1655: Are We In A Stock Market Bubble? Self-Management Tips from Clients

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1655. It's Wednesday, March 3rd, and a question we are constantly being asked. Not we meaning us necessarily, but in general, we are all thinking about this. Everybody's asking maybe themselves this question. And what is that question? The question is, are we in a stock market bubble? Are we in a stock market bubble? It's a good question. Well, looking at a chart here of the Wilshire 5000 index, now that's the big broad based index. It takes market caps, it weights them. And these are actively traded stocks in the U.S. right. But here's the interesting thing. The quarterly averages in the past, not today, used to match the quarterly intervals of the GDP statistics. The gross domestic products, not products, singular product, the gdp, the gross domestic product. Right. And so now a fair question to ask is how does this look today? There are many metrics, there are many ways you can compare things, of course, and we've obviously talked about that ad nauseam on the show. But here is another. When we look at not inflation necessarily, although this, this sort of has an indicator at least for asset inflation. Most certainly. Right. But when we look at comparing the Wilshire 5000 to nominal GDP ratios, okay, in the past it was pretty much in sync, but it got out of whack a few times. And let's compare the past to the out of whack periods to today. And I think this is very enlightening. And then we're going to get to some listener questions and I've got a couple more things I want to talk to you about. The fhfa, not the fha, this is the Federal Housing Finance Agency and talk to you about what they're doing with forbearance. So let's get to that in a moment. But first let's talk about these stocks.

Looking at this chart going back to 1975, it looks pretty.

Even keel. And then we see a big increase at about 1995, not really then, but it starts its climb up to the big bubble about five years later. And of course, you know what that big bulb bubble is? It is the dot com bubble, the tech bubble, the first tech bubble. Okay? Now at this point in the first quarter of 2000, so this is 21 years ago, the ratio of the Wilshire 5000 index compared to what compared to nominal GDP was 1.37. And that is far out of sync compared to the norm. If you looked over the past 25 years before that, you see it at like 0.4 up to 0.6. Then you have that climb at 1995 which I described, where it gets out of sync and it peaks at 1.37. And then obviously there was a crash. And at the lowest point of the crash, at the trough of that crash, that hit in about, and you remember it, folks, I mean, you know, this was about 2003 ish, give or take, the ratio went down to.

About a 7, okay, about a 0.7 there. And then we saw a bit of a climb, but the climb wasn't too outrageous, it wasn't too radical until.

We got to the next bubble. Now, they're calling this the housing bubble because that's how it started. But it was really, as I've explained many times, it was really the Wall street bubble because it wasn't really housing directly that caused that. Yes, of course, the mortgage underwriting standards back then were stupid, silly, too liberal, and they had too many adjustable rate mortgages that weren't underwritten properly, et cetera, et cetera. And nothing new there, we've talked about that many, many times. But.

For whatever it's worth, it caused a housing crash, right? But really what happened was the second part of that that really caused the Great Recession, the global financial crisis, the GFC was the fact that Wall street was doing their little shenanigans and Wall street was selling the same mortgage note in these pools over and over again. There was toxic debt. We all became familiar with a whole bunch of new acronyms.

And we all, we all remember it, right? But there, the ratio only got up to 1.05, as opposed to the prior peak about seven years earlier of 1.37. So let's keep going, get ready for this one. Get ready for this one. The ratio goes down. Great Recession, stock market crash goes down to about 0.6. All right? Then it starts its climb and there are some jagged peaks and valleys in this climb. But overall it's an upward trend and we get to the fourth quarter of last year. Okay, Q4, 2020, what is the Wilshire 5000 index to nominal GDP, gross domestic product. In other words, the output of the country. Now, before I give you the answer, there's one more thing that you really need to consider and that is the ironic situation, the irony of a massive decline in GDP that we suffered last year, obviously. And then you really see how this index is out of sync and how and why people have really been talking about two completely separate economies. Because that's what we've had, two completely separate economies where we have the Wall street economy and then we have the Main street economy. We have two different things. Okay?

