Next Level 258: How to Solve the Affordable Housing Crisis with Matt Simmons

There needs to be an increase in income for the population of this country that keeps up with the housing costs that are out there.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, Next Level Income.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Matt Simmons of Sim Capital. He's the founder and CEO of Sim Capital. He's a real estate investor and with a firm headquartered in Wexford, Pennsylvania. With a career in real estate, beginning in 2006, Matt has cultivated a portfolio exceeding 4,200 units, focusing primarily on value add, multifamily properties and affordable housing initiatives across various U.S. markets. And we're going to get into the differences in those affordability programs. On today's show, under Matt's leadership, Sim Capital has emphasized investments in affordable housing, particularly through the Section 8 program. The firm targets single family and smaller multifamily properties in key markets across the country, aiming to have these properties cash flowing within 30 days of acquisition. The strategy not only addresses the affordable housing shortage, but also provides investors with stable government backed rental income. Matt, great to see you again. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me on. I'm excited.

Absolutely. Yeah. Today we're going to talk about affordability in the housing market. And you and I got to share the virtual stage on a webinar a little over a month ago. Talked about some, some different segments there. And afterwards we were, we were talking and I said, you got to come on the podcast so we can continue this conversation and share it with the audience. So thank you very much for that. Before we get into that, Matt, share a little bit about your background. I know you've, you've seen a lot as I have over the last couple decades in the real estate market. Talk about your background, how you got here today with Sim Capital.

So I've been in real estate almost 20 years now. 19 years. Next year will be 20 years. And I hate to say that dates me and ages me, but.

Oh, it definitely ages you. I could tell. Yeah, I can relate on that.

Right. I, I've started investing in real estate all the way back in 2006. I had exited a company with a partner of mine at that time and was just looking for for good places to put, to put my dollars, my profits into and, and just started buying my own real estate at that time just as, as my own investment for me and my family started with single family homes, small multi duplexes, quad plexes, and kind of grew it over time. I, I actually started in the section 8 sub housing world and kind of learned the hard way that I shouldn't have done section 8 from, from the very beginning. Myself, I'm a firm believer that second age is not for beginners. And we can talk about that kind of a little bit more as we progress through here. But coincidentally, because I cut my teeth on Section 8 and subsidized housing, you know, almost what, 18, 17, 18 years later, when we opened up our affordable housing fund within SIM Capital, it really helped us with that because we knew the ins and outs of it already. We knew what not to do, we knew what the right things to do. And so while I say I learned the hard way, I definitely, it definitely set us up for success kind of, you know, almost 20 years later when we started the affordable housing fund within the company. But over the years, you know, I, I was able to build a nice little portfolio of about 300 doors or so from myself and my family, which led me to starting SIM Capital in 2014. And from there till now, we've done about 700, a little over $700 million in transaction volume. We own about a little over $400 million in, in. And that's comprised of multifamily as well as our affordable housing fund that we talked about about a month ago on, on the virtual stage, which is why we're here today.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And you know, I heard 2006, you know, that that was the, the perfect time to get started in real estate. Right.

Yeah, right. I, I, I, I knew it all. I knew everything was gonna happen, so that's why I decided to do it. Right though. You know the saying, it's better lucky than good sometimes. Right. And honestly, I was lucky.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the market was kind of topping right then. So you got to ride kind of the, the ride up.

Yeah.

But so I want to, I want to talk about how Section 8 housing performed, you know, during and after the downturn. But before that, Matt, let's, let's go ahead and define some of this for the audience that may not be as familiar. You know, most of our understands like class A, Class B, Class C, multifamily with class A being, you know, the kind of the Newest, you know, highest rent, you know, class B. You know, maybe you're talking about stuff that's 20, 30 years old. Class C, it's older. You know, those are, those are typically, you know, as properties get older, they typically, you know, slide down the scale. Although it's different, different markets. Where does Section 8 housing fit into that or how does it fit or overlap into that?

