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Wealthy people's money either starts out or ends up in real estate. But you can't lose your time.
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I'm show host Keith Weinhold. I also serve on the Forbes Real Estate Council and write for Forbes.
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Since 2002, international real estate investor Keith Weinhold owns multifamily apartment buildings to single family homes to agricultural real estate.
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621: The Deals Changed—Did You? Future Interest Rates and Inflation
Season 1 · Episode 621
Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 40:56
Keith explores how real estate strategies have shifted from the 1980s to today and explains why investors need to adapt deal structures to changing interest rates, lending conditions, and market cycles.
He highlights current opportunities in new construction and builder rate buydowns, along with the long-term benefits of fixed-rate debt.
Keith is joined by economic futurist and author Richard Vague, who challenges conventional beliefs about inflation and interest rates and explains how government intervention, war, and supply constraints shape asset prices and leverage decisions.
Together, they provide a big-picture framework for understanding how today's macro environment affects real estate investing decisions.
Join Mid South Home Buyers' one-time, free live webinar featuring Keith Weinhold on September 30 at GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth to learn how Memphis' economic expansion could create new real estate investment opportunities, and have your questions answered in real time.
Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Learn how dramatically real estate has changed from the 1980s through the late 2020s. We'll be sure that your approach is changing with it. Then a great guest and I discuss how war and future calamities will affect mortgage rates, inflation, and your real estate today on Get Rich Education. What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. In September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Home Buyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6,000 homes under management, for a free live webinar, the likes of which I've never done before. We're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms Mid South has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth. Again, that September 30th. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.
Speaker 1 1:35
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 1:51
Welcome to GRE from Cambridge, England, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and across 188 world nations. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're inside Get Rich Education. You could be doing anything with your time. I'm grateful that you choose to listen to me every week. You know, real estate investors sometimes say, "Ah, there aren't any deals anymore. What they usually mean is the deal structure that they learned five years ago stopped working. There are always opportunities in real estate, but your approach changes with interest rates, lending standards, inventory, construction, government policy, and just the overall economic cycle. The best investors don't wait for yesterday's market to return. That's like someone still hoping for Blockbuster Video Store to reopen. They identify what today's market is offering instead. Just consider this historic retrospective on real estate investing from the Reagan administration to today, in 1981, the 30-year mortgage rate peaked above 18.6%. I mean, just imagine proudly telling your friends that you locked in at 17% before rates went higher. That mortgage needed its own defibrillator. By 1984, rates were still near 16%. The strategy then, the approach, was for a buyer to assume the existing owner's lower rate mortgage that they locked in a few years earlier, perhaps in the late 70s, that's how you got a good deal, assuming that existing owners lower-rate mortgage. You can't do that so easily today.
Keith Weinhold 3:50
By the late 80s and early 90s, the opportunity shifted from assuming attractive debt to buying distressed properties. The S and L crisis was upon us. Savings and loan failed lenders found themselves holding piles of distressed real estate, so investors bought foreclosures and REOs at discounts. They improved neglected buildings and then they repositioned them for income. You probably know that REO stands for real estate owned on a bank's balance sheet. All REO means is bank-owned property, but that's what you did. You found those, and then you scooped up a deal that way. As the 1990s progressed, interest rates declined, and loans also became really easy to obtain. We were tilting into the loosey-goosey easy lending environment. In the 90s, it was popular to buy an undervalued property, renovate it, raise the rent, and refinance it based on the improved value. That process later got a buzzy acronym and became known as the Burr strategy: buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. By 2005, financing got more creative. This is when I was a new real estate investor. I remember obtaining what were known as 8015 five combo loans. This meant an 80% first mortgage, 15% second mortgage, and 5% down payment. You remember those? If you've been around for a while, you do. And see, this way you could avoid paying PMI, and you could control property with an astounding 20 to one leverage ratio due to that 5% down payment, but soon enough lending just got absolutely too creative and easy. The quiet lending party turned into a boisterous kegger, delivering the 2008 financial. crisis, and pretty soon I could no longer get any loans. From 2009 through the early 2010s, you could buy foreclosures and short sales at enormous discounts if you could find the loan.
Keith Weinhold 6:20
Financing was tough, but prices were super low. It might have even made sense to pay cash at that time. Fear was everywhere right after the global financial crisis. I mean, it really took courage to act when others were hiding under the bed. By 2020 and 2021, the opportunity changed from cheap property to cheap money. Mortgage rates dropped below an absurd 3% as a result of the COVID pandemic. You could lock up extraordinarily cheap debt for less than the inflation rate, and then let inflation nibble away at it like Pac-Man. Of course, a lot of us are still benefiting from that today, but that opportunity is long gone now. But it doesn't mean that deals are gone today. Where's the opportunity? One of the best ones is often found in new construction, large build. have got to keep moving their inventory as they build these homes because they have got to keep their crews busy. An unsold house for a builder-I mean-that produces as much income as an unplugged Bitcoin miner. Rather than make conspicuous price reductions, builders use their financial muscle to buy down mortgage rates for you, often in the 5% range or even lower.
Keith Weinhold 7:52
Builders might also offer you closing cost assistance, upgraded finishes, or other incentives that a single resale seller just can't match. So from the Reagan administration to today, over 45 years, the winning strategy just keeps morphing. It started out back then as assume the loan, over to buy distress, then to renovate and refi, then it was a creative financing wave, and then cheap debt, and today take the builders buy down. That's where we are. The mistake is deciding in advance what a deal is supposed to look like. The best deal structure changes, and of course, it's going to change again. The investor who keeps fighting the last war is always going to conclude that the opportunity has disappeared, but it hasn't. It's just changed clothing. Still, though, today's new purchases now-they're not as good as the deals that they were five years ago, but the best investors keep investing. They keep adding to their portfolio. It's what they've always done. Absolutely zero winning investors that are successful over time look back and say things like, "I didn't add anything to my portfolio during that 10-year span for this or that reason, the market changes, and you've got to adapt with it. That's a way to think about it. Take solace in knowing a few things. Deal structure changes over time are inevitable. And larger picture, you are investing in a product that is sustainable residential real estate in the form of long-term rentals. These entry-level properties are a scarce asset that people are going to continue to need. I mean, that's what we do here. Just compare. To the fads that we avoid around here, like NFTs, metaverse real estate, which we discussed on the show a few years ago, but said is highly dangerous, eye buying, value add apartment syndications, SPACs, or how about ICO funded altcoins? We don't chase the latest hot thing here at GRE. It is about what's sustainable, necessary, and cannot be easily disrupted by AI, and that's one reason that Get Rich Education is still standing strong after 52 episodes every year for almost 12 years now. Shortly, we're going to bring in a rather esteemed guest today on the future direction of interest rates and inflation. Interestingly, he believes that raising interest rates does not cool inflation, and that's contrary to popular belief. I'm going to press him on this and ask why, but first, our new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. He's only been on the job a few months now.
Keith Weinhold 11:07
He is gaining a reputation for not forecasting what they're going to do ahead of time, like his predecessor had. I guess I tend to like his disposition and the way that he communicates, I sense some pragmatism with Warsh, but gosh, it often seems that a new Fed chair gets off to a well liked start, and then they do something that lots of people criticize. Like, remember in 2004, late Fed Chair Alan Greenspan suggested more borrowers could benefit from adjustable rate mortgages shortly before rates rose and ARM resets became financial landmines. In 2007, Ben Bernanke said that subprime mortgage problems were likely to be contained. Oh, right after that, they helped trigger the global financial crisis, and more recently, the Jerome Powell gaffe, which I'll mention in the interview shortly. Here's what current Fed Chair Warsh says about inflation:
Kevin Warsh 12:14
For some households, businesses, and market professionals, five years of high inflation have left a mistaken impression, that's hard to shake, that the Fed's implicit inflation target was somehow above 2% Let me reiterate, there is no soft inflation target. There is no soft implicit target, not on this committee's watch. There's only a target, and it's 2%
Keith Weinhold 12:42
It's obvious that he is serious about getting inflation back down to 2% That tends to point toward interest rate increases. Let's discuss that and more with this week's brilliant guest. This week's guest is an economic futurist keynote speaker, and he's quite a popular author. He is chair of the board of the Public School Employees Retirement System. That's the largest public pension fund in Pennsylvania. Previously, the Pennsylvania governor appointed him as the secretary of banking and securities for the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he's also the founder and president of several various organizations today, and he serves on several boards, including at the University of Pennsylvania and the School District of Philadelphia. I mean, I hardly know how he has time to do it all, but he made time for us today. Hey, it's great to welcome back Richard Vague.
Richard Vague 13:45
It's such an honor to be with you. I certainly enjoyed our last session, and it's really wonderful to be back.
Keith Weinhold 13:51
Well, and so much has changed since you were last here, Richard. First, why don't we pull back and talk to us about the general state of the national economy today, as you see it.
Richard Vague 14:04
ou know the economy was rocking along okay, and you know since you guys are such experts in real estate, I'll tell you one of the most important statistics, in my opinion, is the number of unsold homes, and by all rights, that number should be about 2 million homes. It's only about a million and a half. So there's a deficiency in our housing stock in the United States, which is, yeah, I think good news for the housing industry. It's always good to have a reason to have to grow. You may recall that in 2007, that had gotten up to four millinomes, which was a catastrophe, as we all know. So, it's the economic statistic I looked at first and most closely, and that was, you know, an okay number, and a lot of the things were going along. You know, not fabulous, but not terrible. Things were kind of moving. And all of a sudden now we have the war in Iran, and that's creating all sorts of problems for us, which you know I think you guys are concerned about. So I generally think the economy's been good, but there's a lot of dark clouds on the horizon.
Keith Weinhold 15:15
You know, Richard, I was recently sharing something remarkable with our audience. To your point, just since 2020, consider all the calamities that we've had: COVID, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, tariffs, and the Iran War. Just since 2020, what's the result of all that? Both stocks and residential real estate are near all time highs.
Richard Vague 15:42
Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that's true is that this is something I go to in great detail in my book Paradox. But the more debt there is, the higher asset prices go.
Keith Weinhold 15:53
Yeah.
Richard Vague 15:54
You know, in the case of housing, that broadly helps middle America. In the case of the stock market, the top 10% of the country owns 87% of the stocks, so that tends to go to the wealthiest instead of to the broad population. But yeah, those two things are at highs.
Keith Weinhold 16:12
You're touching on your well-received 2023 book, The Paradox of Debt, and you know, Richard, amidst all these calamities and all this potentially unprecedented level of government intervention that we've had-you know-it makes one wonder during the next crisis, which is inevitably going to happen, will the government just step in and provide relief again? And how would that look?
Richard Vague 16:38
You know, I think that's one lesson that government has learned indelibly. Way back in 1929, in the couple of years that followed, the government did not step in, and we saw what happened. And I think there's a generation of economists that understand the role of government in a calamity, and you know it's pretty simple. You know the government comes in and crops up financial institutions as they did in 2008, simply by providing the liquidity or buying the bad assets, or the government steps in with relief checks as they did in such a massive way in 2020. But the government has learned that at least to some degree, it needs to intervene. I can't imagine that ever not being true.
Keith Weinhold 17:26
Goshmright when you think about 2020s stimulus and how emergency lending facilities were set up, you had the payment protection program, stimulus checks, mortgage loan forbearance. It's just like this government won't let the asset holders fail.
Richard Vague 17:46
Well, yeah, you know, there's failure, and then there's something that's hurtful but not quite failure. You know, I can imagine that the government will be able to prevent, in some circumstances, certain asset prices going down some amount, it's actually fairly commonplace for stocks to go down 10 or 20% I can see real estate prices going down as they have in the commercial office space. Yeah, but yes, the government will step in when those things become extreme to prevent a true calamity.
Keith Weinhold 18:19
Of course, one consequence of the interventionism is elevated inflation. I know how you've talked before about how the level of inflation is higher than most people think. For example, you'll see today's CPI numbers in the mid threes. Talk to us some more about why inflation is higher than most people think.
Richard Vague 18:41
Well, I have studied inflation, you know, fairly diligently, and inflation really relates to the constriction of supply. And if you look over the 250-year history of the United States, we haven't had that many episodes of bad inflation, and they've always related to a constriction of supply. Most of them have occurred during a war when, for obvious reasons, you know, supplies are constricted. The big 1970s episode of inflation was because OPEC, which had so much more power back in those days, acted to you know punish the United States by constricting supplies, and the price of a barrel of oil went from $4 to $40 a barrel. Yeah, between 73 and 79. COVID was another instance where inflation related to constriction of supply. That was you know people couldn't go to the meat factory to cut meat. People couldn't go to the factories to build things, so all of a sudden our supplies were decimated, and we had a short burst of very painful inflation. Well, now we've got the straight of four moves, and that is impacting the price of oil. I think it's going to impact the price of oil more going forward because. Because we've been able to rely on reserves, both the U.S. has been able to rely on reserves, and China has been able to rely on even greater reserves. And you know we haven't seen the brunt of that, but unless something's resolved pretty quickly, I think in the fall and winter we're going to see even more problematic prices there. But we know agricultural prices and even the flow of commodities like wheat are constricted by the constraints in the Strait of Hormuz and, frankly, other waterways as well. Now, one of the things the numbers that you see reported tend to underreport inflation because it looks at a year-over-year number and doesn't really capture it if it's moved up more sharply in the last month or two. So we look at it on a month-by-month. We you know we break it down about as to as many parts as you can break it down into. But PPI, which is kind of a leading indicator on the eventual CPI PPI's producer price index, it was 4.7% this last month. That would suggest to you that things which are in the mid threes now, which is more higher than we want, you know, probably trending over. Maybe not next month, but you know, over the next three to six months, I'm not going to be surprised if the number's more in the four to five range. So, yeah, I think inflation's being somewhat underreported at the moment.
Keith Weinhold 21:29
The PPI being that harbinger of consumer prices, often four to six months down the road. And Richard, the last time you were here, when it comes to checking and controlling inflation, you said something so interesting. You said that higher rates, which is typically the response in order to try to quell inflation, higher rates actually do not lower inflation, and you did not get a chance to expand on that because we ran out of time. Tell us more about why higher rates do not reduce inflation.
Richard Vague 22:05
Well, I'm going to answer that a couple of ways. One of them is higher rates don't open the Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Weinhold 22:12
Right.
Richard Vague 22:13
You can put rates as high as you want, and it's not going to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Weinhold 22:16
Chairman Warsch doesn't open the Strait. Yes, he doesn't get oil produce nothing.
Richard Vague 22:20
Strait of Hormuz.
Keith Weinhold 22:21
Yeah.
Richard Vague 22:21
And so we can do all we want to on raids, which is a very blunt instrument, and it's not going to address the supply constraints that are geopolitical and war related. So, if you want to curb inflation right now, there's two things to do. One of them's you know end the war with Iran, and the other is to kind of back off a lot of these tariffs that have become so problematic. I think there's a place for tariffs. I think there's certain things China's doing that you know a call for an appropriate level of tariffs. I'm not sure we should be big tariffs on Canada and some of these other places, which have the effect of increasing the cost of our farm equipment and cars and other things like that. So, if you really want to address inflation and address the things that truly underlie inflation, and if the second way I'd answer this is to say, go look at the debt, track the data from you know 1945 or 50. You know, we really look at the post World War II period as the place we really learn things from, and over that period, increased government spending has been accompanied by reduced interest rates and reduced inflation. So, reduced interest rates and reduced inflation have gone hand in hand, and rising interest rates and rising inflation have gone hand in hand, and it's a really easy thing to look at. We've got the data on our site, but there's only been three periods where you've had big shifts in government spending and rates. They're pretty easy to look at, and there's actually empirically an inverse relationship between rising interest rates and it's the opposite of what economists tell you.
Keith Weinhold 24:09
I think, in general, economists tell us that when inflation is high, you raise interest rates because consumer spending is about 70% of the economy, and those higher rates therefore incentivize people to be savers because they're getting paid a higher yield, keeping those dollars out of the economy, and they're less incentivized to be borrowers and expand the economy that way. I think in general that's why economists say that higher interest rates reduce inflation. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 2 24:40
Well, no, I don't, and the reason I don't is because when you look at the data, that doesn't happen. These are easy things to check, and what I would say to you is that rising interest rates increase costs, and you guys know that better than anybody in the world.
Keith Weinhold 24:56
With mortgages. Yeah.
Richard Vague 24:58
What do rising interest rates do to? Cost of your mortgage.
Keith Weinhold 25:02
Everything increased substantially.
Richard Vague 25:03
It has system prices at the grocery store. Well, the grocery stores have to pay our interest for their inventory. So the more intuitive and obvious thing is that rising interest rates increase prices. And by the way, if you and I were to go look at the data right now, which I look at almost daily, that we would see periods of rising interest rates correlate to periods of rising increased costs.
Keith Weinhold 25:29
Well, I'm glad you look at history because I often say here at Get Rich Education, if you want to know what's going to happen in the future, it's easy to have a hunch, but it's more important to look at history. Can you talk to us some more about how, over the long term, higher interest rates don't suppress inflation? If that's what you're saying,
Richard Vague 25:47
yeah. The greatest rise in inflation, you know, in my lifetime was the late 1970s.
Keith Weinhold 25:55
Yeah,
Richard Vague 25:56
and for the entire time that interest rates were going up, prices and inflation were going up, and it wasn't until interest rates started coming down that inflation started coming down. So we could look at any number of periods, and if you're going to argue the opposite, you need to go find me some data.
Keith Weinhold 26:15
Okay. Well, speaking in more modern times, in the last wave of inflation that we had, the CPI peaked at 9.1% in June of 2022. This is the whole famous Jerome Powell: inflation is only transitory. Oh shoot, no, it's not. I better hike rates. He did, and then inflation came down. Is it as simple as that cause in effect, or did something else make inflation come down post COVID.
Richard Vague 26:42
Inflation came down, and it came all the way down in July of 2022. It didn't come down gradually over six, 912, 18 months. You go look at the length monthly inflation. Inflation came all the way down in July of 2022, and stay has stayed down all the intervening period until very recently with the Iran War. July of 2022 was before there was a dramatic increase in interest rates.
Keith Weinhold 27:18
Right,
Speaker 1 27:19
that's simple.
Keith Weinhold 27:21
What caused inflation to come down? Then is it because supply began to arrive on the market again?
Richard Vague 27:27
People went back to work, started building things again.
Keith Weinhold 27:30
Producing.
Richard Vague 27:32
And the problem was folks had not been able to go to the factories and make things, and so we had a you know global supply deficit. Well, the nice thing about that is that you know money incends people to scramble back to work, make things again, and you know once they start doing that, and the Fed actually produces something they call the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index. You can get it on the Fed site. If you look at it, it's supposed to be kind of at zero, and anytime supply chains are disrupted, it shoots up. And any you know, any time the opposite happens, you know there's overcapacity. It goes down, and you can see exactly when supply chains repair is happening. So go look at the. It's called the GSCPI. It's on the Fed side. You'll see that global supply chains had largely started to be dramatically repaired in the spring and summer of 2022, and naturally, supply and demand works. All of a sudden, supply starts showing up, and prices go to hell.
Keith Weinhold 28:39
We're talking with economic futurist author and Pennsylvania's governor-appointed former secretary of banking and securities Richard Vague, more when we come back on the affliction of inflation, what this means for real estate investors, and more. This is Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine. You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Keith Weinhold 29:29
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Dolph Derues 30:31
This is the king of commercial real estate, Dolph Derues. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold and don't quit your daydream.
Keith Weinhold 30:45
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. We're talking with Richard Vague. Richard is the founder and president of so many organizations today. He's the author of several popular economic books. He chairs the board of the Public School employees retirement system. That's the largest public pension fund in Pennsylvania. He's in a lot of places at once, seemingly. Richard, we're talking about inflation before the break. What is the right inflation rate?
Richard Vague 31:16
Well, like I said, inflation. If you look at the entire 250-year span of the United States has it been an affliction that has affected us that often? It is political kryptonite. So when it does happen, it steers our consciousness, and it you know certainly affects your industry. But you know, if we look historically, the Fed targets 2% It's not a bad thing to target. We never really have achieved that level for any length of period. I think if you look at it over the past several decades and take out the high inflation periods, it probably has averaged closer to three. So I don't think two to 3% is an inappropriate level, and I kind of suspect it'll be a level that typifies our future once we get past, if and when we get past this more.
Keith Weinhold 32:09
Yes, not long ago, I was looking at the history of the CPI or the CPI's equivalent, and over the last 100 years, the rate is about 3.2% and we haven't hit that government-mandated 2% target, which is stated right on the Fed's website. We haven't hit that for any month in about five years now, and this asset inflation, as we know, this disproportionately enriches existing asset owners, and it widens this inequality. Something that's more recently been known as the K-shaped economy, can you talk to us some more about this exacerbating wealth inequality?
Richard Vague 32:48
Well, you hit the nail on the head. Something on the order of 80% of all the net wealth held by Americans is in the form of two things: stock and real estate. If you want to talk about wealth, it's those two things, and those two things, probably 60 or 70% of all of those in the U.S. are held by the top 10% I think it's a single-digit number of those that are held by the bottom 50% So you know, if inflation and debt growth push asset prices up over time. It is a mathematical inevitability that the rich get richer faster than those in the middle and at the bottom, and that simply means inequality will increase through time. I believe that's structural. Unless you address that in very some very specific way it will continue.
Keith Weinhold 33:43
Inflation affects real estate investors more than it does the average person because we borrow these big pools of money often at 75 to 80% loan to value, and in a sense, although we know it's bad for general society, and we do think about the K-shaped economy. Of course, inflation benefits us because it debases our debt. But even if you're not a real estate investor, even if you just own your own home, you know, Richard, I really think it begs the question: Is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage one of the best forms of debt ever created for ordinary Americans?
Richard Vague 34:22
The 30-year mortgage, which was created, you know, that started on that path in the 1930 s for the very reasons we all know and love, which is getting Americans to own their own home, and has been, you know, a game changer for the country, and truly one of the great things that's been done, and I hope it's something that we continue to defend and preserve.
Keith Weinhold 34:46
Well, that brings up leverage and the prudent use of leverage. As real estate investors, we have this benefit of getting all these 30-year fixed-rate loans without the threat of a. Margin call being made. We're not borrowing over in the stock market. When you sign your loan documents, it doesn't say that the bank can call your note due at any time, but one could take it too far. And when it comes to debt, I think that really begs the question: Where does intelligent leverage end, and then dangerous leverage begin. What's the border?
Richard Vague 35:25
Well, you guys are experts, and I'm not. But the very simple premise is starts with not overpaying for the property to begin with. It is not an exact science, but generally speaking, I think we can tell when prices are relatively high in a given market and or a given year and relatively low, and you you'd always want to kind of be at least in the middle or somewhat on the low end before you acquire a property. So that's step number one, and then step number two is really just giving yourself a buffer, you know. We saw in the global financial crisis that real estate loans were being made in some cases at 100% of value. Yeah, and frankly, we saw at least some episodes within that folks borrowing over 100% of value, and certainly they were very happy when that happened. But we know there's zero margin for error when you do that, and perhaps even a negative margin for error when you do that. So I would think, you know, you guys know better than me, but you know, I hate to borrow it much more than like 90% of value, maybe 95% if it's a smaller asset and you have a government guarantee, and if you can do it at lower leverage, you know, 70 or 80% of value, that's not a bad thing to consider. I tend to think in the real estate world that you know I've seen many investors, particularly in the commercial space, buy things with lower leverage, 50 or 75% But then, as the asset proves itself, they work with their lender to increase the debt-to-value ratio, you know, and get more money at it over time as it becomes an increasingly proven asset. So they migrate their way from 75% to 95% over time. I think that's a logical path.
Keith Weinhold 37:20
That acronym Ninja Loans, which were popular from about 2000 to 2007, that acronym Ninja means no income, no job or assets, and you might still get a loan of 110% of the value of the property. It was profligately irresponsible. Well, Richard, in a moment, I want to ask if you have a resource that our audience can follow along with you if they would like to do so. But before I do that, do you have any last thing that you would like to talk about? Maybe something that I did not ask you, whether it has to do with the general economy or real estate or interest rates or inflations. Is there something else that we should know?
Richard Vague 38:00
What I would do is just endorse your podcast.
Keith Weinhold 38:04
Thanks.
Richard Vague 38:05
You're approaching this in a very intelligent way, and you're very empirical, and I think your listeners are doing themselves a service by continuing to follow what you do. That's a really reasonable, secure, and yet bold path towards creating wealth, then I think you're to be commended.
Keith Weinhold 38:27
Oh, I appreciate the endorsement. I'm always blown away at our following, but you have some resources worth following as well. Tell us about that.
Richard Vague 38:36
Well, we do. We have a weekly video ourselves that it's about a five-minute video, and you can go to our website, which is tycos.com. So t y c h o s.com, and you know we have data on the site. If you're a real geek, you could go in and you can look at our macroeconomic data. You know, but if you're not, you can sign up for the video, and we come out with what we hope is a short but relevant video once a week talking on some aspect of the economy, and you know we'd love to have folks join that if they're interested.
Keith Weinhold 39:10
Well, it's valuable. I suggest you, the listener, check that out. Richard oftentimes turns conventional economics on his head, just like he did with us today, talking about how if there's higher interest rates, that does not necessarily mean lower inflation. Richard, it's been valuable as always. It's been great having you back on the show.
Richard Vague 39:30
It's an honor to be with you. Keep up the great work.
Keith Weinhold 39:38
In this remote interview, I got a beautiful look over Richard's shoulders there on the screen at Center City, Philadelphia, in the ornate buildings there. I will be in that part of the nation again shortly. Big thanks to Richard Vague. If you're looking him up, it is spelled V-A-G-U-E. We've got a. A lot of terrific content coming up on the show over the next few weeks, including fresh takes on building your wealth that you've never heard before. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 3 40:18
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 40:46
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. getricheducation.com
620: Alarmist Predicts an 80%–95% Housing Crash
Season 1 · Episode 620
Monday, August 24, 2026 • Duration 44:51
Keith debunks alarmist predictions of an 80–95% housing crash and explains why inflation, constrained supply, and strong demand continue to put upward pressure on home prices.
He breaks down key trends in renter mobility, highlights how the AI boom is driving record-breaking rents in San Francisco, and contrasts "dopamine culture" and money maxing with GRE's philosophy of growing one's means through income property and leverage.
Keith also discusses how the Seven-Figure Solution framework helps real estate investors more effectively integrate properties, taxes, insurance, and retirement planning.
619: The World is About to End (Again), The Seven-Figure Solution
Season 1 · Episode 619
Monday, August 17, 2026 • Duration 47:36
Keith breaks down why global crises, geopolitical shocks, and nonstop "doom" headlines haven't stopped stocks and real estate from reaching near all-time highs, and what that means for investors focused on inflation-resistant assets.
He also discusses Memphis as a surprising cash-flow market poised to benefit from the AI boom, sharing details on an upcoming webinar with Mid South Homebuyers.
Keith is joined by real estate investor and educator Jared Garfield to unpack the "Seven-Figure Solution," a strategy that combines cash-flowing rentals with tax-advantaged life insurance to create liquidity, reduce risk, and support long-term retirement income.
Together, they explore how disciplined portfolio growth, smart leverage, and coordinated tax planning can help real estate investors better align their assets with their long-term financial goals.
618: Do This Before Your Income Stops—Scale or Fail
Season 1 · Episode 618
Monday, August 10, 2026 • Duration 37:32
Keith explains why achieving scale rather than simply earning more is the key to long-term financial freedom and how income property uniquely delivers multiple forms of leverage.
He breaks down 25 years of inflation data to reveal which everyday costs have most outpaced wages and what that means for the real purchasing power of the dollar.
Keith also explains why markets like Memphis—combining strong cash flow fundamentals with a massive new AI infrastructure build-out—are positioned as compelling targets for long-term real estate investors.
617: Co-Living: The Greatest Real Estate Cash Flow Strategy
Season 1 · Episode 617
Monday, August 3, 2026 • Duration 40:53
Keith is joined by Jim Sheils, a seasoned real estate investor and builder who specializes in new construction and co-living properties.
Together they explore why traditional long-term rentals are struggling to cash flow and how co-living—renting individual rooms in purpose-built homes—can dramatically boost returns.
Jim breaks down how the model works, who the typical tenants are, and why platforms like PadSplit are essential for management, compliance, and steady occupancy.
Their discussion highlights how co-living can simultaneously address the affordable housing shortage and today's "cash flow crisis" for real estate investors.
616: Which Real Estate Will Survive AI, Robots, and Amazon?
Season 1 · Episode 616
Monday, July 27, 2026 • Duration 45:45
Keith welcomes back Todd Drowlette, star of A&E's The Real Estate Commission, to help demystify commercial real estate for residential investors.
They explore which sectors are most resilient to disruption from AI, automation, and Amazon, why certain office and warehouse assets still work, and how service-based retail like nail salons and quick-service restaurants can offer durable returns.
Todd breaks down the basics and advantages of triple net (NNN) leases, key considerations in office-to-residential conversions, and how rising interest rates are reshaping commercial deals.
He also shares negotiation tactics from large commercial transactions that investors can immediately apply to their next rental property purchase.
For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit or text FAMILY to 66866
615: The 25-Year Money Tree
Season 1 · Episode 615
Monday, July 20, 2026 • Duration 46:31
Keith explores how investors can build legacy wealth by owning productive teak timber and the land beneath it in Panama.
Mike Cobb, an international real estate developer with over 30 years of experience, explains why Panama's legal framework, economic stability, and U.S. dollar economy make it a compelling destination for first-time offshore investors.
They discuss the long-term return profile of teak, its resilience as a hard asset, and common mistakes to avoid when investing internationally, along with how a sawmill and vertical integration can enhance returns.
This discussion highlights how the strategy can diversify both geography and asset type while also opening doors to potential residency options abroad.
For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit or text FAMILY to 66866
614: 75-Cent Gas, Permanent Inflation, and Your Biggest Expense
Season 1 · Episode 614
Monday, July 13, 2026 • Duration 38:31
Keith Weinhold explains why inflation has become a permanent part of the post–World War II economy and what that shift means for today's financial system.
He breaks down economist Dr. Mark Skousen's five structural reasons behind never-ending inflation and ties them to the hollowing out of the middle class and the "last generation to live normally" concept.
Keith then introduces opportunity cost as the biggest financial expense most people overlook and illustrates how leveraging low-cost, long-term debt to buy productive real assets can turn inflation into an advantage.
He closes by outlining a practical hierarchy for which debts to eliminate first and which to keep as tools for long-term wealth building.
For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit or text FAMILY to 66866
613: Mortgage Rates in 2030
Season 1 · Episode 613
Monday, July 6, 2026 • Duration 38:06
Keith breaks down five major mortgage myths, including the belief that today's mortgage rates are unusually high, that the Fed directly sets them, and that rising rates automatically push home prices down.
Drawing on historical patterns, he explains why mortgage rates and home prices often move together, and why waiting on the sidelines for "better" rates can quietly erode your long-term wealth.
Keith also explains how inflation can benefit borrowers by shrinking the real burden of fixed-rate debt and shows how leveraged real estate can outperform traditional stock investing.
He ties these insights into today's K-shaped economy and the growing role of AI, and explains how strategic action and the right guidance can help position investors on the winning side of these trends.
612: Here's When the Average U.S. Home Will Hit $1 Million
Season 1 · Episode 612
Monday, June 29, 2026 • Duration 43:14
Keith explores when the U.S. median home price could realistically hit $1 million and what long-term drivers like inflation, construction costs, and housing scarcity mean for investors.
He reveals the hidden issue of America's aging housing stock, explaining how outdated and inadequate homes quietly distort inventory data and reshape opportunities for renovation and build-to-rent strategies.
Keith also draws lessons from former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and unpacks why some of the "worst" high-crime cities can still offer strong rental fundamentals, helping listeners think more clearly about risk, market selection, and long-term wealth building through real estate.
Join Mid South Home Buyers' one-time, free live webinar featuring Keith Weinhold on September 30 at GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth to learn how Memphis' economic expansion could create new real estate investment opportunities, and have your questions answered in real time.
Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. An alarmist calls for a housing price crash of 80 to 95 percent. We'll listen to it. This city's rents are up 26 percent annually. The rise of dopamine culture and money maxing has made its way into personal finance. Then an invitation to join us for a special event today on Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 0:29
What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. In September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Homebuyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6,000 homes under management, for a free live webinar, the likes of which I've never done before. We're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms MidSeal has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth. Again, that september 30. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.
