2376: Trump's Venezuela Strategy & War on Wall Street: Ending Corporate Ownership of Single-Family Homes

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com Number one.

I love your show. I love, you know, the way that you go deep into business and, and then go, you know, on some of these other tangents of experiences that as business people we all have. So thank you for putting out such good content because it's, it's impactful. It is really impactful.

Everyone is arguing about President Trump's move on Venezuela. In truth, it's not about drugs, not about terror, and not about oil, at least not the way people think. They're missing the point. Venezuela sits on the largest oil reserves on Earth, over 300 billion barrels worth nearly $17 trillion. But here's the the United States doesn't need that oil. China does. China buys nearly 90% of Venezuela's crude, almost all of Iran's oil, and a massive share of Russia's exports. Trump understood something most leaders power doesn't come from owning energy. It comes from controlling who gets it. Destabilize Venezuela, pressure Iran. At the same time, China suddenly loses 70% of its non US regulated oil supply. No fuel for a Taiwan war, no energy for AI dominance, no BRICS currency replacing the dollar. No shots fired, no war declared, just leverage. As Marco Rubio put it, we don't need Venezuelan oil, but we will not allow this hemisphere's energy to be controlled by America's adversaries. This isn't chaos, this isn't luck. This is Trump playing the long game. Out thinking rivals, reshaping alliances and winning without asking permission. That's not recklessness, that's strategy.

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 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.

Alrighty folks, we need to talk about President Trump and more specifically, we are going to talk about debate. Dig into four executive orders or four things he's done in the last week. We'll also add in first time home buyers and builders at the end because I have a sneaky suspicion something is coming. But we are going to talk about eliminating Wall street from single family homes. 200 billion in MBS, 10% credit card max. And finally, the subpoena given to Jerome Powell and the Fed. We're gonna have this conversation with the one and only Jason Hartman. How you doing, buddy?

Hey, good. How are you? And you can tell if you're watching on video that I'm in a coffee shop. And I have alluded to this before with you, Michael, but everybody needs to read the book the Rational Optimist. It's not that new. It's maybe, I don't know, seven, eight years old now, but it is so good because Matt Ridley just outlines how everything just keeps getting better and nobody appreciates it. And I'm not saying everything, but I'm referring here to technology because it is very noisy in here and you're saying there's almost no background noise. It's a noise canceling is incredible. I mean, just appreciate that.

Like, yeah, tech. Tech is getting better. Well, let's, let's.

I'm going to share the screen too for you, okay?

Oh, okay.

Go for it. Yeah. I got something for you. I got something for you on this.

So what do you got?

Here is a quote from one of my newsletters. It just says data from Totality. They've been on my show a few times. They're a research firm. So forth shows that investors accounted for about 30% of all home purchases in November of 2025. Small investors, defined as those owning 10 properties or less, made up about 14.2% compared with just 2.5% for mega investors that hold more than 1,000 homes. So I get that the institutional investors are being painted as this big villain. And rfk, who is now in with Trump, he ran on that platform when he was running it. And it is honestly a bit alarmist in my opinion. However, I think this is good. You know, I think homes are a limited resource. And when resources are very limited, we do institute things like fair housing laws. You know, they really shouldn't be allowed to corner the market on food production or shelter. You know, let's let the small investors and the regular owner occupant homeowners own the houses. Okay? Yeah, I don't want to see BlackRock on all the houses in America. And their market share is pretty darn small, but it is rising quickly. Okay.

Yeah. So what we're talking about here, folks, if you didn't hear the news last week. President Trump's first executive order around making housing affordable was to eliminate one of the buyers. Wall street hedge funds, institutions, folks with a thousand units or more have been buying single family homes. There are providers out there with 80, 50, 60,000 single family homes. Now, if you zoom out and look at a map, you can see that they are highly concentrated. In fact, Atlanta, Georgia and Jacksonville are the most dominant forces for institutional buyers. So again, this will have an impact should this go through. Obviously, Congress needs to codify this or put it into rule of law. But simply one of the things that I did note, Jason, is President Trump in his statement said basically, you can buy no more. He did not say anywhere and nor have I heard it alluded to. He's going to force sell. He's not forcing any sales. Is that fair?