So I think majority of your section 8 is all going to be class C and class D, which is, you know, what we obviously the bottom all type of stuff. Right. And I only say that because it's not that it's bad necessarily bad properties or poorly maintained properties. A lot of it goes to the areas that the properties actually fall into as far as demographics, income, stuff like that. And so, you know, yes, vouchers could be available on class A or class B properties. The property be in the affordability spectrum when it comes to those types of properties. Right. And so, you know, the voucher system, the way that it works is they're not saying you can only be in this type of property, this class of property, it really comes down to a dollar amount and what's, you know, where those, the, the afford the, or the, this, the voucher dollar amounts fall into for the tenants as far as affordability goes. Right. And so a lot of times that's not going to fall into those class A or class B proper. So by default they're kind of forced into those class C or class E properties and areas to make sure that their voucher covers the rent amounts and it's affordable for the tenant that holds that voucher itself.

Yeah. So let's, let's step back or peel away one more layer. So the voucher you speak of, let's, let's break that down for the audience as well. How does the voucher work? So I'm a potential resident. How do I get a Section 8 voucher? Do I apply to the program? Let's kind of walk the audience through that.

Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a, it's called the Federal Housing Choice voucher Program. Right. So it's a federal program that the government provides to help low income housing, low income individuals or families get housing assistance. Even though it's a program, it's still administered on a local level. Typically that's on a, on a county by county level. Now sometimes within that county there's multiple housing authorities.

Right.

And so what you have to do as a potential voucher holder or someone that wants to get approved for vouchers you have to then apply to the housing authority that you want to work with and get approved for that housing voucher. And it's, it's income based. Right. And it's family size based. Right. And they all, they take all those factors into play. The problem is, is that a lot of these, in a lot of the areas, there's a huge waiting list for these vouchers because there's not enough vouchers and dollars to be able to meet the demand that's out there. If demand has only increased over, over the last, well, really since COVID that demand has really increased over the last five years and it's continuing to increase. And I, you know, I, I, I was doing some research probably two or so weeks ago to kind of get an idea on where the, the dollar amounts were at. But, and if I remember correctly, and don't quote me on this, we can, we can verify this and you can cut it out of the show if it's, if I'm not right. But I think there was something like they're $3 billion short voucher program even to this date, even with the increase in funding that there has been year over year. Yeah. And so that goes to show how much demand there is from, from, well, that want vouchers.

Sure.

To the funding shortage that there is in the program. I am also, excuse me, I'm a, I, I do also firmly believe that as with anything that's government related, this, this program needs an overhaul because I think it's, it's kind of antiquated in the way that they approach it. I also think at the, how, at the, at the county and the local level, it's not administered as well as it, as it should be. It's, they're very understaffed and there's also both, there's people that take advantage of the program from the consumer side, the voucher holder side, as well as from a vendor side. Whether it comes from the inspections or the third party people they use for those inspections, kind of abusing the system, not passing properties when they really should because they know they're going to get paid for another inspection, so on and so forth. Those are all things obviously we can unpack later. But it really is administered even though it's a federal program administered at a local county level.

Gotcha. Yeah. And that's, you know, you're not going to get any pushback from me arguing that, that, that a government program probably could, could operate more efficiently and hopefully we're moving in the right direction. I Think, you know, a lot of things today, it's, it's like we've reset at a new level and it's, you know, we hear these, oh, there's, they're cutting, you know, all these employees from FDA or whatever it is. But a lot of these, a lot of these federal agencies have seen like 100% increases over the last 10 or 20 size. You know, speaking of increases, we've seen rents increase substantially, but we've actually seen the cost to own homes increase even faster due to not only the increase in price but the increase unprecedented rise in interest rates. So that's all those things are driving, you know, a lot of these issues. Obviously mass.

Yep, it is, it's. And it's caused that affordable. It's caused that affordability issue to be to, to, to compound, you know, exponentially. Right. The affordability for, for people to buy houses has dropped drastically over the last five years, six years. You know, and I relate that to, you know, people ask where does that come from? Right. And so let's talk about the typical cycles in housing.

Right.