Speaker 1 1:35
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 1:51
Welcome to GRE from Naples, Italy, to Naples, Florida, and across 188 nations worldwide. You're listening to one of America's longest-running and most listened-to shows in the real estate world. This is Get Rich Education, and I'm Keith Weinhold. Yes, the very founder of this snaggle-toothed operation right here. I'm a longtime real estate investor myself, erstwhile writer for both Forbes and the Rich Dad Advisors, serving on the Forbes Real Estate Council, you can also see my work in the USA Today and Business Insider. I'm the creator of Real Estate Pays Five Ways and the Inflation Triple Crown. Oh, after all that, really, I'm just a shaved mammal with slack jaw, a highly leveraged hominid of the landed gentry, right before I discuss the housing price crash of 80 to 95% you know, keep in mind that most people think that if you're in real estate, then you've got to be either a realtor or a landlord. I am neither a realtor nor a landlord. People also think that it takes tons of money. It does not. Now you could pursue no money down strategies, but that takes some time to learn and skill to develop. Now I was a landlord in the early years of my real estate investing, but after about six years of that, I hired a property manager and never looked back. Therefore, keeping this mostly passive, a 20 to 25 percent down payment on a carefully selected residential rental property includes ones that today can still have purchase prices below 200k. That's purchased in a geographically investor advantaged market. Okay, that is the center of what we do here because when you own property this way, now you've got the margin where you can pay a property manager to enjoy the five ways that you're paid mostly passively. Be a savvy borrower.
Keith Weinhold 4:02
Now, when you're between deals and accumulating capital to add the next piece of property to your rental portfolio, that's where you can flip and do the opposite in the short term and be a real estate lender for perhaps an eight to 10% stable return. That's what I do, rather than getting three and a half percent, which is the going rate today in a high yield savings account. So be a lender between deals in the short term, or you're a savvy borrower long term. Now the late analyst at Housing Wire, and he was also a past guest here on the show, Logan Modashami, he brought this 80 to 95% housing price crash media piece to my attention. It's in the form of a meta reel that got a lot of attention. Let's play it. I mean, this type of nonsense circulates out. It's not founded on anything substantive, and this just absolutely does not serve anybody. You've got to take this type of thing as entertainment, but it's being presented in a serious, informative way, and just listen to the basis for the claim.
Hayden Weston 5:19
The United States housing market is about to collapse 80 to 95 percent, which means that homes that were worth 1.5 million are going to be worth 300,000. The reason is simple: the U.S. housing market has reached its most unaffordable level in history. People cannot afford to buy homes, and if people cannot buy homes, the market must correct. The question is how hard the market is going to crash, not if it will. According to CPI and price history data, this is predicted to be worse than the 2008 housing bubble. We are going to see prices drop 80 to 95 percent.
Keith Weinhold 6:02
A housing price collapse of 80 to 95 percent. This is from a platform called Hayden Trades. It has got to be the worst example of trying to steal attention rather than serving people. Gosh, don't even make 20% or 50% crash predictions anymore go for far higher, I guess. He says it is according to the CPI and price history data. This doesn't even make sense. Now the low affordability mentioned that part is true, and this is what's slowed home price appreciation. But here in the late 2020s, there was more upward pressure on home prices, not downward inflationary pressure, which is rampant. That is poised to raise replacement cost because a home is a bundle of land, labor, lumber, concrete, copper, and energy. America's best job markets face land and regulatory constraints that pressures prices upward, and regulations are not easily repealed either. There's a large reservoir of sideline buyers that still want to own, and single-family home construction is woefully insufficient, keeping the supply down. Indeed, there is more upward pressure on home prices, not downward. This coming inflation wave, that's exacerbated by war, is unfortunately, or fortunately, if you're positioned, it's poised to widen the K-shaped economy where winners win bigger and losers lose more. The boat is leaving the dock. Are you on it?
Keith Weinhold 7:54
The distance between the boat and the dock just keeps increasing, and eventually you won't be able to make the leap, the jump from the boat to the dock. Now, in the near term, because we're approaching the fall season, when you hear stats about median home prices, note that prices are lower in autumn and winter than they are in spring and summer. It happens pretty much every year. Now, why is this? Well, one reason is that a lot of people don't think about is simply the fact that smaller houses get sold in the winter compared to the summer. And why would this be? This is because families with school-age children who need larger homes get their deals done in summer months before school starts. That is one reason why median home prices are higher in the summer than they are in the winter. When you look at a long-term price chart of homes, this is why you see peaks each summer and dips each winter. Now, investors like us. Now we're not buying so much for school-age children considerations, but this phenomenon affects the median prices that you see quoted in most any market. That is how that works, and why homes present better in the summer too. Green lawns, Leaves, flowers, and natural light improve curb appeal. Some say buy when the snow is flying, sell when the flowers are blooming.
Keith Weinhold 9:32
Shortly, I want to tell you about the city with rents that are up 26% year over year, and there's no end in sight to those rent increases, either. But first, there's a significant national real estate trend. Now, a lot of times, the discussion about the rental market centers around the level of rents or the vacancy rate, and those metrics sure do matter. But what about tenant retention? That is. Renter mobility rate. How long do residents stay? Well, renter mobility is down, down, down. They are not moving around. That's the big trend. Tenants are staying longer. Renters are waiting longer to buy homes than prior generations did. I mean a lot of people are beginning to wonder if their starter home will arrive before their first social security check does? The share of renters planning to move within three years that has plunged since 2019 from 57% then down to just 37% now. This is according to a national survey from the New York Fed. 57 down to 37% that plan to move within three years. Yes, this means that even after the pandemic waned, renters plan to stay in place longer. Everyone is staying put longer, and what exactly is keeping all of those moving boxes in storage? You guessed it. Buying their own home is more difficult to afford. It's kind of like an obstacle course where the down payment is waiting at the finish line, which is a long ways away. It's like an ultra marathon. This decline in renter mobility. This is obviously good news for income property owners and landlords because vacancy and turnover are our greatest expenses. People are paying more.
Keith Weinhold 11:39
You know, it's interesting that many are staying and put because a lot of renters often pay three to 5% annual renewal increases, especially in single-family rentals. Among apartment dwellers, there are currently more move-ups than move downs. People willing to spend a little more, and part of this is because a lot of people have just simply given up, completely given up on buying a home, choosing instead to fritter away their money on DraftKings parlays, couchie predictions, meme coins, burritos whose delivery fees cost more than the burrito, and a dozen forgotten subscriptions quietly feeding on their checking account. Yeah, a lot of people have just given in. Besides falling renter mobility, there is also falling homeowner mobility. One reason it has fallen is due to the well-documented mortgage rate lock-in effect. But mobility is down among both groups, among renters and homeowners, for a few different reasons. Like I've mentioned in previous shows, America is aging, and older people move less. Remote work means people don't have to move for a job, and housing inventory remains limited. This means that there are few attractive alternatives to move into, whether you're a homeowner or a renter. Those are some reasons as to why mobility is down for both groups. And the New York Fed analysis shows that renter mobility it is especially weak among that subgroup that believes that they will never own a home. I mean, this group of people really isn't moving. They are staying in place even longer. This group that believes that they will never own a home, and this is a skew toward lower income renters for sure, but even upper income renters are staying longer. You know, I own a lot of single family rental homes myself, and I'm just thinking now, I can't even remember the last time someone's moved out. It might be over a year since anyone has moved. The average renter's perceived chance of ever owning a home that has fallen, and this is significant for investors. Okay, that percent of renters that ever hope to own a home has fallen from 52% back in 2015 down to just 35% last year. 52% down to 35% The amount of renters that think they'll ever own a home. Both single-family rental and apartment renters are staying longer. This is both types, and it's not because these renters stop wanting homes. About two-thirds say that they would prefer to own if they had the money to do so. This is substantial. The drop in American mobility rate. I mean, that part is actually decades long, and this seems to catch people off guard. A lot of people falsely believe that people are moving more often, and that's something I've touched on before. This deeply hurts.
Keith Weinhold 15:00
Certain industries like moving companies, furniture stores, and yes, real estate agents—all these groups of people have got to be wondering where did everybody go? The answer is nowhere. Apparently, they are not going anywhere. So the bottom line here, with this lack of mobility, is that renters feel locked out, owners feel locked in, and landlords feel locked up with their tenants staying longer. Although this is good news for landlords and investment property owners, you know there is one thing to be careful of amidst these longer tenant stays, and that is, well, say you buy a rental property with an existing tenant in place that's been there for a while, it's more likely then that that tenant is paying below market rent, and why would that be? Well, because generally, the longer a tenant stays, the more likely it is that the previous landlord gave them a break on the rent. Now, why does that happen? Well, landlords can get lazy about bumping up the rent, and see what's really going on is that the previous landlord, perhaps the person you bought the property from, they themselves bought the property at a much lower price years ago than you did today, and therefore their mortgage payment is lower, and therefore the lower rent was able to cover their mortgage payment. So they weren't too worried about it. But if you're buying at today's prices, well, then you cannot stand for yesterday's rent amount, and that's why it's more likely that you need to bump up the rent to market rent. Although national rent growth is pretty flat, San Francisco continues to rewrite its record book per Zumper's national rent report.San Francisco's one-bedroom rent is up 23% year-over-year to 4,180 bucks, and two-bedroom rent is up 26% to over 6K, 6,020 dollars for the median rent in a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment-the first time they've ever topped 6K there. Yes, the city continues to lead the nation in annual rent growth, and even ahead of New York City for two bedrooms. That's because this is where the growth of the AI industry has collided with a supply-constrained housing market, high demand over low supply. I mean, you might remember that San Francisco was hit especially hard by the pandemic, but its bounce back has been amazing. Even beleaguered San Francisco office buildings are filling up again amidst the AI boom. Now, the Bay Area's previous tech boom back a while ago that was led by tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. All right, that boom was largely concentrated in these sprawling suburban office parks in Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley is not in San Francisco. It is depending on just where you're going, perhaps 60 minutes south of San Francisco proper. But see, this time the city limits San Francisco finds itself as the epicenter because a lot of the newest, biggest names in tech like Anthropic and OpenAI, they are headquartered in the very same city neighborhoods that were struggling with occupancy just a few years ago, and see a big part of what's going on, and there's a lesson in this for you as when a lot of other cities built like Phoenix and Austin did, San Francisco did not, and what's interesting is that the publication, the San Francisco Standard, it reported that get this last November a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Alamo Square was advertised for $5,000 per month. That was already 30% above San Fran's median two-bedroom rent at the time, but despite that fact, so many people attended the open house that the property manager had to divide them into two touring groups. Qualified applicants were then emailed and told to submit their best offer of rent. Okay, basically an invitation to a bidding war here. One tech worker and her roommate bid $5,100. Management responded that they had reached the second round and invited them to increase their bid again, and they declined to increase their bid and they lost the apartment. Those. Same article reported that an even more extreme marina neighborhood example, the winning renter offered substantially above asking price, six months upfront rent, and twice monthly professional cleaning. What kind of prospective tenant offers their landlord professional cleaning? I've surely never had it happen. That and bidding wars are now taking place for San Francisco rentals. Could an AI surge and a lack of supply make anything like that happen in your rental market? That remains to be seen, and probably not to that extent. I've got more for you straight ahead, including the trend of money maxing. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to episode 620 of Get Rich Education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Chaley Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at RidgeLendingGroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family 266866.
Keith Weinhold 17:22
Although national rent growth is pretty flat, San Francisco continues to rewrite its record book per Zumper's national rent report. San Francisco's one-bedroom rent is up 23% year-over-year to 4,180 bucks, and two-bedroom rent is up 26% to over 6K, $6,020 for the median rent in a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment-the first time they've ever topped 6K there. Yes, the city continues to lead the nation in annual rent growth, and even ahead of New York City for two bedrooms. That's because this is where the growth of the AI industry has collided with a supply-constrained housing market, high demand over low supply. I mean, you might remember that San Francisco was hit especially hard by the pandemic, but its bounce back has been amazing. Even beleaguered San Francisco office buildings are filling up again amidst the AI boom. Now, the Bay Area's previous tech boom back a while ago that was led by tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. All right, that boom was largely concentrated in these sprawling suburban office parks in Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley is not in San Francisco. It is depending on just where you're going, perhaps 60 minutes south of San Francisco proper. But see, this time the city limits San Francisco finds itself as the epicenter because a lot of the newest, biggest names in tech like Anthropic and OpenAI, they are headquartered in the very same city neighborhoods that were struggling with occupancy just a few years ago, and see a big part of what's going on, and there's a lesson in this for you as when a lot of other cities built like Phoenix and Austin did, San Francisco did not, and what's interesting is that the publication, the San Francisco Standard, it reported that get this last November a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Alamo Square was advertised for $5,000 per month. That was already 30% above San Fran's median two-bedroom rent at the time, but despite that fact, so many people attended the open house that the property manager had to divide them into two touring groups. Qualified applicants were then emailed and told to submit their best offer of rent. Okay, basically an invitation to a bidding war here. One tech worker and her roommate bid $5,100. Management responded that they had reached the second round and invited them to increase their bid again, and they declined to increase their bid and they lost the apartment. Those. Same article reported that an even more extreme marina neighborhood example, the winning renter offered substantially above asking price, six months upfront rent, and twice monthly professional cleaning. What kind of prospective tenant offers their landlord professional cleaning? I've surely never had it happen. That and bidding wars are now taking place for San Francisco rentals. Could an AI surge and a lack of supply make anything like that happen in your rental market? That remains to be seen, and probably not to that extent. I've got more for you straight ahead, including the trend of money maxing.
Keith Weinhold 20:46
I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to episode 620 of Get Rich Education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Keith Weinhold 21:23
Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family 266866.
Robert Kiyosaki 22:26
This is our rich dad, poor dad author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and there is I respect Keith. He's a very strong, smart, bright young man.
Keith Weinhold 22:47
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. The rise of quick hit dopamine culture has definitely hit the personal finance world, and this is not a good trend for a lot of Gen Zers, who are those age 14 to 29, sports gambling is increasingly a part of what they think is financial planning. A recent survey from the wealth management platform Betterment shows that 26% of Gen Zers, more than one in four, then consider sports gambling as part of a deliberate long-term financial strategy. If you think that's bad, more than half of Gen Zers, 52% say they've rerouted funds from investment over to sports betting in the past year, and that's versus just 24% of all Americans. Yes, the rapid legalization of sports gambling means it's never been easier to bet your whole paycheck that the Mets are going to lose 100 games this season. When a prediction market or a sports book starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem, and this is congruent with the rise of dopamine culture across all of society, where we've gone from playing sports, then to watching sports, and now to gambling on sports. In the kitchen, it's where we've gone from home cooking to leaving and getting fast food, to ordering Uber Eats, it's where media has gone from film and TV to streaming shows, and now with dopamine culture, it is watching reels. It's how shopping has gone from first high street shopping, then to Amazon and now to the TikTok shop. It's how communicating with people. It's gone from handwritten letters to sending emails to Snapchats. It's how we've gone from newspapers to breaking news to rage bait. As far as what we listen to for music, this rise of dopamine culture-it used to be vinyl records, and then Spotify playlists, and now it's trending sounds.
Keith Weinhold 25:11
It's gone from finding love to casual dating to infinite swiping. How about the way we look at and share photos? It's gone from photo albums to camera rolls to Instagram stories, and how about the way we access information with this rise of dopamine culture? It's gone from libraries to Google to Chat GPT, and that brings us to money maxing. Okay, yes, here in our finance world, the rise of dopamine culture has led to this. Yes, that is apparently a word now. Money maxing-it's all one word with 2x's. It sounds like something invented by a 22-year-old who's got three credit cards, three hoodies, and one fork. Okay, but money maxing-that is one of the newest personal finance trends spreading across social media. Now, the maxing stuff in that whole suffix that first became popular through terms like looks maxing, which means trying to maximize your physical appearance, whether you're male or female, and now people are sleep maxing, health maxing, career maxing, and I guess it was just inevitable until they were money maxing. And what it really means is optimizing your financial life so that every dollar works harder for you. That could include using a high yield savings account, earning credit card points and rewards, automating your investments, negotiating bills, and eliminating wasteful spending-eh, in other words, it's just another internet reinvention of financial responsibility. I mean, your grandparents just called it being sensible.
Keith Weinhold 26:58
Now, I do like the fact that young people are talking about money. I mean, as we've covered before, financial education is desperately needed. Schools will teach you about the parts of a biological cell, but surely not how to read a mortgage statement. So you can graduate knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, while believing that a tax refund is free money from the government. So you know, directionally, money maxing is good, but see, it usually only focuses on one side of the equation. That's the problem with money maxing. It only focuses on spending less. And here at GRE we take a different approach. The old financial advice is live below your means, and GRE's philosophy is grow your means. You should only live below your means earlier in your financial life when you sort of have to and you need to form capital for investments. But grow your means so that you can have the means to do things. I mean, that is the point of financial betterment.
Keith Weinhold 28:09
Long term, financial betterment is certainly not sustainable by saving money by getting a haircut at home, only watching men's fast pitch softball at the Moose Lodge because it's free instead of going to a Major League Baseball game, saving $120 on air tickets by adding an extra layover on your trip itinerary, or a buy one get one free deal on Hillshire Farm Bacon. Now, of course, you shouldn't waste money if you're paying for six streaming services and you're only watching one. Well, cancel the others. If you carry a credit card balance at 24% surely extinguish that financial dumpster fire. But you cannot shrink your way to an extraordinary life. There is a floor beneath how little you can spend, there is no ceiling above how much value you can create for others. You can cancel your coffee, you can stop eating out, you can turn down the thermostat until your living room feels like a meat locker, but eventually there is nothing meaningful left to cut. That is the weakness in traditional money advice. It treats personal finance like a sinking ship, and it just hands you a bucket. Growing your means is building a bigger ship. The most powerful form of money maxing is not squeezing another 2% off your grocery bill. It is increasing your income. It is acquiring productive assets and creating systems that pay you repeatedly. I mean, saving 20 bucks is fine. Creating another income stream can continue for. Years. This is the difference between subtraction and multiplication. Most money-maxing advice really isn't different than that conventional advice. It's living in the world of subtraction. Cut this. Cancel that. Buy the generic cereal. Drive across town to save 12 cents per gallon. Hey, congratulations! You just spent 40 minutes of your finite life to save $2.80. Real wealth is built through multiplication. Multiply your income, multiply your skills, multiply your relationships, learn a new system, multiply the number of people you serve with rental property, and then multiply your money through productive assets. Now, this does not mean to spend recklessly. Growing means is not permission to inflate your lifestyle every single time your income rises, but it means directing more attention toward expansion than deprivation.
Keith Weinhold 30:59
Ask yourself a better question. Instead of asking how can I save another $100 this month, ask how can I create another $1,000 of monthly income. That very question activates a completely different part of your brain. Now maybe you develop a valuable skill. Maybe you negotiate your compensation. Maybe you start a business. Maybe you acquire an income property. Maybe you turn knowledge, intellectual property, or an audience into a recurring revenue stream. You start looking for leverage rather than looking for coupons and leverage, that is the real engine of what money maxing ought to be. Leverage means accomplishing more with less of your personal effort, and there sure are a lot of forms you can leverage other people's time. You can leverage systems and technology. We're going to talk about a system later here. You can leverage media where one message reaches 1000s or millions of people, and in real estate, you can leverage other people's money. You can scale. A few weeks ago, here I discussed four different types of scale. Real estate investors can get them all at the same time. If you remember, they are financial leverage, like with the five ways. There's operational leverage, there's geographic leverage, and finally replication. You use a relatively small down payment to control a much larger asset while your tenant pays you rent, that income helps cover the property's expenses and mortgage, and over time, inflation tends to lift rents and property values. While your fixed rate debt becomes easier to repay with diminished dollars, I mean that is real money maxing right there. In fact, GRE's real estate pays five ways framework might be the ultimate money maxing system. One property can produce cash flow; it can appreciate. Your tenant can gradually amortize your loan for you. You get the tax benefits, and inflation can transfer wealth from the lender to you through your fixed rate debt, five simultaneous financial benefits attached to one asset. Oh, and we're going to take that and compare that with saving 50 cents on toothpaste. Now, both things technically do improve your finances, but they don't even belong in the same zip code.
Keith Weinhold 33:41
Now, none of this means that every leveraged property is a good investment. In fact, leverage amplifies outcomes. A well-selected, properly financed property is going to accelerate your wealth creation. But a bad deal with thin reserves-hey, that can accelerate your introduction to an attorney. Money maxing still requires judgment. You want durable income, adequate liquidity, responsible underwriting, and you want to have enough reserves to withstand the inevitable surprise. Because every rental property eventually introduces you to something that is leaking, squeaking, or perhaps refusing to pay. The goal is not to optimize every dollar so aggressively that your financial life becomes fragile. And really, that is an important warning about all forms of maxing. Optimization can go too far. Someone might transfer money among five banks to chase these tiny promotional yields, and open 12 credit cards for bonus points, and then monitor every purchase with the intensity of airport security. Okay, I mean technically they're optimization. Their money, but they're also turning their life into like an unpaid accounting internship. Your money should create freedom, not become another demanding employer. Effective money maxing focuses on the big levers first. Get some big wins. Increase your earned income. Own those productive assets. Use good debt prudently. Reduce taxes legally. Protect yourself against catastrophic losses. Maintain liquidity, and then optimize the smaller expenses. Do not spend three hours clipping coupons while ignoring a poorly structured $400,000 mortgage. You do not congratulate yourself on saving $9 on lunch while leaving 50k idle in an account that earns almost nothing. So we don't obsess over credit card points while carrying a balance because paying 24% interest to earn 2% cash back is not money maxing. That is like arithmetic getting mugged in an alley. And there's also an important difference between looking rich and becoming wealthy. Social media rewards visible consumption on things like cars, watches, first-class seats, rooftop dinners, actual wealth-that's something that's often invisible. It is the rental property quietly producing income. It is the ownership stake compounding in the background. It is the tax strategy that's never going to appear in a photograph, and it is the growing gap between what you earn and what you need to live.
Keith Weinhold 36:46
The person displaying the most wealth can have the least. The person saying very little might own the building. So yes, embrace money maxing. Know where your money goes. Eliminate the waste. Negotiate recurring expenses, automate your good decisions, and make your dollar purposeful. Each dollar, but don't stop with living below your means because that is only financial defense. Growing your means is financial offense. Saving money can make you more secure. Owning productive assets-that's what can make you free. The highest form of money maxing is not becoming the world's most efficient consumer. It is making the transition from consumer to owner. Own businesses, own equities, own real estate, own assets that produce value while you sleep, travel, or spend time with the people that matter to you. Because your time is limited, and yet your appetite for generic cereal is also limited. But your ability to create value, acquire assets, and grow your means. That is far less limited. Live below your means if you must, but don't stay there. Grow your means. That is true money maxing. And the number one reason that people don't acquire wealth. Do you know what it is? It's that it simply does not occur to them that they can.
Keith Weinhold 38:24
That is what Brian Tracy said. That is so incredibly simple, and it's true. If you want a money max, you need to have a great system. Let me tell you about a system called the Seven Figure Solution. Now you've been listening to me weekly for almost 12 years here, which I'm immensely grateful for. You've been earning money, investing well, and here with the seven-figure solution, you're going to be able to finally see how it all goes together. It's about making sure that your real estate and other assets appropriately fund your retirement in a way that gives you protection against market downturns, a tax advantage pool of liquidity, the death benefit of a life insurance policy, and actually introduces you to a new form of leverage all at the same time, the liquidity is key because this is where a 401(k) or IRA limit you. Those vehicles have taxes and penalties if you want to use those funds early, and this does not.
Keith Weinhold 39:34
But the seven-figure solution-it's not just for retirees. In fact, our own in-house investment coach here, Naresh uses something like this, and he's in his 30s. It also gives you a significant tailwind during your investing career. Integrate the seven-figure solution the GRE way, where we have a conscientiousness about leverage in cash flow, and in this case, part of it is how to prove. Leverage a life insurance policy. When it's time to tap that policy's cash value, you take what is a policy loan, not a withdrawal, because you're borrowing against your cash value, and therefore you're using the funds in more than one place. That's the leverage, and then the IRS does not tax loan proceeds, and this reminds me of a billionaire borrowing against the value of their stock rather than having to sell any of those assets. And yet, this can be done tax-free. It's similar to what you can do with the seven-figure solution, even for non-billionaires, it is buy, borrow, die. This leverages an indexed universal life policy, and there is the right way to do this and the wrong way to do it. Part of the seven-figure solution is that your cash value can have an upside ceiling and loss protection on the downside. That's really something that you only care about more as you're closer to retirement. And there are some mistakes to avoid here. You don't just want to set up the seven-figure solution off of a website, and it's based on products that you might have heard of from companies like Nationwide and mass mutual. I strongly encourage you to learn more, see how it all goes together, and learn how the seven-figure solution compares to other vehicles like a Roth IRA, 401k, and even a 721 and 1031 exchange. This is very much about you being able to picture your future, you've been building your real estate portfolio either from your investment coach or on your own. This is how the puzzle pieces finally are all going to go together. I am cordially inviting you to join us for a special live event, the Seven Figure Solution. It is co-hosted by our own GRE investment coach Naresh and Haven Bridges Jared, who you heard from on the show with me last week. By attending live from the comfort of your own home or from anywhere, you can have your questions answered in real time. It is this Thursday, the 27th, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.
Keith Weinhold 42:23
Most people spend decades building wealth, and then they lose far too much of it because the retirement pieces were never designed to work with each other. So you're going to see how real estate, taxes, insurance, and retirement income can fit into one coordinated strategy, helping you grow and protect your wealth, access capital without immediately selling your assets, and potentially avoid losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxes unnecessarily. So it's not just another collection of disconnected financial tips. Really, it's your opportunity to finally see the entire retirement picture and understand what might be missing from yours. It's complimentary to attend. The longer you wait, the fewer options you could have. Decisions made today can affect your wealth for decades. Don't wait until retirement day to discover that your plan had expensive holes in it. There are some moving pieces here, so it's especially helpful that you attend this one live, and that way you can have any questions answered in real time, so that you really understand. And you might have been one of thousands of listeners that have attended our property webinars before, and they are important to building your portfolio. But this one could very well be more important in seeing your big picture, seeing your retirement, and seeing that your heirs aren't left with a giant tax bill too. You can reserve your seat now for the seven-figure solution at grewebinars.com again. That's grewebinars.com. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 2 44:14
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 44:42
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. getricheducation.com.
Join Mid South Home Buyers' one-time, free live webinar featuring Keith Weinhold on September 30 at GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth to learn how Memphis' economic expansion could create new real estate investment opportunities, and have your questions answered in real time.
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. The world is about to end again. It's the economic disaster that never arrives. I'll break it down. Then you've been earning money and investing well all these years. How does it all go together? It can culminate in the seven-figure solution, it's about seeing your future today on Get Rich Education. What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. And September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Homebuyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6,000 homes under management, for a free live webinar, the likes of which I've never done before, we're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms Mid South has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth again that september 30. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.
Speaker 1 1:39
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 1:55
Welcome to GRE from Kankakee, Illinois, to Cherokee, Iowa, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold. This is Get Recid Education, and the world is about to end. Even if you survive, your portfolio surely won't. Oh, jeez. At least that's the impression you get from mass media and what I'll call the Doom Scroll Industrial Complex. Fear creates urgency. Urgency attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs attract ad dollars. And I guess that using a slogan like "everything will probably be fine" well, that's never been a great ratings strategy. Now, can what has happened since 2020. Just this cheery little sequence: COVID, then Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, tariffs, and then the war in Iran. All that just since 2020. I mean, that right there sounds less like an economic timeline and more like a movie plot, or that the world is repeatedly spinning the wheel of misfortune. Yet after all of that, what is the result? Both stocks and residential real estate are near all-time highs. Apparently, the apocalypse has been postponed yet again-at least economically speaking. Now let's zoom out and break down these threats and a few more, all just since 2020, because 2020 is the year where, of course, you had the COVID-19 pandemic, economic shutdowns, the fastest major stock bear market in history, supply chain breakdown. You saw empty shelves, and there was unprecedented government intervention from the Paycheck Protection Program to stimulus checks to mortgage loan forbearance. Then, in 2021 and 2022, you had post-COVID inflation and supply shortages. Now, this was more of a result, not strictly geopolitical, but a major investment threat, and that led to aggressive interest rate hikes. From 2022 to the present, you have Russia's invasion of Ukraine, energy and food shocks came from that, sanctions, instability over in Europe, and really a heightened nuclear risk in 2023. You had the U.S. regional banking crisis. Remember SVB, yes, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic. They raised fears of a financial contagion that would spread like fat. Than a secret in a small town, it actually made me buy some gold. From 2023 to the present, you had the Israel-Hamas war and this broad Middle East instability, Hezbollah attacks, Houthi attacks, Red Sea shipping disruptions. It's almost like a geopolitical group project. And then from 2025 to the present, you have renewed U.S. tariffs and a global trade war, and this year you have the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz disruption. That is the biggest current geopolitical investment threat because it combines all of these things: war, oil disruption, inflation, higher interest rates, and a recession risk. So it's a lot like this particularly unpleasant smoothie that's been blended together.
Keith Weinhold 5:55
All right. Well, all of that-that is just an absurd amount of uncertainty and disruption only since 2020, and though major markets are at all-time highs in the face of this, let's acknowledge that some were hurt here, like apartment building owners vulnerable to interest rate resets, and certain commercial sectors like office. Even worse, let's be sensitive to the fact that COVID in wars have resulted in a real loss of life. GRE's enduring strategy of primarily owning long-term residential rentals with fixed-rate debt has been comparatively really resilient. In fact, these calamities-they probably made you better off from the inflation that it has spurred. More people work from home. Well, that means that they're consuming our product while higher inflation debased our debt and jacked up our property values and our rents. And you know somehow every. single generation thinks that their collection of crises is uniquely terrifying, and it is not. And what do I mean by this? Well, in the 1980s, people feared war with the Soviet Union, the Cold War. A global population explosion so bad that millions or billions of people would surely die from hunger. You had the AIDS crisis. You had a hole in the ozone layer. Well, all those things. Virtually zero investors make decisions based on that stuff: an imminent Soviet attack or mass starvation from overpopulation. There is one thing that is 100% certain here, and that is that more shocks are coming. In case you don't want to sleep well, you can get worked up over the certainty of future calamities, artificial intelligence is making cyber attacks faster and more scalable. AI has even created entirely novel viruses. A confrontation between China and Taiwan that could create risk in the semiconductor space.
Keith Weinhold 8:18
A blockade that might disrupt the world's advanced chip supply, creating more inflation and more uncertainty. Here is what's changed, though, for what investors care about. You know what has changed with today's set of calamities versus those of the 1980s and earlier, because there is something, and it's a big deal for investors. Here's what's changed: recent history shows that the government does more to intervene during disasters, stimulus checks, liquidity programs where they're printing trillions, bailouts, pushing interest rates down to almost zero, quantitative easing. How about a foreclosure moratorium? Anything you know during COVID, it was a lot of these things, and it was the CARES Act, and it was a student loan payment pause. I mean, the Federal Reserve even set up emergency credit facilities. We now know that when the economic building catches fire, policymakers they rarely stand around admiring the flames. They just flood the place with currency. So the best investors they keep prudently building real estate portfolios in the face of risk, not the absence of risk, because the latter does not exist. This incessant government intervention, whether you agree with it or not, it gives you more safety cushions the next time that things fall apart. That's why what appears risk. Is still risky, but less so. So there is more incentive to take on prudent risk than I've ever seen. You know, no politician wants America to fall apart under their watch. So increasingly, they'll just paper over the problem by printing, printing, printing, and then, therefore, the resultant inflation, the consequence of this, that can be dealt with under the next president's watch, not theirs. In fact, future calamities they almost make you want to own scarce real assets that benefit from inflation, not a hedge, a benefit. Trying to time every war, election, banking crisis, tariff announcement, virus, and Fed decision. Trying to time all of those things-that is usually ineffective. You either own more assets, or you get left behind in everything that's happened since 2020. That just underscores this. In fact, Berkshire Hathaway, the closely watched company that Warren Buffett ran for a long time, but he still has influence in.
Keith Weinhold 11:16
You know, they recently began moving out of cash and into assets, they ended their long net selling stretch. In fact, in the latest quarter ended, they've now done the most buying that they've done since early 2022. They have jumped back in the game. It appears that Berkshire Hathaway got tired of sitting on the sidelines and seeing others make gains, and they're pretty bullish on housing too. They bought a home builder. The bottom line here is that shocks are going to keep arriving, and yet productive assets and well-financed residential real estate has repeatedly survived them and just continued appreciating. Don't wait for a risk-free world because you'll wait forever. When you evaluate all these calamities, just since 2020, again, COVID, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, tariffs, and war in Iran, and then you realize that both real estate and stocks are near all-time highs anyway, and the government keeps backstopping asset owners like never before. This is just a fresh angle on how much better off you are when you prudently own more inflation-benefiting assets sooner. I want to tell you about something called the seven-figure solution. You've been here listening to me weekly since 2014. You've been earning money. You've been investing well, and now you're going to see how it all goes together. It's about making sure that your real estate and your other assets appropriately fund your retirement in a way that gives you protection against market downturns, a tax advantage pool of liquidity, the death benefit of a life insurance policy, and actually introduces you to a new form of leverage all at the same time. Now the liquidity here is key because this is where a 401(k) or IRA limit you, they have taxes and penalties if you want to use those funds early. This doesn't, but the seven-figure solution-it's not just for retirees. In fact, our own in-house investment coach Narayish uses something like this, and he is in his 30s. Let's discuss it, and then you'll see where I have an invitation for you, where you can get involved. I'd like to welcome in a guest we last had on the show a few years ago.
