downs happening, and that's why I've often told people, Rick, like, this is potentially a good time in the cycle when you're adding more rental property to really look at new builds or build to rent while these rate buy downs last. Now, I talked to a builder in Houston yesterday, and I learned a few interesting things. You talked about the smaller square footages. They could confirm that often times this builder offers either a bedroom or a study. You can get an extra bedroom or a study like a little office space. And more and more people are opting for the study. So they're starting to build homes more with the study in mind because more people are working from home and one less bedroom because people are having fewer children.   Rick Sharga (00:23:57) - Exactly right. It's the combination of both of those two things, either having fewer children or having them later. And many more people working from home than they were prior to the pandemic. And those studies become very, very useful., rooms to have in the house. Rick, what.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:12) - Is the lowest cost, new build, single family home that you see? I mean, is anyone even building in any parts of the nation, like a 225 K new build home? I haven't seen one.   Rick Sharga (00:24:26) - I haven't seen one. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're in a market in a state like Alabama or Mississippi and some of the more outlying areas, maybe some markets in the Midwest where home prices aren't as astronomical as they are elsewhere. But look, the builders are building judiciously. They're not overbuilding., we had a cycle in 2008 where we had a 13 month supply of homes available for sale and building Irish building. They got caught with overstock. But what they are building, they tend to build as move up homes because they're more profitable.   Rick Sharga (00:24:58) - So you're just not seeing an awful lot of entry level homes being built. And the hope is that as they build that first move up level home, some of the people with entry level homes will opt to sell and bring some of that inventory back to market. We are seeing more construction. We are seeing building permits,, going up on a year over year basis., most recent numbers are around 1.5 million permits. So the builders are bullish on the future. And housing starts were up in both January and February. Most importantly they're up most strongly in single family owner occupied homes. We're seeing housing starts to decline dramatically in terms of multifamily starts, right. But that's because there's about a million new apartment units coming online between last year and this year. And we don't need a whole lot more apartments., we need,, more single family homes. So if your listeners are seeing headlines talking about housing starts being lower, it's really because we're seeing fewer multifamily starts.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:54) - Last year was a big year for multifamily construction.   Rick Sharga (00:25:57) - All time high in terms of multifamily units under construction. And a lot of those are still coming to market this year. There are going to be some markets that are actually still oversupplied. So again, you have to be paying very close attention. When we talk a little bit about the rental market in the apartment category, we have seen apartment rents decline year over year in pretty much all categories. Whether you're looking at studio apartments, one bedroom apartments, two better apartments on a year over year basis, rents are actually in negative territory, according to Realtor.com and according to some data I've recently seen from RealPage. If you're looking at the actual price of rent and I know that's a little different than percentage increases or decreases, you're still seeing that rents about it's below peak. It's about 1.6% below the peak we hit in 2022,, when vacancy rates were just about nothing. But we are still below peak, and the median rent is ranging,, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,700 a year for apartments, single family homes, which I suspect more of your listeners are actually,, renting out than apartments.   Rick Sharga (00:27:03) - Yes. Are doing better. We're seeing year over year rents continue to grow. They're growing modestly. They have not gone into negative territory, and they haven't,, during this boom and bust cycle that we've seen in the housing market. And if you're looking at,, price gains, according to some recent data from CoreLogic, if you're at the higher end of the single family rental market, prices are up about 3% year over year. At the low end, they're up about 2.9%. So very little difference depending on your price tier and also very little difference depending on whether you're looking at an attached single family residence or,, detached family single family residence. All those are up right around 3% year over year. And that's a good sign. Again, you're dealing with a as your your listeners know, you're dealing with a slightly different tenant in a single family home than you are in a, an apartment. And a lot of these people who would have been buyers or opting to rent stands to reason that,, they'd rather rent a house, particularly if it's in a good school district or in a good neighborhood than an apartment, because they have needs.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:06) - Rents are extremely stable historically. They just sort of plod up slowly. What happened about two years ago, three years ago, with that 15% plus rent increase, that's an aberration.   Rick Sharga (00:28:19) - Yeah, that's a good point, Keith. If we're looking at 3% rental growth year over year right now in the single family rental market that tracks with historic normals, usually you're somewhere between 1 and 5% a year. So threes, you know, smack dab in the middle of all that. And the growth rates also vary wildly by markets., just kind of give you a range if you're looking at a single family rental property in Honolulu, in the city, year over year, you're up about 6%. If you're looking at a unit in Miami, Florida, you're down about 2.5%.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:50) - So rental growth rates.   Rick Sharga (00:28:52) - Rental growth rates. So really just depends on where you are. That's pretty much your range from a couple points down to I think Honolulu actually had the largest,, increase in the CoreLogic study. A lot of your listeners are probably interested in buying foreclosure properties.   