So typically a housing cycle lasts about seven years, right. Eight years, 2020, when Covid hit, we were on year number 11 of an upcycle. Right. Because it really started back in 2010. Right. That, that rebound. And so 2020, 2021, we're in year 10 and 11 of an up cycle. And typically had coven not hit and they, and had they not artificially rate slow and artificially kept, you know, the treasuries low, I think we would have saw a correction starting then. But that correction never happened because the rates just up drastically to you know, 2 and 3/4 and 3% which made affordability, which made people able to afford homes. But then that drove man up because you had all this new influx of affordability from new buyers which then drove demand up and it drove housing prices through the roof. And we still haven't seen that. Correct. Even the higher interest rates that you mentioned.

Yeah. So let me. This is, this would be a fun discussion. So I agree with the seven year cycle, but I think the real estate cycle goes in 18 year cycles. Two seven year cycles stacked and I think the last cycle bottomed and began up in 2012 which would have ended the seven year cycle in 2019, mid cycle slowdown. And then I think we're in the second seven year phase. But I agree the market's been perverted by these artificially low interest rates that have really. And we have to see typically we see. And I think it's coming Here, probably in the next couple years, we have to see some sort of correction because, yeah, if people can't afford housing, that and the market's not catching up, you know. Right, what's, what's, where do you go? Give. Yeah, something's got to give with that. So if you're listening and you want to buy a house, I think there's, there's hope for you, you know, going into the future. But, you know, that's, that's the problem, Matt. We have a shortage of starter homes. We have a shortage of rental units. Now we've seen in the class A space where we have a lot of our portfolio, we've seen an influx of supply which has been, which has suppressed rents. But we haven't seen that newer product filter down to the affordable levels yet. And we're going to start to see supply dry up here, you know, in the next year and really into 2026 as supply drops off a cliff. How does, you know, I mentioned, I kind of mentioned this at the top of the show. You know, how does section 8 or subsidized housing typically, or how does it typically perform during downturns? Does the section 8, you know, kind of hold steady or does it outperform or perform better during certain areas?

So it, it definitely holds steady, but I also think it outperforms the market as a whole, mainly because now, and we can touch on this a little bit, but I think mainly because we, we see consistent year over year rent increases from the housing authorities. You know, let's talk, let's take 20, 23 into 24, for example. Right. So 24 saw an 11 and a half percent national average bump in Fair Market rents in the housing choice voucher program. And you, if you compare that to what, what you see typically see in a market rate, ren, you might see 2 and a half to 3 and a half percent rent increase year over year. Right. And so that itself shows that, okay, we see the government, the housing, you know, the, the housing choice voucher program, they're saying, okay, we see the demand, we see that we have to increase rents to entice landlords to accept a voucher on their house. Right?

Yeah.

Coincidentally, from 24 into 25, you didn't see that big of a bump. And in fact, in some areas you actually saw a drop in Fair Market Ren. And here, here's why. And it's the first time I've actually seen that happen. But coupled with that, we saw a lot of these local, Remember I talked about everything administered at a local Level. Right, right. What we saw is a lot of these local housing authorities go away from a countywide fair market rent program to going code based.

And so they're saying again, you cut out there for just a second for.

To go what, based on zip code base.

That's what I thought. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. So they, so now they've gone into a much more kind of like finite detail and picking and choosing what zip codes see a rent increase and they're actually decreasing in some zip codes. And I think I, I think what the reason you're starting to see that now is because in, in some areas, like take Cleveland for example. Right. That's a big market for us. We have a big portfolio in Cleveland and up until 25 it was all countywide based. But then they went to a zip code base. What they saw is, they saw, okay, landlords know the good areas of Cleveland, they know the bad areas of Cleveland. Even though they can get subsidized rents in the bad areas, they still want other properties in areas that are considered nicer areas because they want to see that year over year price appreciation along with the rent appreciation. Right. And so what that does is they, they, they dropped fair market rents in the nicer areas and they increased it in the, the bad areas to try to, to try to entice landlords to put the properties in some of those areas. And.

Oh, for us. Yeah, yeah.

And so for us it's like, well, that, okay, we understand that, but we still don't want to buy a property in some of these areas because we're not going to get the year over year price appreciation. And on top of that, people don't want to live there because you have higher crime rates, you know, higher poverty rates, stuff like that. So yeah, was shooting themselves in their own feet and they think they're doing the right thing and providing more housing by providing better rates in some of these, these other areas. But actuality, landlords still aren't going to go there because they don't want to buy properties in those areas.