Yeah. Yes, that is true. And you know, I don't think he could force them to sell it, to sell the properties they have. That would just be pure communistic. The government doesn't have that much power, thankfully. Even Trump, although I tend to agree with him most of the time.

Yeah. When I think about this, and I think, first off, let me be clear, all of these notes over the last week that we would be going through are aimed at winning the midterm elections. Right. He has seen a positive message with RFK's, Wall street out of the single family home. He's leaned into a quote, you know, people live in homes, not corporations. Right. He's leaning into that because he wants to get, he wants to get the message that he's fighting affordability. You know, the only way to really drop prices would be to make them sell and frankly, make them sell quickly. Right. If you had them or force them to unload, say in a year, that would be disruptive. It's certainly disruptive in some of the big cities like Atlanta and Jacksonville. But that does not seem to be.

Yeah. If you want to show the screen again, I've got a chart for you. This chart is a good little outline, you know, about the equity. We've talked about it before. You know, people have massive amounts of equity in their home. Here is the renter occupied housing inventory in the United States. Now, keep in mind there are different surveys and different ways to count these things. Okay, so this is from the Census Bureau. According to the FRED website, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, this is about 46 million renter units in the United States and about 86 million or 87 million owner occupied housing units. Right. So that's that's the way it breaks down. And this is housing inventory estimate total of about 148 million in the US so just some reference points so people understand and remember the institutional investors only really account for about two and a half million I believe of the overall housing stock. So it's a very small number so far.

Yeah, very cool. Again though, it is a great message. It will certainly get people motivated. He is trying to win the midterm elections, you know, so I think this first one net positive for his goal, AKA winning the election. But as far as collapsing home prices, really a nothing burger.

Don't, don't worry about it.

Yeah, yeah, but don't worry about it. So number two though, number two, move the needle a little bit. We actually saw mortgage rates drop to 5.99 there for a second on Friday and that is empowering Fannie and Freddie to Deploy or buy 200 billion in mortgage backed securities. That certainly can move the needle.

That along with your next topic and that is Chairman Powell. So maybe those two go together.

Yeah, yeah. So again folks, if you don't know what's happening here, one of the reasons we have lifetime low rates with some of you out there having twos and threes on your mortgages is the Fed became the largest buyer of mortgage backed securities. They basically bought everything and the kitchen sink which allowed people just to take rates lower and lower and the Fed was buying, buying, buying. Now what we have is an outside buyer, Fanny and Freddie going give me 200 billion. Now this money will run out. It is limited. It'll be interesting to see if they raise it even higher. But yes, this will move the needle on rates without question. And frankly you saw that on Friday hitting 599 in the morning session. So yeah, if you're going after lower mortgage rates, that is one way to do it. Would you agree?

There are so many positive things going on right now. I mean it's just amazing we have gotten ourselves into such a hole in this country because we've literally been the United States of fraud. I mean the United States of fraud, we can all see it now. It's all being exposed. If Pam Bondi would just indict some people, it would be so much better. But the pressure on rates going down, the limited supply, you know, getting control of the oil in Venezuela and reducing energy costs and freeing those people from their dictator. I know I'm jumping around here, so sorry about that. But. But yes, rates down, Lower pressure on rates or more pressure to lower rates. We're Seeing that they're going to get even lower this year, the market is taking off, more people are going to sell, which now you might think initially that's bad. I think that's great. We need more overall activity. There's two aspects to this lower rate equation that are really important for people to understand, Michael. One is the mortgage lock in effect, that we've talked about before many times. And a lot of people just won't sell because their deal is too good. Well, guess what? As rates go down, their great deal gets slightly worse compared to what else they can buy. Because the delta between the low rate they have and the new rate they can get, which will still be higher. Okay. It's not going back down to, you know, two and a half percent. Okay. But that delta gets smaller, and as it gets smaller, they start to rationalize and think, okay, hey, look, honey, we can sell our home. Yeah, we'll have a higher rate on the next home, but we need to move. We've been putting this off for years. So that will allow more cycle, more sales. It will stimulate the economy. The, the real estate people, the mortgage people, the furniture people, the home improvement people, the clients people, like everybody. Just stimulates the economy. Yeah. No, great news.