Keith Weinhold 13:54
He's a frequent guest on popular shows, including our friends over at the Real Estate Guys Radio Show, and this guest has also been a terrestrial radio show host himself. He's a long-time real estate educator and an active investor, just like you and I. So he speaks from experience and not a textbook. He's the creator of what we'll discuss today, called the Seven Figure Solution. Welcome back to the show, Jared Garfield.
Jared Garfield 14:21
Hey, it's great to be with you again. Thanks for having me.
Keith Weinhold 14:25
It's so good. Now you're with the Haven Bridge Group, and you help people, especially real estate investors, with what's called the seven-figure solution. Tell us about it.
Jared Garfield 14:37
it. Well, Haven Bridge, we get the name for that because people are really looking for a haven of safety, and the bridge is kind of what crosses the gaps that could kind of destroy your wealth, and it's the path to get there. So we want to take people on a path to safety, and the seven-figure solution is the idea that if you're going to be drawing out even 4% per year to not outlive your money, because people are living now. To 8590, 95 years old, and so that means you could have 35 years in retirement. And with inflation and different things like that, you really have to have a lot bigger nest egg than what most people realize. So a seven-figure solution is how to get to more than a million dollars liquid that you can draw on in a tax advantaged manner for the rest of your life, while also having living benefits. And we pull real estate in with it because we want people to have 10 or 15 or 20 rental properties by the time they retired. That they 1031 exchange regularly, so that they're always keeping tax advantages. So that even in retirement you have strong tax advantages, and ultimately we think that when you're 65 or 70, you might want to go from 30 single-family houses to 1031 exchange into one institutional asset that's a little bit less management intensive.
Keith Weinhold 15:57
Okay, so this is a tax advantage vehicle that real estate investors can use during their investing career, and those tax advantages then really convert into something that you can use in retirement as well.
Jared Garfield 16:11
Yes, what it does is it's a vehicle that instead of saving the money from your cash flow from your rental properties in the bank, we say, well, why wouldn't you rather invest in something where it grows tax-free, number one, and then number two, you don't have the penalties like you would with a 401k, where you get taxed and you get penalized 10% if you pull it out. It's liquid, usually about 80 to 90% liquid, so you can pull from it whenever you like, and you can use it for down payments to grow your real estate portfolio. But you can earn sometimes between five and even seven or 8% in a tax advantaged manner where you're not taxed on it, but you're earning a much higher return than if you put the cash flow into a bank.
Keith Weinhold 16:51
All right, so you're building this tax advantage pool of capital that grows over time, and this is important to have some liquidity. You know, Jared, I've often talked to our audience, about three to 5% of your portfolio value ought to be kept liquid. Maybe with a vehicle like this, you would want to put in more of that because real estate investors we have expenses, so you have this liquidity to cover things like vacancies and major repairs, or perhaps you could even use this account for future down payments on additional investment properties. Is that how it's utilized?
Jared Garfield 17:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I get it partially this way because in my early 20s, I got up to where I had about six rentals, and at the time, I also owned a real estate brokerage, and I was doing very well. I was making a six-figure income and things. And what happened is, I back when a
Keith Weinhold 17:41
six-figure income was a big deal.
Jared Garfield 17:43
Yeah, back in the early 2000s, it was a little bit better money. But the funny thing was, I had four rental properties that all went vacant at the same exact time, and so now all of a sudden, I was paying like 4500 bucks a month in mortgages, not counting the house I lived in, but I had to cover four mortgages on four of my rental properties all at the same time, and I hadn't saved the cash flow, so I didn't have a huge emergency fund. All my liquid capital went into down payments and into renovation money to rehab the properties. Okay, and so it put me in a real bind, and I was out driving a Volvo S80 around throwing two paper routes in the mornings, and then going to my real estate brokerage after my paper routes to cover those rental properties. And so this was basically meant as a way to say, okay, this is a way that I have the liquidity. I'm getting a higher return, but now my tenants are not only buying me the houses, but they're also giving me a couple million dollars in life insurance, and they're wrapping my investment component or the cash value of that, the cash value part of the policy. They're wrapping that in a way that it grows tax-free, so it just accomplishes a lot of things. But the other thing that's a beautiful thing about it is there's a lot of things that we call living benefits.
Keith Weinhold 19:02
All right, so you have the living benefits and the tax advantages, and I know how you have pointed out that this can save an investor 10s of 1000s of dollars in taxes per year and hundreds of 1000s or more over time. Can you tell us more about that?
Jared Garfield 19:20
Yeah, because what happens is the money that goes in is growing tax-free, so you don't get taxed on any of the growth. But what we really like about it is, let's say that you're cash-flowing $2,000 a month off your rental properties, and you're putting 2000 a month into this policy. Usually, after the first year, if you're max funding, 80 to 90% of that's liquid. So if you've got 24,000 sitting in there, you've got access to 89 to 90% of the money. So it's pretty liquid. But what happens is over a 20 or 30 year period, that money could turn into three or 400,000 a year that you can pull out in the form of policy loans. And by doing that, it's not taxed. And you can pull that out throughout your retirement tax-free. So if you were paying 25% in taxes and you're pulling out 200 grand a year, that's $50,000 a year in retirement that you're saving in taxes. But that could be over a 20 or 30-year period. So over 20 years, that 50,000 could end up being a lot of money. I mean, 500,000 over 10 years, a million over 20, and so that means you don't have to accumulate as much. But a lot of our investors love it because they'll save it up with discipline, and then that way it's there if the furnace blows. So it makes your real estate safer, but it also becomes your down payment funds to expand your portfolio.
Keith Weinhold 20:40
Okay, the seven-figure solution is the vehicle that we're talking about here, and what part of the IRS code, just briefly, is it that gives this tax advantage?
Jared Garfield 20:51
It's Internal Revenue Code Section 79 that allows it to grow tax-free. In the 1980 s, doctors and a lot of very wealthy people were using this to the point that IRS changed the laws. They went and sued the insurance companies because doctors would go in and dump $2 million in, and they would buy a $2 million life insurance policy. So they were self-insured, which meant that they didn't have any cost of mortality on it. So they basically got all the benefits of the tax-free growth and the tax-free pullout. And the IRS said, "Wait a minute! We think you're doing tax evasion. So what they did is they came around and they said, "We're not going to let you use this loophole anymore for the very wealthiest people to have this. So they came to a compromise, and the compromise was that if you wanted to put in 2 million, you had to maintain a corridor where there had to be a little bit higher amount of life insurance. So you might have to buy a $2.3 million policy, but then you could still dump, say, $2 million in and have all the tax advantages. It's a strategy that's been used for over 100 years by families like the Rockefellers and the Hunts and J.P. Morgan. The very wealthiest families have always used these strategies to grow and protect their wealth.
Keith Weinhold 21:59
Okay, so it's a part of the tax code that allows cash value to accumulate within and be withdrawn from a life insurance policy tax-free.
Jared Garfield 22:11
Correct, and it gives you living benefits, which I alluded to a minute ago. And the living benefits are if if you end up having to go through things like long-term care, disability, if you can't perform, you know certain functions for a certain period of time, chronic illness, critical illness, terminal illness. If any of those things happen to you, you can borrow against the policy and have access to money during those things that would normally decimate your wealth, because you can actually access the death benefit in advance.
Keith Weinhold 22:42
Now I know a little about the six risks. Tell us about that.
Jared Garfield 22:47
Well, Keith, there are six risks that all investors face regularly. The first one is inflation erosion, and that means that your purchasing power often ends up leaking out of your balance. And the balance might look fine, but inflation can eat away at it. So even if you've raised a lot of money, if inflation means that you can buy half as much five or 10 years from now, then you know your wealth isn't as big as you thought. The second is the volatility setback, and that's sequence of return risk. That means that if you retire on a bad year where things really bad, stock market drops, you could end up using your money at a time where it really weakens your wealth because it may have dropped by 50% So if you had a million, now you have a half a million, and you're spending 100,000 a year. At the end of year one, you might only have 400,000 left. So sequence of of return risks from volatility setback, tax drain. That's just the compounding cost of an uncoordinated tax picture can really be a problem, and then the next one is liquidity. If you don't have liquidity and you've locked up all your money and you can't access it until you're 59 and a half without significant taxation and 10% penalties, the liquidity lock is a problem. There's the longevity paradox. What happens if you outlive your money, you know. So living longer is a benefit, but it exposes you to where you might not have enough money to live on in your latter years. The last two are care avalanche, and that is if an unexpected health event happens at the wrong time, it could really destroy your wealth because medical costs have spiraled out of control, and then the last one is the line to land, and that's only one of the six that's really about growth.
Keith Weinhold 24:28
Right, only one of the six of those was about growth. I can't stand the longevity paradox. Yeah, we think we all want to live a long time, but then it's more difficult to fund living a long time, and if you outlive everybody, nobody shows up at your funeral either. The longevity paradox-one of the six risks that the seven-figure solution can really help you with. Now, tell us more about funding it, so you can get a good cash value balance in. There, I know that one way you do it is actually with short-term rentals instead of a paycheck.
Jared Garfield 25:06
We love short-term rentals, especially for our highest net worth clients, because the reason is is the bonus depreciation of the big beautiful bill. Oh, right! You could take up to like 150 or even $200,000 in year one, they take that depreciation that they used to spread out over a whole lot of years, and they make it to where if you get with your CPA and you analyze your short-term rental, you could potentially take all of the furnishings, all of the artwork, all of the dishes and things that are in the property. Sometimes they'll let you take components like the appliances, the air conditioning unit, the furnace, and they'll let you take it all in year one instead of having to line item it and spread it out over you know 27 and a half years. So what this means is, if you have a short term rental, then you you might get like 150 to 200,000 tax break in the first year on the right property, but it's better than that because instead of having to have like 750 hours to hit full-time real estate professional status, it cuts the hours that you have to have significantly down. I think it's more like 150 hours or something like that, or 300. It's like half the hours, and so you can hit the benefits of taking unlimited passive loss much easier if you have a couple of short-term rentals.
Keith Weinhold 26:24
You're listening to Get Rich Education. We're talking with Jared Garfield about the seven-figure solution, something that takes some time to understand, but it can give you a tax-advantaged pool of capital that grows over time, and it also creates this overall tailwind, not just during your investor life, but then it provides tax advantaged retirement income at the same time. More on this when we come back. You're listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group and MLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at ridgelendinggroup.com, that's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Keith Weinhold 27:25
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Speaker 2 28:28
Real Wealth Network's Kathy Betke, and you are listening to the Always Valuable Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold.
Keith Weinhold 28:46
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. We're talking about the seven-figure solution with Jared Garfield. Something that can be a particular benefit to real estate investors both during your investing career and then once you're in retirement as well, and this can take the form of either an indexed universal life policy or a whole life policy. There are a lot of wrong ways to do this and wrong things to get into. We're talking about the right way. Part of that is funding it as best you can. Can you tell us more about that?
Jared Garfield 29:20
Well, there's a lot of different ways to fund it. A lot of our clients will come in. We have some people who will use rollovers if they're nearing the end of retirement. Some people will roll over a 401k into a cash value life insurance policy because they can do it over a five or seven year period, and they pay the taxes when they roll it over, so their taxes go up a little bit for five or seven years of retirement, but then what happens is that means that during their retirement they're not taxed on the income all the way through retirement, so that can save really significantly. But a lot of our clients will do a flip and dump 40 or 50,000 a year in by just saying I'm going to do one flip a year and use that to. Fund the whole thing, or they'll take the cash flow and dump the cash flow into here instead of the bank, just so that they get the living benefits and they get the much higher return with still 80 to 90% liquidity. So could be cash flow from rentals, could be money from a flip, or sometimes some of these short-term rentals can make 20 to $30,000 a year, and if you get $100,000 tax break, you have more money that's not going to Uncle Sam, and then because that's your discretionary income now, because of the tax break, you could use that money to for down payments to grow your portfolio or to do a flip.
Keith Weinhold 30:35
Now, Jared, I sort of think of the cash value that you're accumulating in this policy as safe money that grows at a slow to moderate steady rate, but if it rarely or ever loses value, can you tell us more about that and the rate of return expected in the policy?
Jared Garfield 30:52
Yeah, absolutely. With the IULs, it's going to depend a little bit upon the carriers and stuff like that, and whether you go with a mutual company and stuff like that. It can vary, but a lot of times people are going with things that are what we call indexed. So you can actually index it to the S and p5 100 if you think that we're going to have a bull market and the market's going to really go up strongly. You can index it to the market, and sometimes they'll have a participation rate where they'll say, "Okay, you can participate up to 12% So if the stock market does 17% the most you can make is 12% So you're giving up a little bit of upside, but that's still not nothing. I mean, that's not three or 4% You can still make you know 10 or 12% that year, but you're giving up the part above the participation rate. And the reason that you do that is if the market tanks and drops by 30 or 40% The worst you can do is 0% return. Zero is my hero because you didn't lose anything. So if you had a half a million sitting there, you don't go down to 250 and then wait eight years to get back to break even. Instead, you're still at half a million. And if the market goes up next year by 20% and you had a 10% cap. Then your half a million, you know, is now at 550,000. When everybody else, if it went up by 10% they're at half the amount that they had.
Keith Weinhold 32:13
You have a story or example of how you've helped somebody with this, because I know a lot of investors that are passionate about utilizing the cash value inside an insurance policy tell us.
Jared Garfield 32:28
Well, I've got one friend who's a developer, and he did like a $5 million policy. And every time he flip a subdivision or flip a house, and let's back
Keith Weinhold 32:36
up. Does a $5 million policy mean that's the death benefit?
Jared Garfield 32:40
Yeah, that's the death benefit. Thanks for catching that. That's the death benefit, but that also has a correlation to how much money you can dump into it. So if you have a $5 million policy, you can dump a lot more money in for the tax free growth. And the quicker you hit that death benefit amount, at that point you're self-insured, and so at that point you really don't have cost of insurance on administering the policy hardly at all, and so at that point, when you're what we call self-insured, the return on the investment becomes a lot better. But this particular developer was able to use this policy because he had so much cash value in, and if he sold a house, he'd take 40,000. If he sold 10 a year, he might take you know 400,000 and dump it into this policy, and so it made him bankable. And he was able to use the money to go out and do new subdivision developments because the bank would actually use the policy as the collateral to be able to give him loans at much lower interest rates.
Keith Weinhold 33:38
That's valuable. Tell us about that. I don't want to use the wrong words here, but then effectively with this example, are you borrowing against the funds in the policy? So therefore, you can get those dollars working for you somewhere else, all while simultaneously the cash value continues to compound and grow. Sort of another form of leverage.
Jared Garfield 34:01
Correct. What they basically do is they basically freeze part of the amount and say, okay, we're using this as the collateral and stuff like that to be able to do the loan. But if it grows and and makes 7% you're still making the money off of the money that's sitting in there. It's just collateralized as part of the loan. And some people will even use it to like go buy a car, like instead of buying a car and going getting a bank loan and paying 7% to the bank, they might borrow money out, go pay cash for the car from the life insurance policy loan, and pay 2% instead of 7% But they're paying it to themselves, and as long as they're paying the interest to themselves, if the money that they borrow out could potentially still earn the same money and earn 7% even though you had borrowed out. So it's doing two things for you at the same time, as long as you're paying that loan interest. But and that depends on the option that you take when you do your loan.
Keith Weinhold 34:54
We love leverage around here. Leverage trumps compound interest. In so many ways. Oh, I'm really glad that you told us some more about that using the funds in more than one way at the same time. Tell us more about what it costs for the investor, the costs of setting this up, and then what some of those trade-offs are, Jared.
Jared Garfield 35:18
Well, that really depends on the individual. I mean, everybody has to sit down and be able to decide what is acceptable for them. You know, a lot of times people will want to max fund the 401k that they're doing at least just to the amount that's matched. But then after that, this could be a great place instead of putting a whole bunch more money into a 401k. Some people will elect to say, "I'm going to put the matching portion into my 401k, but then I'm going to take my cash flow from my real estate and money that I could have contributed to other alternatives and put it into this because I want the liquidity. I want to be able to leverage this money and pull it out without any restrictions. That as long as I can pull out 80 to 90 percent, I could go buy a car wash, or I could invest in a business, or I could, you know, do whatever I wanted to. I could loan it to my kids for their college and make them pay me loans back to my policy. There gives you a lot of flexibility to do it. But the thing that we love about it is we'll do what's called an illustration, and it may end up if you start at the right time, it could be a six-figure passive income stream at retirement, and then if you have the real estate, because this helped you grow your portfolio, where without doing the strategy, you might have ended up with say 10 properties. We might be able to get you to 20 or 30 properties working together as a team with your real estate coaches and stuff like that. Then we can potentially grow your real estate portfolio, and what we want to do is 1031 exchange every seven to eight years. I don't believe in holding properties for 30 years.
Jared Garfield 36:47
I believe in exchanging them every seven to eight years because when the tax benefits have been used up, if you exchange to twice the size portfolio, you have better appreciation on a portfolio worth twice as much. But that new value, you still get the depreciation advantages, where the old value that was half, you know, the depreciation is used up. So you're you're getting new depreciation on the higher value assets, and then our goal would be that by the time you don't want to be involved in managing the property managers, that at some point you're going to have a 200 unit apartment complex with on-site management, and at that point you don't have any financial worries really because you're 1031 exchanging into those apartment complexes, but you have so much equity that you're still maintaining depreciation during your retirement years. When most people who have lesser plans don't have the tax advantages,
Keith Weinhold 37:41
I love that you said so much of that, and to you, the listener, Jared is licensed to do this, and our own in-house investment coach. You mentioned coaching. Naresh has the proper licensing as well to holistically help integrate this into your investor life. And for example, yes, we are rarely of the mindset that you would hold a property for all 30 years because after seven to 10 years, your leverage ratio gets worn down, and then additionally, if you're buying turnkey properties, oftentimes that's when capex expenditures start to enter into the picture. So yes, oftentimes we do these seven to 10 year holds.
Jared Garfield 38:23
I love that. Yeah, that's a really really good strategy, and and it always makes it to where you can grow so much bigger portfolio by not being taxed through that exchange. And you know, believe it or not, there's actually even ways when you have extra cash boot, they do allow if you notify them in advance. Sometimes you can take some of the cash boot on the exchange and roll it into some of the products that we utilize.
Keith Weinhold 38:47
For more specifics, I know you said it's based on one's individual situation, but how much does it cost to set up a policy? And then, are there any ongoing maintenance fees? Can you give us more specifics there?
Jared Garfield 38:59
So, there's small fees to administer the policy because you have people who are trading and doing different things and working within the policy for the funds. But usually, you can set policies up as low as 100 or even $200 a month. We don't usually recommend that because you want to max fund it. Usually, when you're doing these strategies, if you're just doing $100 or $200 a month, you're basically buying life insurance, but you're missing a lot of the benefits because what you want to do is to be able to max fund it. So what we like people to do is get as minimum life insurance. That's not in our advantage because we get paid based on the premium of the amount of life insurance you get. But you get the smallest amount of life insurance for the amount that you can max fund. I would much rather have somebody get a $500 a month policy that, let's say, they could put you know a thousanmd a month in or something like that, than to have somebody get $1,000 a month policy where they're paying a thousand a month but they can't max fund it because by max funding it you're maximizing the growth component of the cash. Value, and so it depends on how much you want. But you can go anywhere from $100 or $200 a month to we have clients that will dump $20,000 a month in because they really want to shield as much money as they can from tax growth.
Keith Weinhold 40:15
Tell us more about who the seven-figure solution is for and who it's not for.
Jared Garfield 40:20
Well, if you're living month to month and you don't have discretionary income, it's probably not a good solution. In that situation, you probably want to get term insurance and just make sure that you cover catastrophic things. But if you've got discretionary income and you've got an extra four to $500 a month that you could use to max fund, we figure most people need life insurance anyway, and the way that we teach it, when you mix it with real estate, rather than pulling it from your monthly budget, doesn't it make a lot more sense to let your tenants buy the houses for you, but also pay for a half a million or a million dollar life insurance policy for you, where the tenants are covering the savings for anything that happens at the property with capex or vacancy or damage, and at the same time covering life insurance and potentially a six-figure passive income that's tax advantaged at retirement. So I pull the money out from other assets and let the assets cover this asset.
Keith Weinhold 41:18
Oh well, Jared, this has been great. Before I ask you if you have any last things to tell the audience about the seven-figure solution, I invite you, the audience, to join us. It's going to be Jared and our own in-house investment coach, Nareesh, bringing you a live online event that you can join from the comfort of your own home next Thursday, the 27th at 8 PM Eastern. You can register now; it's free at grewebinars.com because there are a lot of moving parts, and it does take some time to wrap your head around this, benefiting from the cash value of an insurance policy. And this way you can have a Q and A, and you can get answers in real time at this event. It's called the Seven Figure Solution: Build wealth, reduce risk, and create tax advantage retirement income through real estate. Again, it is next Thursday, the 27th at 8p.m. Eastern, you probably have generated some questions inside your head while you're listening to this, and you can sure have them answered there as you're going to learn a whole lot more about it next Thursday. This could help a lot of people. Jared, do you have any last thoughts?
Jared Garfield 42:38
I think the only thing is that we like to work with the team. We like to work with your CPA. We like to work with your real estate investment coach. I used to be a coach and trainer for Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, and he always talked about power teams. And so we want to be able to be a part of your power team and work with your other advisors to help you implement something. We're not here to give you tax advice. We want you to be able to work with your investment advisors and your CPAs, and just be a part of the team. But I would point out that over my career, I've owned hundreds and hundreds of single-family cash flow rentals, duplexes, fourplexes, apartment complexes. I've done some land development, and I implement these strategies myself. I had 17 Airbnbs, and so these are the strategies that I implemented as a full-time real estate professional. I felt like that this strategy of having a seven-figure solution could help you to avoid some of the pitfalls that I experienced in my 20s.
Keith Weinhold 43:32
So much all comes together for one pretty comprehensive solution. It's the intersection of growing your portfolio, getting tax advantages and having the death benefits of insurance and more all coming together next Thursday, so that you can learn more. Jared, it's been great having you back on the show.
Jared Garfield 43:52
Thanks, Keith. Always glad to join you.
Keith Weinhold 44:00
Integrate the seven-figure solution the GRE way, where we have this conscientiousness about leverage and cash flow. In this case, it's how to prudently leverage a life insurance policy. When it's time to tap your cash value, you take what is a policy loan, not a withdrawal, because you're borrowing against your cash value, hence using the funds in more than one place, and the IRS does not tax loan proceeds. This reminds me of a billionaire and how they borrow against the value of their stock. That way, they don't have to sell their assets. This is similar to what you can do with this. Another thing is that you know real estate investors are not used to a volatile ride because our asset values stay stable. You heard Jared mention the acronym IUL there. That's an indexed universal life policy. It's a real benefit. That says you tie yours to the S and P five hundred. Well, that index was down 18% in 2022, and that your cash value can have an upside ceiling and loss protection on the downside-an option that you'll care more about as you get toward retirement. In 2008, the S&P was down 37% so the math is cruel on value losses. In fact, it's even worse than it sounds because if you're down 30%, then you need a 43% gain just to get back to even. That is just math.
Keith Weinhold 45:39
There are some mistakes to avoid here, and you don't just want to set up your seven-figure solution off of a website. And it is based on products that you might have heard of from companies like Nationwide and Mass Mutual. I strongly encourage you learn more, see how it all goes together, learn how the seven-figure solution compares to other vehicles like a Roth IRA, 401k, 721 exchange, and 1031 exchange. This is very much about seeing your future. You've been listening to me here every week for almost 12 years, earning money from your day job, building your real estate portfolio, either from our investment coaching or on your own. This is how it all goes together. Next week with Jared and GRE investment coach Naresh. By attending live, you can have your questions answered in real time. One last time, you can sign up for the event for next Thursday, the 27th at 8 PM. Eastern, 5 PM. Pacific. Learn about something that's potentially really valuable to you: the seven-figure solution at grewebinars.com. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 2 46:59
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 47:26
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building, getricheducation.com
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. When I talk to a 25-year-old, it's an epiphany. When I tell them that they need this one thing that they're lacking, then some fascinating takeaways about the 93% inflation we've experienced in the past 25 years, and what you can do about it today on Get Rich Education. What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. In September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Homebuyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6000 homes under management, for a free live webinar the likes of which I've never done before. We're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms Mid South has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth again, that's September 30th. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.
Speaker 1 1:33
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 1:49
Welcome to GRE from Livonia, Michigan, to Laconia, New Hampshire, and across 188 nations worldwide. You are listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, heading up this slackjaw operation for another wealth-building week. But at least I'm just a slackjaw. If this slackjaw gets lockjaw, it would probably end the show. Now I've got to tell you, when I meet a 25-year-old, I soon tend to learn about their job because it takes a lot of their time, even if I don't ask them about it, and I find out that a 25-year-old is usually an employee of some sort. They're working for somebody else, depending on our conversational flow. I ask that person this question: Have you considered adding scale to your life? And they usually don't know what I mean. I ask that question because, sadly, today it's less common to live an economically vibrant life if you have a quote normal job like a teacher, engineer, retail manager, app developer, or other normal jobs like a firefighter, truck driver, physical therapist, or social media manager, that is not going to lead to an economically vibrant life with options and freedom. I mean, you used to be able to raise a family of four in New York City. That opportunity is just gone for anyone under a certain age. Well, what about say doctors, corporate executives, and attorneys, including some people that might be older than 25. I mean, professions like this can still pay exceptionally well. But even white-collar careers now have AI breathing down their necks. AI is drafting briefs, reading scans, and virtually attending meetings without pretending to enjoy them. Okay, well, what about the outcome for a 25-year-old that's gone along with the somewhat more nascent trend of rising AI sheltered trades like plumbing, electrical, HVAC, welding, carpentry, equipment repair, and these other types of jobs where ChatGPT can't crawl beneath your sink. Look, here's the thing: it doesn't matter whether you wear scrubs, a suit, or a tool belt. Employment has one stubborn limitation: even if you grind hard, even if your body holds up, even if promotions help you climb to the top of the corporate ladder, when you stop working, the income stops. That's the big problem, and yet people keep designing their life this way, employees lack scale. Now, what is scale? Scale is your ability to increase your wealth or income without increasing your personal time and effort at the same rate. Now, employees can find just a little scale. 401k contributions can compound for decades, sometimes with an employer match. Some employees receive stock compensation or bonuses, but employees generally sell one unit at a time. That unit is an hour. They're selling their hours for dollars, and here scale is limited, if not impossible. Real estate investors can stack several forms of scale simultaneously, and remarkably, doing it takes zero certification, zero qualification, no license, and no permission slip from the dean.
Keith Weinhold 6:05
The first way real estate investors have scale is through something that you already know so well: real estate pays five ways, leverage appreciation, 10 funded income, loan amortization, tax benefits on the entire asset, and inflation profiting on the bank's loan. Secondly, as a real estate investor, you have scale through operational leverage. Property managers, leasing agents, contractors, lenders, insurers, and software all allow just one investor, you, to control multiple properties. You don't personally collect every rent payment or replace every water heater. I mean, sheesh, that could be a plumbing career with less sleep. And this is all tenant funded. Thirdly, real estate investors have geographic leverage. An individual investor living in Los Angeles can own property in Atlanta, Tulsa, Cleveland, and Belize. Physical location does not limit where your capital works. Your body can only work in one city. Your capital can work the night shift in five. The fourth way real estate investors have scale is with replication. Once you learn how to buy and own one suitable rental, the process can be repeated. You buy, stabilize, finance, rent, and repeat. See, the first property is the hardest, and then your second property does not require learning an entirely new profession. It can be replicated. To review what you've learned so far, those are four dimensions where real estate investors achieve scale through real estate pays five ways: operational leverage, geographic leverage, and replication. Here's the important distinction: employees often mistake earning more with achieving scale.
Keith Weinhold 8:16
A surgeon making $900,000 a year earns a nice income, but see that surgeon has limited scale if the income stops when the surgeon stops working. But an investor earning just $150,000 from a portfolio possesses more scale because dozens of tenants, properties, loans, and operating systems continue functioning without your one-for-one labor. That's the distinction. That's why the $150K investor might or might not be living a better life than the 900K surgeon now, but they are set up to live a better life than the surgeon in the future. Now, your employer, the person who hires you, has scale with their many employees. But if you're an employee, you probably don't have scale. You cannot save your way to scale either. That's just stored labor. Savings become scalable only when you convert them into productive assets. Income is how much money comes in. Scale is how little your personal time needs to increase for more money to come in. You can work 20% more hours, but you cannot sustainably work 10 times more hours. Capital can be deployed across 10 assets without requiring 10 times more personal effort. And you know, once I realized this, at a certain point in my life, I was motivated to obtain loans for rental. This helped me scale and own more, replacing my active income with mostly passive income sooner. All right, so what should you do when you have this epiphany? It doesn't mean you should flip over the stupid copier machine as you storm out of work today and announce that you are now a real estate magnet. Not right away, at least employment that can be your launchpad, just like it was for me when I was a humble construction materials inspector for the state DOT. A job does provide you with some benefits like short-term advantages, seed capital, mortgage qualification.
Keith Weinhold 10:45
I'm talking about health insurance and some steady cash flow, and even some skills. But the mistake, whether you are aged 25 or 55, is allowing employment to remain the only economic engine for your entire life. Your job can fund your future, but having just one single linear income source that should not be your entire future. But you know, some people just stay on lazy cruise control at a slow speed and let their life unfurl that way. Others, you know, they merely haven't been exposed to thinking this way, and fortunately, now you have been. Really, the bottom line here is that labor won't scale; capital does scale; it compounds, and few, if any, investments offer more dimensions of scale than real estate. And you also get all kinds of other ancillary benefits by gradually tilting away from active income and toward passive income. Because increasingly, when it comes to taxes, you're going to pay lower capital gains tax rates instead of the higher ordinary income rates. The sooner you optimize this and get into as many properties as you can, you're also going to gain the ability to borrow against your assets tax-free, and so much more. Scale or fail-that's the lesson here, and most people fear change. It's why they stay stuck in relationships longer than they should, and why they stay stuck in jobs longer than they should. They keep settling for a B plus life. Don't settle for a B plus life. This is something that NYU professor Susie Welsh talks about: If you have a D life, oh, everything is lousy. You don't live where you want to live. You don't have reliable transportation. You don't have friends, and you're so very motivated to change that. If you have an A plus life, you've got it all. You get to do what you want to do, who you want to do it with, and you're tremendously incentivized to keep that. But having a B plus life like so many do, and being stuck in it, that is the most dangerous place to be. You could tread water for years and stay stuck in a life that you know you're not fully satisfied with, but it isn't so terrible that you feel compelled to change it. So the people that grow wealth know it means that sometimes you have to give up the good to have the great, and the K-shaped economic divergence that we've had in the past five years. This is really bringing things to a head, so get scale.
Keith Weinhold 13:43
Scale is the difference between grasping the financial abundance that's available to move you toward that A plus life, or staying on the treadmill, stuck and struggling. Two different people living a B plus life, you know, they have the same starting point, and making a plan is your difference maker. We help you with that here. If you're ready to add real estate scale to your financial life, drop a quick email to GRE Investment Coach Naresh for a complimentary strategy session at Naresh at getricheducation.com. You don't need any qualifications. It can take as little as a 20% down payment on a 200k to 400k rental property, and we have access so that you can buy directly from the builders and get a mortgage rate in the fives. And we are chasing the next hot thing here. Last week we discussed co-living on the show. We waited until that strategy was proven. I like strategies that have had some contact with reality. AI can compose a song, or summarize a meeting, or fabricate a photo of some. Wacky like Abraham Lincoln riding a dolphin, but it still cannot download an affordable bedroom, affordable housing. You're scaling into something sustainable that has a future and can't be easily disrupted by AI. Scale or fail. Stop settling for the B plus life. We can help right now at this moment. Drop a quick email to naresh@getricheducation.com. I should spell that out for you. It's n a r e s h@getricheducation.com.
Keith Weinhold 15:36
More straight ahead. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Get Rich education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Keith Weinhold 16:13
Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure: I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family to 66866.
Chris Martenson 17:17
This is Peak Prosperity's Chris Martenson. Listen to Get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream.
Keith Weinhold 17:33
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Having residual income from real estate, it can make you more comfortable for sure, but for me, I like to primarily use it to buy back my time. I'll tell you how I just did this. It's a small thing, a small win. It is time for my car's annual routine maintenance. Boring. I really don't want to lose my time dropping it off at the dealership in the morning and then picking it up again. Those two boring round trips don't add anything to my life. But the dealership had the option of, for just 100 bucks, picking it up for me and dropping it off for me at the end of the day. Oh well, that is an opportunity for me to buy some time, so that's why I did that. Now, when it comes to flying, sometimes I fly coach and sometimes first class. I just booked a flight and I refused to pay six times as much for first class. It just wasn't really worth it this time because the experience isn't that much better, and it sure doesn't save me any time. I tend to do that if the price is just 3x more, so I'll pay to save time, but not always to borrow a wider seat for five hours. And you and I both make hundreds of time versus money decisions every day, most of them small.