That's interesting. Yeah. So they're perverting the market and they're, they're, they're trying to affect the natural market cycles, but it's, yeah, you can only, you can only swim so fast upstream. Right?

It's exactly right. They can only do so much. And I really think it's going to, ultimately it's the first we've seen that happen, or at least I've seen that happen. And so I, I ultimately think it's Only they're only going to end up hurting themselves and ultimately providing less housing for people that need it because they're trying to manipulate things that way.

Yeah, that's interesting. And look, this is a complex problem. I live in Asheville, North Carolina. We've seen, seen Asheville be one of the most competitive market markets in the country. And when that for, for listeners, if you're listening, you say, what is competitive? Like, I know Asheville is nice. A lot of people want to live there. Competitive means the highest rent growth in the country. And part of the issue, Matt, was that the, the city council restricted developers from coming in, even from land that they already owned that they had a legal ability to build on. They wouldn't issue that. So with that issue. Yeah, so it led to an artificial supply, the pressure decrease or pressure on, downward pressure. So, you know, you look at it and as I'm listening to you, it's like, well, I mean, you could do, you could do opportunity zones to encourage developers in those areas while maintaining, you know, the same rent growth program. But yeah, it isn't, you can't, you know, it's like you can only if, if there's no fire burn and you put more fuel on it, you know, you still have to have something that's going to create that base state.

Exactly.

Yeah. But that is interesting. And I'm sure, you know, as you were mentioning before about people taking advantage of the system, I'm sure, you know, there are people in those areas that do lobby for that.

Sure.

You know, and there's, there's a lot of things that can push on that, which really, you know, really, you know, this is the debate. We could, you and I could go back and forth and, you know, we could talk all day on, you know, what role the government plays and should it play a role in this and that. But that brings me to my next point. And you know, it's, you really can't build affordable housing today. You know, you look at these programs, I think here in Asheville, they were spending like over $300,000 for an affordable unit. San Francisco, last time I checked, it was over $800,000 per unit. Right? Yeah. I think I shared this on the webinar. And we operate in a slightly different area of the affordable space, as you know. But, you know, we're, we're creating, I say creating. We're taking units that have a fair market value, about 150 to $175,000. So we're about half of what, you know, you know, some of the lower range cost is to bring an affordable unit to market. Any thoughts on like, how, how do we solve this affordability crisis, Matt, with respect to, you know, not only providing, as your group and our group does, affordable units that are out there, but how do we encourage development of, of units that are more affordable, you know, across both, you know, residential real estate as well as multifamily real estate.

You know, I have this conversation often and I, and I look at it as, it's a two prong. It's a two prong problem that has to be solved. One of those, one of those prongs is where you and I kind of come in and from a, from, from an investment standpoint, a developer standpoint, a landlord and owner's point, but there's a second part to that equation and it goes to an income standpoint from a consumer side. And, and I think, I think, I think it's lost on a lot of people because as, as we're talking here, how can we make houses more affordable? Right. We can do everything in our power to do that, but ultimately there still comes, it's still, still an income portion of this that has to come into play from a consumer side, right?

Yeah, somebody's got to provide it, but somebody's got to buy it or pay for it.

Exactly. And I think we can do all we can to bring costs down as much as possible, but we're still going to be limited on what we can do based off of what materials are going to cost, labor is going to cost and any of you know, subsidy that we can get from, from whatever it might be, whether it's tax, tax, subsidy, tax, you know, abatement, whatever it is. We still have our fixed costs regardless that we're going to have. We can't break through that, through that floor. Right, because you have inflation that drives costs up year over year over year. So there still comes an income. Still the other prong is the income standpoint. Right. And we have to figure out a way. And income has not kept up with pace of inflation. It hasn't kept up with the pace of housing. It hasn't kept up with interest rates. And so you still have this income issue that is, that is a big factor in all this affordability issue. And so that's, that's an area that you and I can't, we can't, can't play a part in that. Right. That, that's out of our control, but it is in the control of, let's say, government to a point, and employers as to, there needs to be an increase in income for, for, for, for the population of this country too, that keeps up with the housing that are out there.

Right, right.