No, absolutely. The lower the rates go, the more people are pulled off the sidelines. You get what, what you're referring to is often called turnover.

Right.

People are turning over. I call them the move up buyers. Move up buyers have basically been dead for three years. And they are so important to the market because they're a buyer and a seller. And to your point, they make other.

Two transactions, not one, two.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. And then they paint and they remodel and, you know, new carpet and all that stuff. And again, what people really don't realize is we just posted a. I think it was a 5.2 or maybe 5.4 GDP estimate. And, and, and that's with housing being a.

With low inflation. With low inflation. I mean, it's like genius. It's incredible.

Yeah. But again, I want to stress with housing being a negative, it has been a detractor or a headwind for the GDP for two and a half to three years. It's going to turn in 2026, and that is going to really just. We, we might see 1/4 Q1 or Q2 with a six handle. That's how crazy this might get.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's going to be a good year. And it's just getting better and better and better. All right, We're Cleaning up a lot of the mess that has been created over the last six decades in this country. I mean, it really begs the question, Michael, everybody talks all the time. We talk about it all the time. We're $38 trillion in debt. This country is. Right. The largest debtor nation, but also the largest creditor nation, which the doomers fail to point out in the entire world. Okay. But we're also the biggest economy. So it's all relative compared to what? But think of how much of this debt and how much of the deficit is just fraud. It's just scams by Somali daycare centers, learning centers, or, or NGOs. So many people, especially on the political left, have just been on the take for decades and it is thankfully being exposed and hopefully it will just end. End. And.

Well, it ain't ending until we died. Yeah, you know, I've seen some estimates because again, the fraud is just coming left, right and center. On the low end, about 300 billion, high end, 900 billion again.

Oh, I've seen, I've seen two and a half trillion. Oh, my God. Yeah, well, I, you know, again, I don't know what time period that is.

And so, yeah, I was recording single year estimates. Those might be cumulative. But again, and I keep doing this on extra Twitter, like every time some Republican comes out and says blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, where's the indictment? Yeah, stop, stop with all the words.

That is frustrating. I agree.

Yeah, show me an orange.

It's better than nothing. It's better than nothing. At least we're, at least it's being exposed. People are aware and, you know, once the cat is out of the bag, you can't put it back in. Okay.

Yeah, well, I don't know. Politicians have a sense to protect their own, I guess. But anyways, let's keep going on the topics at hand. We're going to go in order. And the next one, number three, is actually President Trump coming out and saying basically, credit card companies, for the next 12 months, the maximum rate you can charge is 10%. Now, folks, the average going into this was roughly 20, with some people paying almost 30. So I'm curious, what do you think about President Trump coming out and saying, thou shalt not charge more than 10%? What do you think?

Okay, so I have mixed feelings about this. And here, here's the. Let me give you the negative side first. You know, usually I agree with Trump. I think he's usually doing the right thing. On this one, though, be careful because whenever you regulate something like this, you create shortages. Now, that might be exactly what's needed is a shortage of credit cards or, you know, where limits go down and so forth. In fact, I have very good credit and I have, you know, good net worth and good income. And I got two letters from one of my, from two. Well, it's one credit card issuer, but I have two other cards, okay. And that is Chase. And they, they actually reduced my limits, okay. Because they don't want to be exposed to lower rates. Now, I'm not financing anything on my credit cards. I just pay them off every month. But I do use them heavily. I do pay them off. So JP Morgan has probably done that throughout their system and so have a bunch of other issuers to lower their risk of having to accept much lower interest rates. I think what Trump should have done is not made this so severe. If these companies have been used to ripping people off to the extent of 20 or 30% per year, he should have limited it like 15%. Okay. However, this could actually slow down the dumb spending that people do. People that have credit card debt are usually dumb spenders. Okay. Dave Ramsey would have a field day yelling at them. And, you know, people need to get into better shape. And this could force a discipline onto households that are, that just have too much credit card debt. And what I mean is not the lower rates forcing a discipline. I mean the lower amount of credit being offered in the market, which is an obvious result of regulating the thieves that have been overcharging people for so long.