Keith Weinhold 19:04
With the more residual income you have, you're gonna make better decisions where you can choose the time over the money. One thing's for sure: whatever we're doing with our money, and that is that our dollar does not go as far as it used to. Let's look at inflation during the first 25 years of this century. This is really interesting. We're going to see how the cost of goods and services has changed from 2000 to the end of 2025 on some select categories that you spend on, and then I've got some mind-bending takeaways for you once I describe this chart, and this is the same chart that I sent to you last Thursday. If you are one of my newsletter readers, but I can open up and talk about it more here than I can in the newsletter because I keep that short. Overall inflation is about. 93% during this time period. 93% over these 25 years. Now, here are the items that rose less than that much, meaning that they became then more affordable over this span. What fell the most is the price of televisions down more than 90% in the first 25 years of this century? Toys down 74% Computer software down 73% Cell phones down 44% By the way, this all uses the government's CPI inflation rate, clothing up just one and a half percent, and even though it's up, that's still more affordable because it's up less than the overall 93% CPI inflation rate over this span. Household furnishings up 21% and finally new cars up 26% So all those items became more affordable because they rose less than the general rate of inflation. All right, moving on up. Now we're going to go above the line. Items above the 93% overall inflation rate, food and beverages were up 106% housing up 111% average hourly wages up 131% All right, let's pause. Yes, wages then outpacing 93% inflation. but of course, since that 93% uses the government CPI, well, that's pretty understated. Probably, you know, the true dispersing power of the dollar is probably more than 93% So it's debatable about whether there are real wage gains from 2000 to the end of 2025, medical care services up 147% Next in the category that has become less affordable is childcare, up 159% And as I'm naming these, there are some common threads here where I think you're going to have a few epiphanies when I point them out. College textbooks up 177%. Sheesh, what a scam! College tuition and fees up 197%, and finally the major category that became less affordable here at the top is the worst of all: hospital services. They have soared the most, up over 281% All right, there they are.
Keith Weinhold 22:57
And what takeaways do we have here? The items that became less affordable tend to be where the government either provides subsidies or they heavily regulate and mandate the product or service, like education, child care, and medical care. The categories that have become more affordable-that's where there is little or minimal government intervention, like clothing and technology. The lesson is that free market competition kept prices low, and some of these categories that became more affordable-you know-they would have become even more affordable than that if it weren't for profligate dollar printing, sadly, the items that have become less affordable-and this could really upset you-the items whose price increases exceed the overall rate of inflation, like medical care and housing, these are life's necessities. They are not once the stuff you need most got harder to obtain, healthcare is the ultimate example of this. It's sad to say, but you'll either pay the fee or you'll die, and the price reflects this. With hospital services up 281% outpacing the overall rate of inflation by about 3x. Also, items that have become more affordable, they are then generally the more discretionary purchases like furnishings, toys, and televisions. You can live without that stuff. Items that have become less affordable. They also tend to be more in-sourced activity, while those more affordable are outsourced, like to China. If you've noticed the trend, then anything involving people in the United States will be expensive, like child. Care and medical care. It involves people in the United States, and then it just gets more and more expensive. And this is also why service prices increase more and goods prices increase less. People are expensive.
Keith Weinhold 25:18
Microchips don't ask for dental insurance, and microchips don't file sexual harassment lawsuits. Overall, inflation was just 2.66% per year during this time period. But when it's compounded for this long, that's how it got to 93% cumulatively. But of course, inflation is higher than this 2.66 rate here in the late 2020s, and inflation is poised to rise even more than the level that it's at now. The war in Iran has pushed up energy prices 24% and these costs seep into almost everything, all right. But you're probably aware of this already, so I'm not going to discuss it much more because I discussed that before, like on episode 606, nearly two months ago when I called it our most important message in years, all right. But few seem to understand that this is just one part of a new inflation triple whammy. First, you've got spiking energy prices, like I mentioned. Second, more U.S. tariffs, and third, you've got mushrooming AI spending, and as a result of all this, this new inflation triple whammy that most people aren't aware of, this has pushed up bond yields to their highest point since 2007, and pressure is mounting for the Fed to jack up rates. Mortgage rates are soaring right along with them, and they are now near 7% Could mortgage rates reach 8% This is a real question now. The bottom line here is that inflation made the dollar lose nearly half its purchasing power in the first quarter century. Real asset owners will win, especially leveraged income property owners. This raises the property's replacement costs, spikes rents, and erodes your mortgage's real burden. Nearly everyone else is going to lose, and I don't want to lose a learning moment for you here. Bond yields-they are closely tied to what future mortgage rates are going to be. It's not about what the Fed does, and this is not as esoteric as some people think. This correlation between inflation, bond yields, and mortgage rates. Bonds pay a fixed interest rate long term.
Keith Weinhold 28:01
For example, the 10-year Treasury bond right now pays about 4.7% each year for the next 10 years. That's what that means. Now, would you lock in your investment for 10 years in order to get a 4.7% return? Well, if you were a conservative investor, maybe you would if you knew that inflation was only going to be 2% because then you'd be making about a 2.7% real return on your investment each year risk free. But if you expect inflation was going to be 5% over the next 10 years, oh well, then locking in a return of 4.7% means that you would lose real purchasing power every year. Investors don't want to lose money, so if investors expect that inflation is going to be higher, they will only buy bonds if they're paying higher amounts. And the bond market is telling us that as of today, investors expect at least 4.7% inflation over the next 10 years. If things change and they expect inflation to be higher than that, well, then bond yields will go up. If they expect inflation to decrease, for example, from a recession, bond yields will go down. So therefore, Treasury bonds are a true representation of investor inflation expectations and the movement of that bond yield-that is the number one factor that moves mortgage rates in that same direction. There's your explanation. That wasn't so hard. The market does not believe we're going to escape the Middle East war without substantial inflation or energy supply chain issues. That's what that means. Now, what else is going on in this era is the continuation of a reduction in the volume. Of housing transactions, fewer deals are happening. It had its recent peak of 6 million existing homes changing hands back in 2021. In 2022, it was 5 million, and it's been about 4 million transactions every year since. Now, as far as investor activity, just looking at that, for big investors, activity that's been sideways to a little down these past few years. But let's look at ourselves for smaller investors, mom and pop types, defined as those doing 10 or fewer deals per year, which probably includes you. You know, each of the past three years, activity has been up for smaller investors like you. You have gradually been purchasing more property, and this is as reported by realtor.com. Okay, what are the reasons for this?
Keith Weinhold 30:55
Well, back during the pandemic, you had to compete with owner-occupied buyers, that's when open house lines stretch down the block, and today there are fewer bidders in the room, and small investors are buying because builders are buying down your mortgage rate for you. That's another reason, and the source analysis it found that investors are sticking to affordable Midwest and Sun Belt markets that have strong rental demand. In fact, they're buying at least one out of every five homes in Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Birmingham, and Oklahoma City. Real estate providers know that some prospective owner-occupant homeowners and even some investors-they won't buy anything at today's market mortgage rates, even though you and I know that these rates are historically normal. But providers-they need to stay in business. They need to keep turning things over. They need to sell property. They need to keep their people busy. They're not running museums here, so they're making sure that mortgage rate buydowns happen. And one of the most lucrative sources that I know about for investors is Mid South Homebuyers because they have investment property where the numbers work in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas with mortgage rates in the fives and a conventional loan with 25% down. A lot of their income properties cost under 200k, and these are quality homes in decent neighborhoods. I've physically walked inside many of them myself, not by drone, not with a virtual tour, not by AI, and not through some glossy brochure with suspiciously perfect lighting. The reason I'm telling you about this now is that this mortgage rate is one part of their limited triple five program. Here's what else we get as investors: a mortgage rate near 5% like I mentioned, and a 5% property management fee for five years. Though leverage has its benefits, if you decide to pay all cash instead, they provide you with the 5% property management for life, even if you finance later. I think they call that their forever five. Frankly, it's just amazing how many investors rave about the quality of their rehabs and say that their property management never seems to mess up in this industry. I mean, that is about as common as a calm political debate, or perhaps an airline actually improving legroom, and I have helped recommend Mid Health Homebuyers to our listeners for over 11 years. I know some followers that have looked at their available properties and scooped up three properties on one phone call. In fact, where they're based and have a lot of their available properties, Memphis. You know, Memphis has a story where I don't know if any other market in America can tell it right now. Do you know what's happening? Memphis is developing into having both the new brains and the brawn behind AI, and you got more smart money moving there now. Memphis is now home to the world's largest AI supercomputer. It's XAI's Colossus. It's now part of SpaceX. It's the biggest single-site AI facility on the entire planet. Anthropic is paying over a billion dollars a month to run Claude on it. Google just signed a deal worth up to 30 billion starting october 1, and I look forward to announcing that I have got a live event that I am co-hosting for you the day before this happens on september 30.
Keith Weinhold 34:56
So yes, that's the night before Google's money starts flowing. Into Memphis in one year, XAI became the second largest taxpayer in Memphis after FedEx, and the city has committed 25% of the property tax revenue from those sites to infrastructure in the surrounding neighborhoods. And when you add in FedEx, because Memphis already moves more physical goods than anywhere else in the country, you can see how Memphis is increasingly becoming the brains of the digital economy, while it's already been the brawn of the physical one. In every other market, you know they showcase things like their population growth and the rent-to-price ratios, and those attributes certainly matter, but now the fact that perhaps the biggest infrastructure story in America is happening in the most affordable major cash flow market—I mean, this is something that almost nobody has connected the dots on. So join me and my two co-hosts that lead Mid South Home Buyers.
Keith Weinhold 36:01
We're going to discuss market fundamentals, the AI build out, what it means for jobs, rent in neighborhoods over the next decade, and then a heavy live Q and A on Mid South. You're invited to join me. This is happening again on Wednesday, September 30th. It's at 8p.m. Eastern. Yes, you will have me live. Sign up at getricheducation.com/midsouth. It's a special event as Memphis is positioning to become both the brawn and brains of AI and a property provider that already makes a lot of sense for investors. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 2 36:54
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 37:22
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. For the first time ever on the show, we're talking about what some call the greatest real estate cash flow strategy today: co-living. Learn about what it is, what it is not, the pitfalls to avoid, and just how terrifically profitable co-living property can be today on Get Rich Education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Speaker 1 0:59
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 1:15
Welcome to GRE from Dover, Idaho, to Dover, Delaware, and across 188 world nations. You're inside Get Rich Education nation. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. For about five years now, it's been harder to make the cash flow numbers work on long-term rentals, and that's because sure rents are up, but not as much as expenses are, and that's why for your regular income properties, builders buy down your mortgage rate for you so that it works. But now enter co-living properties, and your cash flow can be multiples higher. In fact, today we're going to talk about a model that has seven times the cash flow of a regular long-term rental, for example, instead of renting a detached single-family home to one family, if instead you divide it up into six bedrooms and rent each one of the six bedrooms to an individual, you will drive substantially more income. You've got six rent checks instead of one. That's what a co-living property is in general, and you're usually renting it to tenants that are working a lot. They're away from the property. It's often run through pad split. You'll learn more about what that means. And though co-living is lucrative, you still need the right market, the right layout, the management, which is really key here, and the right operating model. Today, we'll talk to a GRE Marketplace operator that provides co-living properties to investors like us with a management solution. And as you'll see, it gets even better than that. Although they serve just one geographic area in the U.S. which happens to be an investor advantaged area, as you'll see, this is conducive to out of state investors. If you want to own there, we're talking about co living income property today. Next week, there's something vital I want to tell you about, and I can't wait to do that. It's about the way that I talk when I meet a 25-year-old, and I learn that their only source of income is as an employee at a job. And no matter what age you are, what I'm going to share with you is going to apply to you too, and it's pretty transformative. That's next week here on the show. As for today, let's learn about co living. Jim Shields is here. Jim, welcome back to the show.
Jim Sheils 3:56
Keith, good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Keith Weinhold 3:58
Well, Jim, we saw each other in person a few months ago at a conference. I wanted to have you back here today to discuss co living since you're involved in it and you help other investors learn about it. And now you even started providing properties for co living specifically for them. And you know, Jim, with co living, I have seen models in the past where, oh, a single-family home it might be retrofitted, renovated to say have six bedrooms and three bathrooms, and that way you, as the owner, you could rent it to six tenants, really who are each only renting a room rather than renting the whole place to one family. In this way, tenants get cheaper rent because they're only renting one bedroom, and then for the owner, this gives them stronger cash flow because they're renting it to six different parties and not just one. So, with affordable housing really being a struggle for so many, you know, co-living is. Really taking off. So tell us more about what co living is and what it isn't, Jim.
Jim Sheils 5:05
Yeah, co living was something that was brought to us by one of the owners of Pad Split. Actually, they had met me and worked with me on other new construction projects, and and kind of my evolution, as you know, Keith was I I went from doing a ton of fixer uppers for many of years to new construction, and both can get you where you want to go. But I like new constructions. But meeting some of the owners of PadSplits, I found that they were starting to have the same struggles that I was when I was rehabbing a lot of homes. You know, it's not easy to take a three bedroom or four bedroom home and turn it into an eight bedroom or a seven bedroom, and so you know, starting from scratch with new construction, we're able to set up for what they're trying to create, and what they're really trying to create with co living is that affordable housing crisis. There's a lot more single individuals out there not looking for you know whole, not needing whole family dwellings to live. They're more at a basic income level that you know keeps them quite a bit below being able to rent. Like here in Jacksonville, the average price of a one-bedroom apartment is just outside of their qualifying range. So they might have a good job and decent credit, but they can't qualify. So what we've seen co-living do, and again, working through our our management partner of Padsplit, is they are bringing in this system of putting people together in one home, still with the screening, still with certain amenities that you know really help the property get seen, wanted, and rented, and then certain managerial things, where you're providing good options for living in areas that need more affordable living, and for landlord investors like ourselves, you're providing now a new opportunity to beat what I've called the cash flow crisis. You know, we have an affordability crisis, but that's also created a cash flow crisis, Keith. As you know, and the numbers that we've been able to see are quite advantageous for both the renter for the amount they pay and for the owner for the amount they're going to cash flow. And that's what I'm seeing this new co-living movement is about. It's really landlords taking a new risk on a certain type of property and tenants getting a type of property that fits their income and their needs.
Keith Weinhold 7:27
You know, Jim, philosophically, I'm thinking about assisted living homes, and when society changed sometime last century, assisted living homes became more of a trend where a lot of times that's where the elderly people went. Now we have co-living, and you kind of wish the world would be a place like where you know someone freshly out of high school or college could be married and have children, and you know just one or two jobs could float and support that family, and they would be able to afford their own home, either to own or rent. But increasingly, that's just not the world that we're living in. It hearkens back to multi-time GRE guest and legendary investor Jim Rogers. To paraphrase Jim Rogers, Jim Rogers said, "I need to invest in the world with the way that it is, not the way that I want the world to be. That's one thought that keeps coming to mind with co-living.
Jim Sheils 8:29
Yeah, for me too. Honestly, Keith, when I first heard about co-living, it was a few years ago. Someone saw me speak at a mutual event similar to one we last saw each other at. I got off stage, and they came up to me and they mentioned to me we're doing these things called co-living.
Keith Weinhold 8:44
Yeah.
Jim Sheils 8:44
And I was kind of blinded. I was looking backwards instead of forwards, and I said, "Oh, that doesn't sound right. That doesn't sound like it could work, you know. And I had a lot of what ifs, and how do you handle this? Well, you know, as the niches really started to solidify and show real wind at its back, all those questions and doubts I had have been answered, and I've kind of become a believer in why it's working and also the results. You know, for us, build right, finance right, manage right. That's always been our model. That's what's going to help us and our investors succeed. Building it right and managing it right. We had to figure out, but figuring that out-that's key. And it's very cool to see investors today breaking the norms of saying, "Well, you know, we can't have cash flow anymore on a nice new construction property in a growth market like Jacksonville, Florida. You can't have good cash flow. Well, that's just not true with co living coming on because again you're answering the call of a forgotten tenant and their needs.
Keith Weinhold 9:46
Yeah, I just think for any thoughtful investor, it's got to give them pause. But this is where society has gone. Well, we're going to talk about how profitable co living is for investors later. But first, tell us more about the nuts and bolts of how co.
Jim Sheils 10:01
Yeah. So the way that it works is, first of all, you start, you know, again going with our model, build right, finance right, manage right, building it right. When you're starting with new construction, you're able to go into the property with all eyes open, without a lot of surprises, and you're able to build it right to the design that a co-living property of success would entail. You know, we're doing seven bedrooms, seven baths. We're doing 14 bedrooms, 14 baths. We're doing 20 bedrooms, 20 baths. These are all things that we worked with the owners of Padsplit as they've worked and researched areas all over the country, starting here in Northeast Florida. But what we're doing, we figured out exactly what type of build you do you need to do that's going to work? Smaller living areas. There's only one utility box. There's not you know multiple utilities. It's not a multi-unit building. So there's one utility box. You build it to that specimen of either we build anywhere from seven bedroom, seven baths, right up to 20 bedroom, 20 baths, and that's the build part. That way, you're getting into it and not having to, you know, kind of. It's really tough, Keith. I don't need to tell you with your experience to turn a smaller house into that bigger house and starting from scratch with new constructions. Great. The second thing we found was finance. Right, as you know, we do our own in-house financing. Well, a lot of the co-living since the banks didn't understand it. Just like you know, it's become a newer niche. They were locking in at 8% You know, with our in-house financing, we were able to get deals down to five and a half percent. So right there, that helps with the rate, the long-term rate, the cash flow, and then management. Again, we've managed 1000s of properties, but we've really teamed up with PadSplit to help us manage these. This is what they specialize in, not only for attracting investors into their organization, but also for managing the properties and screening the tenants, getting them in, and their management system combined with our Build Right Finance Right has been a great combination.
Keith Weinhold 11:57
Pad Split, somewhat of a platform like Airbnb, but it's for co-living type properties. We'll talk more about pad split shortly. But yes, you are making these more efficient for co-living because right from the beginning, you are building them new construction specifically for co-living type of arrangements, rather than that six-bed, three-bath retrofit example I brought up near the beginning of our chat, but tell us more about who actually lives in co-living homes. What's the tenant profile like?
Jim Sheils 12:29
Yeah, let's go to the opposite end. When I first heard about this years ago, Keith, I said, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be really unqualified, seedy people not working, getting into trouble, and that's just not true. Again, a lot of these people are hardworking, but they can't afford the $1395 for a one bedroom apartment, but they can afford an $825 a month room. And a lot of these people might be working at a local warehouse, at a hospital. They're very localized, blue collar, or some in training jobs, you know, extra five $600 a month makes all the difference. Where it's not going out to rent, not even including utilities, it gives them a nice place to live. So it's really entry level replaceable income people, maybe single people that work at a nearby restaurant. But again, they're trying to save more money in their pocket and not spend it on that higher expense, which the competition would be a one-bedroom apartment.
Keith Weinhold 13:31
Now, the tenancy durations here are shorter than what you're going to have in long-term rentals, of course, because one part of what you do, Jim, is for years you have helped GRE followers with build-to-rent long-term rentals. The resident does get more. They're going to get a furnished room with utilities in co-living arrangements, and they're also probably going to have their utilities bundled as well. So tell us about the typical tenancy duration, and then what all the resident gets.
Jim Sheils 14:00
Yeah. So the residency is going to receive all the things that they have to be turnkey. That's the bed, the desk, the dresser, the closet, the bathroom. Everything is set up there for them, and so they just move in. They're not going to have to pay for electric or water or internet. All that stuff's going to be included. There's a washer dryer normally there. Sometimes they're coin operated, other times they're just included, but that way they're not trying to take out a utility in their name or set up internet. Also, for the investor, that's a good thing because you have one master lease. If you start to do a bunch of leases, well, you could get in trouble with the rules of your community, probably of having multiple leases on one property. It's not a multi-unit building, so you can't do that. So one master lease with one utility and all utilities included allows you to do that. This makes it very easy to move in and out. And the average Tennessee might only be six months, but again, the way that it's set up, what we like about PadSplit is they. Have a very good marketing and screening process, so they're constantly marketing and screening to people in the area, and then they have their own private community with investors. So we'll build it and finance it. Our people will move over to their community for management, so the owners can speak together, and then the tenants, though they're coming through pad split system, and so what I like about that is if they try to not treat the property well, well, they're not allowed back into any pad split properties anywhere within the city. So that's really good for co living protection. So we just see that turnkey approach, and you know you've been preaching turnkey real estate for a long time. Yeah, this is a turnkey room where they're able to move in, they're able to move out easily. They can transfer to another co-living property, and by doing that, you can get people in and out very quickly, which keeps the vacancies low, even with shorter tenancy.
Keith Weinhold 15:57
All right, so an average tenancy duration of about six months, and for you, the prospective investor, as you're trying to understand co-living, maybe think of it as like when you check into a hotel. Co-living residents stay longer than you stay in a hotel, but as far as all the utilities are in the room combined, all into one charge with your WiFi, your water, your electricity, your natural gas, and the room is already furnished. Just one all-inclusive payment, making it easier for that co-living tenant. And Jim, you've been talking about pad split, where you're partnering directly with them, and that's the management part of this. Of course, this is more management intensive than a long-term rental. So, tell us more about Pad Split and how it works. Sort of like an Airbnb platform, but yet for longer-term, affordable room rentals that has the property management infrastructure somewhat already built into Pad Split.
Jim Sheils 16:56
Yeah, I think your comparison to Airbnb is very accurate, Keith. But it's more of a community for both tenants and investors. Airbnb, you know, I have short-term rentals and I use Airbnb. But what I've seen with Padsplit, which I think they've done a good job with, it has a community feel sharing for the investors who are a part of the Padsplit community, and so there's extra communication on your management, how properties are going, what areas are doing that. You know, great source of communication on the ongoing management. But for the tenants too, they know right where to go to find these types of properties, and the tenants also have to join this community. So there's a joining where if you want to rent a pad split, they have to join the community. They have to go through all the approvals and such, so that's pretty much how it's set up. It's seen to be very effective. Again, what held me back from this probably for about two years, Keith, was the management piece. You know, we've always managed our properties. I said, well, this is not our niche. Just like we don't manage short-term rentals, we only rent manage long-term rentals, and so I really had to watch and survey a lot of the existing investors and how they were doing, but it's nice to see someone with a good managerial system for both the tenants and the investors to work together in.
Keith Weinhold 18:12
Does PadSplit handle everything like marketing and tenant screening and rent collection?
Jim Sheils 18:19
So what they handle is the way that pad split works, like here in Jacksonville, where's our main market where we've started building co living properties. Is they will work hand in hand like an Airbnb, but underneath them they'll have preferred property managers that they'll work hand in hand. It so they'll handle certain things of the marketing, the tenant screening, and then some more of the mechanical PM pieces, the property management pieces. There'll be an assigned property manager that the client will be working with, the investor will be working with, and the tenant will be working with. So it's kind of a two-tiered approach. Like right now, my I'll use Airbnb, but I have a property manager for my short-term rentals. Same thing here, but we actually have the preferred management list and approvals through Padsplit.
Keith Weinhold 19:06
Okay, so much of this is handled through Pad Split, but not everything. There's a second tier where they partner with local property managers in that area to, for example, help with tenant turns or help with maintenance requests.
Jim Sheils 19:20
Yep, absolutely, absolutely.
Keith Weinhold 19:23
Now, short-term rental hosts are used to Airbnb fees. What are Pad Split fees like?
Jim Sheils 19:29
There's a monthly fee for belonging to PadSplit to keep your property occupied in there, and I don't remember exactly what it is for the tenants, but I know that they keep it affordable. So overall, you're going to be paying a little bit less than an Airbnb property that you would for you know if you use Airbnb and use a short-term property manager, it can be quite expensive. We've seen the pad splits come in below that and still achieve the goals of a good short-term rental. You know we're seeing. I know we're getting into this later, but taking those fees out and doing quite a bit of contingency because of the move and move outs, we were still seeing like a seven bedroom, seven bath based around the same price of one of our single family homes. The cash flow can be about seven times higher. Wow, on that thing, so it it really does answer the call for higher cash flow by bringing that more affordable rental in.
Keith Weinhold 20:25
We're going to talk more about just how profitable it is for investors, and more about co living somewhat nascent model, a model that's actually been around for quite a while, but it's really gaining traction in making things more affordable for tenants and making things more profitable for investors, we're back with more shortly. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. This is Get Rich Education. Flock Homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture, it's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now, mom and pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation. See if your properties qualify at flockhomes.com/gre. That's flockehomes.com/gre. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. And full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility.
Keith Weinhold 22:11
Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family to 66866. Hey, it's corporate direct Ted Sutton. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream. Welcome back to Get Research Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. We're talking about co-living, specifically how smart it is to get this right from the beginning and build a new construction single-family home, or something that could be larger than a single-family home with seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, or 14 and 14, or 20 and 20, and when we think about this gym physically, the footprint. What is parking like at a seven-bedroom home or larger? And did this entail any zoning hurdles?
Jim Sheils 23:15
A couple of things. It can entail zoning hurdles, so I would make sure, especially if you're doing new construction, you have someone who is a builder in the area that knows how to work with the county department or city department of how to get these approved. That's a very important things for how you submit them and how you make sure you're staying compliant. I think compliance is very important, obviously, for a rental and and parking. What we've seen right now is we look for about 50% So when I say 50% of bedrooms, so a seven-bedroom house, we're going to have three or four parking sites. There's a large majority of people that don't have a car, and that's why a lot of these are built near public transportation. But we still try to always serve, you know, based off of what we saw, the needs to stay in compliance, also working with Pad Split on lots of their designs. 50% of parking spots is usually good for the amount of bedrooms that you have.
Keith Weinhold 24:08
What about zoning hurdles? What had to be met there?
Jim Sheils 24:12
It's going to be a trial and error for a new builder or a person who's rehabbing a property. You know, we were not the first to come in and do this, we had watched Pad Split do it for two years and more with rehab properties, but just starting new construction, we knew Northeast Florida and what needs to be done very well, and so it's all in how you present it. Again, if you go in there with multiple utility boxes and such, you're going to be in quite an issue. So we found that we didn't have any issue with that. Also, we own some of these in some of our quad communities, so these were for larger. You know, you've worked with our quads before; they're yeah, you know, larger buildings. Well, we've been able to turn those into, for example, 20 bedroom, 20 baths, and so they operate like a small. Building, but they're in our quad communities where we wrote the HOA, and so they're allowed. And there's a plethora of parking there, so that keeps us in compliance. So really, compliance is knowing what your local city or county is going to require and knowing how to get that approved. That's very important.
Keith Weinhold 25:18
Okay, so these can thrive in sort of duplex and fourplex type neighborhoods. That's where they're being built, and you have a good bit of control over that with you having your own de facto HOA there as well. And Jim, I looked at several of the co-living properties and the footprints and the floor plans, and you know I was really encouraged to learn that really the cost for one of these brand new build seven bath seven bed co living properties really isn't that much more than a regular single family home designed for one family. So talk to us about the pricing.
Jim Sheils 25:57
Yeah, in Jacksonville, for example, seven bedroom seven baths, going between 325 and 345, which is very similar to single-family homes. And then our pricing for our quads, like a 2020, would be in the low nine hundreds, and that's the same as a quad as well. So we've been able to match our pricing to, and we have duplex ones. The 1414 would be mid five hundreds, which would be about the same as a Jacksonville duplex. So you know, I'm going off Jacksonville pricing right now, just as a sample. Sure. Okay.
Keith Weinhold 26:30
The model I looked at was seven bed, seven bath. It had two stories. The price was 325k, and it had 1800 66 square feet. Talk to us about just how profitable that it is for an investor on a pro forma income and expenses basis, Jim.
Jim Sheils 26:49
From what I've seen is if the average single family home was bringing in about $3,500, and that's a net on the year. So we're saying net, you know, cash flow on the year. Let's say it was about $3,500 on the year of a single family home that you bought. Well, your pad split property would be more closer to about 25,000 for the year. Wow! So that's a big jump. Now, with that comes a lot more rent collected, Keith. But also, and again, we can't do it here, but on the performa, there's more expenses because you have pad split. You have just very similar again. I think your analogy of a short-term rental for anyone who owns those very similar. There's more components. There's more pieces to it. There's more management. But what I did like about the performas that were first brought to us, large amount of rent collected, but also a large amount of contingency and expenses calculated in to get that number. So those are what I liked again seeing these is there's a lot of expense taken out to still reach that you know higher cash flow, but you know it's something that you will want to account for as well. You know what keeps people safe? Do your numbers. Do your numbers real. You know talk to people who have owned co-living properties, make sure that you're accounting for the extra expenses of tenants turning over more and and just more management involvement.
Keith Weinhold 28:10
Okay, so on that comparison where you likened it to a long-term rental versus this model, it's about $25,000 of annual cash flow, which is about $2,000 of monthly cash flow, and was that for the seven bed, seven bath model?
Jim Sheils 28:26
Yeah, and it would go up from there for the larger models.
Keith Weinhold 28:29
Yeah. Now, are tenants paying in advance by the week or by the month, or how does that work?
Jim Sheils 28:34
That's a key thing. They pay by the week, which I didn't realize how important that was for affordability and staying current on your rents, but from the things that I've been shown on working with Padsplit, they showed that when they charge people by the week, it's much more affordable. A lot of these people are paid weekly, so it really keeps them in good rhythm, and so they go on a weekly process.
Keith Weinhold 28:57
And is this just as conducive to out of area investors like long term turnkey rentals are?
Jim Sheils 29:03
Yeah. Well, that's why you always want to build right, finance right, manage right. You have lots of great connections. You can find a great builder that's willing to build them. You get good financing and then good management. So you don't have to live in the area, but you want to make sure someone is taking care of that for you. Again, I am going to say I know some people like to manage their own properties from afar. That can work with long-term rentals. I've done it with a few of mine when I left California and came here. From what I've seen, though, for co-living, the involvement-if you are from out of area-I would highly, highly recommend that you follow a manager process and work with a manager.
Keith Weinhold 29:43
Meaning that you would use one of PadSplits recommended managers.
Jim Sheils 29:47
I would use PadSplit with one of the preferred managers that we know well, and actually one of the managers that they highly recommend worked for our company for five years, and she's great. And for what we're. Doing, I can put a stamp of approval on it, and again, I think just seeing the involvement, these can work really well. But you want to have just like any time, but even more importantly, on these ones, you want to have management in place, especially if you're afar.
Keith Weinhold 30:14
Sure. So, what could the involvement realistically look like, Jim, if that out-of-state investor is using Pad Split and using Pad Split's recommended manager. What might that investor have to do remotely? And maybe that's just on an email basis.
Jim Sheils 30:32
You know, a lot can be done by email. Again, Keith, our goal-I don't think you should be spending more than two hours a month on managing your property manager. So again, just because there's more involvement, what I like is it doesn't mean there's more involvement for you. You're paying someone to set that up to handle it. You'll have to be involved somewhat. You are a property owner, but again, I don't see that you have to get involved with every little thing. In fact, I like to step back and not get too involved in my properties. I find like I just kind of go and stir things up. Let my manager do their thing. I'll manage certain big picture managerial things and in communication and overall just directionals. But you should not be getting overly involved. That's what their job is. You should not be doing that.
Keith Weinhold 31:18
Now I'm a turnkey real estate investor myself, as you know, with multiple properties in various states and places, and I'm used to getting monthly emails from my manager in those markets, and that is what my owner statement looks like: income and expenses and anything that's going on with the property. But that's just on a monthly basis. Are there weekly statements for co-living managers and owners?
Jim Sheils 31:42
Still rents are collected weekly, but statements still come out monthly.
Keith Weinhold 31:46
Because—
Jim Sheils 31:47
You want to, what you do is you collect all of the rents, but then again, it's easier to reconcile with all expenses and such that come out on a monthly basis. So it's done monthly.
Keith Weinhold 31:58
Are they writing common mistakes to avoid that are developing in the space, like an investor that gets in and buys their first co living property, and then they think, "Oh gosh, I wish I would have known about this thing sooner that I didn't think about because I'm only used to long term rentals. Any common mistakes to avoid pitfalls like that with co living, Jim?
Jim Sheils 32:17
Yeah, a couple of things. First, again, I can't stress enough that co living, from what I've seen and experienced, they do make money. But on the build it right, you know, going back to our build right, finance right, manage right. Just know if you're going to try one your on your own and you want to convert a home that's three bedrooms into a seven bedrooms, it is a much more tedious, involved process. Where again. Keith, like you said, are you getting things approved with the county or city? Just know that you really want to be in the know, and that's going to take some involvement. So that's my warning on if you're going to use co living and rehab your own property, financing wise. The thing that the mistakes I've seen made is people didn't see that they had higher interest rates, so you want to do that in your numbers. You know, working like with us, we're we have our own in-house financing. We're able to get it down to five and a half percent, but some of these co living banks are looking at it differently, and you might be more around 8% So you want to just do that in your numbers, and then the third pitfall, which we've you know hit on, and this is one of your real foundational rules: is management is key. And on these, where I see the biggest harm, once you get it built right and financed right, it could all fall apart if you don't have management in place. So I would just be you know some of you do it yourselfers. I have some things that I like to do it myself too, but on a more technical type of property like this, I highly encourage you get management in place to do their thing.