Even with, even with developers like us that are trying to bring housing prices down and kind of keep it affordable, we can only do so much. And I think that has been lost on a lot of people that talk about this affordability crisis that we're in is they're only looking at it from the, well, the developer side. Oh, we're greedy. Oh, we're, you know, and yes, we're not greedy, but we do need to make money.

Numbers.

We're in the business of right. Numbers have to work. We still need to be profitable. But there is that other prong that I think a lot of people look over and you hear them talking about minimum wage and stuff like that. And this isn't a minimum wage issue, this is an income issue for, for, for the general population. Because the general population, for the most part, the affordability has, has, has escaped them. Even the general population, your middle class, your, your blue collar, you can't afford to buy a new house anymore nowadays.

And the down payment, the amount of time it takes to.

Right.

Raise a down payment, the percentage of.

Right.

Yeah, it's, it's insane.

Yeah, it is. And so when that population can't even afford a house, you know, we're in a real crisis and that's where we're. Are where, where we are. And so I don't, I wish I had the answer on how to solve this whole thing, as I'm sure you did, because I think if, if we had the answers to solve all this, we'd be a hell of a lot wealthier than we are right now and we could help even more. Right?

Yeah.

But I don't think we have the solution to that because there is that income portion of it. We can do so much. We can, we can buy properties, we can, we can, we can develop properties. We can, we can take advantage of low income housing tax credits. We can take, we can take event. We can take advantage of the housing choice voucher program. But ultimately it still comes. That income portion isn't being addressed yet. And that's the biggest problem.

Yeah, no, I agree. And yeah, it takes, takes economic growth. It's the same thing they've been talking about with, you know, lowering the budget deficit. But we have to grow our way out of it essentially. And you know, I'm going to, I'm going to play devil's advocate here, you know, for both of us.

Yeah.

Do you think that these programs, like, you know, some of the tax abatement programs, we have some of the section 8. Do you think it's actually causing more, you know, causing harm in some ways?

I'm gonna say yes. I think there's all, I think that there's, there's always positives and there's always negatives.

Right, right.

You know, I, I think, and I think part of that can be part, some of the negative, the harm that can be caused is what I touched on earlier, where you have people that are taking advantage of the situation.

Right.

They're taking advantage of the program, which ultimately takes away opportunity for other people that actually need it.

Yeah.

Right.

Or like you said, the program's perverted where they're, you know, raising in some areas and. Yeah.

And dropping in others. Right. And. Or you have that just stay in this program because they know how to milk it and they can keep their, you know, they can, they can keep that, that voucher approval and their income just under that threshold. Right, Interesting. So they're forever on this program and forever taking advantage of, of, of, of the, the offerings that there are. And a double edged sword from our stamp. It is. And from our standpoint, we look at Section eight is it's, it's, it's not. It shouldn't be for a forever thing. Right. There should be caps on it, in my opinion. You should put a number, you should put a cap on the number of years someone can actually collect a voucher because that forces them. But, but alongside that, there needs to be some. And this is where I think the overhaul needs to come in. There needs to be some community or countywide outreach effort with these voucher holders to help them educate themselves to get out of the situation that they're in.

Great.

Right. Job creation, education, trade, stuff like that.

Yeah.

To help these people kind of level themselves up and out of this program where they put a yearly, if they put a timeline cap on it and they required these people to take part in this education could really help bring these people out of this welfare program which opens those vouchers back up for other people that need it. Right.

That's a, I love that. What a great. Yeah. What a great idea. Yeah.

And so I think if they implemented something like that, it would go a long way in helping to solve this problem and provide them the housing that's needed. But they don't. They just give these vouchers out and. Yeah. People have to qualify each year for them. There's no cap On. On how long they can be on the program. They just keep taking advantage of it over and over and over again. And ultimately that makes it harder for the people that may have done really well for themselves, but find themselves in a hot. In a tough spot right now and really need that voucher. But they have to wait two years for a voucher to become available.

Yeah, you know, that's an excellent point.

Yeah, that's. That's the harm, I think, at least with. With. With the, The.

The.

The section of the industry that we're in, with the section in the vouchers, I. I really feel that downside and the harm that's being caused that it isn't being addressed and fixed.