So, yeah, when I, when I heard this one, I'm, I'm like, be careful what you wish for. Because again, I think I, this is how it worked down for me. It's like, okay, these institutions are profit generating. They are not charity. So what happens again? We're going to just wave a magic wand and 10% is the max for the next 12 months. Well, a first thing happens is they evaluate their risk profile and they cut limits, as you just said, they're going.

To, of course they're gonna do that.

Almost everybody is going to be cut. Second, they are going to take some people like yourself who have maybe large potential balances and take them to zero. There are going to be less credit cards flying around. You may have two Chase cards today. In the future, you may have one.

Yeah, but they might cancel cards, but they'll probably just lower the rates because this is a temporary right. You know, it's not going to last.

And I, I highly, I bet again, there are people out there, Jason, as you Know, running around with 12, 14, 15 credit cards. They will not have 12 or 15 credit cards if this goes through. But here's the more important thing. Access to credit will decline severely. And as an economy built on credit.

Card credit, though specifically correct. Other credit will actually probably expand, Michael, because they'll be looking for other places that they can place this money and loan it, right?

Yeah, but not, but not everybody qualifies for that. Like you're not an asset holder or you know, whatnot. But again, this, this where I went with this in the end is. And again, I'm telling, you know, I'm not in. I don't like this one. I think this is actually, this actually could hurt the economy, which again, I just said earlier, could have a six handle. If this goes through, you are going to reduce retail sales. The dumb spending, as you said earlier, is going to go down. And, and that means retail sales go down. And as economy based on consumers 65% or so, it could actually be negative.

Listen, it does have some negative side effects, but think about it, how realistic is it? The foundation of every economy has to be capital formation. And this is a wholesome discipline. We need to reduce consumer credit. We should do that slowly so it's not a shock to the system. But credit card debt is the worst kind of debt out there. So reducing the supply of it. I mean, remember in the 50s, nobody had a credit card, okay. This was invented when Diners Club came out and a guy at a restaurant didn't have cash to pay the bill, so he invented the Diners Club card. That was the first credit card. And then it just expanded. Expanded. When we went off the gold standard in August 15, 1971, credit expanded massively. And this is not a wholesome way to run your life or the country or business. We do need to reduce credit card debt. So, okay, look, it's going to have a little bit of pain in terms of reduced sales, but we can't build an economy on constant consumerism expansion. And listen, I'm a consumer. I love consumer, okay? But we gotta have capital formation. We gotta force people to save a little more money to do real things like buy a house.

Okay, okay, all right, Disagree with me.

It sounds like you do.

Oh, I definitely. Well, again, I, I mean, I don't think it's the government's job to tell people what to do just because something's good for them. Capital.

But they do, they do control the playing field. Certainly they're not telling people what to do. They're telling the credit Card companies what to do, but they're not agree. You know, people can go into more debt. It's just that they're going to reduce the supply to a rational level, I think of credit.

I think I, I think it'll be. Well, again. It's not done yet, but it could be pretty severe, I think. So, you know, we'll see. Again, it's a year. We'll see. Well, then the big thing that came out yesterday and clearly Jerome Powell saw this coming because he had a two minute video lined up.

I know, I saw it. Yeah.

It's crazy. Jerome Powell and the Fed's been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice. Trump says he doesn't know anything about it. Hard to believe, but you know, whatever. And near as I can tell, this is all about Jerome Powell talking about the remodel of the Fed and talking about in front of Congress, basically lying to Congress. What do you think about this? Many people are saying this is just an attack on the Fed's independence. And Jerome Powell is basically saying, I don't bend the knee and this is what happens to you. What, what are your thoughts?