Keith Weinhold 33:47
For sure, it is easy to make the case that the management is even more important than the property itself. One of the things that I like about what you do there, Jim, is you're so forward-thinking and you are so into making the experience as turnkey for that investor as it can possibly be, and one of those things is as you rolled this out, you had a lot of the financing hurdles rolled out right with it. Tell us more about those in-house financing options you have that you touched on specifically for co-living, and especially I'm thinking through the lens of like that seven bed, seven bath, 325k co-living property that I saw.
Jim Sheils 34:28
Yeah, I mean it's nice with getting to be a builder of our size with a really good balance sheet. We're able to work with banks and buy large tranches of money or slate large tranches of money at cheaper rates than available to the public. You know, for our normal long-term rentals, we can get down to 3.75. That's for normal houses. You can't get that low because of risk factor. Banks still they like working with us, but we have gotten it down to five and a half percent. So right now, our most popular program is a 30-year fixed five and a half percent for co. You know, and again, a lot of people that have come to have said, "Holy moly, we were locked in at 8.15. We are getting it not as low as our lowest rate, but at a really good rate now. You know, below what's normally offered out there. So that's normal qualifying that you would have to do with any bank loan through us. And our counselors are happy to talk more about that. That's our most popular program for the co living for the seven seven. You're looking at a five and a half percent interest rate, 20 to 25% down. That is a super attractive rate. Is that something that the home builder helps participate in buying down discount points, or that the buyer is asked to do in order to get down to that rate? Working with us, well, it could go either way out in the marketplace, Keith. When working with us, we pay all of those required fees and points to get the lower rate. That's on us, not on the buyer.
Keith Weinhold 35:50
All right, we're talking about co-living properties today-a way to supercharge your cash flow. This is one of the greatest cash flow strategies in all of residential real estate today, Jim. Is there any last thing you have to tell us about co-living? Perhaps something that I did not think about asking you that I should have.
Jim Sheils 36:09
I think that's probably just what you and I talked about, like what Jim Rogers said. It's how not how I want things, but how things are. Yeah. And so for me, I held back for a few years, even when some of the founders right here in my own backyard have pad split to team up with, but I think that I couldn't picture Keith 10 years ago having a short term rental and like wait a minute I'm going to have them stay there every week and I'm going to have to furnish it you know is from the old guy doing long term rentals so I think for people just read up on it it's becoming a very interesting trend there's some very interesting statistics of why this is working, how management can be handled effectively, how to stay in compliance with your city. There's a lot of good information. This is a great starting point to our conversation today, but I don't think this niche should be ignored because the track record is already there and it is answering a need of both investors and tenants, which is pretty cool.
Keith Weinhold 37:04
It has been super intriguing to learn more about this. Jim represents one of our GRE Marketplace providers. It's been great having you back on the show.
Jim Sheils 37:13
Now, thanks for having me, Keith.
Keith Weinhold 37:20
Yeah, a really informative episode today. If you want to learn more about co-living properties, you can do so at gremarketplace.com/co-living. That's where you'll get the investment report, floor plans, financial projections, see the exact pricing, and learn more about pad split there. I've been around this space for a while, and I know investors that own co-living properties. Some other best practices that I've learned about are that you want to have limited visitation or a zero visitation policy for your co-living tenants. As we touched on, these properties can really make money, but don't try to manage them remotely. Make the house rules unusually specific. Address guests, quiet hours, smoking, drugs, pets, parking, food storage, shared bathrooms, thermostat settings, and cleaning and abandoned belongings, and enforce the rules consistently and quickly. Because one disruptive resident can cause several good residents to leave, and in co-living, retaining household harmony that is often more valuable than retaining one problem tenant. Provide professional common area cleaning. Don't expect seven or 14 unrelated adults to collectively develop some passion for wiping down the stove. That is not going to happen. Shared areas should be cleaned at least weekly. Install bedroom locks and then smart exterior locks. Give each resident private space, eliminate shared keys, and immediately revoke keys after move out. Cameras they should generally be limited to lawful exterior and entry locations, not in private spaces. Provide excellent internet in co-living, unreliable WiFi. That is practically a habitability crisis. Use business-grade equipment, strong coverage, and have a backup plan for internet. And as an investor, it's wise for you to maintain a larger repair and turnover reserve than you would for a normal long-term rental. Keep these things in mind, and it can keep seven times the cash flow from becoming seven times the headache. Again, you can get the investment report, floor plans for the very properties we discussed today, financial projections, pricing, and get more information about pad split all at. gremarketplace.com/co-living. That's gremarketplace.com/coliving. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 1 40:15
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 40:43
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. We're talking with the star of the A&E show, the Real Estate Commission today. What real estate sectors are safe from AI, robots, and Amazon disruption? How many deals on the commercial side are still going to implode due to mortgage rates resetting higher? And some of the best negotiation techniques from $100 million deals that you can use in your own deals, and more today on Get Rich Education. You know, Mid South Homebuyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties. It's an executive coach. For nine years now, their CEO Terry Kerr and his COO Pat Nix have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners, his name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one-on-one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to DanielThomashHind.com. H-I-N-D. That's DanielThomashHind.com and sign up before spots fill. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056 They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Speaker 1 2:19
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 2:35
Welcome to GRE from Peoria, Illinois to Peoria, Arizona, and across 188 world nations. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. Though we're a show centered on how to build wealth through residential real estate investing, today we're talking mostly about the commercial side with a guest that's more comfortable investing in commercial real estate than he is residential. We'll learn why. He is the star of the new real estate show called the Real Estate Commission that airs on A&E Network. Todd Drowlette, because he was here with us last year shortly before the show debuted, and he had so many interesting things to tell us then. That's why he's back. Now we know that residential real estate is positioned well at surviving the boom in artificial intelligence's influence because everybody still needs a place to live. You can't download a kitchen or living room, and a chatbot can't replace a roof. But some types of commercial real estate are vulnerable to AI. I'm going to ask Todd which types and businesses are the most resilient to survive AI, robots, and Amazon, because there surely are some. He does a good job of making commercial real estate approachable to those that have never invested in it before.
Keith Weinhold 3:59
Contrary to the narrative, he also likes to talk about why office real estate is not dead. Occupying both worlds, I will ask him about office to residential conversions and also get his take on what is happening with commercial loans because apartment investors have been feeling the pain ever since mortgage rates doubled and nearly tripled in 2022. I'll ask about commercial loans blowing up and just how much more of that is expected to happen because the pain is certainly not over there. Let's meet this week's guest. A series on A and E Television and streaming launched last year called The Real Estate Commission, and it's going well enough that it's gearing up for season two. The star of that show is with us today. He was with us last year just before the show debuted, and that's when he shared all kinds of interesting insights with us, like why. A gas station is on a certain side of the road. He's perhaps the most prolific commercial real estate broker in the nation. He's managing director at Titan Commercial Realty Group in New York, closing deals totaling over $2 billion all across commercial real estate sectors. He's represented everyone from local startups to national reits. Hey, welcome back to Get Rich Education, Todd Drowlette.
Todd Drowlette 5:26
Thank you so much for having me back. I appreciate it. It's always great to talk to you.
Keith Weinhold 5:30
Yeah, same. It was so interesting when you were here last year, and I do want to ask you about how it's going with the A and E show later. Most of our listeners own single family rentals or small multifamily, and I think the commercial side, Todd. Frankly, it it intimidates some people. I know I've thought of it that way before. What are some of the misconceptions that the residential side seems to have about the commercial side?
Todd Drowlette 5:56
So a big misconception is that you have to be smart to do it. You certainly do not. A lot of people also think you have to already be a multimillionaire to do it, right? So the same way with residential, there's levels to it. There's levels to commercial real estate. So I say there's pros and cons, right? So in commercial real estate, if you have an office building or a shopping center or a ground lease, you rent to a McDonald's, whatever. You don't get phone calls at two in the morning saying my hot water tank just exploded, my furnace isn't working. So you still get property management calls, but they're typically from you know Monday through Friday, nine to five type of thing, and you don't need millions of dollars. People think you do. It's like you can buy a small two or three tenant office building or a two or three tenant retail shopping center, maybe something has a nail salon, hair salon in it. Depending on the market you're in, that could be a couple $100,000 to buy. If you're in a tertiary town in the United States, if you're in a major metro, it could be a million, 2 million bucks. But the rent is commiserate with what you're paying. So if you can make an 8 or 10% return, a lot of banks will finance startup people as long they're looking in commercial at the quality of the tenant and what the lease is. So you could have no experience, but if you're going to rent to a Hertz rental car, a Starbucks, a McDonald's, even if you personally have like say a 750 credit score, it's decent. It's not a perfect credit score, but you're financeable. They're lending in commercial real estate based on the credit and the length of the leases, not necessarily on your own financials. And a lot of people don't realize that, and they think, "Oh, bank's never going to approve me because I've never done commercial real estate before. Well, nobody's ever done anything until they do it, right? So as long as you start small, banks will lend to people, you know, on smaller things, there's a ton of pros to being in commercial real estate compared to residential. There's less competition. It's easier to repeat deals because once you know one tenant's looking for something, then you can find the next thing they're looking for, and it's a small knit group. You know, if there's 3 million real estate agents in the United States, I would say across the entire country, maybe 10,000 of us are commercial real estate agents.
Keith Weinhold 8:05
Yeah.
Todd Drowlette 8:06
So if you get into commercial, once you get into that network of people with a deal with the tenants and the whatever, you know, if you're in, you're in. If you're out, you're out. That was a very long answer to a very short question.
Keith Weinhold 8:16
Well, some people even have one of the same hangups about residential real estate investing-they think just to buy income property takes an awful lot of money, not realizing you can start with a single-family home of less than 300k or even less than 200k still today and make a small down payment on it. And you know, Todd, I think one thing that refines commercial real estate for some people and piques interest among residential investors is one of the first things that they learn when they're finding out about commercial real estate investing is the triple net lease. Oftentimes, you see that abbreviated NNN out there, and how that can make things somewhat more hands off for that commercial real estate investor. So, can you tell us about triple net leases?
Todd Drowlette 9:00
I sure can. Number one, the funny thing about triple net leases: none of the three things the N's represent start with an N. So your triple nets are literally your real estate taxes, your insurance, and your commonary maintenance. None of which start with an N. Yet it's called N N N.
Keith Weinhold 9:14
It's kind of like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The 3r is what only one of them starts with an R. It's a terrible acronym, but yes.
Todd Drowlette 9:22
Exactly. So there's different types of triple net properties. So essentially, a triple net property, unlike most residential, where you're responsible, you get X amount of rent, and then out of that rent for your income, you're going to subtract out your school tax, your property tax, your property insurance, liability insurance, you know, snow plowing, lawn mowing, all that type of stuff, right? So triple net properties, you have absolute net properties, which is the best thing you can own from a landlord's perspective. Those are things that are called absolute ground leases or an absolute net lease. Typically, you'll see those in like many gas stations. Will be that a lot of McDonald's. Deals are that where essentially you own a piece of property, you buy a piece of property, and you go here. You have X amount of time to put your building up, do construction, get your approvals. You're going to pay me X per month in a ground rent. You build your own building, you own your own building, you're responsible for it, and I just own the dirt. And those are typically 10 to 20 year leases with options. The downside of a triple net ground lease is you can't depreciate anything because it's just ground, right? So you don't get the depreciation you get with other properties, but you have no risk other than the credit of the tenant. So if you're signing a lease with the United States Postal Service and it's the federal government, you know you're getting that. Those will trade typically about one percentage point higher than U.S. Treasuries because there's very, very little risk in it. But there is some risk, so as an investor, you need a little bit better return than the guarantee of a U.S. Treasury.
Todd Drowlette 10:54
Then you have roof and structure triple net properties, where basically, okay, the roof and the structure I'm responsible for as the landlord. Anything inside of that, or you're responsible for, and then the tenants pay the proportionate share of, like I said, the taxes, the snow plowing, whatever. If that's a multi-tenant building, then you run the risk. Oh, tenant moves out as the landlord, you got to pick up that percentage. If if you have a 10,000 foot building and someone's in 2000 feet and they move out, well, now you're responsible for 20% of that tax and CAM and insurance bill until you replace it with a new tenant. But typically, if you're investing in small strip centers, smaller office buildings, which people say office is dead, I've made a fortune in office. Office is not dead. You just have to own the right office in the right place. A lot of downtown offices are dead, where they're moving to the suburbs for drugs and a lot of other issues. But typically, you know, strip centers today, people are buying those for 8% returns to as much as 10, 12% and a lot of times they're vacancy. That's upside you can add into it as well. But again, these are all things that you can get into for a couple $100,000 down, and there's way more room for error than people think there is. As long as you have a professional that's looking at the lease for you before you buy it, you know you just want to make sure the guarantee is on the lease that you have corporate guarantees. But typically, if a bank will finance it, they're also looking at that. But it's not as scary as people think it is, and it's really a strong alternative to investing in single-family homes. Not that I'm knocking single-family homes. There's pros and cons to literally everything you do in life, as you know. 100.
Keith Weinhold 12:28
A triple net lease, where in commercial property the tenant covers three main expenses or nets: property taxes, insurance, and the maintenance and repairs. And in a lot of the situations, like Todd is describing, that really leaves landlords responsible for little more than the mortgage, really increasing the passivity here. And you know, tenants that are willing to shoulder a triple net lease, I don't think of them as taking on those extra costs for nothing. I think about it is in exchange, tenants typically pay lower rent then, and the tenant also gets more control over the property in a triple net arrangement.
Todd Drowlette 13:08
That's a generally safe thing to say, but I hate saying this. I can't believe I'm even saying this, but you know they say location, location, location. So it really depends on the market. The biggest mistake people make to go, oh, I get asked all the time, should I invest in land? I'm like, hell no, raw land. I go when I develop stuff, I have a use for it. Once I get the approvals, then I'll close and buy the land. Land banking stuff and just going and buying land and hoping it goes up in value. I have a number one rule that I always say to people, and it's anytime you can buy $1 for 50 cents, you buy it, but you don't buy property for $1 hoping it goes to $2 because there's no guarantee that that'll happen. In raw land, you know you have a guaranteed. You're paying taxes every year, so just paying taxes on something that's also not returning you anything is a terrible investment, in my opinion. You're speculating. If you want to speculate, just go to the casino, play roulette, pick black or red, and you have roughly a 50-50 shop minus the three greens, but there's a lot easier ways to make money than buying raw land. But shopping centers, triple net properties, there's definitely ways for people to get into that that are much lower risk, and they're not as scary as you'd think. And many banks will finance them.
Keith Weinhold 14:18
Now, if you had to buy one commercial asset today, what would that be? I know that might depend on some factors, but generally, I've got to say, industrial comes to mind for me as one of the hottest commercial real estate asset classes in quite a while.
Todd Drowlette 14:32
So I would pick two strategies. One would be high bay warehouse, whether it's specifically industrial or just warehouse, but things with high ceilings, open floor plans, like you know, a 20,000 foot warehouse, 30,000 feet, something in that range, that a lot of people want that type of use. Warehouse rents have been increasing way faster than office or retail rents have been in the same markets. And as things get more and more automated, you still need to ship stuff. You still need to. Stuff you still need to get things to people's houses, so with the whole AI boom and the crazy things that are happening, I think there's going to be a lot fewer people with jobs sooner than people realize. But I do think the warehouse is a good thing to be invested in, especially if it's on main streets. It could be retail, could be warehouse, could be whatever. The second thing I'll say that's very low risk are any businesses that Amazon can't compete with you for. So, a small strip center that's two or three tenants, that's a hair salon, a nail salon, service type business, retail tenants, because it's a turnover business. So, like nail salons, they're never going to come to your house and do your nails unless you're a billionaire, because they can make more money with people coming to them in back-to-back appointments. So any type of service business tenant that you can have, and typically nail salons, hair salons, they don't usually go out completely. Usually, if they don't want to do it anymore, they'll sell the business to somebody else, and you keep a tenant. From an ownership standpoint, there's very low turnover and having to pay new brokerage fees or do give tenant fit-ups or free rent to like get their business up and running. So I would either go high bay warehouse with loading docks like 18 foot, 20 foot or higher ceilings, open floor plans, overhead doors, 20, 30,000 square feet, or two or three tenant strip malls with high traffic counts, good suburban locations that have service type businesses. Those are your two. Would be very hard to lose as long as you don't overpay when you buy them.
Keith Weinhold 16:25
This is such an interesting thing to say when you think about a resilient business, something that can't easily be disrupted by AI or Amazon, which something like a nail salon would fit into. Tell us about some of those other types that might fit into a small retail center that are resilient that way.
Todd Drowlette 16:45
End caps, so any kind of like a Popeyes, a McDonald's, anything that's drive-through or food. Even you're starting to see, you know, the Tesla robots, and you're seeing more and more of that. However, people will still buy the food. So whether the employees are actually still in there, it's all robots. They still physically need a place that's close and convenient for people to drive to, or even the food delivery apps. Like a lot of the retail restaurants now are telling me 30, 40% of their orders are delivery through like Uber Eats and whatever. But those are great tenants to have because they're still making money, and as the world's changing, they're adapting. And I want tenants that adapt to the changing world. And honestly, they can afford to pay more. This is terrible. But from a strictly landlord perspective, the fewer employees they have, you don't have workers' comp claims, you don't have the insurance, you don't have all those things. The more you can afford to pay rent to landlords. So as the world's changing, those type of retail, small strip centers, end caps, fast food, QSR type food, quick serve retail. Those are definitely things that I would be considering if I was someone getting into this, and they're things that I also own. So I always recommend what I would do myself.
Keith Weinhold 17:55
Right, and with that commercial tenant, if they're serving fast food, yes, it's not like their customer has to physically show up there at that business for that business to thrive.
Todd Drowlette 18:06
And actually, if you have them as a tenant, because of the delivery, like with a drive-through, you're typically only working off one or two miles. But Uber Eats or these other meal services, they're now going out five, six, even seven miles in some places. So that actually means their sales could be higher. And another thing I didn't mention, but now I'm thinking, a lot of restaurant tenants will pay a percentage rent. So actually, as their sales go up, even though there's not more infrastructure, you know, strains from more customers coming in and out of your property, as they're doing the meal delivery, you're actually potentially be getting cut of that as a landlord with percentage rent, which is a thing that doesn't exist in residential real estate, obviously, there's multiple streams of income for triple net properties at times when you have percentage rent that doesn't exist in warehouse, where it's in retail. It doesn't exist in office, doesn't exist in warehouse, doesn't exist in residential. So that can be a nice bonus, and you see that with supermarkets, restaurants, different types of retailers pay percentage run.
Keith Weinhold 19:05
Okay, so in a sense, Todd, we've been talking about going against the flow, if you will, in being in businesses that are resilient toward disruption from AI or Amazon. But while we're talking about industrial real estate, warehouses do come to mind for me soon afterward, I think generations ago maybe industrial had the connotation of a dirty factory. But today, when I think about warehouses, I think about Amazon fulfillment centers or AI data centers. So, what is the business like for investing in those sort of warehouse deals, and how do those deals even get put together for these warehouse types.
Todd Drowlette 19:42
So you have two types. So you have people who do spec building. So there's guys that will go out and say, "Hey, I'm in the warehousing business, and they'll go through. They'll get approvals and they'll say they'll buy 10 acres, 20 acres, 30 acres, and they'll say, "Okay, we're going to." Put I'm making this up. 500,000 square feet of warehouse on this. They'll go get approved, but they basically will put up a spec building of 40,000 50,000 feet, and then they'll lease it. Depending how long it takes them to lease it, then they'll build the next one. Once you kind of have one building up, it's much easier to prelease. If you just have a piece of dirt and say, hey, I'm going to do a warehouse building here. Unless you have a direct in specifically with Amazon, and they're like, hey, we need to be in Skoda, New York, you know, at this exit within 10 miles of that. And it's like anything. Once you do something for someone once, they're working across the whole country. So if you're particularly good in a specific region as developer, they will often say, "Hey, find me a spot here, here, because they're in the business of getting open and running data centers. They don't care if you're making a profit on the real estate, and they're not set up to locally go through the approvals, know the politicians, know the process, that whole thing. So there's opportunities like that. If you don't know anyone from a hole in the wall, if you have a big piece of property and you start with whatever you're comfortable with to spec out a warehouse, 10,000 feet, 5000 feet. See how long it takes. Do you lease that in six months? Does it take three months? Does it take a year? And then you can kind of take some of the profits from that, either refinance, or if you have a construction loan, then build the next one, build the next one, and build the next one. You can kind of build out as the demand comes along.
Keith Weinhold 21:22
You're listening to Get Rich Education. We're talking to the star of the A and E show, the Real Estate Commission, Todd Drowlette. So much when we come back. He's going to update us on what's happening with office to residential conversions, how much higher interest rate pain is still going to surface in some of these deals, and a negotiation tactic or two that you can use for your own residential deals. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Flock Homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now, mom and pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation. See if your properties qualify at flockhomes.com/gre. That's flockehomes.com/gre. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. And full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility.
Todd Drowlette 24:15
Well, I'll tell you about some of the pitfalls, and I'll tell you the huge opportunities. If you have office buildings that are vacant, you know, particularly in downtown municipalities like in Albany, New York, you know, our state capital in New York. Politicians and the government right now are creating a lot of incentives to convert those, where they're putting up grant and giving away millions of dollars to private developers that you don't have to repay. So there's a huge opportunity to have people take on a lot of the risk for you to do it. Some of the pitfalls people get into are you want to pick the right office building to do it for. So you want to a make sure that that office building either has on site parking garages or on site parking because I've seen people try to do it and that. Downtowns where there's no parking, and you can put a lot of money in a building with no parking. And if you're not in New York City, where people are used to, and you're competing against suburban apartments, that's a tough sell. So that's number one. Number two, for whatever reason, people really want in office buildings and downtown settings floor-to-ceiling windows. So you really want to pick office buildings that already have floor-to-ceiling windows because it can be very expensive. If you get over three floors, it can be very expensive to cut out windows and make them larger. And another, this is a huge money potential pitfall if you're not careful. Many municipalities and states have different codes for elevators for residential buildings than they have for office. It makes no sense to me, but office buildings. It has to do with fitting the elevator has to be large enough that you can get a stretcher if someone had a heart attack and needed to be wheeled out. Ah, for some reason, residential buildings require larger elevators, and if your shaft isn't big enough and your car isn't big enough. You could have a million dollars or more of an unexpected expense to either make the shaft bigger. Some buildings you can't even do it.
Keith Weinhold 26:08
Well, but if it was originally set up for-
Todd Drowlette 26:09
It doesn't make any sense either. This is new. If you have an office building that's 30 stories tall, people could have heart attacks in the middle of the day at the office. So how is that any different than if they're at home in an apartment and have a heart attack, so it doesn't make any sense to me why the code is different for the fire code. But in New York State, the fire code is different, and that can be astronomically expensive, or it can literally stop your project dead in the tracks if it just becomes cost prohibitive to do it.
Keith Weinhold 26:34
That's something that I never would have thought about. I generally like to see office to residential conversions revitalizing central business districts in our cities. You know, you talked about the parking before having less need for parking. If people can walk to work and where they work, that increases the walkability of an area. I like so many things about office to residential conversions, despite all the hardships and the pitfalls you have to avoid.
Todd Drowlette 27:01
Oh, they're great. You just want to make sure you're picking the right building. So my point is, if you have five or 10 vacant office buildings, mostly vacant office buildings, just make sure you're choosing the right one. And before you buy it, do your due diligence and go through with contractors and engineers and architects that understand all the codes and say, hey, the other positive thing that saves money in office conversions is most office buildings. If you have an elevator bank, typically have bathrooms directly across from the elevator bank, so water and sewer can be very expensive when you're running apartments. So having central lines going up through usually concrete floors can save you a ton of money in the design and the layout of how you place the units and do it around central bathrooms, but typically larger office buildings will have plumbing and sewer on different parts of the floor. So it just means you have to go less distance and it saves money. And a lot of office buildings, even older ones, have higher ceilings, which today is very desirable for apartments. So if you can have a building that has natural light, high ceilings, and you can get grant money to do it, that's definitely something people should look into. And even with a smaller building, I've seen people in New York people are converting 5000 foot office buildings into like five units. You know, there's money to be made. You just have to buy right. I always say, you know, if you can buy $1 for 50 cents. Buy it. Don't buy $1 and hope it goes to $2 A
Keith Weinhold 28:25
lot of these physical limitations, oftentimes in the office to residential conversion, and Todd in the residential world, oftentimes apartment buildings have been problematic. A lot of these syndicators have had their deals blow up because in 2022 or earlier they got five to seven year fixed rate debt. Those deals are coming due. The mortgage payments double, and a lot of times the operator just can't meet it, and it blows up. And apartment building values have been down about 30% nationally, largely for that reason, even though an apartment building owner gets a commercial loan, I still want to know from the commercial side and the commercial use type how much higher interest rate pain do you see that has surfaced and is still going to surface.
Todd Drowlette 29:17
So, I'll answer this by quoting my grandmother. She said, "Anytime you want to cook, whatever size pot you think you need, pick twice that size pot and start using that.
Keith Weinhold 29:29
Yeah.
Todd Drowlette 29:29
So I say the same thing when you're financing a deal or you're writing it out and seeing what your returns are. I always say to people, make sure that you have a big enough cushion in there for all the things you can never predict in commercial loans, there's a ton of guys that are about to lose their shirts, and you're starting to see it because, unfortunately, I don't know if it's true in residential real estate, but in commercial real estate, I've seen guys go from nothing to 50 million, 100 million, $200 million net worths, but I've also seen. Lose everything. So what happens in commercial real estate that you don't want to do is so many people say OPM, use other people's money, use other people's money, use other people's money, which is fine as a strategy. But what you don't want to do is cross collateralized loans. So if you have one property and then you go, oh, let me refinance that and then buy a next property and I'll refinance that and buy the next property, and then the bank's like, okay, we'll refinance that, but we're going to now tie all these properties together as one mortgage, or you're going to cross guarantee these properties. Right. The problem with that is, the people who do that strategy, if you started at that, you know, in 2021 when interest rates, you could get things at three and three quarters percent. Well, commercial loans are five-year loans typically, and they might have 20 or 20-five-year amortizations. So, unlike a residential mortgage that's a 15 or 20 or 30-year self-amortizing loan, they're not. At the end of five years, you have a balloon payment that you have to pay off. So, if interest rates are going down, that's amazing because if your tenants are the same, and even if your rents didn't change, and you bought something at 6% and now it's at 5% Your cash flow goes up significantly, and nothing happened other than your refinance. The problem is you have a ton of guys right now, guys, women, people that were financing stuff five years ago at three and three quarters, and now interest rates are hanging six and a quarter, six and a half, depending on the property, is might maybe seven. Same tenant, same everything. You're giving the keys back to the bank because you're broke now. Because all of a sudden you're financing, you squeeze too much out of the deal. I always say you can take on the in in or you can take on the out, but you can't have both. So when people are financing stuff, they just need to make sure. Like here's another thing I'll go off on. A lot of people will buy stuff with tax credits, and you see even with residential apartments, a lot of guys are financing that, selling people tax credits. Economies and things change and things move. If a deal is so tight that you need the tax credits to make the deal make sense, yeah, don't do the fricking deal because tax credits should be an added bonus. That's just, hey, that's a nice adding to the cushion. So many people have razor thin margins. They go, oh well, I do the tax credits. If I can get 70 cents on the dollar, this is how I make the money. I tell people I will have nothing to do with tax credit deals unless it's strictly a bonus. The deal has to stand on its own, and always assume in the course of five years interest rates could go up three points or down three points. Most people will not listen to me and will not do that. If you do that, you'll never get killed and you won't lose a property. It's super conservative, but there's enough money you can make, and if you buy it right, that's how you can afford to figure that spread in when you're financing something. But just so many people get greedy, and I just think back to my friend Bob Bear, who died. I met him when he was like 70-five. He was a billionaire, self-made, and he used to say to me, "It's not what you make; it's what you keep. And when people would ask how rich are you, he knew how rich he was. He would say, "I don't owe anybody in the world a dime.
Todd Drowlette 32:59
And to me, my entire strategy is I don't owe anybody in the world a dime. So I personally look at deals and say, out of my own cash flows, what can I buy? And instead of buying four properties a year, I might buy one property a year. But if I'm buying that and compounding my returns, I'm not paying interest to the banks. So it's just a different strategy. I sleep at night. I'm like the multimillionaire next door. I don't live extravagantly. I don't drive Ferraris and Rolls Royces. That's just not my thing. But I sleep at night and I have peace, which is important to me, knowing I don't owe anybody in the world a dime. But will I get as rich as the guy who's risking everything? No. But real estate to me is musical chairs, and the music always stops at some point. And there's never enough chairs for everybody. But if you're somebody who's in a cash position, which you're going to be going through in the next six months to a year, on the residential and commercial, I think there's going to be blood in the streets. And I think people who are sitting in cash are going to have like a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy things at a deep discount.
Keith Weinhold 34:02
Philosophically, we're different in one way. I use debt and leverage to grow larger, but ensuring that I do have enough income to cover the mortgage and all the operating expenses. But Todd, to your analogy about your grandmother in selecting a bigger pot than what she would need to cook whatever she's going to do, when it does come to debt, the last time I bought an apartment building myself, which wasn't recent, I could have chosen seven-year fixed-rate debt with a balloon at the end, or 10-year fixed-rate debt with a balloon at the end. The 10-year fixed-rate debt cost me one quarter of a percent more in mortgage rate, which dented my cash flow during the entire duration of that loan. But I did indeed choose that 10-year loan in order to have that much more certainty, and I sure am glad that that's what I did.
Todd Drowlette 34:54
That's always the game because it's people think that rich people know what you don't, or it's inside. Whatever I'm like. Number one, if you sit in a room with a bunch of rich people, yes, they will work against you if it benefits them to work together. But if it doesn't, you have egos and separate interests that are all competing. And there's always that thing of I know very very rich people who could buy and sell me 100 times over, and I also know that you don't know what you don't know, and the world has gotten so complicated, and financial markets are all intertwined globally. Anyone to be able to predict, it's like it's a crapshoot when you're like, okay, do I take seven years? Where do I think interest rates will be in seven years? It's hard to say where interest rates going to be tomorrow. You ask a banker tomorrow, they can't tell you. So it's like, what's your best educated guess of seven or 10 years? What's the better play? But I always go the conservative route.
Keith Weinhold 35:43
I think it's easier to predict the future direction of capital prices than it is interest rates. Myself,
Todd Drowlette 35:50
but I will say also, I am the exception. And if you have 100 other guests on here in the next year, well, 50-one more guests in here the next year, yeah, they would all say Todd's an idiot. That's terrible advice. If you want to get rich, literally leverage, leverage. Just do it intelligently, and I acknowledge that. I don't see the world the way other people do, but my end game is to be rich and comfortable, and to sleep at night with peace. And that's why I choose to do what I do, realizing I'm giving up. It's the you know what are you giving up to what do you gain benefit analysis, and I'm realizing I'm giving up some upside in my total potential net worth. But I like peace, and you know I had anxiety for years. I don't have it anymore, and I live my life to be as anxiety free as I can possibly be.
Keith Weinhold 36:34
That's interesting, and that certainly works for you, Todd. What's one negotiation tactic that you get from dealing with, well, let's say Decca or Centa million dollar commercial deals that our listeners could use the very next time that they buy a rental property.
Todd Drowlette 36:53
So the number one mistake I think people make is they assume what's motivating the other person, and they assume it's always price. So anytime I'm going to negotiate a deal from someone, whoever has the most information always wins, and whoever doesn't need the deal always wins. Yeah. So I want to know as much about that other person on the other side as I am. Are they going through a divorce? Are they desperate? Do they hate each other? Is it a partnership breakup? Did somebody inherit it and they live five states away and don't even know what this thing is worth that they have. So the number one thing from a negotiating standpoint is understand exactly who you're negotiating with and what's motivating them. From an actual tactic standpoint, just think logically through whatever the process is, and you can always go up. You can't go down. So the key is to offer as little as you can without insulting the person, so they don't even respond. So figure out what that fine line is, and before you go into the negotiation, know what your walk away number is. That's just the point you're not getting over. The fast way to lose in a negotiation is to get stuck in a bidding war. There's nothing I want so much that I'm going to overpay for it. So when people go, "Well, if somebody else is interested, I go then sell it to them. Yeah, I don't need it. Sell it to them. And then the other thing I'll say is, if you start the negotiation, this is the one piece. Say your number and shut up. So many people are scared of silence. And then, right, if the person doesn't immediately respond, they go, "Oh, well, I guess I offered you 500,000 I mean, I guess I could go 550. As soon as you talk after you give a number, you're negotiating against yourself. So throw the number, let it land wherever it lands, and do not talk until that person responds to you. That's like the number one mistake I see people do. They throw out a number, they get nervous with the silence, and then they immediately go up in their offer. That person could have been thinking, "Oh my God, did I forget to call back my whatever? And they're not even thinking about the number you just threw out. But people just assume, oh God, the number was too low, and then they negotiate against those. Do not do that.