The number today is 1.72. Yikes, yikes, yikes, yikes. It is way out of sync, way out of sync. 1.72 is the number Q4 of last year. So we can see here that that shows us that we may have a problem. You know, Houston, we have a problem. Okay, there you go. So for whatever it's worth, consider that. All right? The FHFA has extended the forbearance period to 18 months. In other words, you don't have to make your mortgage payment for a year and a half. Congratulations. Now this doesn't apply. Remember, do not do this or at least proceed with caution and get some advice from competent professionals. And we can refer you to those competent professionals. You're certainly not listening to one of them now. There you go, little self effacing humor. Jason. Okay, get some advice from competent mortgage people. And remember something. When we refer you through our network, you to mortgage professionals know that they specialize in the investment property side of the business. There really is a difference between that mortgage person that you got your home loan through, if you own a home, or maybe you refinanced your home. And someone who really specializes in helping investors build portfolios, that is a different type of mortgage rep. So reach out to us. Jasonhartman.com have your investment counselor help you. If you don't have an investment counselor, just fill out any form on our website and they will contact you. Or call us at 1-800-HARTMAN in the USA, 1-800-HARTMAN and you can get some assistance, get referrals. One of the big parts of being successful as a real estate investor is having a team. And guess what? We can provide that team for you through our network. And instantly, well, almost instantly. Maybe it's not quite a microwave oven, but it's pretty fast. We can get you connected with all kinds of resources, all kinds of referrals, people, software, etc. Etc. So don't hesitate to reach out. Even if you're not ready. We're always here to help you. We take a very long term view of our business and our relationships with customers. So there you have it folks. 18 months of forbearance option. Now, not sure if I mentioned this a moment ago, but why wouldn't you want to take advantage of the forbearance opportunity? Because it is an opportunity. Why wouldn't you want to do that if you are looking to buy properties soon? Because some lenders are saying that you cannot be in forbearance and get any new loans. Okay? So just take that for what it's worth and get connected with right professionals that can help you with that. Okay? Now let's go to a couple of comments, listener questions, things like that. The first one comes from our client, Drew Baker, who's been on the show many times. He also really helps our empowered investor inner circle group. If you want to know more about that, we announced kind of a webinar, an intro on that and I'll see if I can get that link for you in the show. We'll certainly post it below in the show notes if I don't grab it for you while I'm speaking here today. He really adds a lot of value to that group and we appreciate it. And he has an interesting comment here that I'll start with. And here it is of course, focus being self management and being an empowered investor. And I gotta tell you, I love self management, but it's a choice. You know, you may or may not want to do it. But here's what he says about hiring contractors and the handy platforms that are available to all of us.

Hey Jason, you know, I've thought about possibly if you want to do another podcast one of these days on have a couple interesting things we could talk about, you know, one of which is that, you know, a lot of these crowdsourcing sites that have reviews for, you know, contractors like Thumbtack and you know, TaskRabbit, but I think that's a little bit smaller. But you know, these people that are on thumbtack, they like really strive to have good reviews. And I think, I think my issue with a lot of contractors is kind of the 8020 rule applies to them where like 80% of their business comes from 20% of their clients. So kind of the people at the periphery don't really get any attention because they're Kind of seen as sort of almost a burden to the. To the contractors. And people will get flighty, and, you know, they're just unreliable. Whereas I think these people on, like, a site like Thumbtack, the ones that get good reviews, they're 80% is thumbtack. So you're kind of under the umbrella of them being accountable to you. And so, you know, not giving some crazy quote, not lying to you. And so I used a contractor today that did some AC repair work for me, and the guy sent me a photo of the gauges, sent me a very reasonable estimate by email. I paid him right there over the phone and gave me his thoughts about replacing the system eventually. And I just thought, boy, this person just has it together. They have a system. Small business guy, you know, talking to the owner, texting with him, you know, just kind of that small business competent person you want to find. And I thought, boy, this is so rare. So it's nice, though, that, you know, these people sort of are held to account. So they're not just these flakes, because I had some of these. I had this guy that was like a flipper in Memphis. I don't know. He, like, gave me kind of some of the contacts that he uses when he needs help for doing some repair work. And I called some of these people, and, I mean, it's like some of them don't speak English. A lot of them, like, don't get back to you. One of them went out and looked at it and, like, wanted to charge me, like, $12,000 to do stuff that really didn't need to be done. It just seemed, like, so disconnected from someone. And you're like, you. I've never done work with you before, and you're telling me that I need to spend $12,000 on fixing, you know, everything. It's kind of just random. So. So what I was gonna say is I'm gonna go through a little bit of an experiment here, but I'm gonna sort of try to build my vendor list and by using these. Some tax sites and see how that goes. And I'm doing it in two different markets, so I'm doing it in Memphis, and I'm doing it in Indy. And so.