I think the Fed should not exist. Okay. The original budget for this remodel was apparently $1.9 billion. That is shocking. That they should be building a cat, adding on to their castle. Okay. To the tune of 1.9 billion. Now it's gone over budget and it's 2.5 billion now. I mean, that's insane. People are struggling and we've got this fake bank, okay. This creation that shouldn't even exist. These elitists like Jerome Powell living like kings and queens. You should go online and look at the videos and the pictures of this remodel. It's a palace. Why should. The Fed shouldn't even exist, much less have a palace. The cost of money which the Fed sets and the supply of money should be regulated by the marketplace, not some, some bank that nobody even knows who owns it.

Yeah.

The Fed is a scam.

Yeah. So we're going to disagree on this one again. I think the Fed has its place, obviously. I think they've gotten over their skis and they're, they're in lots of places they shouldn't be today. But again, I believe the original intention of the Fed was to be the buyer of last resort.

I live the lender of the lender of last week.

Yeah, buyer, lender, whatever you want to call it. But I've lived through three. Environment. Yeah. I've been lived in through an environment three times. The.com crisis, the GFC and Covet, where if the Fed wasn't there, we could have, we could have seen something worse than the Great Depression.

So I'm not fair enough and I agree with you, but would we have even gotten there if the Fed didn't even exist in the first place? Because all think of it. Let's look at the dotcom crash, 1999, 2000, you know that era. Okay, I remember I, I paid a lot of attention to that. I was launching a, an Internet business at the time. I filed for a patent on the process and so forth. And those companies would have never been able to get out so far over their skis if the Fed did not even exist. Okay, the Fed was basically, the pitch was that the Fed would eliminate these radical ups and downs and swings in the economy. And since then the swings have only gotten more numerous and more radical. Yeah, the Fed has failed over and over and over again. But it's very hard to, to know if what I say or what you say is true because we don't know what it would have been like without the Fed. My theory, none of these cycles would ever get so radical if the Fed didn't exist at all because things would have to operate more rationally in the first place.

Yeah, you have a better opinion of people in animal spirits than I do.

Again, I do think spirits are enabled by the Fed.

No, what I was going to say is I think the amplitude is risen because of the Fed. However, animal spirits exist regardless. So just because the hill is not Mount Everest, instead it's Mount Whitney, that's still a nasty hill. And you know, without the Fed. Again, I think the Fed, the Fed's role initially created. I could get behind buyer of last resort, but most of the time they'd be sitting on their hands and doing nothing. That's what they should be doing. And ever since Greenspan, they seem to have been working their way into other quarries now. Yeah, they're activists and they're doing more and more things and they're trying to grow their power, hence growing the Fed. I'm assuming this remodel is adding square footage. I never bothered to look, but I think they've, they've gone from their original mission, which in my opinion is hard to argue. You need some buyer of last resort. But I think they're too big.

But, but that buyer and that lender of last resort, it's two things. It's buyer of assets and lender. Correct. And money is lent into existence. Everybody just first needs to Understand how that's created, which is a complicated discussion that takes hours, really, but that could be done by the government. Why do we have this private fake bank doing this rather than just the government doing it? At least with the government we have some recourse. We elect the politicians in theory and we limit the power in theory.

Yeah. Again, I, Again, just, you know, we'll get off this one after this last question because it's, it's, it's, it's frankly the least of three important ones that we've talked or the four that we've talked about. But again, I think, I think you need to have. I, I believe in the Fed independence. I really do. I believe.

But do you believe the Fed should even exist?

Yeah, again, I've said three times, I think that. I think we need a buyer and a lender of last resort. Again, we can argue that they're one of the reasons that the, you know, they're Mount Everest problems because they're involved in the, they take the amplitude up, but people are people and they're going to be greedy and all of that. And, you know, problems are problems. So I, I do think they should agree I. Or exist. I think they've done. I think they're doing too much too often, clearly. But I don't think there should not exist, in my opinion.

But I also think your power should be limited.

Oh, very. Again. Right. I'm, I'm trying to be very clear. I think there are sometimes, maybe four or five times in a century things get haywire and you need that last buyer or seller. Right. It's just we've got it, we've got to insert it, we got to put a floor in so that we can, you know, get out of this thing. Again, I think I, in, in a hundred years, if it was my magic wand, the Fed would be, the Fed would be silent, except for like five months out of 100 years, in my opinion.