Yeah, you almost have, you know, a perversion of incentives. Like you said. You're like, well, hey, if I just make a little less money this year, I'll still get this. So ultimately, I'll actually bring in more revenue. It's like, you know, Michael Shellenberger wrote a book called San Francisco, and he. He lived in San Francisco. He was a progressive, and he's like, well, how do you solve this problem, you know, of. Of homelessness and, you know, drug addicts? So he went around the world, and what he ultimately came to, which is interesting, he kind of changed his perspective, is that you need a carrot and a stick. You know, you offer these programs, but you have a stepwise progression. So you say, hey, we'll give you a place to stay. If you get sober, you don't have to share a bedroom. You can, you can get your own. If you get a job, you can get your own apartment. And like you said, you have these sequential stepwise incentives there. So you could take a program like you all participate in, Matt, and you could take somebody that's in it and lift them out instead of keeping them in there. That's a, that's an excellent point.

Yeah.

I'm glad I asked the question. I was like. I was like, I don't know where this is going to go, but yeah, it is. Are we thinking about. Yeah, go ahead.

It made me. It made me, too, because most people don't ask if, If. If these programs cause harm. We know they do. Good. Obviously.

Sure.

We absolutely need.

Well, we know. Yeah, we can point to the people that they help. Absolutely.

Right. 100%. But I've never actually had anyone ask me, do they also cause harm? And I. That's my answer. I firmly believe that they absolutely do, and this is how they're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's. No, and thank you for that perspective. You know, I look at the tax abatement programs and, you know, there's, there's some pushback. You know, we do a lot of these projects in Houston. People say, oh, this isn't fair, but because we're not getting this tax revenue. Right. But yeah, we're not getting tax rate, but it makes the project economically feasible for us and our investors. It creates effectively instant affordable housing for those that are there. And it provides, you know, it provides very high quality units in a market rate, stepwise increase that works for that. So I think we need more innovation like that Asheville does public private partnerships. I mean, you know, it's like, how, who's gonna, who's gonna build it? You know, do you want. Right, you want. I don't think we want the government building housing. I think we want private developers doing it.

I, and I think government has proven that they can't develop housing. Well, you know what I mean, let's be honest. They've tried over the years and, and it's always an epic failure, which I, and I agree. I think that's, I think it needs to be a, A prior. A private solution, basically. Right. It needs to be the private sector that's, that's doing it with the government providing some incentives for sure to make it possible, like you said, economically feasible. But it definitely needs to come from the private sector.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I suspected we may be on the same page with a lot of that stuff, but yeah, I love, I love these discussions because, you know, I'm kind of. We have mobile home parks as well. And, you know, I'm a, I'm a kind of like energy. It's like all the above. It's like, hey, let's get, you know, mobile homes. Let's get affordable. Let's do section eight. Let's get, you know, tax abatement programs. Let's, let's lower restrictions and all the red tape so we can get more units at a cheaper price going in into markets that need it. We just, we just need more housing basically, anyway, we do get it. So let's, let's, let's have some more fun. What do you, what do you see happening, you know, over this, you know, whether you say like this the second half or this next phase of the real estate cycle. Matt, like, what do you see unfolding here over the next, like five to 10 years? We got a lot of variables out there.

Yeah.

And, you know, what do you, what do you see happening? I know we have again, it's really challenging with the Fed and tariffs and all that.

Yeah. And we definitely have some, we definitely have some additional factors coming into play that we haven't really had to deal with before, you know, I would say. So I'm going to kind of give you, I'm going to give you a short term, midterm and term outlook here of what I see.

Terrific.

Yeah. I think short term and when I say short term, you know, six to 24 months. Right. The next six to 24 months, I think going to see interest rates for the most part go sideways for the remainder of this year. Probably start seeing them come down. When I say interest rates, I'm talking about mortgage rates, not necessarily the Fed fundraiser, but I see, I see interest rates with mortgages ultimately going sideways for the next four to six months and then ultimately starting to trend down towards the year. What that's going to do, in my opinion, because we're already short on supply, that's going to increase demand from a buyer perspective because that brings back affordability. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see a large influx of supply that's going to be able to meet that demand, which is going to ultimately drive home prices even higher year, which we don't need. But ultimately that's, that's, that's economy, right? That's, that's Economics 101, basically. And I think interest rates are going to continue to trend down over the next couple years. You know, as, as that happens, the tariffs have me a little perplexed, I'll be honest.