And what he means to say is, you know, he refers to as thumbtack sites. Thumbtack is one site. You know, TaskRabbit is another. There are. There are several of them out there, okay, for all sorts of trades. But I've used them both, and I like them very much. I had very good experiences, and really think they're a great resource.

I'm contracted with someone to do a rent ready in July, so we'll see how that goes. And I have the guy who's probably going to do the AC unit next month and, and then in Indianapolis, I'm going to do some drywall ceiling repair work. And then if that goes well, I'll use the same guy to do a bunch of interior maintenance on one of the properties that had been neglected forever. I'll let you know if you want to do kind of a before kind of podcast on what I'm, what I'm thinking about that could help your audience. I'd be happy to do that. And then we could do a follow up, you know, after type interview if you want to go, here's all the things I learned and what, what I'll do different next time.

And the next message is from one of our investment counselors, Evan. You've heard him on the show before and he is speaking internally to our team, just talking to our other investment counselor, another one of them, Sarah, about how he refinanced his fourplex. And I'm sure most of you have taken my refi till you die advice, but if you haven't yet, it's obviously a phenomenal opportunity right now. Your rich uncle Jerome Powell has given you a big gift of these insanely low negative interest rates. They're basically negative interest rates in real terms.

Refiing my four plex in a little rock, going from 4.5% to 3.5%, going to save me 300 bucks a month. Awesome. Refi till you die. It works. Yeah, it works. And it doesn't even take that long. That's the beautiful thing. I mean, you can wait seven years or 12 years in the video that you outlined, but you could also do it much quicker. Hey Jason, I listened to your podcast the other day with the Marxist professor. The only question I had to him was if this is a much better model that he was claiming it to be, why would it not win out in a competitive marketplace?

That's a good question. So you might remember the episode I did a while back with the guest calls himself the Marxist Professor. A believer in Marxism? I'm not a believer, but I thought he was a very interesting guy, so I had him on the show. I like to get some opposing viewpoints, of course, as you well know. And so one of our little listeners asked a good question here.

Isn't that the foundation of capitalism itself? If you have a better, more efficient system and idea, it should win out.

Yes, it is.

Hey, I'm listening to an interview that.

Gundlock did for Yahoo, and this is George Gammon speaking. You've heard him on the show many Times.

Looks like July 1st. So if you go to Yahoo. Finance, their YouTube channel, and pull up the interview, basically he states exactly what you've been saying from for like, two months now that everyone's moving to the suburbs. And his firm did extensive research on this and showed that the offers in the suburbs have gone to the roof, while in the cities they've just plummeted. And I think, I don't know what you're doing for marketing material right now, but to have Gundlock back up exactly what you're saying, that might be a cool clip that you could download and turn into some, you know, some like a testimonial almost backing up what you've been saying for like two or three months from someone like unluck.

So with that, you realize how it has been a while since I've gotten through some of these messages. So that's why we need to get through some of the listener comments more often, some of our internal team discussions that we share with you and so forth.