Right.

It's, it's, you don't typically have to come in except at the very. Think about J.P. morgan. I know, I don't know what year that was. 19. I don't call it 1926 or whatever. Before the Depression. He basically came in and said, I'm buying. And then that saved the market, but the market's too big for one person now. So the last thing I think is the Fed needs to be independent. If you've ever studied economics and you see what happened, I think it was Nixon and Burns, when Arthur Burns kind of relented to Nixon, I think it was. That did not end well and led to the second bat of inflation, the 1981 recession, which for me was personally horrible. My dad was unemployed for almost a year and we almost lost the House and all of that.

I think the marketplace and the government, as much as I don't love the government. Right. I think those two entities, the market and the government, can do everything the Fed does much better than the Fed can.

No chance. I mean, again, you're saying this today.

As somebody who actually disagree on something.

Absolutely.

I think that's our first thing we're having here, folks. No, I don't think.

It's not an argument. Well, certainly this is an argument, some kind, most kind argument there is. But again, I think, I think you're looking at this today because Trump's in power and you've said a couple of times you love everything he's doing or most things.

He's everything but most.

Yeah, so that's most, last time I checked. And we, There's a Republican Senate and in House, I would ask you to, you know, just close your eyes and, you know, suddenly Biden and Harris are back in office.

Yeah.

I guarantee you if everything is equal except who is in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you would not have the same opinion.

So in other words, I would not want a liberal government running the money supply in the.

You wouldn't want them making choices. Of course you wouldn't. That would be, that would be asinine.

Possibly. But we had honest voting and we had honest money. I mean, listen, I, I think we should just have honest money, sound money, you know, in general. But we can't go too far on that because like, we could never go back to a gold standard.

No, that's.

Genie is out of it.

That's out of the bottom.

No, but in principle I do agree with that.

Yeah, I, yeah, I think in principle it's, it's, I agree with that as well. Sound money is certainly better than where we are.

But I love inflation induced debt destruction, you know that. So even though, even though I philosophically hate the Fed. Listen, align your interest with the most powerful entities that have ever existed, the Fed at the end, governments and central banks.

Inflation is a feature, not a bug. As soon as you truly understand that, you invest for it and you win. It's just that simple.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, let's get on to two things that aren't yet announced, but I'm a betting man and I bet they will be announced in the next seven to 10 days. Number one, there is going to Be again, this is my opinion, just a pure, pure ass. Guests. There will be some program announced by President Trump aimed at first time home buyers only. What do you think?

I don't know. Tell me more. I mean I, you know, Trump says he's gonna have a. Trump and Scott Besson, our Treasury Secretary have been saying for months they're gonna declare a housing emergency. They're gonna do all these things. But what exactly can they do? What exactly would that look like?

So again I have just speculation and guesses.

Yeah.

Number one, we saw a trial balloon of this earlier in the year and you and I talked about it or actually late last year to get the calendar right. We could see a 50 year mortgage only for first time homebuyers. And again, just put the cherry on top. The rate will match the 30 year mortgage which historically speaking wouldn't happen because of duration, risk and the, and the government will make up the delta. Right. The government will do a rate buy down of whatever it takes, one and a half points or whatever. Again, very, very targeted at first time home buyers. Obviously there'll be definitions of what that is. Probably a price point too, probably like, you know, median price below. So they're not going to let some first time home buyer buy a mansion or something, for example.

Right.

So they're going to be some caveats and price points and probably some income. But you could see a 50 year mortgage. You could also see something, I think it was, Obama did a version of this was 8,000 tax credit for a purchase. Again, I think there's going to be something that says first time home buyer, first time home buyer, first time home buyer, first time home buyer. Trump's going to announce that something like.

That, that's entirely possible and all of that is just super bullish for investors. That's the thing you should take away from this. Yeah. If, if we have a 50 year mortgage and that cuts people's payment BY what, about 15, 17% per month, assuming.

Rates are the same. Yeah, correct.