Keith Weinhold 38:48
Risk the awkward silence. And yes, to your point about learning more about the other side, terms are often more important than price for sure. Well, Todd, you know a lot of commercial real estate content in mainstream media it tends to focus on these big institutional deals. But what has made your A and E show interesting, the Real Estate Commission, is what it's called. Is it focuses more on sort of leasing and this negotiation that we're just touching on there, and that's what makes you interesting. So tell us about what audiences can expect for season two of the Real Estate Commission on A and E.
Todd Drowlette 39:24
So, season two, you will 100% see real landlords, real brokers, real investors. You'll see real retailers. You'll see people relocating their offices in New York City. You'll see stuff in upstate New York. It's generally in the Northeast. In the first season, we helped a kitchen cabinet manufacturer relocate their suburban offices in Philadelphia. I sold a 50-unit HUD property that has a HAP contract you might be familiar with. That was crazy going through a bankruptcy foreclosure proceeding two year. That was crazy. Yeah, so you are going to. See more of that. It's a documentary. It's not a reality show, so you're watching the deal as it unfolds. Some things have happy endings. Some things have terrible endings, but they're real endings either way. So people will see a lot of that of deals happening in the Northeast. And if someone's listening and they're a business owner and they want to be part of the show, they can apply. We're announcing the casting will be open for about three weeks across the U.S. They can go to the realestatecommission.com/forward/tv and they can apply to be part of the show.
Keith Weinhold 40:32
Now, since you started this last year, I want to ask: Has this A and E exposure helped you generate more business and create traffic? I would really think so.
Todd Drowlette 40:42
Yeah, I wasn't sure. You know how because you never anything new. You never know, right? Like I put time and energy into it. It definitely did. Definitely, people start to notice you, which is a little weird. I was in a cell phone store, and they literally it was playing, and the guy's like, "Oh, it's you! Like, and then everybody who's walking in, he's like, "Hey, look, it's the guy on TV. He's right here. That was like kind of an awkward. Like, I'm like, "Okay, this is weird. Guy was excited, so that was fine. It's an adjustment of things, but it definitely has increased our overall visibility and people reaching out to do deals with us for sure.
Keith Weinhold 41:18
Is there any last resource you'd like to tell our audience about.
Todd Drowlette 41:21
I would just quickly announce the first season did so well. We're actually doing a spinoff show that'll also air on A and E called the Real Estate Commission New York that we're casting in upstate New York as well as New York City for brokers, agents, home sellers, home buyers that will actually document real buyers, real sellers, same thing. It'll follow our format, which I know there's a million shows on TV about real estate. Those are reality shows, not docu series. And I'll say, without going into the details, there's a very big difference between those two and what you're actually seeing on camera and what's happening. That will air in March of 2027, back to back with our show, I will make cameos in that. But I'm executive producing that show, so from your residential audience, that's a show they should tune into. I think they'll get a lot out of it.
Keith Weinhold 42:12
Congratulations! Your show has had so much success that it's setting the template for another show, and it has been most interesting since we first had you here last year to follow this along, Todd Drowlette. It's been a valuable chat. Thanks so much for coming back onto the show.
Todd Drowlette 42:28
I'd love to come back anytime, and thank you so much for having me on again. I appreciate it.
Keith Weinhold 42:38
Drowlette is spelled D R O W L E T T E. Todd and I talk a good bit off mic as well. In addition to the elevators, sometimes he emphasizes how cumbersome to impossible HVAC system compatibility is when you're doing office to residential building conversions. Too, you just never seem to hear about an easier than expected office to residential property conversion. It is most interesting and rare that Todd is not much of a leverage guy at all. Whereas in the vein of financially free beats debt free, I like to approach deals where the interest cost is lower than the expected opportunity cost. When it comes to negotiating, some of Todd's approach, you know, it's similar to what prominent hostage negotiator Chris Voss shared with you here on the show a few years ago. That silence is powerful in negotiating. In fact, if you feel like you need to say something to fill the silence. Use what Chris Voss calls the mirroring technique, and the mirroring technique that is simply repeating what the other party just said, kind of like a parrot would. For example, if you're trying to buy a property and the seller says that the best they can do is sell it to you for 550k and a delayed 90-day close. Reply with 550k and a 90-day close, and then listen to see if the seller comes down from there. Or instead, you can simply say nothing and just sit there with the silence like Todd recommended. The reason I like these particular negotiating techniques right here is that they're easy to remember and they're easy to do. You either remain silent or, per the mirroring technique, you just repeat the last words that the other party said. Thanks to Todd Drowlette today, you can check out the real estate commission on A and E Coming up here on the show soon. Back to residential, where for the first time ever on the show here we discuss what might be the greatest real estate cash flow strategy because it's becoming quite popular today. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 1 45:08
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 45:36
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Keith Weinhold 1:35
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Speaker 1 2:08
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 2:24
Welcome to GRE from Cherokee, North Carolina, to Cherokee, Panama, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Welcome back to another Wealth Building Week. You are inside Get Rich Education, where financially free beats debt free. Today we're talking about a specific investment that is not residential real estate. In fact, it's a more primordial real estate type that predates housing. So therefore, it is lucid and intelligible. It's easy to understand. Sort of the opposite of more arcane investment like AI data centers or crypto mining. At a basic level, this makes it easy to understand, and there aren't any tenants to manage. It also does not pay you as often as monthly, though as you'll learn, there is income and appreciation is expected too. Now, if you invest outside your home country, you're probably going to want to be diligent and select a politically stable nation that also has an operator based in that region with a fantastic track record. It helps if they're close to the U.S. This small nation is close to the U.S. in both geographic proximity and economically. Their currency is even the U.S. dollar. They even share an electrical system with the U.S. with the same outlets and voltages. As you might be guessing, where I'm talking about, this nation also has a consumer culture somewhat similar to the U.S. with American restaurants and retailers and brands in our real estate world. What we find more important is how, like the U.S. this nation is a constitutional presidential republic, and both nations have these separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches, the three branches and elected presidents, in these competitive multi-party elections, and both America and this place have market-oriented economies that emphasize private property and private enterprise, banking and financial services, international commerce, logistics, ports, and aviation.
Keith Weinhold 4:49
Today, we're talking about the opportunity for you to own productive timber and the land beneath it, teak hardwood trees in Panama, a quarter-acre parcel. At a time with your name on the deed, that direct ownership is known as fee simple ownership. I have directly invested in Panama for about 11 years myself. Now, though teak might be able to survive in a climate like Hawaii, mere survival is not enough in the U.S. It is difficult to impossible to find anywhere that grows productive plantation teak. Here in the late 2020s decade, we've had bouts of El Nino or La Nina a lot of places in the world, and that has severely weakened some crop types. Other providers of different agricultural investments are failing, but not this teak. They're resilient, and we'll get into the physical properties of the teak. I'm going to ask today's distinguished guest about that. He and his business partners planted some select timber 27 years ago, and they've been offering teak hardware parcels to investors for that long, 27 years, and for about the last 10 years to GRE investors. Hundreds of you are participating now, but I'm going to wait to ask more about the physical teak product itself until later, because what's more important are the investment environment and the strength of the operator. So learn more about this and what the projected investment returns are, and just how much exactly does a quarter-acre parcel of teak cost? If you so choose, owning teak parcels also gives you the option of residency status in Panama, and you only need to spend two days there every two years in part of maintaining that status, they offer investor in-person tours of the teak plantations too because they're proud of what they do there. I expect a fascinating discussion with Mike, the teak company co-founder and CEO. This week's guest has become a friend since I met him about 10 years ago. He co-founded and is CEO of an international real estate development company. He's got active projects throughout Central America. He's been doing it for more than 30 years, so he's not a tinkerer and not trying out project concepts.
Keith Weinhold 7:26
And at this point, he's helped thousands of North Americans diversify their portfolios through international real estate ownership and residency planning, and even lifestyle investing. And if you've ever attended an investment conference on something like global diversification. You might have seen him speak there because he's such a frequent, recognized speaker and voice, and he's authored multiple books on real estate, financial freedom, expat living, and just unlocking a better lifestyle. Hey, welcome back onto the show, Mike Cobb.
Mike Cobb 7:59
Oh Keith, nice to be with you. And you're right. 10 years, we've enjoyed one another's company at many conferences. It's always great to be back with you virtually. I look forward to seeing you again personally one of these days as well. And yeah, thank you for the very kind words on the intro.
Keith Weinhold 8:14
Yeah, if I'm teetering on whether or not to attend a conference, I ask myself, is Mike going to be there? That's right.
Mike Cobb 8:20
We'll hang out,
Keith Weinhold 8:22
100% And you know, Mike, he's also an avid reader of GRE's "Don't Quit Your Daydream" newsletter. So then, clearly, he's even smarter than you've ever thought. You heard him on the show before, so you knew he was smart, but now he's even smarter than you ever knew since he's a reader. Tell us what you like about the newsletter.
Mike Cobb 8:40
You know, Keith. I gotta say, every issue that comes in, I read it. By the way, today's issue said read before Thursday, so you give me a couple days tomorrow at least to read it. Anyway, no, you know what? You are so powerfully succinct. The charts that you put in are wonderful. You were a geographer major, and and so spatial things are important. I also recognize. I love the charts. I love the graphs, and I hate to even say I love sort of the I hate to call it the trivial information, but you know enough data points that seem trivial when you put a theory around them actually become meaningful. And what you are able to do is you're able to connect dots that most people don't connect. That's the hallmark of genius, and I think you are a genius, by the way. And I think your newsletter shows that. And so, thanks for putting it out. Your readers are very, very fortunate to have you there, giving them the kinds of information that are super relevant in the marketplace at one level and on a specific level. But even more important, creating the theoretical constructs that allow them to understand the why of something's happening because you know if you understand the why of something you know it makes a lot more sense first of all but it also allows us to maybe forecast the next what coming down the pike and if we can be on the front edge of something or you know being able to look over the hill or around the bend that's. Powerful in the marketplace, and and you bring that power to your readers. Well done, man.
Keith Weinhold 10:04
Thanks. Yeah, it's not just what; it's why this matters. And that was an incredibly kind thing to say. I write every word of the letter myself, and you, the listener, you can get the letter free now@greletter.com I send it about weekly, and Mike, I know that U.S. investors, including some Get Rich Education followers, they've been increasingly looking offshore for one thing many perceive the political risk has palpably higher than it was a few years ago. So, just broadly, tell us more about what North American investors seem to be looking for.
Mike Cobb 10:42
Sure, I summed it up earlier today. I was talking with a conference organizer, and he was really giving me the hard sell on why I should come to his conference. And it's probably not a good fit. But I heard myself say it for the first time. What we really help folks do in certain spheres, but maybe in this sphere, is help people get a good night's sleep, you know, peace of mind, right? And when you've got the political turmoil, you wrote an article or a newsletter a couple weeks ago, and it was about inflation, the kinds of things that were happening, and it was so spot on. And I think your readers, and not just your readers, but people who are tuned into what's really happening from a political standpoint, a financial standpoint. There is no way you can print this much money. There's no way you can have these kinds of things going on all the time that create a huge run-up of debt, right? And it's not even the debt; it's the implications of the debt. What's going to happen next? How's this thing going to unwind, right? And so when you have all of this stuff going on. You have people who are really, really worried about their future. It's a financial future. I say there are two train wrecks. There's a train wreck of debt, which is what I just talked about, and there's a train wreck of freedom. And that train wreck of freedom is really, in some ways, a result of the train wreck of debt. But when you've got a train wreck or two train wrecks happening, we really have three choices. We can ride it out, right? Take the ride and go for the crash, right? We can do something about it, but we really have to do something about it before. I'm going to mix a metaphor here, but if you know a hurricane's coming in three or four days, you don't wait till the wind's blowing 150 miles an hour to put up the plywood, right? You get out there while the sun's still shining. You put up the plywood, and then when the hurricane hits, like you got plywood over the windows, and you can ride out the storm. And this is where I think so many people are today. They're recognizing this hurricane is coming. The problem is, is that I don't think people always know where to go get plywood, right? What do I do? How do I protect myself and my assets, right?
Mike Cobb 12:38
And what this conversation right here is about is here's one kind of plywood you can put up on your window and the diversification overseas the diversification internationally into a hard asset that is not really inflation proof because I'm not sure there is such a thing but largely inflation proof or a big a great hedge against inflation real stuff hard assets real estate timber commodity right this is. what so many people are now looking at, and then the other piece of it is you can layer in a residency, which starts to give you that political plan B. You've got an economic plan B, kind of the hedge against inflation, but you've got this residency component that gives you sort of a hedge against the political uncertainty, and 1000s of folks have moved in this direction. Several 100, I think it's about 600 folks now, have picked up the residency as part of their timber investment as well. So a lot of different things going on, but I think they do circle all the way back to this train wreck of debt and a train wreck of freedom, the political divisiveness kind of what's happening.
Keith Weinhold 13:40
Now, what if someone hasn't invested in a hard asset overseas before, Mike? I'm thinking some people might come ask you. You know, why would I do this? For example, I live in the United States, where we have a rule of law and stable, mature markets and high property ownership rights. So, why should I look to diversify internationally with hard assets,
Mike Cobb 14:01
yeah, I think there's a general answer, and then maybe a couple specific answers. Generally, you know, I would never bet against the U.S. the U.S. economy. We're the largest economy in the world. I would never bet against it, right? But I think that for prudence, we would all want to have at least another basket for a few of our eggs: 5% 10% 20% Pick. Pick a number that's comfortable, but have some of your investable net worth outside your home country. Like that's just prudent, right? Why would you have everything all in one basket? And so we see that as a general answer. Specifically, a country like Panama, where we do have artique plantations, they have public title escritora publica. It's fee simple title, but in the civil law, so it's called escritora publica. The rule of law is strong in Panama. And then the other thing about Panama that I absolutely love is you have the canal, and the canal provides both economic stability and political stability. On the economic side, it generates just. Under $5 billion a year of cash flow, year in year out, right? So just it's like an ATM machine for a country with a population of about 4 million people. Do the math on that; like that's a huge amount of money on a per capita basis, right?
Keith Weinhold 15:13
Narrow water passages have really been newsworthy for a long time now, too.
Mike Cobb 15:16
Well, they have, and just like the Strait of Hormuz, right? You know, people sometimes go. I hear it said, "Oh, the canal is a vital strategic U.S. interest. That is absolutely 100% correct. But if you're a country that produces any goods that ship, or you're a country that receives any goods by ship, that canal is a strategic interest to you, and by definition, that's every country in the world. Every country in the world wants that canal open and transiting, right? Because everybody either produces or receives or both, right? And so you've got the political stability element as well as the economic stability element. You've got the rule of law. Panama is a great, great place for that person who you mentioned who's never done an overseas investment, never gone offshore, right? What's an easy place to start? What's one of the safest places to start is Panama, and it's in this hemisphere too, so it's close. I mean, you can get there for three hours from Miami, three and a half hours from Houston. Flights all over to U.S. Canada. It's easy. So I think a lot of folks see Panama as a very, very easy way to make that first step overseas.
Keith Weinhold 16:25
I happen to know that you just flew in from Panama. You're in the United States today, but you're constantly going to Central America. You span time zones more often than almost anyone I know. You mentioned fee simple ownership in there. For those that don't know, I think of that as direct ownership, where you don't have some weird administrative government layer in there that can dilute your hard asset.
Mike Cobb 16:47
Right, you can own it in your own name, you can own it in a corporation, so it's easy to own it. But yeah, no layering, right? By the way, the Constitution treats owners who are Panamanian the same exact ways it treats all foreign owners, and actually, we do business all over Central America. The one thing that we look for is a a legal regime that protects foreigners and foreign investors the same as it does domestic. Panama does that.
Keith Weinhold 17:12
Yeah, so investing in hard asset in Panama is a bit like investing internationally with training wheels on, due to its close relationship with the United States bolstered by the Panama Canal, but yet if someone hasn't invested internationally first, there are still a few mistakes to avoid. Maybe things that one isn't aware of. Can you tell us more about that?
Mike Cobb 17:33
The biggest danger people have when they make their first foreign investment is what I call margarita madness, right? And a lot of times it happens. You're on vacation in Cancun. You're having the time of your life. You're you just went parasailing, whatever. You're walking down the beach, and some developer says, "Hey, come on up here and take a look at my condo project. You know, and we'll buy you dinner at Senior Frogs tonight. We'll give you a coupon or whatever, right?
Keith Weinhold 17:55
Right.
Mike Cobb 17:55
And a lot of people do that, and then later that night, that's Senior Frogs. They're celebrating the condo they just bought, right? I mean, it's not how we transact real estate in the U.S. and Canada. There's a due diligence process. There's a due diligence period. It takes weeks or months to transact on a property, not hours, right? And so the single biggest mistake is that, and the way that we really can resolve it. I mean, my book is all about this. In fact, you have a copy, and I think you've helped some of your your readers and listeners get copies as well. It's called "How to Buy Your Home Overseas and Get It Right the First Time, and it really boils down to three simple principles: buy what you see. Is it there? Right. Own community. Right. Make sure it's in a place where you have people around. Right? Because there are a lot of ghost towns out there, and then know the developer. Do your due diligence on the developer himself, right? So you've got these three principles, and if you follow those three principles, you could do a lot better. But I actually think there's even a better way, and it has to do with character. It has to do with us, and you know when we move to the developing world, anywhere outside of you know North America, Northern Europe, maybe Australia, New Zealand, right? We're moving from the land of seller beware, right? Think lemon laws, think Ralph Nader, think advocacy groups, you know, lots of laws and regulations that control the seller, to the world of buyer beware, where none of those laws exist, and so now you're on your own. And because we've been living and transacting our whole lives in a seller beware environment, in a bubble of protection, we're protected by the government, right? We think we are. We'll just say that anyway. But we're protected. We're in a bubble, and we move to the land of buyer beware.
Mike Cobb 19:38
The problem is we don't really know how to transact. We don't know the right questions to ask, and our single biggest advantage, our single biggest attribute or asset that we have, is actually humility, because we don't know what we don't know, and we have to forget what we think we know. Assumptions, right? We can't bring assumptions with us that hold true. Some do some. Don't right. If we approach a transaction overseas with humility, there are no dumb questions. I'm going to ask every question I can think of. I'm going to do as much research as I can within a limited period of time. I'm not going to not analysis to paralysis forever. I'm going to say, look, I'm going to spend the next 30 days. I'm going to do a ton of due diligence, and at the end of 30 days, if I like what I say, I'm going to transact, right? So you're you're not getting the deer in the headlights never to do something, right? But you know, several weeks, maybe a month or two, depending on what it is you're doing, is enough time to do really, really good due diligence. Ask all the questions you can think of, but approach it with humility. And when we do those things, we transact so much, so much better than if we just rush into it with Margarita Madness.
Keith Weinhold 20:44
Right? People get caught up in those emotions with Margarita Madness and end up with a timeshare that they can't get rid of, or something like that. You said something so interesting there, Mike. When you move from the developed world to the developing world, you move from a seller beware world, like with some of the things you have to be aware of, and like you need to give disclosures and such into a buyer beware world. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
Mike Cobb 21:08
Yeah, and really, a lot of my book and a lot of the presentations that I've given, you've seen me give over the years, really deal with what I call a change in thought process. Because mostly in presentations, right? My goal in a presentation is to help somebody change how they think, to take away the bubble and understand that they're on their own, right? It's not really their own. They have you, they have me, they have other resources, right? But they don't have this bubble of government or regulations or laws out there protecting them anymore. Now it's the individual, and as an individual, I don't want to be rugged individual. I want to find other people that can help me, right? But I have to do that as opposed to it's just there for me, right? So if I can help people change how they think, they will transact so much better. They'll make better investments. They'll make investments that work for them in ways that they want them to work for them, right? They'll achieve the goal or the dream in a much, much, much higher percentage of the cases,
Keith Weinhold 22:04
we're talking about investing antique tree hardwood plantations, principally in Panama, like you mentioned, and we're talking about one mindset about crossing borders with our investing, and another is oftentimes, at least for GRE listeners, we're crossing asset use type because we're so used to residential rental housing. So when you cross into agriculture or forestry, I guess as it is with teak, what are some of the bridges to cross there as we change use type?
Mike Cobb 22:35
The reason I love timber generally and teak specifically in Panama in this case is that most people, most people, and I hope that many of your readers aren't most people. Most investors look at 20-five years and they simply say themselves, "No way, no way. And I love that because right now teak timber is being cut down 10 to 12 times faster than anyone is replanting it. And the reason people don't replant it is because most average investors come along and say, "Oh, it's 25 years. I can't wait 25 years. Well, you know what? Good, because the folks who do decide to move ahead and plant the teak, what that means is the price of teak is very highly likely to continue to increase in value far beyond inflation. Teak wholesale teak prices have gone up five and a half percent a year on average for the last 50-three years. I think that number is going to increase largely because there's this huge psychological barrier. People think, "Oh, 20-five years, but back in 1990-eight I bought 100-acre cattle pasture in Panama, and we had a professional forestry company plant it and maintain it for the last now 27 years, and two two and a half years ago, we started building a sawmill. Our sawmill is up and running. In fact, was just down there and brought back one of our first retail products. We're producing lumber. Our first container of lumber is headed out to a distributor in Colorado next week.
Keith Weinhold 23:56
Mike's holding up a nice cutting board for those in the audience.
Mike Cobb 24:00
Nice cutting board. We're setting up an e-commerce site. We're going business to consumer with cutting board, bath mat, shelving, tables, chairs. We have our whole production facility ramping up with new retail products. So the bottom line is, is yeah, man, it does take 25 years. You know.
Keith Weinhold 24:15
The lantation to harvest cycle. That's the 25 year span you're talking about here. The patience it takes for an investor.
Mike Cobb 24:21
Thank you. Yes, absolutely. And then, as we cut down this mature plantation that we we are now harvesting right now, it gets replanted, and the next 25 year harvest. I'm 61 Maybe I'll make 86 I don't know. Maybe not. Right. But my kids probably will, and they'll get the big harvest in 25 years, and then it'll replant, and maybe they'll get a next one, or maybe it'll be the grandkids, right? And so what we found savvy investors, people who are really not your average bear, right? And they think to themselves, how can I create generational wealth stewardship? I have enough money coming in. I mean, Keith, that the I mean, you can own teak for 10 grand. You can. Own a quarter acre of teak. You own the land. You own the trees. 10 grand, like it's 9000 something or other, but 10 grand, right? I mean, the bottom line is it's such an affordable, easy investment, right? And it turns into well over $100,000 in today's numbers. Who knows what inflation? But in today's numbers, buying power, you know, 10,000 turns into 100,000 right? Over 20-five years, and so most people who do this recognize the fact that they might get the first harvest, but it's their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids who are going to get this harvest every 20-five years thereafter. And so the 20-five year thing becomes a wonderful thing, not a bad thing. Right, it keeps many people out, which keeps the price of teak high and growing, which we like. But it also creates this cash flow period. People go, "Oh, it doesn't cash flow. I'm like, "Absolutely, it does. It cash flows phenomenally four times a century. Like you have an internal rate of return of almost 11% 10 point something, right? You have an internal rate of return of 11% and it cash flows four times a century. This is a phenomenal cash flow investment. You might get to see the first one or the second one, but you're probably not seeing three or four. But somebody else in your lineage, your family, your heirs will see it, and they will all be so happy you made that decision to own teak.
Keith Weinhold 26:22
We're talking about the ability for you to own teak parcels and the land beneath it, title in your own name, one quarter of an acre at a time. We're going to talk more about that with Mike when we come back. You're listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Flock Homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now mom and pop landlords can 721 their residential real estate. Request your initial valuation. See if your properties qualify at flockhomes.com/gre. That's flockehomes.com/gre.
Keith Weinhold 27:09
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Ken McElroy 28:12
This is Rich Dad advisor Ken McElroy. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold and don't quit your daydream.
Keith Weinhold 28:29
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. We're talking about international investing with teak tree plantations. This isn't something experimental. We're not talking about a tinkerer here. You have to be more careful when you go overseas, and we're talking about with the owner of an international company that's been doing this for 30 years, providing international investments. But the teak tree plantation, I think, began in 1998 or 1999 Is that right?
Mike Cobb 28:56
Yeah, 98 was the purchase of the property, and in the rainy season of 99 we planted the first 100 acres. Yep.
Keith Weinhold 29:03
Yeah. Well, talk to us more about that because you talked to us about how historically teak appreciates at about 5% per year. Tell us about how we get to that 11% internal rate of return.
Mike Cobb 29:15
Yeah. Sure. I mean, so two things. One, you've got the five and a half percent a year kind of calculated out over a very long period of time, 50-three years. So that's a pretty good statistical baseline. And then the fact that your trees actually physically grow, right? I mean, back in 2008 my joke is from 2008 to 2012 While the rest of us in real estate were hating life, my trees just simply kept growing, right? They just kept growing. And so what you start off with is about 100 maybe 110, I think, trees on a quarter acre, and in the end, after all the thinnings, you end up with somewhere between 22 and 25 trees per quarter acre, and each of those trees produces about 1.2 to 1.6 cubic meters of timber. For lumber, by the way, one of the things that we are working on, and you know, look at the end of the day, you had a walk, jog, run, right? And we're in the walk stage right now, but we're harvesting out all of the other elements of the teak tree. Your lumber piece, that just you know, sell it as boards, you know, one by fours, one by sixes, one by eights, whatever it is. Ship that stuff off. That's your 1.2 to 1.6 cubic meters, but you've got other pieces of the tree. You've got stuff that's too thin, the root stock that can be turned into other things, including cellucrete with cellulose, the ground up, the sawdust itself. We're saving all the sawdust. We're going to use that for cellulite. This is the math on this. Our investors get 80% of the net proceeds after processing costs, which is 15% my company gets 20% and so we, my company, has the highest incentive to drive the highest possible return to the investor possible because I get 20% of whatever I make for the investor, and so all the numbers we use are always the net investor number, right? And we have a business plan. All the numbers are laid out. It's all there, and it's pretty easy to see how the IRR gets up. About I think it's 10.6, 10.7% I can't remember. Just under 11% but it's all in the business plan, Keith. And again, this is part of that due diligence process, right? Get a copy of the business plan. Get on the phone with one of our property consultants maybe take a trip to Panama. I just got back. We just took a group of people. Yeah, we got tours. Yeah, we have tours, and so like as part of the due diligence process, come visit, come see the trees, come see the sawmill. Right? If it's something that makes sense from a an investment standpoint, yeah, the material, the facts, and the due diligence is all there for people to be able to pick up and do over a you know several week period, you know 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is.
Keith Weinhold 31:47
Well, let's back up because seemingly you have had really good prescience. Because when we look at world agriculture today, we see some problems. Whether some people want to call it erratic weather, other want to call it climate change, and how that's really ravaged some crops and created disruptions in certain produce. Or with coffee, you know, we've also got a cattle production problem, for example. But you've chosen something that's been really resilient. Tell us more about that resilience and just why teak of all crops and forestry.
Mike Cobb 32:22
Let me start by saying, who was it? Yogi Berra says, you know, predicting is hard to do, especially when it's about the future or something. Exactly. Yeah. Right. But I mean, look, we're talking about the future. I mean, who the heck knows, right? I mean, that's what makes it investing rather than you know something else. But teak has been grown in plantations for almost 400 years. It was started by the British in India, what was then Burman throughout Southeast Asia. And one of the things the Brits did so so well is they documented everything. They had statisticians keeping track of altitude, rainfall, soil types, different stock. I mean, just anything and everything that you could imagine, and so by the early 1900s, some of the best books about teak and teak plantation farming was written. I actually read those books in order to interview the forestry management companies in Panama that we would hire them to manage our plantation, because I don't know anything about it, right? But I wanted to be prepared to do the interviews, so I was. What amazed and fascinated me was this incredible track record of production for almost 400 years of teak as a commodity in the marketplace, and then for the last 50 years, 53 years, you know, seeing what's happened to the price of teak in that time period. Look, nobody can predict the future. Weather patterns change. Teak as a species, is very very resilient. You know, the highest quality teak is grown in very specific conditions, and the Darien province of Panama has exactly the conditions to produce the highest quality teak. If those conditions change, maybe the quality of the teak goes down. Maybe the quality of the teak goes up a little bit. Who knows, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we don't control weather. We don't control weather patterns. We don't control the future. But that thing goes back to the idea of diversification. Like, how can we mitigate against the future? I think we do that by just simply broad diversification. And if we have all of our assets and stocks, bonds, and rental real estate, we're pretty concentrated, especially if it's all in the United States, right? Our home country, for example, and so some diversification into other sectors probably makes sense. I know it makes sense for me because I think that's my way of hedging against the uncertainties of the future.
Keith Weinhold 34:37
Let's talk about the tree quality and then the sawmill, because some people don't understand that teak really has pretty special properties that maple or black cherry or oak doesn't have.
Mike Cobb 34:47
It does. It has a very very high oil content and it has a hardness that makes it extremely resistant to rot fungus, which is why it's used in the marine environment. If you look at Chris Craft. Boats or yachts. You always hear about teak, teak, teak. Teak is used in maritime environments because it holds up to the salt water-not just salt water-holds up to water, but even more so, salt water and the environment, which makes it unique. And so, even if you don't treat teak, right, you just leave it out. It turns gray, but it doesn't rot. And then you can come back. You can you know sand it and varnish it and turn it into that beautiful, rich color. It's a beautiful, beautiful wood. It's funny because it has furniture uses, outdoor furniture, patio furniture, things like that, decking. But now they're starting to use it in hardwood floors. They're using it in gates and fences and soffit materials. Again, outdoor uses, but it can be used indoors as well for very very fine furniture, which at the end of the day teak has a panache that a lot of these other woods don't have. Mahogany is certainly one mahogany. The thing about mahogany is it's softer, right? It's a softer wood. It carries some qualities in terms of the grains and the colors that make it a a very favorable product for cabinetry and other things. We actually looked at mahogany as a species to possibly grow, and it's about a 30-five to 40-year harvest cycle. And so, when we looked at that, we said, you know, we can get our heads around 20-five, and and maybe someday we will do some mahogany plantations as well. But for now, we we started with teak. Actually, when we did the analysis, I don't know if this is still true, but 27, 28 years ago, when I did the initial research and analysis, it had the best time value of money ROI.
Keith Weinhold 36:29
Ah, that's the first time I learned that. And some of these durability properties that you've been talking about really go back to my earlier question about how some more sensitive crops have been ravaged lately.
Mike Cobb 36:39
Yeah, it holds up very very well to the environment. By the way, it'll do well in pretty much everything but desert, right? If it rains too much, the teak will grow faster. Actually, it produces a less quality. The quality of the teak is less. If so, if panama's rain system changed and it started raining every day of the year, where we have it growing, teak trees would grow wonderfully. The quality of the teak would be lower, right? Still, be teak. It'd still be valuable, but not as valuable in the marketplace. So.
Keith Weinhold 37:08
Now you've been here to talk about teak before, but something that you added a few years ago was a sawmill to really bring some vertical integration there. And now you're not at the mercy, perhaps, of the price that you would need to sell to a lumberyard. Can you tell us more about how it's going with that?
Mike Cobb 37:22
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the bottom line is, is because we earn 20% of what we earn for the investor on their wood, our goal is to sell it for as high a possible price. And lumber does pretty well. I mean, you can sell logs. Let's just start there. You can cut the trees and sell the logs for X. You can turn the logs into lumber and sell it for you know whatever 578 x. You can turn it into things like cutting board, chairs, tables, a finished product, and there you're talking about you know not just five to 7x You're talking about another 10x on top of that. So that's like 30x right? I mean it's an incredible difference. So from log to finished product, it's about a 30 times differential in what you ultimately achieve out of the marketplace for return. Right now it takes longer to do it. There's more work involved, but at the end of the day, because you make more of the investor, we make more. Some of the teak is going to go out as finished product, and so we get a blended return of lumber. We don't do logs, but we're going to have a blended return of lumber and finished product that will push that yield up maybe higher than we've anticipated, which would be just fine with everybody.
Keith Weinhold 38:30
ll right, all right. Diversifying your exit, then. Well, before we learn about how we can get a hold of more information, is there any last thing that we should know about investing across international lines into teak, maybe something that I didn't think about asking you, Mike.
Mike Cobb 38:45
The only thing there is two of the teak farm parcels can be bundled together for a half acre with about a I don't know it's a seven $8,000 legal piece government fees to achieve a residency. So you can actually become a resident of Panama with the teak investment, and again coming in on about 600 folks have done the residency as well as the investment and ownership of the teak farms. So I would say that's a piece. Again, if people aren't sleeping well at night, they're worried about inflation, they're worried about social disruption, polarization, where things are headed, right? And they like the idea of the teak investment, then you know it may make sense to just do the extra government legal piece and get the residency card. I mean, I just did that. By the way, I think you know I'm a I'm a Nicaraguan resident because I lived in Nicaragua for 14 years.
Keith Weinhold 39:34
Mike is holding up his Nicaraguan ID.
Mike Cobb 39:37
but last summer I also got my Panama residency card, so now I have, y'all. I'm a U.S. resident, U.S. citizen, and I'm also a Nicaraguan. I think I held up my West Virginia driver's license. Hold on, let me go. Here's my Nicaraguan residency. Sorry, I was like, yeah. Wait a minute. Anyway, so right. So I'm a U.S. citizen, and I'm a resident of both Nicaragua and Panama. And so, this is something that a lot of folks choose to do because of the uncertainty, the political and social uncertainty in their lives. The teak itself will help with the economic uncertainty, but the residency then helps with the other two elements.