Hey, Jason, it's Adrian. Hope you're doing well. Just wanted to let you know today is a celebratory day for me. I'm finally no longer a California property owner. We sold our primary residence last week.

After only 6 months of ownership and just sold the Oakland 4 Plex. And super thankful to have gotten out.

Before things get worse and totally reinvesting in all the areas we recommend and.

Just want to thank you for all your guidance. I've also connected with Bob, who I thought was going to be at Meet the Masters and setting up a whole.

New asset protection strategy.

So it's total repositioning and I'm super excited to be on the other side of it. And yeah, I just wanted to reach.

Out and say thanks.

So that's our client, Adrian, and I'm sure he's listening now. Hi, Adrian, how are you? And he's been doing some great stuff with his portfolio, really. Repositioning, getting into the right cash flow markets and getting his asset protection strategy set up. He did that with our attorney that we recommend there. And you can listen to that free web class@jasonhartman.com protect. So thanks for that message, Adrian, and let's go to the next one.

Well, Jason, I do think about you every day, especially in the mornings when I hear your podcast. You have become like a drug for me that I meet every morning. And regarding the event, I can tell you that it was too bad I wasn't able to hear the whole thing because that weekend I had my grandchildren here, three of them, which is a full hand. But the few things that I heard and that I saw I love very much and I learn a lot. So thank you for those events and hopefully I would love to see one, but in person. Okay, bye. Bye. Thank you.

So that's one of our listeners who joined for just a brief time, one of our online Zoom events. Just a little reaction there. Let's go to the next one.

Hey Jason, this is Clay. Just giving you, just reaching out to you. I was thinking about you when I was listening to George Gaming's most recent podcast with Jason Burek where they were talking extensively about stagflate tax and lie.

Anyways, I thought it was stagflate tax and lie. That's what the government's doing to us.

Important to harp back to a couple of the things that you do with real estate portfolios as a means of defense against what, what the government's going to be doing. Essentially what they were talking about is they think that one of the most likely ways that the government's going to try to come after people is through higher property taxes. And that had me thinking, oh man, it's not good for, that's not good for, you know, our us that own portfolios of rental properties. But then they talked about the way they think that's going to happen is they think that instead of just simply increasing the percentage tax, they think what they're going to do is re estimate or take a, you know, find the current nominal value and increase taxes based on kind of the new or higher or current value, as opposed to whatever previous value people were probably paying taxes on. And what that brought me to thinking is about how you've advocated so strongly for the refi till you die. And I think that's incredibly prudent to think about. Now. We need to, we need to have that as probably a central pillar of our current investing mindset. Because what, what we can do to protect ourselves if property taxes start going up is there's still 1%, you know, rent to value properties out there and even those properties that are in our portfolio, essentially what they're going to be trying to do is they're going to try to tell each of us that, hey, your house has gained in value. We're going to tax you based on that. Well, if that's how that's going to work out. What we need to do is we need to. We need to refinance the house. We need to strip the equity that they say is there. That way we continue to renew or reset the property and the leverage on that of sorts in order to reach those gains. And essentially we need to protect ourselves. Obviously, with the rent coming in, that'll continue to probably keep going up. But if we keep stripping equity and then using that equity for good things, that will keep us current and allow us to continue to recognize the value of our houses as they nominally appreciate. But it'll also keep us with a hedge, with our leverage against the devaluation of the dollar, which is a part of that same theory. So anyways, the old mentality of going ahead and paying all your properties off cash and keeping a low property tax and kind of writing things out, I think that mentality is going to be chipped away at even more going forward. And so.

I do, in the back of my mind, as I was thinking about that this world's gonna get crazy and we need to protect ourselves. Anyways, hope you're doing well and I'll catch up with you again soon.

Bye. Bye.