Yeah. And they may be because we have 40 year mortgages today, but the rates are not very desirable because they're not part of that secondary market system. Right, Correct. They're outside of that system. So the rates are higher. But if we get this Michael, we would see a lot of additional money flooding into the housing market and that will prices, which I don't think that's really the solution. It's a temporary fix but it's good for investors at the end of the day because it's going to push up prices Yep.

And again, remember as I started this video, this is all about Trump winning the midterms. I'm not confused. Trump is trying to win the midterms. He knows if he loses the House or the Senate, he's a lame duck and undoubtedly will be tried to be impeached. So he knows he's fighting for those last two years of his presidency. So here's the second guess prediction, you know, pie in the sky thing coming. Not only do I think President Trump will be announcing something that says, first time home buyer, first time home buyer, first time home buyer. I think he's going to do something for the builders. Now, I have no idea what that might be. Might be federal land, it might be credits for. You know, what I believe we need is entry level housing. And how I quickly define entry level housing is 1300 square feet or below. Right. The average home today is 2100 square feet being built. We need something like we did in the 1950s, which by what, by the way, folks, was under a thousand square feet. So again, I think there will be something for the builders. The builders can't build those things today because they are not profitable. Let's not be confused. It's not a charity, but we might see the magic wand say, hey, Lennar Pulte, Toll Brothers, whatever it is, if you build me a thousand or ten thousand or whatever, you get these little goodies on the backside of that. So again, I don't. This is the one. I have the least knowledge of how he would do it. But the only way to really fix what we have going on is to create tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of entry level house. Not more housing. We don't need more 2,000 square foot housing.

We need more or 5,000 square foot housing. You're exactly right.

So I suspect we will have a building initiative like the 1950s after the war and we level housing.

Yeah, I think you're right. And largely that was the GI Bill that did that after World War II. And that's why we had a baby boom. That's why we have baby boomers. Okay. It, you know, it created a whole phenomenon. But what they could do is actually, I don't think the federal lands solved the problem very well.

No, it's not. Not very well.

Yeah, that's, that's probably not. It's cute. Yeah, it's, you know, it's something that's, it's a talking point. But I don't think it's too powerful. What is powerful is cheap financing, some incentive there somehow just like 50 year mortgage for buyers. Right. And lower rates and. Or just taxes, tax credits, tax incentives for the builders to create more. And that is kind of easy to do. You know, those two things are not too difficult and they could be done and this problem could be solved. Also maybe talk about zoning and eliminating property taxes or eliminating income taxes altogether. These radical ideas which are being talked about seriously. I mean, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and a few others, eliminating property taxes, that would instantly increase prices and buying power by about 15%. Certainly it'd be phenomenal.

Yeah. So those are all the things that I noted. I know you read as much as I do. Anything else that caught your attention the last week that we can riff on?

Oh, there's so much to talk about. I mean, there's a lot to talk about in terms of Venezuela. Lower energy costs, which will make housing cheaper to build. Every product we buy could get to be including groceries, like 30% cheaper if fuel costs get cheap enough. And we have now cut China and Cuba off. I mean, we just cut them off from that Venezuelan oil. It's, it's just, it's a beautiful thing. I mean, it's. This is the golden era for the United States.

My current belief about 2026 is inflation will surprise to the downside. Oil, shelter, cost, all of that. Unfortunately, unemployment will surprise to the upside, which means we're going to get four or five rate cuts in 2026 is kind of where I'm sitting.

Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Very exciting. If you want to go a little longer and talk about inflation for a moment, I can do that. Let me share my screen again because I've got a new exciting thing that we should do a whole show on. Okay.

All right.

This is the pro forma we use. One of the things, when I got into this business 22 years ago, a very good decision I made is to standardize my data. And I found the software I really liked. It's called Property Tracker. I later bought the company. I made the software free. So this is free. You can just go to propertytracker.com set up a free account. You can do these performers yourself. But we have modified this performer in some incredible ways just over the last two weeks, Michael. And let me just show it to you because this is pretty exciting. So, you know, I've talked with you many times and your and your listeners about inflation induced debt destruction, which is this beautiful hidden wealth creator that basically helps people pay off their mortgage or pay down their mortgage because inflation does it for you. If you borrow money at today's price, meaning a dollar is worth a dollar. And ten years from now or five years from now, or what? One year from now, we have inflation. And you're paying it back in cheaper dollars.