Rick Sharga (00:29:07) - We're not seeing a lot of foreclosure activity. Still, we are starting to see a little weakness in consumers. When we met last week, we talked a little bit about the strength of consumer spending, but we also talked about increasing amounts of spending on credit cards. And we're seeing consumer delinquency rates increase in pretty much every aspect of consumer lending, whether it's a loan, whether it's a credit card debt, whether it's an auto loan, whether it's a home equity line of credit, whether it's a mortgage, a mortgage, delinquencies are up a little bit. The only category we're not seeing an increase in delinquencies right now is student loans. And my theory on that is that people have only recently had to start making payments again on student loans, and we don't have any data to show that they're going delinquent yet. But the delinquency numbers we need to take with a grain of salt, because many of them are most of them are early stage delinquency. So somebody missed a payment, but then they catch up before they get 60 or 90 days delinquent.   Rick Sharga (00:30:02) - But we are seeing trends that suggest more delinquencies. And if you have more delinquencies, that leads to more foreclosures. Mortgage delinquency rates, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, went up to about 3.8% in the fourth quarter, the historic average going back to the 1970s, which is as far back as the NBA goes, is about 5.25%. So we're still way below normal levels of delinquencies. As I mentioned, most of those are early stage delinquencies, and they're being resolved before they get more serious. Because of that, we don't have a lot of foreclosure activity. So this is no longer Keith government intervention. It's no longer government forbearance programs and foreclosure moratoriums. It's the fact that the economy's been so strong. Unemployment rates have a very strong correlation to mortgage delinquency rates. We got together last time I mentioned the unemployment rate was at 3.9%. I just told you that word delinquencies are at 3.8. Can't get much closer than that. And because of that, foreclosure activity is still down almost 30% from where we were in 2019 prior to the pandemic.   Rick Sharga (00:31:07) - And I should point out, the 2019 wasn't a particularly big year for foreclosures either. So I don't see us getting back to pre-pandemic levels of foreclosure activity until sometime next year. And what's important for people in this space to understand is that even though we're seeing roughly the same number of delinquencies that we saw back in 2019, fewer of those delinquent loans are going into foreclosure. Fewer of those foreclosures are getting as far as the auction, and even fewer of those are going back to the banks as REO properties or bank owned properties.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:40) - Delinquency occurs before foreclosure. We have low levels of both, and I would imagine that one substantial reason for that are these low fixed rate payments that so many people have. Minutes ago, you showed us that 90% of those with a mortgage have a rate in the fives or less. And then oftentimes when we talk about these sorts of things, we don't even consider the fact that more than 4 in 10 homeowners are free and clear. They don't have any mortgage at all. So it's difficult for people to get in trouble.   Rick Sharga (00:32:10) - Yeah. And when they do get in trouble, what's really a saving grace for a lot of these people? And I believe the reason we're seeing fewer foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions is that there's $31 trillion in homeowner equity in the market, and 90% of borrowers in foreclosure have positive equity. A huge percentage of those have at least 20% equity. So what's happening interesting is that many, many of these borrowers are protecting their equity by selling their home before the foreclosure sale. If they get to foreclosure sale, they run the risk of losing all their equity, or at least the overwhelming majority of their equity.   Keith Weinhold (00:32:48) - That's a great point with how this really works.   Rick Sharga (00:32:50) - And so if you're looking to buy a distressed property, if you're looking to buy a foreclosure property, you really need to be working directly with the homeowner in the earliest stages of foreclosure rather than waiting for the auction. And certainly rather than waiting for the bank to repossess the home and resell it. And some recent data from a friend of mine@auction.com tracking some numbers from Adam Data.   Rick Sharga (00:33:15) - 55% of the distressed properties that were sold through from June through to September of last year were sold in that pre foreclosure period prior to the foreclosure auction. That's wildly different than we've been in in years past. So really important for anybody looking to buy distressed property, to consider moving upstream and working directly with that homeowner. And it's a win win. You can help that homeowner protect their equity, have some cash to make a fresh start with and, and typically buy a home in pretty good condition and a home that you need to be part of your rental portfolio. So just kind of recapping some of the stuff we talked about, Keith, both today and last week, I still think that from an economic standpoint, there's still at least a good possibility we might have a short, mild recession sometime later this year. I don't see unemployment going much higher than 5%. Even if we do have a recession, if we don't have a recession, we'll only see the economy slowed down a bit. It might be hard to tell the difference.   Rick Sharga (00:34:10) - I'm expecting the volume of home sales to go up. I think we bottomed out in 2023, but not by a lot. Maybe we see a 10% lift over last year, which would take us to roughly 4.4 million existing homes. I wouldn't be surprised to see 700,000 new homes sold, really just depends on how quickly builders bring inventory to market. But if I'm right and mortgage rates go down slowly over the second half of this year, we'll see more home buyers come to market more quickly than sellers. We don't see a lot of sellers come to market until we get interest rates down to about 5.5% or lower, which probably won't happen until 2025. So more buyers coming to market than sellers means the prices will continue to go up. We continue to see investors account for 25 to 30% of all residential purchases. So I think we'll continue to see a higher rate, partly because investors are active, partly because a lot of consumers are waiting for market conditions to improve, but that limited affordability in today's market conditions, I really do think means more demand for rental units.   