Okay, so that was a really good point that he brought up. And one of the things that he didn't say, but I was thinking is that. And this is a really neat opportunity for us as investors because that is a loop, right? If the assessor says your property is worth more, and if municipalities are doing that to try and gain more property tax revenue, then you can go to the lender on your refi till you die plan and use that comparison that the assessor has made to get a better appraisal. And you can also do that in reverse. You can fight an increased tax assessment with an appraisal that you're refinancing on. And that is a very, very powerful tool to do that. As you know, and we've done many shows on this over the years, you can appeal any property tax assessments when markets are going up, as they have been for quite a while now. Some of these municipalities are seeing that and you know, they're. They're trying to reassess properties and raise taxes. Right, Raise property taxes. But that's an excellent way, you know, use those and play them off of each other as a way to get better appraisals and get more cash out on your cash out refi, following my refi till you die plan. And then also use it in reverse in whatever way it works best for you to get a lower Tax assessment. Okay, so let's see if we can do one more message here and then we'll call it a day for these. And I really am glad we had a chance to catch up on some of these. We're still not caught up. We have many, many more listener comments and internal team comments and so forth. But let's see if we can do one more today before we wrap it up. So this is our client, Drew Baker talking again.

Someone that you default to that controls the narrative, they're never going to be wrong. And I think that's the problem is they control the narrative and they control the flow of information. So it's filtered through their lens. Anytime bad news comes up, they can just deflect it elsewhere. And so, you know, I mean, I had a tenant that moved out recently and you know, they were kind of rough on the property, but they were good tenants. They paid on time and you know, there was one little hole in the wall, a door that would.

And so what he's referring to is the property manager. Remember, Drew and I are both big fans of self management and having more control, being an empowered investor. I would not recommend that if you're brand new to investing, of course, and I would definitely recommend that if you are going to self manage, you become a member of our empowered investor inner circle which has. It's not just about self management, but that's definitely one of the focuses and we provide a bunch of resources to help you self managing and becoming a more empowered investor.

Kind of busted up that may have been from previously. So I didn't hold them account to that, but a couple little things. And I went through about five things, half the things they reasonably explained and I said, okay, no problem, I'll cover those. And then, you know, having the house professionally cleaned and fixing a hole in the wall and getting the house deodorized basically was like 500, which is really what it's going to end up costing me to deal with those things. And so I held that money back from the security deposit. Now I can tell you there is no way that any property management company would give them any charge on their security deposit refund. This would based on the condition of the property, even though it was in rough shape, they would have given them a full refund. And what's nice is I control. I mean, this may not be for everybody. So I fully understand this. But like I'm working on a template for my lease agreements and every lease I tend to get better, I tend to add more things, remove things Sharpen up details.

In other words, the lease agreement itself. He's got a better clause. He's had experience. He makes the lease agreement better every time. And he uses HelloSign to do the signing. And it's free, you know, for a small volume. Of course, if you have a big volume, you've got to, you've got to pay for the upgraded HelloSign package, which is still incredibly cheap.

I'm working on a lease agreement right now for this other property. And I added two things in here that I thought were like, really important to outline in the lease agreement. And basically the premises is I realized that like maybe 50% of my service calls are because, you know, there's a bad light bulb. You know, they need to reset the breaker or, you know, reset the GFI switch or the H VAC service comes out. It's because they didn't. The failure to replace the furnace filter, stuff like that, that like, it's kind of like, okay, I'll just let it go and I pay for it. Well, I'm not doing that anymore. If you put in your, your hair dryer and it pops the breaker and you want somebody to come out for a hundred dollars and flip a switch, then you're gonna have to pay for that. The house protected itself by turning, you know, not, not allowing the fuse to break. And it tripped the circuit. So, you know, if your light bulb's bad and it's within reach and you know, you want to have your furnace serviced and you didn't do the proper service to, and it's not working because you didn't do your part. Like, I don't think it's unreasonable that those things be covered by you.