Keith Weinhold 40:15
Next time you fly in and you're doing customs in Panama City or Managua, show them your West Virginia driver's license and see how they like it. See what happens.
Mike Cobb 40:22
It wouldn't work. Hahaha.
Keith Weinhold 40:25
Well, the prices are low. You do not need to be an accredited investor in order to do this. So there's really no qualification bar to clear. There's really no limit in the number of parcels that you can buy. Some people like to purchase 10 parcels, but you can buy as little as one, and tell us more about that price.
Mike Cobb 40:42
Yeah, in fact, we've introduced Keith since the last time we talked a financing program. Oh,
Keith Weinhold 40:48
I didn't know that yet.
Mike Cobb 40:49
We did. That's a fairly new. It's a this year thing, right? So the teak parcels, I think 9890 or something, whatever. Call it 10 grand. The parcels just under $10,000.
Keith Weinhold 40:59
Okay.
Mike Cobb 40:59
Yeah, and they have a down payment and a credit card thing. I think it stretches maybe over a year or two, so it's a fairly short period. Let's people who don't have the entire 10,000 upfront who want the teak investment to be able to acquire it. And if they're doing the residency piece, the residency piece can only begin after the teak farm piece is acquired, right? But it can also lead to the residency piece over time. So yeah, and then there are some discounts on three of them and 10 of them. So we have a lot of people that actually end up getting them for. And and here's a really cool thing because it's titled in your own name, it can also be titled in a child's name or a grandchild's name. And so we have a lot of people that actually acquire them and they don't take ownership. They put it in their kid's name or their grand name. Yeah, so it's a wonderful way to move that asset already right out of the gates into the next generation or the next generation.
Keith Weinhold 41:52
So we're talking about diversifying at least twice, both internationally and then in a different asset type as well. This has been fascinating to learn about, Mike. It's just fascinating alone, I think, to learn about the geography and the teak itself. And like we touched on earlier, they do organize tours. Any reputable provider should do that. They're proud of what they offer there. Tours in the Darien province of Panama, in this case, to see your teak tree parcels. It's a really approachable price. If you want to learn more and get a report and perhaps purchase some parcels, Mike's one of our GRE marketplace providers. You can visit gremarketplace.com/teak or talk to your GRE investment coach. Mike has been fascinating as always. It's been great having you back on the show.
Mike Cobb 42:40
Nice to be here. Thank you, Keith.
Keith Weinhold 42:48
Teak is one of the more durable crops that there is. The demand for teak hardwood is substantial, and it's really growing. They have also had the same tree manager for all 27 years since the teak was planted, some real continuity there. The name of the manager is Heyo Forestall. There's a little to manage with the teak hardwood trees, like performing thinnings, and those thinnings do give investors like you intermittent income. So you're not waiting for absolutely everything for 25 years, but the income from the thinning is really small. Most of the return takes place in that 25 years, and it's interesting to me to see the profile of the GRE investor in teak because it attracts young investors, and maybe that's because the cost of entry is so low. It also attracts older investors because they more often have an eye toward passing along something productive to their heirs that is going to outlive them. A lot of them don't want to give their heirs money because money can be spent on fleeting trivialities. Also, the older a person is, they just have an easier time visualizing the fact of 25 years and knowing that it really will pass by. And yes, in-person tours are offered there in the Darien province of Panama, and there were 13 to 14 attendees on a recent tour. They do need to limit the group size, and the tours are for you, whether you're an existing investor or not. If you're just checking it out, that's for you too. If you believe that you want to attend a tour and you don't want to buy, I understand that you can get your money back from the tour.
Keith Weinhold 44:35
The next tour is in September. Each quarter-acre newborn teak parcel costs $9,680 $9,680 and over 20-five years, it's projected to produce about 110k in today's dollars. And yes, now with financing, we've talked about this investment on GRE before, but it's the first time where they now have financing in place, so you don't even need. 9680 to get started. Also, retirement funds might be eligible for use here. And really, when you think about the long-term horizon of this investment, retirement funds make sense. If this is potentially interesting to you, get a hold of the report that goes into the details and shows you some projections and more. You can do so by either contacting your GRE investment coach or visit gremarketplace.com/teek. Money may not grow on trees, but sometimes trees grow into money. Until next time, keep growing your means and maybe a few trees. You could visit gremarketplace.com/teak. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 1 45:53
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 46:21
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. getricheduceducation.com
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. In less than 40 years, America has gone from 75% gasoline to permanent inflation. Then learn about the biggest financial expense you will ever have in your life. It's not taxes, housing, interest charges, inflation, children, or healthcare. Most people have never heard of it today on Get Rich Education. You know, Mid South Homebuyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties. It's an executive coach. For nine years now. Their CEO Terry Kerr and his COO Pat Nix have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one-on-one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to DanielThomashHind.com. H-I-N-D. That's DanielThomashHind.com, and sign up before spots fill.
Keith Weinhold 1:41
What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056 They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Chaley Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.
Speaker 1 2:14
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world, this is Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 2:31
Welcome to GRE from Bavaria, Germany, to Batavia, New York, and across 188 world nations. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. In the 19 the 1988 movie Die Hard, there's a California gas station sign in the background that's visible. You can see it there. The gas price on this sign is a jaw dropper. Unleaded 77.9 cents per gallon, regular 70-4.9 cents per gallon. That now looks like it belongs in a museum next to rotary phones and blockbuster video cards. Yes, California gas for 75 cents, and the movie Die Hard. It had all these actors from yesteryear, like Bruce Willis and Reginald Vel Johnson. Yet you, depending on your age, you might remember 1988. It's not like ancient history. Now we all know that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, like Milton Friedman said, but is there more to this? Is there more than the Fed targeting 2% inflation, just like it says on their website? Oh, there sure is. And by the way, with a little research, it looks like California Gas averaged 95 cents in 1988, not 75 like it shows in Die Hard, but in any case, the point is still there. And today, inflation keeps running hot. Four years ago, the pandemic made CPI inflation peak at 9.1 percent. Today, the hangover effects of tariffs push it up, and the Iran war are turning up the heat even more, with the latest reading above 4% Inflation is running at more than double what the Fed wants. You can even make the case now that inflation is out of control. But here's the thing: inflation has exceeded that 2% target for 60-three consecutive months now. I mean, think about what that means. My gosh, just imagine having an important target that affects every American and missing it 60-three times in a row. That's kind of what's happening now, and they're. Going to keep missing it. So this streak of inflation above 2% started back in March of 2021 during the pandemic hangover, and it is still going strong after 63 months. Nobody knows where this is going to end. Most Americans get crushed by rising prices because their wages don't keep up, and you know collectively they sort of think we are concerned, but then they mostly keep doing the same thing while their lifestyle quietly shrinks. So consumers despise inflation. Everyday investors are lukewarm about inflation, and leverage real estate investors are smiling like they found a 20-dollar bill in last winter's coat. Leverage real estate investors are pretty ecstatic about inflation. Now the history gets super interesting.
Keith Weinhold 5:59
Okay, how did we get into this, where we just always seem to have inflation? So learn the history, and then I'll tie it back to how it affects you as an investor. Because before World War II, inflation behaved differently. The old pre-1945 pattern was that we had inflation during wars and booms. We had deflation after panics and depressions. So therefore, the result was that over long stretches, price levels often just moved sideways. We used to have recessions more often back 80 plus years ago than we do now. So therefore, you just had these price levels move sideways because a recession even prompted deflation, actually a strengthening of purchasing power. But then after World War II, inflation basically went permanently positive. I mean, yeah, permanently positive, where inflation is just always turned on with very few exceptions to that. In wartime, now we have inflation. In peacetime, now we have inflation. During the Super Bowl, now we have inflation. It is inflation, no matter what is going on. Right then, so what changed? Prominent economist and GRE podcast guest here, Dr. Mark Skousen. He has cited five major reasons that inflation became a permanent fixture from 1945 until today. And Mark Skousen was here on the show with us almost exactly two years ago because he's also the founder of a great event called Freedom Fest that Nareesh and I broadcast a show from, the five reasons that Scowson cites for never-ending inflation are first, never-ending wars. Now this doesn't only mean formally declared boots on the ground wars where tanks are rolling, never-ending wars. It means this permanent state of global military readiness that we have today, where we have overseas bases, defense contractors, right with the military-industrial complex. We have NATO commitments.
Keith Weinhold 8:17
We have anti-terror operations, naval patrols, intelligence agencies, and all this enormous machinery that's required to keep America as the world's security backstop. Well, all that costs an awful lot of money, and when government wants more money than it collects, it has a favorite trick: just create more dollars and create them out of nothing. I mean, it's like ordering another round of drinks for the table and then putting it on the unborn grandchildren's tab. The second reason for the never-ending inflation is the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and how that's changed over time because the Fed they were originally supposed to defend the dollar, defend the gold standard, and act as lender of last resort. Today it mostly just does the last one. It acts as the lender of last resort, and it's really not even last resort. I mean, she shit seems to patch any significant hole in the economy by creating more dollars and then pumping them into the system. When markets wobble, banks panic, or politicians overspend, or the economy catches any kind of cold, you know, the Fed often just shows up with this fire hose of liquidity. Now, sometimes that's necessary, but either way, it means more currency creation. So, the Fed it began as this sort of sober hallway monitor, but now they're often the responsible party that needs monitoring. But no. No one is going to stand up and do it because no one in power wants austerity under their watch because that is extremely unpopular. The third reason for permanent inflation is the Bretton Woods Agreement. You've probably heard of this, but let me summarize what it briefly means. Okay, Bretton Woods was the 1944 deal that basically created the post-World War II global monetary system? It made the U.S. dollar the world's reserve currency. If you remember anything from Bretton Woods, just remember that it did that. It made the U.S. dollar the world's reserve currency, and the dollar was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce.
Keith Weinhold 13:29
And finally, the fifth reason for never-ending inflation post World War II is Keynesian economics. I mean, you probably at least heard the term before. It's been thrown around here from time to time. Named after John Maynard Keynes, K E Y N E S. And before I go on, I invested in real estate for a long time before I learned all this stuff. Probably close to a decade of investing first. So I taught myself this material, Keynesian economics. That's the belief that demand is what drives economic output and employment. So, if you only remember one thing about Keynesian economics, it's that you need demand, and it stokes demand. It says demand drives everything, and what I mean by that is the spending, spending from households, corporations, and government. So, in plain English, when private demand weakens, the government should step in and spend. That's what Keynesian economics says. Well, that means deficits, borrowing, stimulus, support, programs, relief, rescue packages, emergency measures, and see what happens is that temporary measures somehow become permanent measures wearing a fake mustache. Remember, even Nixon said removal from the gold standard is temporary. Well, that was now 50. 55 years ago, in theory, the government runs deficits in bad times and then tightens up in good times. But that doesn't really happen because, in practice, government often runs deficits in bad times and good times, war times, peace times, election years, non-election years, leap years, all the time running deficits, spending more than we take in, and when deficits become normal, well, then currency creation has got to follow. That's the consequence. Well, these five forces that I told you about for never-ending inflation, the reasons that I just shared with you-they are now structurally embedded. They are not going away.
Keith Weinhold 19:03
I mean, there is even political resistance to deflation in this system. Investors benefit the most when they own one thing: real assets tied to long-term debt. You probably knew that I was going to say that because if the dollar is designed to slowly melt. You don't want to be the one holding the ice cube. You want to own the freezer. That's the control that you have. The first half of the year recently ended. It's time for our asset class rundown. From the midpoint of last year to the midpoint of this year, single-family home values are up only about one and a half percent. That's the average of Case-Shiller and FHFA. Apartment building values are down 1% in the past year. When it comes to rents per Zillow, single-family home rents are up 2.8% in the past year to an all-time record of almost 20-$300 Apartment rents are up just. 1.3% nationally. Sunbelt Apartments were the weak spot. Apartments.com said the South was down seven tenths of 1% year over year, and the mountain region down one and a half percent. With San Antonio, Denver, Austin, and Phoenix among the weaker markets, that's due to oversupply in those areas. 30-year mortgage rates down from 6.8 to 6.6% The S S&P 500 up 21 percent on AI optimism, despite a war in Iran. Though down in past months for the year, gold is still up 21 percent, silver soared 63 percent, Bitcoin down 45 percent. I mean, speculative digital assets have really gotten a cold shoulder. Oil up 4% although it went on a wild ride, and CPI inflation reheated to 4.2% That's our asset class rundown.
Speaker 2 22:59
This is our rich dad poor dad author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Keith Weinhold 23:17
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. I want you to listen to something along with me, and then I'll come back to comment. This is from the parallel truth. It's called the last generation to live normally, and it's less than two minutes in length.
Speaker 2 23:32
We have to talk about something that sounds dramatic, but it is becoming true. Your parents may have been the last generation to live a normal life-not an easy life, not a perfect life, but a life where the basic deal still made sense. You could get a stable job, you could buy a house, you could raise children, you could save some money, you could retire one day. And even if life was hard, most people still believed that if they worked honestly, their future would slowly get better. But look at what happened to your generation. You work more, but own less. You study more, but feel less secure. You have more technology than any generation in history, but less peace, less time, and less confidence about the future. Your parents were told, "Work hard, and you will build a life. But you are being told that, "Work hard, and maybe you can afford rent. And the most disturbing part is that this did not happen overnight. It happened slowly. First, housing became an investment instead of a basic need. Then, education became a debt trap. Then, healthcare became too expensive. Then, stable jobs disappeared. Then, everything became a subscription: your house, your car, your software, your entertainment, even your future. Everything slowly became something you rent but never truly own. And while ordinary people were falling behind, the economy kept looking strong on paper. The stock market went up, billionaires got richer, companies made record profits. Politicians kept saying that everything was fine, but if everything is fine, why does an entire generation feel like it is drowning? The truth is, your parents did not live through normal history. They lived through a rare window where ordinary people. People were allowed to share in the wealth of the system, but that window is now closing. The old promise was simple: work hard, buy a home, raise a family, retire with dignity. The new promise is different: work forever, rent everything, delay children, carry debt, and call it freedom. So maybe young people are not lazy. Maybe they are just the first generation honest enough to admit that the old deal is dead. Your parents were not lucky because life was easy. They were lucky because they were the last ones who got the deal before it was taken away.
Keith Weinhold 25:27
Yeah, there it is-the last generation to live normally. That's really a fresh slant on the hollowing out of the middle class. The rules have changed. Inflation is entrenched. Now you know why. Back in 2020, the pandemic accelerated that effect, and yet it's just unbelievable to me that people think working hard and saving money is enough to get you the lifestyle that you desire. Now I am not against hard work, it's the fact that people think that that's all that it takes. Before we hit the permanent inflation era, it might have made sense for you to say, save your money, pay all cash for a cheap fixer-upper property, and work hard for years to fix it up yourself. Oh, and then you could own a modest home debt-free. Today, even if you could do that, why would you? Instead, you can just prudently finance your way through life. You could have instead borrowed for two or three already renovated properties and let debt, inflation, and perhaps even tenants do the work for you. Above all, do the right thing before you do things right. That's what I like to say. Well, the way you get wealthy is by owning a lot of assets, not by grinding in the salt mines to pay off your debt. Those that are debt free are often asset poor. The biggest financial expense that you will ever have in your life. Do you know what it is? It is not taxes or interest charges. It's not even inflation or housing or healthcare or having children, most people have never heard of it. You probably have, but most people have never heard of this biggest financial expense you'll ever have, and they certainly don't know how to avoid it.
Keith Weinhold 27:34
Say that you're 35 years old and you put 100k under a mattress for 30 years until you're 60- years old. Instead, if that would have been invested at a 12% annual return, do you know how much that would have grown to? That would have grown to $2.996 million All right, basically 3 million bucks, a 30x increase. Therefore, it would be a 2.9 million dollar mistake to save money, and what this means is that the biggest expense you'll ever pay in your life is called opportunity cost. Yeah, opportunity cost is life's biggest expense. It's the return that was foregone when you chose one option over another. So opportunity cost is not what you spend; it's what your money could have become had you put it somewhere more productive. All right, now that was a pretty extreme example of 100k under a mattress. As a listener to this show, you are probably more savvy than a person that would save big lumps of money for close to zero return. Let me give you a better example of how when you pay all cash for something, you've usually just made your future self poorer. A friend of mine heard the episode last year where I talked about buying a new car for myself, a BMW X3 SUV. As it is, you probably remember that episode. Though I could have paid all cash for the car, I put the minimum down payment in there and then financed as much as I could because of a favorable 4% interest rate that I got on a car loan. Well, my friend Jesse heard that episode. This influenced him. So what he did is he bought a Subaru for his wife. Although he had planned to pay all cash and could have paid all cash for the car, Jesse got financing, and he did better than me. He got just a 1% interest rate somehow. Wow! It was actually nine tenths of 1% but let's just call it 1% What a deal! Instead of paying all cash for the car, he held on to that chunk of money. Instead of tying it up in a depreciating asset, he is financing it all. Now I don't. How much the Subaru costs, but let's just say it was 50k to keep the numbers simple. Well, look, if Jesse feels like he can get a 10% return over time by investing his money instead of sinking it into a car, how much does he profit by borrowing? Of course, he has the advantage of keeping his funds more liquid as well, but how much does he actually profit from this arrangement?
Keith Weinhold 30:24
Well, the math is so easy that you can even visualize it in an audio format here. Now it depends on the loan term, but the simple spread is a 10% investment return minus a 1% car loan cost. That is a 9% positive spread on 50k. That's roughly $4,500 per year in benefit. That's before any taxes, risk, or fees. $4,500 a year just for doing some loan paperwork. Like if you wonder whether the loan paperwork is worth it or not, that's what we're talking about here, and that's 375 bucks a month. So if you're wondering if it's even worth it taking the time to get a car loan when you could pay all cash, it probably is. All right, now that's the upside. What about the risk that's associated with taking a loan instead of paying all cash, well, the caveat here is that the 1% loan is guaranteed, but the 10% return is probably not, and that risk gap does matter. If you're financially fragile and you can't make the payment with another pot of money, well, then you risk default. That is over leverage risk. That's the worst case scenario. All right, what's the flip side? The flip side is that you could earn a return even better than 10% As we know, with real estate pays five ways on investment property. If you earn a 20% return, now you're making $9,500 a year on the spread, not $4,500, but a 10% return. That is the base case. So again, by paying all cash instead of getting the loan, your future self would be poorer by $4,500 a year. And now, my friend Jesse, that learned this from me, he's actually a CFA, a chartered financial analyst, a sophisticated money guy. But he had simply been overlooking this. And said another way, what you're doing here is that over time, your investment is paying you more than your interest is costing you, and in my life, I have been doing exactly this sort of thing all over the place for decades. An interesting thing that I hear about this, although it makes me scratch my head, I've heard a few people say this. It's just like, oh well, I don't want to have to deal with a car payment? I just rather be done with it and move on. What is there to deal with? Just set up auto pay with preserving funds for say a 10% return. You're then going to see more dollars flowing into your account than you will out of it. I mean that part can just be automated.
Keith Weinhold 33:19
My life and finances are set up this way. In fact, when I get a loan for a rental property, I have had mortgage loan officers that are looking at my finances. They tell me that I have more stuff flowing into and out of my checking account than they've ever seen anyone have. I'm I'm financing and arbitraging my way through life passively. This is thanks in part to inflation. I am not paying very much at all in that biggest financial expense that we all have in our lives-not taxes or children or housing, but opportunity cost. I am avoiding paying that. This is the world that we live in today, a lot of times debt reduction is horrible advice. Debt free that can keep people from falling over a cliff, but it stalls any wealth creation. Now the debts that usually make the most sense to pay down they're the ones with high interest, variable rates, no tax benefit, and no productive asset attached. And here is the priority order that I use for paying down debt or paying off debt. First, it is credit cards. Pay down these first almost every time. I mean, a 20% or even 30% credit card rate. This is like financial quicksand. You don't need a sophisticated investment thesis when you can get a guaranteed 20-4% quote-unquote return by eliminating this debt. The next place I would pay down are payday loans, personal. Loans and consumer finance debt. I mean, these are usually bad debts because they're at a high rate, have a short amortization, and they're usually tied to consumption instead of an income-producing asset. Pay these aggressively too, and then next in priority is paying variable rate debt that could reset higher. This isn't quite as important to address.
Keith Weinhold 35:24
We're talking about things like HELOCs, adjustable rate loans, margin debt, and some business lines of credit. Some of those can become dangerous when rates rise, even if the rate's tolerable today. The uncertainty can be a bit of a problem. Now, when it comes to should you pay down student loans, consider that. low fixed-rate student loans that might not be urgent. It sure wasn't for me. High-rate private student loans that could be different. That could get more of your attention. You also got to weigh things like tax benefits. Look out for forgiveness programs when it comes to student loans, those haven't been quite as available lately under this administration. Also, look at employer repayment benefits before you rush to pay down student loans, and then really the last one: low fixed-rate mortgage debt. Pay that last if you ever do. In fact, it is quite possible that I will always keep this debt type around that low fixed rate mortgage debt. So really, my rule of thumb here is to kill toxic debt. Be careful with unstable debt, and don't rush to pay off cheap fixed productive debt if you ever pay it off at all. You and I covered a lot of ground today, starting with 75 cent gasoline in California, all the way to the biggest expense you'll ever pay throughout your life, being something that most people have never heard of: opportunity cost. Coming up on the show here, a lot of good episodes, including a great guest and I are going to discuss a new way to invest in residential real estate that we haven't discussed before, and it will massively boost your cash flow. If you found today's show valuable, whether it was the history of why we have permanent inflation or the idea of passively financing your way to wealth, rather than only working harder. I would be grateful if you share this episode with a friend. Just tap the share button in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and send it to someone who would benefit from hearing it. Or take a screenshot of this episode and post it on social media. It helps more people find the show, and it gives you and your friends something smart to talk about with each other. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 1 37:53
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 38:21
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Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. There are myriad misunderstandings about mortgages. I dispel the myths and discuss the expected mortgage rate level in 2030 You will know more about mortgages than 99% of people today on Get Rich education, you know, Mid South Home Buyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties, it's an executive coach. For nine years now, their CEO, Terry Kerr, and his COO, Pat Nix, have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally. You can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one on one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to danielthomashind.com H I N D, that's Daniel Thomas hind.com and sign up before Spotsville. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group, NMLS 42056 they provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone, because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your pre-qual, and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge, while it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com that's ridgelendinggroup.com
Keith Weinhold 2:07
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Speaker 1 2:40
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 2:56
Welcome to GRE, from Keene, New Hampshire, to Kenai, Alaska, and across 188 nations worldwide, I'm Keith Weinholding. You're listening to Get Rich Education. Everybody knows that a mortgage rate is the interest rate that a borrower pays on a property loan. Okay, sure, that part is easy. And then, oh boy, the misunderstandings begin about eight seconds later, where will mortgage rates be in 2030 I want to tell you about this and more, because mortgage rates are one of the most talked about parts of real estate, and people discuss them with this confidence and bravado of a guy at a semi quincentennial barbecue that's explaining crypto and nutrition between bites of potato salad, yet he's probably got a lot of things wrong. In the next few minutes, though, you're gonna know more about mortgages than 99% of Americans. Let me tell you about five Goliath mortgage myths that throw a lot of people off, and this includes what mortgage rates are going to be, both next year and in 2030 The first myth is that mortgage rates are high today. I almost can't believe the number of people that say this in the world that I'm in. I hear it almost every day. The reality is that mortgage rates have normalized. The 30 year rate is currently normal to low. Now, I shared with you before that the long term average is 7.7% per Freddie Mac. They have the best, most respected stat set on historic mortgage rates, and theirs go back to 1971 Well, today's rate is between six and 7% They just don't feel low after the freakishly low era about five years ago. Now, after I tell you about mortgage rates in 2030 I'll tell you also about whether we're ever going to go back to the. 3% mortgage times. Understand, it's not just mortgages, but most other interest rate types are also on the low side today. A lot of rate types are based on the effective federal funds rate. What's based off of that are rates for credit cards, HELOCs, some business loans and personal loans, they are all based on the prime rate, which is based off of the federal funds rate. Well, the federal funds rate's long-term average is 4.6% Do you know where they're at today? 3.6% So, the fed rate is fully 1% below the long run average. The second myth, gosh, and this is such a pervasive one too, is that when mortgage rates rise, home prices fall. This is such a myth, and because I've talked about this premise before, let me bring some fresh angles to it for you today, with some historical accounts too, because the reality is that when mortgage rates rise, home prices usually rise right along with them, but sharply rising rates can slow appreciation, and before we move on, one of the most famous, I suppose, American real estate investors ever. He spoke about mortgage rates recently. Let's see what he says. This is under a minute in length. Oh, and he also happens to be the current White House occupant.
Donald Trump 6:34
I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody, maybe anywhere. It's all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rates. You can have all the housing you want, but you have to understand, I don't want to have - I don't want to hurt people that own houses, too. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses, they become rich. I don't want to hurt them either. What you want to do is what's good for everyone? Get the interest rates down. We have this num skull that was the head of the Fed before, and he's a stupid person, and we call him too late because he was too late with the interest rates all the time. We need low interest rates. Low interest rates will solve everything, will solve that.
Keith Weinhold 7:18
Well, lower interest rates don't solve the main problem, though. We need to build more housing no other than the fact that low rates could make it a little easier for builders to finance their operations. Lower mortgage rates do nothing to increase the housing supply, and, contrary to what most people think, rates have exceedingly little to do with home prices. When mortgage rates blew past 18% in 1981 they were between 18 and a half and 19% Then, what do you think that home prices did? Well, they kept on rising right through it since 1994 Mortgage rates rose 1% or more six different times, and home prices went up all six times. Even when mortgage rates tripled three years ago, home prices still climbed on a nominal basis. How do they do that? Well, the short version here is that we've got to think about what's happening in the larger economy when rates rise. What does that mean? What does that signal? What is that a symptom of rates rise to keep a hot economy from overheating, and when the economy is hot like this, that usually means people are employed and they're confident and they're financially flush, so then what do they want to do? They want to buy a home, and therefore there are more bidders. That's why higher rates usually lead to higher home prices, and they're talking about raising rates again, because employment has been resilient, and inflation is more than double the Fed target. All right, well, if higher rates usually correlate with higher home prices, then do lower rates mean lower home prices, no, because nominally home prices rarely fall at all. Now, what then did rates do when real estate prices had a rare national fall in those years around the 2008 global financial crisis? Do you know? Do you know what mortgage rates did then? Do you think that mortgage rates were up or down during the global financial crisis? And this is a definitive answer. There's no gray area. They were clearly either boldly up or boldly down. What do you think during the global financial crisis? Mortgage rates plummet. Did more than 2% so the only time since the Great Depression that national home prices fell substantially, mortgage rates also fell substantially.
Keith Weinhold 8:05
The problem in that era, around 2008 is that you often could not get a loan, banks were barely lending, man. People overlook this. You can't just assume that you can get a loan whenever you want it, even if you qualify. But yeah, it's just amazing how many people believe this. I guess second myth. I mean, it is one of real estate's most persistent fairy tales that when mortgage rates rise, home prices fall, that just doesn't happen. And gosh, it feels like I explain this to somebody every week, that when mortgage rates rise, home prices usually do too. If you explain this phenomenon to somebody, I think what you can tell them is that history shows, and as I like to say, take history over hunches. History shows that mortgage rates don't have much to do with home prices. The, I guess, third mortgage myth out of five is that the Fed sets mortgage rates. The reality is that they don't, and you probably already knew about this one, because you're unusually sharp, and you're listening to this. Mortgage rates are more closely tied to the 10 year treasury yield, and inflation expectations, and bond market demand, and lender spreads, and the appetite from investors for mortgage-backed securities, and even your credit score, that's what mortgage rates are tied to. The fourth one here is that you should wait for mortgage rates to fall before buying, and the reality is that maybe you should, but usually not. And again, we can look at history here almost every time you look back at when you purchase property and how much property you owned when you added it into your portfolio, there you know. Do you ever think, oh gosh, I sure would have been better off had I waited two years. Now, if you do wait two years, what happens? Prices will almost certainly be higher, and you don't know where mortgage rates are going to be. Run the numbers, and you'll probably see that waiting is not the free lunch that some people think it is.
Keith Weinhold 9:13
The main problem with waiting is that it delays how the real wealth gets created from the five ways real estate pays, and to my earlier point, if you do wait, you're probably still going to be able to get a loan, but mortgage markets can seize up in times of distress, and you might not be able to get a loan at all. A lot of people just assume that credit is always going to be available. We don't know that for sure. Now, let's take a look at my most ill-timed real estate purchase ever, since we're talking about timing, and this is when I bought a green fourplex building in May of 2007 right on the precipice, just as we were about to tilt in to the global financial crisis. I paid $530,000 for this property. It was pretty nice, like not a beautiful building, but just a good setup where every tenant had their own attached one car garage in that building. Okay, so I did not wait, and by the way, this was a big purchase for me at the time. I mean, 530k perhaps that's about a million dollar purchase in today's inflation-adjusted terms. Back at that time, that was my biggest property yet, until I got into larger apartment buildings and other single-family homes and things like that. But what happened just after I bought this in 2007 Well, that green fourplexes value temporarily went down, and during this time I was paid the other four ways that real estate pays. Rates fell during the global financial crisis, so I had a refinance opportunity, and then that green fourplexes value had fully recovered by about 2012 or 2013 and it paid me positive cash flow every single month that entire time, and that's it. That was actually my worst timed purchase ever. That scenario, the worst mortgage conditions in anyone's lifetime, and it still wasn't so bad. Well, here's what else happens with the strategy of waiting for rates to fall. When rates fall, more buyers tend to rush in, and because you've got more buyers that qualify for a. Mortgage that didn't qualify previously, that means more competition. There are fewer seller concessions, if any, and there are higher prices. It might even create bidding wars, somewhat like we had in 2021.
Keith Weinhold 9:13
The last of the mortgage myths is that mortgage rates can be predicted, so you had better pay close attention to forecasts. Oh no, the reality is that trying to predict mortgage rates is about as predictable as to whether your contractor is actually coming on Tuesday. Let me tell you, all right, what the prominent analysts and agencies have to say about the future of mortgage rates, amalgamating forecasts from Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, the Mortgage Bankers Association, a Reuters poll of economists, and more. By the end of next year, okay, so about 18 months away, they all cluster in a range of 6.2 to 6.5% This is for the 30 year fixed rate mortgage by the end of next year, and for 2030 it is about 5.8% That's what we're looking at for crystal balls of all these agencies, if you average them together, and you know what I have to say about these numbers, don't count on these at all. These people do not know, nobody does, they'll probably even tell you that they don't know. Okay, they are your forecasts right there. And what about us here? GRE does not make mortgage rate forecasts. We only make a home price appreciation forecast annually, and we are not about to make mortgage rate forecasts here. That is because they're just really hard to predict, and therefore that would not serve you. It's really just a form of entertainment that's a poor use of your time. It doesn't serve you. Making a bold mortgage rate prediction is exactly how economists audition for humiliation.
Keith Weinhold 17:14
Mortgage rates, future direction, that's based on so many factors, like inflation, jobs, treasury yields, deficits, geopolitics, oil prices, and wars, and the future direction of mortgage rates has to do with investor sentiment, which often changes and often doesn't make sense, and whatever new fresh economic surprise is going to wander in tomorrow, and you know, I'll tell you, when I was a pretty new real estate investor, and I had a property under contract, I remember sometimes asking my mortgage loan officer over the phone, now, do you think that mortgage rates are going to be lower next week, because maybe then I should wait and lock in. I mean, that's a question I asked a number of times. I mean, sheesh, it would have been just as useful if they answered by reading me their horoscope. Now, that is not a knock on mortgage loan officers in any way. They're smart people, but they just know the borrowers do want some insight, but it's just so hard to forecast now that you know that most forecasts base around 5% mortgage rates in 2030 which is useless information. Will rates ever be 3% again like they were about five years ago? There is no forecast by any of these agencies that predicts a 3% mortgage rate at all in the next five years, but you know, really, you have to ask, Who saw that there would be such low home loan rates on the horizon back in 2007 and things like the Great Recession and a global pandemic, you know, those sort of black swan events, they're just rarely, if ever, on the radar, and see drastic events like that are what it takes to move mortgage rates down into the seller, but a couple things are for sure, 3% mortgage rates anytime soon are extremely unlikely, and if that does happen, it probably means that there has been a real world calamity. Okay, that's what I can tell you.