Correct.

So inflation basically pays down your mortgage balance and also reduces your monthly payment on that mortgage because you're paying it back in cheaper dollars. So we added my trademark inflation induced debt destruction strategy to the property tracker software. So now it's calculated right here for everybody to see. This is one of the things I should have done much sooner. I should have done this eight years ago, okay. But I finally did it. And here it is. Here's the basic stats on the property. This house is a remodeled house for $115,000. Projected rent is almost 1,000. We've also got the rent to value ratio in here now 0.9%, which is great. But here, if you looking at my mouse, we have principal reduction. This is the principal that your tenant is paying for you every single month, $84. But inflation at a projected 3%. And you could call that the real inflation rate or the CPI rate, which is artificially low. Whatever you want, you can decide on your own number. It doesn't matter. We just thought that's a very default of 3%. It's a variable. Yeah. These are assumptions. Okay. So that's the projected rate. Inflation is basically paying off $215 per month for you. That's almost $2,600 a year. Your return on investment on this property, 36% annually. That's the projection. This is why real estate or income property specifically is the most historically proven asset class in the world. Because it's a multi dimensional asset class and you make your return on investment in many ways rather than just, you know, buy low, sell high, buy low, sell high, get some dividends here. You've got so many things working for you and this is why nothing beats income property.

Yeah, I love that. That's very cool.

Some new stuff on the performance. Just go get a free account. You can do these performance yourself, change the assumptions, do whatever you want.

And you see the link there on the screen, folks. PropertyTracker.com right down there in the middle bottom www.propertytracker.com. that's very cool.

It's free. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

What do you see for 2026? What's Jason's magic thoughts on 2026?

You know, I think it's going to be a good improving year. I don't think it's going to be Some crazy amazing Covid era year where real estate goes through the roof. But there are so many fundamentals, supply and demand dynamics, political help, that the market is getting lower interest rates, more affordability. People who have been waiting and waiting. There's so much shadow demand in the marketplace. So I think it's going to be a good solid year. Not, it's not going to be nuts. Okay. Like it was during the COVID era where there's massive.

I don't want, I don't want it to be, I don't want it, I.

Don'T want it to be that way either. It's too difficult. I hate that market. Yeah. Even though it's nice to see values go up so much. But it's very hard to operate in a market like that.

Yeah, no, it's, yeah.

What do you see again?

I, I think, you know, I think we're on a multi year journey where affordability unfortunately gets better slowly. People don't like that. Everybody wants a 38% crash because, you.

Know, whatever, good luck.

Yeah, it's not happening. But I do think afford it. Affordability is remarkably better than it was two years ago. It's actually the lowest it's, it's, it's the best it's been in two years. I think it gets better this year. I think we have real wage growth. I think the Fed is, is going to be able to declare victory on the cpi. Thus rates are going to go down. Plus we get a new Fed president. And yeah, I think, I think there's just a lot of positive momentum. The other thing is Q1. I think people are sleeping on Q1 because the most consumers are going to get quote unquote free money from a large tax return. They'll also be able to change, change their standard deductions or withholdings and get more money at the end of the month. And you know, consumers love to spend. So I think 26 is going to be better than most people think.

And hopefully the consumer spending is driven by consumers having more money in their, in their pocket rather than charging their life away on, on credit cards and, and basically selling their future.

History says it's going to be both, Jason. It's going to be both.

If credit supply reduces like we talked about earlier.

Yeah.

Our credit card supply reduces.

That's true.

Then it'll force a discipline on, on the consumer. Which is a good overall.

Yeah, overall would be a good. Dave Ramsey would be happy, that's for sure.

Yes, he would. I'm sure he's happy about this 10%.

Well Jason, you're coming out to the ORAD event which is roughly one month away. I can't believe it'll be here this soon. Jason, you're amazing buddy. Take care.

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