And you know, and when he says you, he's referring to the tenant. And he's absolutely right. Some of these property managers just give people's money away. It's absolutely ridiculous. Now, on balance, I just want to say this again. Okay, Nothing terribly earth shattering here, but remember, one of the most, I guess, coveted commandments of my ten commandments of successful investing is commandment number three, thou shalt maintain control. The reason you want to maintain control and be a direct investor is so you don't leave yourself susceptible to, to the three major problems when you relinquish control to somebody else. Mostly referring to you're investing in a fund, you're investing in a Wall street related asset. A bunch of executives control everything. Investment bankers, Wall street brokers, Goldman Sachs, aka Goldman Sachs.

And they're in control. The CEOs are in control. The board of directors is in control. The other executives are in control. They're paying themselves huge, Bon. And their investors are getting lousy returns. You don't want to relinquish control because you'll lose your money. Or if you don't lose money, you'll get a meager return compared to being a direct investor when you would get a much, much better return. So that's the scoop. And here when you're self managing, you have much greater control and you can make sure that your tenant understands that they're not living in a hotel room. This is not a full service hotel at the Ritz Carlton, right? They need to act a little bit more like a homeowner. And if the GFI breaker blows because your blow dryer blew it, you got to flip the switch, right? It's not hard. It does not require an electrician. This is a self service thing. You don't change people's light bulbs. Okay? Things like this, right? This is obvious stuff that the tenant has to do.

It's not my responsibility to send the tenant furnace filters. But I find buying a 12 pack.

For 50 bucks, it's also not your responsibility to pay for crazy pest control expenses, right? You know, if there's some ants in the house, your tenant needs to buy some ant traps at the grocery store and place them around the house to, you know, to keep the ants out. I mean, this is property managers. I've seen them pay for this stuff. If they try to charge you for this stuff, just tell them, no, you're not paying for it. But the better alternative may be to just self manage.

And shipping it to their house makes me look like the good guy. They will presumably do it. And if they don't, they're going to be charged for the service call to replace it themselves and they'll learn quickly that that didn't work out well for them. And you know, they can't say, oh, why shouldn't have to pay for the service bill. You're like, hey, you didn't replace the filter. I paid for the filters. When technically that's your responsibility. So this is something that you did. You have to do maintenance. You have to do routine maintenance and keep the house in good shape and keep these things working on your end, otherwise they're going to break down and you're going to be responsible. So it's about setting the expectation and stuff like that I'm getting better at and I'm building that into sort of my expectations. So, you know, in the past, I just Let all this stuff go, you know, and now I'm kind of defining what I think is fair and outlining to the tenant, which what I think is fair. You know, I had an elderly lady who, like, had a curling iron and, you know, the guy had to go over there and just hit a button and then charge me $95. And I'm like, it's ridiculous. I'm not doing this again. Like, that's not happening. So, you know, it's just silliness, folks.

That is why we do this show. So instead of learning on your own dime, you can learn from us. And that was great. So I'm really glad that Drew shared that, and I couldn't agree more. Do not let property managers overcharge you for all this stuff. Teach your tenants how to be good tenants. Teach them.

What they can expect and what you expect in return. Okay, so we will be back with another episode on Friday, and then next week we are packed with information. We're going to talk about the states that don't tax retirement distributions. And even if you don't want to move to one of them, you'll want to hear about this because it has a lot to do with what is happening with the economies in various locations and with real estate in those locations, too. Anyway, reach out if you need us, Jason hartman.com or in the US you can actually pick up the good old phone and call us at 1-800-HARTMAN have an investment counselor on our team. We have several who can help you build a portfolio. They can consult with you even if you're not ready. Get set up for a great next year. If you're not going to make this happen this year, get set up for next year. And by the way, you might have to get set up for next year anyway. Why do I say that? Because inventory being very scarce, we have clients who are buying properties today that won't even be completed until next year in some cases. So the sooner the better, engage with us. The sooner the better. Even if you're not quite ready to do anything right now, you definitely want to be engaging with our team members. And hey, it's free. All right. We will talk to you on Friday. And of course, the YouTube channel is always available to you. And until next time, happy investing.

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