Rick Sharga (00:35:14) - And I think foreclosure activity stays below normal levels for the rest of this year, and REO inventory bank repossessions are going to remain even lower for even longer. I don't think we see REO activity come back to more normal levels for at least a couple of years, so anybody looking to buy these properties really does need to be moving upstream in order to make those purchases.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:34) - Yeah, with low affordability, hence more demand for rentals. I've already noticed that the homeownership rate, which is somewhat of a trailing number here, has already fallen from 66% to 65.7%. And with low affordability, it seems that that homeownership rate could fall even more, meaning the rate of renters would be higher.   Rick Sharga (00:35:54) - A friend of mine always complains that the government's somehow beside behind all of these trends, one way or the other, and and wonders why, with all the government programs aimed at increasing homeownership, we haven't seen that homeownership rate increase much. And I think sometimes things said to the natural level and our homeownership rate, really for the last 30 years, has been somewhere between 64% and 66%.   Rick Sharga (00:36:19) - And that might just be what the natural level for homeownership is in the United States. Will it dip a little bit as people can't afford to buy a house? Probably. Probably will. When market conditions improve for buyers, will it go up a little bit? Probably. But we hit 70% homeownership back in 2006. And it turned out that was the bad number and that not everybody's ready financially for the kind of commitment that homeownership requires. And so I've always said that the key isn't getting everybody into a home. It's the sustainability of homeownership for people that that we do get into that house. One of the best days of your life is when you get the key to that house, and it has to be one of the worst days if you have to give it back. So I hope we all keep that in mind as we move forward.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:03) - That's right. Government incentives is in the past saying there's a $10,000 first time homebuyer tax credit. Oh, we're not in an era where we need help. On the demand side, all you're doing is driving up prices.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:14) - And I don't know that you're helping out anybody in that case. But I think with really overall, one big takeaway here, Rick, is that if you the listener, if you're waiting for prices to drop substantially sometime or for interest rates to drop substantially sometime, that might not be worth the wait. You could be waiting a long time.   Rick Sharga (00:37:32) - I do expect mortgage rates will decline. I don't really go back to the sub for rates we saw a few years ago, but they're going to decline slowly and they may not decline enough to offset rising home prices. I mean, you have to get your calculator out and and figure out how that math works for you. But you're absolutely right, Keith. And I tell people today, even with mortgage rates being where they are, if you find a house you love or you find a house that's a good investment and you pencil it out and the numbers work, don't wait because the opportunity costs can be severe and you could wind up missing out on a property that could either be a good cash flow unit for you on rental, or it could be a property that you wind up living in for the next 30 years.   Rick Sharga (00:38:13) - So don't be afraid of today's market. Just be very prudent and judicious in the way you approach it.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:19) - Well, Rick, get resuscitation of followers and the nation have been a beneficiary of your housing market intelligence expertise for quite a while now. If someone wants to engage with you in the CJ Patrick Company, who are those types of people and how could you help?   Rick Sharga (00:38:36) - I appreciate the opportunity. Most of the companies I work with or companies that provide services to lenders, anybody who has a business that's in the real estate or financial services markets, who would benefit from my coming in to share with them industry data, or has data themselves that they would like to get out into the marketplace? Anything data related really, I tend to specialize in. So market updates and market overviews and market. Analysis or things that I do on a pretty much daily basis for companies.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:07) - How can they engage with you?   Rick Sharga (00:39:08) - They can find our website, which is C.J. patrick.com. They can find me on Twitter. I hide there under my name, Rick, or reach out to me on LinkedIn.   Rick Sharga (00:39:17) - And if you reach out to me on on a social media channel, make sure that you mention you know me through Keith, and you're not some crazy Russian bot trying to hack into my personal information.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:27) - Well, then, Rick, it's been great having you back on the show.   Rick Sharga (00:39:30) - I'm sure we'll do it again sometime soon. Thanks for having me.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:39) - Yeah, terrific Intel there. In this episode, Rick said that to still expect a lower amount of sales going forward and expect modest property price appreciation. Every region of the nation is seeing price growth now. And by the way, you remember that late last year, I unveiled Gray's home price appreciation forecast for this year, stating that prices should rise 4% and here in Q2, I still like how that looks. There is not much distress with current homeowners, but if you're looking to scoop up a foreclosed property cheap, you better get aggressive and work directly with the homeowner in the earliest stages of foreclosure. Don't wait for that property to go to auction. Rick also said more demand for rental units is coming, and I encourage you to engage with Rick.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:30) - Let him know you heard about him through me. If you want to go deeper and engage with some of the services that he offers, perhaps you work for a real estate company or a demographic company. You can do that at C.J. patrick.com. But most of you, the listener is an individual investor. So check him out on X where his handle is Rick Sharga. He is Rick Sharga on LinkedIn. Big thanks to Rick Sharga today. Until next week I'm your host, Keith Wild. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 5 (00:41:04) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:32) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.