Keith Weinhold 19:31
I've got more to tell you here, but to summarize what you've learned so far today, in this era, rates of all types are historically a little low, contrary to popular belief, mortgage rates have little to do with home prices. Waiting for rates to fall rarely works, and mortgage rates are nearly impossible to predict. And my favorite way to make it easy for you to remember how interest rates move in an account. Economy is that they are like walls. A high interest rate is like a high wall. It's an impediment to the movement of money, because people are less likely to borrow and more likely to save, since savings accounts yield more. And then a low interest rate is like a low wall that you can easily just step over it facilitates the movement of money, making you more likely to borrow and less likely to save. And if you want to understand more about how interest rates move economies and affect real estate, and you like analogies like that, I discuss more about how interest rates are like money walls in the latter portion of GRE episode 573 I've got so much more for you today. Straight ahead, I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 20:53
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Keith Weinhold 22:14
Go to Freedom Family investments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 668 66 That's that's family 266866 This is Rich Dad Advisor Tong Wheelwright. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream. Keith, welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and let me help you with a couple questions that some of you have had, and when listeners or followers like you engage with us, whether that's through our general inbox or our investment coaching, or even my face-to-face interactions with people. Sometimes I hear something like, "Hey, well, I am waiting for the crash until I build my real estate portfolio. Now, I don't know how to take this always. Sometimes I think people are joking. Other times I actually think that they are serious, and see what happens is that an awful lot of media creators, they will produce a video or a blog or a podcast, and they like to talk about how a housing crash is imminent because that type of material really gets attention, words like crash and collapse, they're hype words, and these hype words like crash and collapse, they really play on people's very real primordial survival instincts that are produced in your brain's amygdala, that's why people keep consuming them, and it's also why fear-producing media gets lots of attention. I mean, it's the if it bleeds it leads phenomenon, you know. In fact, I have one real estate pro friend, and he's told me that if instead of talking about real estate logically and with an education bent in the way that I do here at GRE, well, instead if I flip that and I talk about doom and all the improbably bad things that could happen that could make my material so interesting that it would create a following so big that would transcend real estate circles, and I'd be a regular on whatever CNBC and The Joe Rogan Show. This friend somewhat jokingly suggested that with the way I use the pre. Frontal cortex to discuss real estate. I should speak from the amygdala instead. I could become a doomer, a crashaholic, an appreciation denier. And by the way, the prefrontal cortex is the sort of executive brain. It helps you think things through, compare options, solve problems, make plans. Ask yourself the question, is this actually a good idea? Logically, it's the logical part of the brain.
Keith Weinhold 25:33
Oppositely, the amygdala, that's what tells you something feels dangerous, I better react now. And your prefrontal cortex tells you, hold on, let's think this through. It's what's logical, and you know, though, this is what we've always done here, the logical, because scaring you is not serving you, it's only entertaining you. In fact, lately, there are even some people that were calling for a home price decline that no longer are doing so, and the NAR just revised their home price appreciation forecast this year up to 4% and then the other piece is that I've received more feedback recently from listeners about something that you're trying to grasp, and that is the concept of inflation profiting on your debt, which I've always presented as the fifth of five ways that you're simultaneously paid through real estate, and really the feedback it goes something like this: I don't see where I'm profiting at all if I borrow 100k on a mortgage, and then 10 years later I still owe 100k because I still owe 100k So, how is this getting me ahead, even if the tenant pays all the interest? Really, that's the question. And before I answer that, you can always reach out to us at our general inbox at Get Rich education.com/contact How do you contact us? Get rich education.com/contact where we have a real human being here at GRE monitoring the inbox for you, and oftentimes we also get comments on our videos at the Get Rich Education YouTube channel, so that's a less formal feedback mechanism, but if you're trying to grasp inflation profiting, think of it through the opposite lens. What if you put 100k in cash under the mattress, you slid it under there, and you left it there for 10 years, and then you unearthed it. Well, you probably wouldn't want to do that. Why not?
Keith Weinhold 27:49
It's still 100k We all know full well that, because at 3% inflation over 10 years, it will get worn down to about 74k of purchasing power since prices and rents and everything else is now higher. Well, in a similar way, 100k in debt after 10 years is still 100k same name, but it will only have 74k in real value. That is the way to think of it. The saver lost purchasing power, the borrower gained repayment power. Hopefully, those two persistent questions about a housing crash and about inflation profiting gave you some satisfying answers. And you know any more, so much of what we've discussed with you here every week since 2014 it is now in view, or actually it's not even in view as much as you are living inside it, that hollowing out of the middle class represented by the K-shaped economy, we are living in it, and when I told you about it, perhaps a decade ago, I was not using that term, K-shaped economy. However, that term was born in 2020 and it was popularized on Twitter back then. When we had our big wave of inflation five years ago, the asset owners recovered, if they ever suffered at all, they're the ones on the upper branch of the K, and the middle class and lower class that do not own assets. They were not able to recover, and inflation makes their standard of living sink lower. Where we're at today is that the top 10% of US earners now account for fully half of all US spending. Well, how much time do you have if you haven't yet? How much time do you have left to build your portfolio to make sure your trajectory has you on the upper branch of the K, not the lower branch? Rich, five years, you only have five years left to get rich, all right. Now that's not my answer, but that's what Andre G says, and I like some of his material, and I don't know if I'm saying Andre's name correctly, but according to him, the reason that you only have five years left to move economic lines trajectories to move from the K's lower branch to the upper branch is because of AI. You've got five years to learn a skill, start a business, or invest in real estate. The reason why is that upward mobility comes from finding efficiencies where you can make things better, but artificial intelligence makes things so much faster and more efficient, so that gap between the way things are right now and the way they will be in the future is going to close.
Keith Weinhold 30:56
AI compresses that gap to almost zero, because when everyone can use AI to build websites, write code, analyze markets, automate workflows, whatever it is, is because it becomes really easy for anyone to do anything, and it becomes a lot harder to move from the bottom of the K to the top, so for those at the bottom, there are fewer inefficiencies to solve and get ahead, and this is why the saying "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has the propensity to speed up. So, what can you do? I've described elsewhere about how stocks are not a wealth building tool, they're a wealth preservation tool. If you already have wealth, stock price to earnings ratios are bloated. It's good to select an asset or business that's hard to be replaced by AI, and then get good at that thing, like HVAC, plumbing, pest control, electrical, roofing, masonry, or investing in real estate be in a niche that AI is going to have a hard time replacing. Just buy some rental houses, and here at GRE, we talk about optimizing the five ways that you're paid all the time. Buyers who are waiting for 5% mortgage rates, you know, they're a little like people who refuse to buy gas at $4 because they remember $2. Okay, those days are not coming back. The market rewards action, not nostalgia. Actually, you can get 5% mortgage rates today through our GRE investment coaches, because we know the builders that are buying them down to that level for you.
Keith Weinhold 32:54
Now, do you realize that even with zero appreciation and zero cash flow on a property, you're probably still going to win bigger than stocks in their average returns of 10% That's right, even if you get zero appreciation and zero cash flow on a property, because with a historic average from your ROA, from your tax benefits, and inflation profiting alone, that's a 14% total return, just using today's mortgage and inflation rates. A 14% return, even with zero appreciation or cash flow, you're probably going to have more than zero from those. This is why we do what we do here, and you're owning your own deal, your own rental property, and you don't have to be the manager. I'm talking about your own and emphasizing that because a lot of investors got burnt recently because they said, "Oh, I'm going to invest in this influencer's deal, he's pooling all this money together for a deal. Instead of that, you can invest in and control your own deal without having to be the day-to-day manager. Those that bought property through our GRE marketplace with our coaching a few years ago, they are rich today. We had a number of those listeners come right here on the show last year, and joined me for an episode, and you heard some of them say, "Here is what my life is like now. They got on the upper branch of the K, they turned get rich education into got rich education, and it's not just for beginners, you know, we also have listeners that booked a free coaching session with us, and they gave real estate another shot after their first attempt at real estate investing failed, and that's because here they got a coherent strategy from a GRE investment coach, and then they got the outcome. It's actually pretty straightforward. Here's how it works. Our coaching actually understands this business because they work with investors like you every single day, and we are investors ourselves. What they do is they sit down with you, probably virtually, understand your situation, your goals, your timeline, where you're at financially, what your preferences are, what your concerns are, and they ask you the right questions. They listen, and then they show you what's actually possible, given your specific situation. A big difference between what we do and what a lot of others in the business do is that we are focused on your big picture strategy.
Keith Weinhold 35:44
See, we're not attached to any one market. Take local agents and local operators. Now, those people can be helpful, but they're clearly incentivized to have you buy whatever their product in their geographic market is well, RGRE investment coaching doesn't have that conflict of interest, and that's why, for free, our followers have such a good success rate in making sure they occupy the upper branch of that K. To find what's best for you, we'll walk you through different markets, different property types, and different strategies, depending on what makes sense for your situation. And it's truly free. There's no weird pleading to have you do something else. We don't try to sell you some paid coaching program or anything else like that. In fact, if you want to buy something from GRE, you simply cannot do it, because we don't even have anything for sale in almost any other industry. You would have to pay to talk to someone this knowledgeable, but you'll know more when you hang up than when you called. So, if you're ready to add real income-producing property to your portfolio, that's exactly where we can help, but it's more than that. If you want, come away with a plan to retire in five to 10 years, because it's about a total strategy. You are cordially invited. You can book a free coaching call at GRE Investment coach.com Until next week. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Don't quit True Daydream.
Speaker 1 37:28
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 37:56
The preceding program was brought to you by Your Home for Wealth Building Get Rich education.com.
Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes.
To get in the best physical, mental, and professional shape of your life, go to DanielThomasHind.com and apply for Daniel's intensive 1-on-1 coaching for burnt-out entrepreneurs and executives.
Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. When will the median US home value hit the $1 million mark? I have the best answer for the exact year that it will happen, and it's probably sooner than you think. Also, there's a big hidden problem in America's housing market today, and no one is talking about it. It's not prices, mortgage rates, affordability, nor is it inventory. I'll tell you about it and more today on Get Rich Education.
Speaker 1 0:30
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 Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key 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. Sign up now for the Get Rich Education podcast, or visit getricheducation.com
Keith Weinhold 1:14
You know, Mid South Home Buyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider, I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties. It's an executive coach for nine years now. Their CEO, Terry Kerr, and his COO, Pat Nix, have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners, his name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one on one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to danielthomashind.com h i n d, that's danielthomashind.com and sign up before Spotsville Flock Homes helps multifamily owners exit the operator grind, whether it's your sixplex or a 50 unit apartment through a 721 exchange. This defers your capital gains tax. It's a strategy long used by institutions. Now you can swap tenants and toilets for passive income and zero management. Request your initial valuations. See if your property qualifies at flockhomes.com/gre that's F L O C K homes . com / G R E.
Speaker 2 3:00
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 3:16
You're listening to One America's longest running and most listened to shows on real estate investing, not flipping, not speculating, not whatever the latest hot thing is, but prudent long-term real estate investing. This is Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. You've got to believe that you were not put on this earth to live a mediocre life and waddle in the safety of mediocrity. Your investing should be a reflection of that. You've got to believe that you can obtain financial freedom when you're young enough to enjoy it. What would be the point of deferring financial freedom until you're old, like, what would that point even be? I mean, just imagine a rich elderly version of you. It cannot buy youth. Youth cannot be bought. Look, right now, if someone offered you $20 million to be age 85 tomorrow, the probability that you would take it is pretty much zero. So then build sustainable, durable wealth now today, and with a sense of urgency. That's what we're doing here. A $1 million national median home price. When do we get there? Well, back in 1990 the median national home price was about 120k and you know, funny as it sounds, you can read about how back in 1990 people thought that homes were highly priced, even overpriced, and that maybe they'd need to start. Going down, why was that? Well, just three years earlier, in 1987 they crossed over 100k for the first time. So psychologically, six figures for a home price, that was still a fairly new phenomenon. In 1990 mortgage rates were 10% then for a 30 year fixed rate loan, and by the way, 10% mortgage rates didn't feel too bad to homeowners and real estate investors in 1990 because as recently as 1984 they were 14 and a half percent. Roll it back a little earlier to 1981 and mortgage rates were over 18% then, and of course, mortgage rates are a friendlier six to 7% today, but remember we're talking about home prices here, and when it comes to the trajectory of home prices, rates are really just trivia, because as I've discussed here on the show for years, to many people surprised, mortgage rates have almost nothing to do with home prices, contrary to popular belief, but to those people in 1990 that were still somewhat freshly getting used to six figure prices that were now 120k at that time today's median home price of 429,000 to $300 would have sounded as absurd as paying $18 for airport trail mix and $24 for airport beef jerky, yet here we are.
Keith Weinhold 6:36
All of those prices are true. That's where we are today, all right. Well, from 1990 till today, home prices have nearly four exed. So, with that backdrop from recent history, what about a million dollars? When do we get to that point? Well, home prices only need to go up about 2.3x from here. Yogi Berra said it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future, and I want to credit Dr. Lawrence Yuen, any our chief economist, for doing this analysis and sort of getting this conversation started, because when we look at the national median home price hitting million dollars, this forecast assumes zero price growth for this year, although home prices are now up 1.8% year over year. Here we go at 3% price growth from today, we get to a million in 2056 at 4% it's 2049 at 5% price growth, it's 2045 and it's 6% home price growth, it's 2042 and that's just 15 and a half years away. One part that I really want to credit Dr. Yoon for is that if you take the actual price trend from the last 25 years with all of its ups and downs, which also gives you an average annual gain of four and a half percent, by the way, and you project this into the future, that path reaches $1 million in 2048 just over two decades away, so taking the past quarter century, then, and extrapolating it into the future means we hit a million dollars in just a little over 20 years. So, therefore, perhaps the most prudent and sensible projection gets us there in 2048 But look, it's easy to make the case that growth is going to be on the higher side of these estimates, I mean, just look at what's going on now.
Keith Weinhold 8:45
Already, inflation is over 4% and there are all kinds of forces that are poised to push that inflation rate higher. I've talked about those in recent episodes. Today, 42 out of 50 states show annual home price gains. Near-term sparks to more home price growth are energy and material price volatility from tariffs and wars, which are poised to push up the replacement cost of homes. And you know, when your property's replacement cost rises, all capital values tend to rise as well. There's also pent-up demand and still paltry supply in most US regions. I'll get to that, but regulatory costs alone are now $132,000 for a new single-family home. You heard that right? Yes, the cost of zoning and other regs is now 132k and that figure is sticky. That does not tend to come down, and then you've got these longer term bonfires, not just the short term sparks that I mentioned, but the longer term bonfires that could make million dollar median home. Dollars occur before 2048 This construction of data centers and all the resources that it takes, and chips, and copper, and electricity, that's all inflationary for our society. When we're building that infrastructure, our currency will keep getting diluted to deal with huge debts like defense and social security payment commitments and interest payments themselves, I mean that part is plain as day new household formation that's expected to push up demand until at least the late 2040s and after that demographically things could turn, but the base case remains 2048 here for the million dollar median home, so this million dollar mark, you know, it's not some sci-fi housing fantasy where your realtor shows up in a flying car, okay, values are already approaching a half million, and this figure of a million that is just 1000 1000, it's not some incomprehensibly gigantic number that's shooting for the moon and the stars, so really the bottom line here is that a million dollar median national home price is an almost inevitable destination and is being pushed up by appreciation, inflation, replacement costs, and scarcity.
Keith Weinhold 11:25
The real question is not whether this happens, but it's when it happens. That's why I gave you the year of 2048 as the base case. I want to talk more about housing scarcity shortly, but first, for some historic perspective, do you want to know how much my parents paid for their home in 1974 I thought I knew the figure, but I wanted to check with Dad, and he let me know, and it was what I thought. All right, first, I think I've shared with you before that my parents still live in the same Countersport, Pennsylvania home, the old smallish Victorian style home built in 1917 They've lived in that continuously since Richard Nixon was our president. And you know, when I go visit my parents, I get to sleep in the same bedroom that I have since I was an infant, just amazing. Also, do you know that that home where I grew up, and they still live in.. Do you know that home is location? Do you know where that location is? On what I'll call the urban to rural spectrum, it's interesting. The home is not in a city, it's not in the suburbs, it's not in the exurbs, it's not in the country, and it's not in a planned community either. What's left? Do you know where it might be? Maybe you're thinking too hard. It is in a small town, that's the answer. A small town with a gridded street pattern and Main Street, that's called Main Street, and old brick businesses. It is a standalone community with its own identity and a really slow pace of life. Its population was about 2600 at the turn of the century, and it's down to about 2100 residents today. And Cowder Sport, Pennsylvania, is a remote place, it's over two hours to the nearest international airport in Buffalo, New York, and there really aren't that many flight routes out of Buffalo either. So, for that detached single-family home that does have a big yard, my parents bought it in 1974 for $20,000 exactly 20k and they quickly got that home paid off back in the day, about 58 years ago.
Keith Weinhold 13:48
The only financing they had, it wasn't a mortgage in the traditional sense, rather my mom's parents gave them a small loan to put toward that 20k and it was an interest-free loan, and the seller kind of gave them my parents there this adjacent grassy lot, practically free. The person that sold it said they didn't feel like mowing it. That wouldn't happen today. Real estate is just more coveted and calculated, I think. It'll just go throw in a lot, and you can guess who had to mow that adjacent grassy lot more than a few times? Yours truly. And hey, I might even mow it again this year when I visit my parents, and my dad listens to this show, and he sure hopes so. It's not a bad looking home today. I definitely did not grow up dirt poor, but just modestly, there was only one bathroom for our family of four that we all shared, and yes, what this meant was patience, timing, and the ancient art of knocking on the bathroom door with urgency sometimes, and we all took baths only until I was age eighteen, there was just simply no shower until then. We all shared one car, a Subaru station wagon, definitely not deprived in a great childhood, just living modestly. Well, today's median home price is now 22 times the 20k that my parents paid for their home in 1974. Homes in countersport are a lot cheaper, so maybe it's just 12x there. But see, the point is that the home doesn't have more utility because it doesn't have any more than the same three bedrooms today. It's got about the same amount of usefulness they did add a second bathroom. What happened is that our currency has just debased enough to be worth about 1/12 as much as it was in 1974 That's why the price is up 12x Before I get to national housing scarcity factor, maybe you've always wondered where I get my abundance mindset from, since I grew up in a small simple remote place, I'm not sure it's just an internal confidence gain from somewhere. Sometimes I wonder if where I grew up actually contributed to growing my means rather than living below my means, because at some point subconsciously I might have thought before that, you know what, if I fail big in life, then I could always move back to old counter sport and own a decent home for just 200k in a town where I know people, maybe it worked that way, and I moved away from that home for good at age 23.
Keith Weinhold 16:44
By the way, that's when I left the nest. As you know, I like to say the most important thing here is that I won the parent lottery - decent, stable married parents. That means considerably more than inflation or economic factors ever could two grade A parents now getting back to housing's scarcity factor. Did you know about what's happening with the available inventory of homes now after four years of rising supply? The inventory trend has flipped. There are now fewer homes for sale nationally than there were a year ago, and this has really thrown off some forecasters that thought inventory would climb about 10% this year. Instead, we have fewer one to four unit properties on the market today than we did last year. This matters because it could signal the next phase of the housing market, it's important to identify these inflection points right here, if it truly is one, because shrinking inventory, that means fewer options for buyers, more competition, and eventually upward price pressure, if the trend holds, but that's not here yet, we haven't seen home prices really take off. A decade ago, there are about one and a half million available homes. The pandemic low in 2022 is where we hit a jaw-droppingly low, 350,000 available homes. I mean, really scraping the bottom, those were the days when there were 40 people in line to see one open house, that was nuts.
Keith Weinhold 18:28
Okay, from those scarce, scarce days that has rebounded to 1.1 million available homes the past year or two, and this year it stepped back a little to about 1 million available homes for sale in this nation, so bigger picture today we have 30 to 35% fewer homes available now than we had a decade ago, and remember we've also got to account for the fact that we've had population growth since that time as well, that's why demand continues to exceed supply, so really the housing shortage is a little worse whenever you factor in population growth. So this really speaks to the scarcity, and so does something else here. And there's a big hidden problem in America's housing market today, and nobody, like no one is talking about this, it's not prices, it's not mortgage rates, affordability, nor is it inventory, it's the fact that America's housing is aging with the median now 45 years old, that's older than America's homes have ever been, and 45 is also about the median age of a TikTok user's parents, I think. Now, an 80s built home isn't exactly ancient, but this really factors in here. Now, in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, the typical home predates 1960 in Austin and Raleigh, it. Is post 2000 so it feels like the Northeast is replacing avocado green appliances, and the Southeast is just replacing Ring camera batteries, because, as you'd expect, fast growth areas have a young housing stock like Florida and Texas and Tennessee to a lesser extent, and at the beginning of the month, I sent our newsletter subscribers this terrific national map that shows the median age of homes by city, a rare map that's pretty fascinating, and in fact, the oldest homes in the nation are in Elmira, New York. They are about 70 years old, not far from where my parents live in Countersport, Pennsylvania, and this is such an under-discussed part of the housing shortage. See, a market it can technically have what seems like available inventory, but still not actually have habitable, financeable, insurable, affordable housing, and older housing stock that creates friction with repairs and appraisals and insurance and affordability.
Keith Weinhold 21:10
Harvard's Joint Center for Housing studies found that 3.6 million renter households, that's 8% live in inadequate housing with problems in multiple structural deficiencies like water leaks or serious problems with electrical HVAC or other systems, and this is a real threat to NOAA housing. Are you familiar with this term, NOAH? NOAA stands for Naturally Occurring Affordable housing, and it means properties that are affordable purely due to free market conditions, not public funding. What's interesting is that America isn't just not building enough. See, we're also retaining a lot of older homes longer than generations past did in the mid 20th century, what cities routinely did is that they demolished obsolete housing, and they rebuilt aggressively. Today, that just doesn't work in most places. Replacement happens slowly, because of higher construction costs. In this not in my backyard bickering, and zoning restrictions, and labor shortages and environmental rules. I mean, it just doesn't work that way anymore. Now, here at GRE, we introduce you to providers across the nation that do deep, extensive quality rehabs, but much of America, they just kind of keep patching their homes like it's a 1998 Honda Accord with 280,000 miles in three glowing dashboard warning lights, that's what they're doing, that's why the average age of the home keeps going up. All right, so what are some of the big takeaways for real estate investors with America's homes being older than ever? Number one, it's supply. America still needs more housing, even in cities with stable populations. A lot of them are going to see more units become obsolete than will get built. That's why when you see a headline like inventory is up, all right, that can be true, but it can also be misleading if it's a 1952 duplex with knob and tube wiring, and a furnace that's held together with hope and duct tape. All right, a surprising amount of America's housing stock is basically running on CPR and Lowe's rewards points. The second takeaway with this aging housing stock is that obviously more renovations are required again, that is, if you're not buying new or turnkey, so therefore states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, they all have busy Home Depots.
Keith Weinhold 23:56
When obsolete properties get renovated, okay, well, then rents have to increase to support those costs, and then you know what happens a lot of times. Cynics call that process right there gentrification. Aging homes are going to be a major policy topic over the next decade. There is this tension between keeping buildings affordable and keeping them standing, you can't preserve what's falling apart, but see, then fixing it prices some people out, and then the third investor takeaway with this aging housing is yet again the arrow points here one more time, build to rent housing, yeah, new build rental homes, they're often the way to go. Usually the trade off for you is that you pay more upfront, and then you have fewer maintenance and repair costs. It usually works out for you, and today this is really tilted to your advantage, because home builders are still doing. Generously buying down your mortgage rate to perhaps 5% it depends on the builder, but this is a rare setup for you in this cycle of the market. New property, low maintenance, and mortgage rates that feel like they came from a different decade, you're getting them now. Not only is our housing aging, hey, so are we. The median age of all Americans is 39 Back in 1980 it was just 30, so this is a massive demographic shift in a short period of time. I mean, you and I are both older than we ever have been, of course, and we're both about 20 minutes older than when you and I started talking today. That is why I endeavored to make this show well worth your time. The bottom line with the aging homes is that by most measures, US housing stock is older than it's ever been. New construction has not kept up with population growth, and this is going to shape housing affordability and construction trends and investment opportunities across America, perhaps for the rest of your investor life. I need to tell you about America's worst cities for crime shortly, because it includes a lot of cities popular with investors, including cities that we frequently talk about here. So, what is going on? This is something that I've wanted to tell you about for a long time. Hey, if you like learning from me, you are in luck. This week and next week, it will be monolog episodes, just you and I together. I'm Keith Weinhold. More for you straight ahead here on episode 612 of Get Rich Education.
Keith Weinhold 26:41
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Keith Weinhold 27:12
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Speaker 3 28:14
This is Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, and listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold and don't quit your daydream.
Keith Weinhold 28:28
Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. America turns 250 years old this coming weekend. That's our semiquincentennial, which is a word that sort of sounds like it should come with a Latin tutor and a necktie. If you live in the US, like I do, happy birthday to us. Enjoy it, celebrate it, be grateful for it. We're living through a milestone that only comes around once every two and a half centuries. Remember that, despite our differences, we still get to live in one of the most remarkable nations ever built. Warren Buffett said, No one has ever been a success betting against America since 1776 and they're not going to be a success in the future doing it either. End quote. Before I discuss the worst investor cities for crime, Alan Greenspan died last week. Let's learn from history with this long-tenured Fed chair. He served for 19 years, from 1987 to 2006 And then I'll talk about what it means to you. And I actually met Greenspan in person, just briefly, at the New Orleans Investment Conference several years ago, he led the Federal Reserve under four presidents from both parties, and really he was regarded as somewhat of a celebrity economist. He shaped economic policy during this period of massive wealth creation, again 1987 to. 2006 almost two decades, Greenspan was held for his well-timed interest rate moves to fight inflation, all while promoting economic growth, but you know, a lot of prominent economists, they also blamed his big financial deregulation for causing the 2008 global financial crisis. Greenspan and Nomics were really about entering government during the Ford administration after he co-founded a successful economic forecasting firm, and then Greenspan really became known for basing his decisions on this sort of meticulous data analysis, not textbook economics, and he ultimately gained this guru status for really capable monetary policy, including during one of the longest economic booms in the country's history, between 1991 and 2001 all years in which he reigned, and he helped engineer a swift recovery from a massive financial crash during the late Reagan administration, and he did that by slashing interest rates, and then pouring tons of money into the economy, and you know, yeah, everyone is popular when they slash interest rates and print tons of money in the short term, because that makes everybody feel really prosperous, but I think you know what that leads to. Say it with me, inflation in the mid 90s. He presided over rate increases to stem that price growth without causing a recession, and that is a tough balancing act that's known as a soft landing. Jerome Powell basically did that too, despite his faults. But anyway, later Greenspan didn't pay attention to people that wanted him to keep jacking up rates, but he got it right to hold off from doing that.
Keith Weinhold 31:50
There was an economic upswing because Greenspan correctly predicted that we'd have all these productivity gains from personal computers that would help tame inflation. He got that part right, and Greenspan, he was like famous for using these hard to decipher pieces of jargon known as Fed speak. I mean, it was unforgettable in 1996 when he dropped the term irrational exuberant, so that really just means these unduly escalated asset values, and he also pioneered these interest rate change announcements as a way to help guide the markets, instead of surprising everybody. But, on the other hand, you know, anyone that shapes the economy is gonna get some criticism. A lot of people said that Greenspan would just always rescue the stock market, and investors sort of knew that he would come rescue it, and that made investors make these riskier and riskier bets. He was an acolyte of libertarian Ayn Rand, and so Greenspan lobbied for this sort of light touch financial regulation during the Clinton years, and that combined with his refusal to raise interest rates and rein in subprime mortgage lenders to stamp out the housing bubble in the 2000s that's really what caused people to say that he was partially responsible for the global financial crisis. His influence definitely remains today. Alan Greenspan lived from 1926 to 2026. Now we've all seen those lists, like America's worst cities or the highest crime metros in the US, floating around on social media, in articles like Newsweeks published for decades, and everywhere in between, right.
Keith Weinhold 33:42
It's like the 10 places where your wallet, your hubcaps, and your will to live disappear, something like that, in some form. When you consider real estate markets that you want to invest in, the quality of the area absolutely matters. A bad neighborhood. Oh, that's going to contribute to stagnant rents, flat or declining values, higher vacancy, and you'll probably attract a tenant who treats your property like it's a borrowed jet ski. All right, not where you want to be, but a faulty modus operandi is that a reader? They often see a list like this, and then they extrapolate an area's crime or their public safety issues and blankets them across an entire city. Now, one of these lists came across my desk recently, the 50 worst cities to live in in the United States, and the cities are ranked, and here's what struck me as wild, paradoxical. At least seven of the top eight cities have areas with strong investment fundamentals. Actually, so the eight worst, in order, are Detroit, Memphis, Jackson, Mississippi. St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, Shreveport, Louisiana, and then eighth worst is Birmingham, Alabama. Most all of these have good investment pockets in them. Now, I've never visited Shreveport, so that's one that I can't speak to. All right. Well, what is going on here? Why am I calling them good investor cities if they all make this list, and by the way, I was born in the 34th worst on this list, Redding, Pennsylvania. One of my degrees is in geography, and I get out and see the world, and what's weird, and you'll see this over and over and over again in society throughout your life, and that is when people talk about their own city that they live in. Oh, they understand the nuance. Okay, you know your own city has posh areas and rough places and working class areas, and that city that you live in has improving neighborhoods, and it also has don't stop there for gas after midnight areas, but see, when there's another city that people aren't familiar with, or they haven't visited, well, then suddenly the entire area gets slapped with one label, like, oh, that's nice, or that place is a dump, or the world would be better if that entire city slid into the ocean. Well, that's lazy thinking. Almost every city has sections that they're proud of. And then, well, the garbage collector has to live somewhere. Take Memphis, for example.
Keith Weinhold 36:38
It has long been one of America's most real estate investor advantaged cities, and it is a favorable place for income property owners, because it's got landlord friendly laws, a deep base of blue collar distribution jobs, a high ratio of rent income to purchase price, and Memphis also has such an embedded renter culture that tenants appliances actually move around with them, but yet Memphis, like I said, is a dreadful number two on this worst cities list due to high crime. Okay, that's the problem with citywide statistics. Bad neighborhoods can skew stats for an entire city, in fact, since we just mentioned them here on the show last week, take a reputable Memphis-based income property provider like Mid South Homebuyers, they renovate and provide investors with property in neighborhoods like Fraser and White Haven, but wait a moment, you can easily read about crime and blight and disinvestment into these same exact two Memphis neighborhoods, Fraser and Whitehaven. That's real, and that is accurate. And simultaneously, Fraser is anchored economically by nearby world-class hospitals, a massive Amazon presence. You've got Nike's largest distribution center in the world. I mean, that's not exactly a tumbleweed economy. Drive down Fraser's Pamela Drive, and you're going to see an established leafy middle-class neighborhood, mostly built in the 60s, with these modest, well-kept properties, and you can see that if you pull up Pamela Drive, Memphis on Google Street View, and they're often three bed, one bath ranch homes, about 1000 square feet in size, with two tenths of an acre lots. I mean, everything I just described there is ideal for cash flowing rentals, driveways, lawns, normal life - it's not posh, but pride of ownership is apparent here. People mold their lawns, trash stays picked up, you see orderly cars, maybe a jogger or a baby stroller, or a neighbor watering flowers.
Keith Weinhold 38:58
You do not see dumped furniture, no cars on blocks, no front yards that look like a failed episode of storage wars. Community stalwarts live here, like our police officers, nurses, public school teachers. So, see, there's substantial variation in investability, even within Fraser in Whitehaven, it's almost a block by block phenomenon, even within one neighborhood. So, to mentally stigmatize every neighborhood in Greater Memphis as bad due to their high crime areas is a really gross aberration. So, when one isn't familiar with an area, there's often an inclination to broad brush stroke at all. I mean, gosh, I wonder if people in Kazakhstan think that you are an abject degenerate simply for sending your child to school because they read that America has lots of school shootings. See, it's. The same principle here, and just like any provider the GRE tells you about, Mid South Homebuyers wants you to visit their neighborhoods in person. In fact, they frequently arrange investor tours and even welcome your visit so much that you'll get a $500 credit on your first property for attending the tour, they will pay you to come see Memphis effectively, and the bigger picture, national crime rates of all kinds just keep plummeting, because everybody is on their phone. Frankly, a lot of places on worst cities lists, like Memphis, they can be dangerous to invest in without a free consultation from our GRE investment coaching or a resource like Mid South Home Buyers.
Keith Weinhold 40:51
So, the bottom line is that investors, they don't buy a city, you're going to buy one specific house on one specific street with one specific tenant profile in one specific property management system. Micro locations are what determine your ROI, and by the way, Mid South Home Buyers has good income properties, some of them for about 200k or under 200k and right now they're offering investors their triple five program. This means they buy down your mortgage rate to 5.5% or maybe a little lower, and have a property management fee of just 5% for the first five years on every new turnkey property purchase. That is currently one of the best deals in the nation for income property. You can learn more at Mid South homebuyers.com If that sounds interesting, hopefully you've learned about real estate today and have helped clear up some misconceptions. Million dollar median homes are not some far-fetched fantasy. 2048 is my best guess as to when we reach that point. Housing is more scarce than you think, especially when you consider that America's homes are older than they've ever been, and when we look at one city's crime or demographic statistics, that broad brush strokes quite a wide area. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, there's a way to get more out of it for you and others, that is by telling two friends about the show, I love it when you do that, and I'm grateful for it. Text them this episode right now. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.
Speaker 1 42:37
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.
Speaker 1 43:05
The preceding program was brought to you by Your Home for Wealth Building, getricheducation.com
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