Yeah.

And when I say it, that's me a little perplexed. I firmly believe what's going on has, is long overdue and I firmly believe that we needed a change. We needed to stop being, you know, the worldwide funder of everything and we needed to kind of bring back manufacturing, we need to bring back purchases domestically. And I think short term we're going to, we're going to feel some pain from that. I mean, we saw it over the last 45 days already, right. With, you know, the market being down 1500 points one day, 1800 the next, down 1200 the next. I mean, you have that volatility, right. And that causes whiplash for most people because they're, they're operating off of emotions. Right. And I get it. But ultimately I think things are going to settle down a little bit and, and we're going to start seeing ultimately the goal that, that they want, he wanted to achieve with the tapes and, and with the overall outcome And I think that's going to help stabilize the economy. I don't care what people say. The last four years, the economy has not good. You can't have a good economy when you're operating at 9, 10, 11 inflation rates. I think it was all smoke and mirrors, to be honest. And I think the uneasiness that we're seeing now, which may have been the terrorists, may have been the catalyst to that, that action. But I think that's just the fallout from the smoke and mirrors over the last four years.

Yeah, it's hard, you know, I mean. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

I mean. No, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's tough, right? You look at the, like the actual job creation, you look at who the jobs are going to. You look at the government jobs, the immigrant, you know, immigration, you know, the, the amount of money, you know, the deficits we are running, the spending. Right. You know, any, anybody. It's like your neighbor can borrow a bunch of money and look like they're rich for a couple years, but eventually the bill comes to catches up.

Exactly.

Yeah. And I feel like we're like a junkie, you know, going through rehab right now as a country. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, well, you know, who do you blame with that?

No.

Yeah.

And we can go down a whole rabbit hole with that.

Yeah, yeah, let's. Yeah, I know you, you, you and.

I. Yeah, I, I could get on my soapbox, but I won't go there.

Because we'll stick people, we'll stick to housing today.

But when you, you and I are.

Sharing a, sharing a bourbon or something, we can, we can talk about that. But we're gonna, now we're gonna have to make this a regular thing maybe every year. Have you come back on? Yeah, but we're wrapping up our time. I'd love share a little bit more about SIM Capital. I know you're up in Pennsylvania, not too far from where I grew up in Maryland. Talk about like what, what market you operate in and how investors and our listeners can learn more about what you guys do.

So we are technically considered a private equity real estate fund firm. We have, we do on both a fund basis and a syndication basis. We primarily from the start in 2014were heavy value add, multifamily focused firm where we would go in and we would buy, you know, heavy value add class C plus B, you know, B minus properties, you know, renovate, increase value, stabilize them and sell them. Coming out of COVID we is where we really started dipping into the affordable housing space. And we've been really successful with our affordable housing fund. And so those are our two focuses. You know, the goal is to continue our growth. We want to get to about a billion dollars or so in assets by the end of 27. And we're sticking with the, with the value of multi family and the affordable. We see really good opportunity in both of those spaces as well as we actually do offering from a debt perspective. We started a debt fund recently because we see some good opportunity there with the way the market has been. But all that can be found@simcapital.com you can schedule, learn more about us. You can hop on the website, you can request, schedule, call with our investor relations team, ask any questions, talk about any of the offerings that we have, talk about our history, talk about where we're moving forward in the future. And you can, you can me out on, on social media as well. I'm all over Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all the channels.

Beautiful. And we'll be tagging you here on this podcast here. And that's Sim Capital with two M's. We'll have that link in the show notes. Check out Sim Capital's website there. And Matt, really enjoyed catching up with you again here. Thanks for your time and sharing your appreciation, perspective and thoughts with the audience.

Man, I appreciate it. It was a blast. I always love doing these things when, when we can connect on the same page and talk about, talk about how to fix problems in the world.

Anybody, anybody with an American flag on the wall is I'm a fan of.

So appreciate that. Appreciate it.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.