2473 FBF: Mass Censorship, Centenarian Population Growth, Listener Comments and Responses
18 Sept 2026 · 43 min
In this episode of the Creating Wealth Show, host Jason Hartman delivers a rambling monologue that weaves together criticism of big‑tech censorship, a demographic deep‑dive into the rapid rise of centenarians, and a series of real‑estate investment insights. Hartman lambasts Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos and other tech moguls for de‑platforming content, urging listeners to migrate to alternative video sites such as BitChute, Rumble and Odyssey. He then presents a chart showing the global centenarian population growing from roughly 130,000 twenty years ago to 573,000 today, arguing that an aging world will strain entitlement programs, force governments to print fiat money, and drive inflation – a scenario that, in his view, benefits real‑estate investors whose assets are inflation‑indexed. The discussion shifts to political risk in real‑estate, focusing on New York co‑ops, rent‑control, lead‑paint and sprinkler mandates that threaten landlord profitability. Hartman offers concrete financing advice (down‑payment ratios, loan‑rate buydowns, break‑even calculations) and strategic guidance (avoid over‑diversification, concentrate in 3‑5 markets). Throughout, he promotes Hartman‑run services – Property Tracker, the Empowered Investor Inner Circle, and a one‑stop team of lenders, 1031‑exchange specialists, and property managers – while encouraging listeners to submit comments and questions via the show’s website and Voxer. The episode ends with a call to subscribe, leave reviews, and join the Inner Circle.
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Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com.
Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new skill, 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 16461646, and you are stuck with yours truly today. Yes, I have a bunch of random But very important things to catch up with you on. So we need to catch up, folks. We don't talk enough. It's only three days a week now: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then of course we did have a live stream this morning. And I am happy to announce that our our pseudo government, the government where Mark Zuckerberg is president, has. After sending me to a reeducation camp, has agreed to let me livestream again. Oh, I'm so thankful. I just, I just want to kiss his feet. I want to worship our king, Mark Zuckerberg, because it's, it's just such an honor now that I've been reeducated. And I'll make sure that I, I don't talk about the You know that thing where people go and oh, I can't say what they do, but you know they like well, they don't it's not the V word. They they cast a B. Well, you know like a ballot. It's just I hope I hope the algorithm didn't pick that up because Tim Cook, the other god that we must worship, who who I used to revere and really have a lot of respect for, but hey, that's all changed because he has now turned into a. Nasty censorship guy himself, and has been very outspoken that he is going to decide what he believes is true versus letting you decide what you believe is true.
Wow!
Imagine that! And you know Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and even Jeff Bezos, of course, you know he bans books. Isn't it great that Bezos is stepping down? I mean, you know he's he's been a tyrant. Granted, you. You know, we all love being a customer of his company, but try being a seller with his company and you'll experience a lot of abuse under, under King Bezos. And, um, you know, like, like all of these people, they talk all about equal opportunity and all these politically correct things, yet I don't know why Bezos has handed over the reins of his company to a white male. Who might even be a Christian. Oh my God, what a sin. I mean, you know, they, they, they talk about all this stuff, but just watch what these hypocrites do. Watch what they do. They don't do— they don't do anything they tell you you need to do. It's just unbelievable. But anyway, so we did a live stream this morning and we were on Facebook, but yesterday YouTube took down another one of my videos. Dare speak about the, the event that happens in November where people do this thing and they try and pick who their leader is going to be. You can't talk about that. Nope. No siree. No ma'am. No talking about that. Totally forbidden. So suffice it to say, if you want to hear the real content, you can find me on BitChute and Rumble. And, you know, other places like Odyssey where they don't censor you because there are actually some, some people that are ethical, who believe in democratic ideals, who believe in free speech. But everybody on these platforms is now walking on eggshells. They're all tiptoeing around censoring themselves. Yes, self-censorship is the best kind of censorship because then You never hear what you don't hear, and you don't hear anybody complaining about how they got deplatformed, how, uh, their videos are getting taken down, how their books are taken off of Amazon. Um, you know, it used to— you know, we used to have the Nazis, we used to have Chairman Mao, we used to have Joseph Stalin and all these evil oppressors. Pol Pot. Well, we still got Kim Jong-un. We had Fidel Castro until recently. We used to have those people who would burn the books that you heard about in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a must-read, and also 1984 by George Orwell. I probably can't even speak these titles anymore. I'm actually surprised you can still get them. You better just get your copy of these books before they go away because they are on the verge of vanishing. I just guarantee you. It's gonna happen. They're gonna just be out of print, or they'll find some way to make it hard to get these, these books. Um, but we used to have like the book burners, right? You know, the Nazis were famous for burning books. But now we have Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey. Who else? Did I miss anybody? I don't want to miss anybody. Oh, we got Netflix. They, they basically burn books too. You know, they, they have to decide what you're allowed to see on their platform. Yes, of course.
Wow, folks.
It's a, it's a scary time for democratic ideals. It's a scary time for democracy. It's a scary time for freedom of speech. It is. But the good news is it is an amazing time to be alive. And guess what? Centenarians— yes, those folks over 100 years old— are becoming much more common. I'm looking at a chart right now that says the number of people worldwide who are over 100 years old has now reached 573,000. There are 573,000 people in the world who are over 100. They're in the triple-digit club. Now, the question you must be asking is— I hope you're asking— are you asking the Jason Hartman question? Because that's the question. It's always the question. And the Jason Hartman question, of course, is compared to what? Well, it sounds like that's a lot of people over 100, but compared to what? Well, just as recently as 20 years ago, there were only about— and you know, the number's not exact, so I'm trying to interpret the chart. And I, unlike Unlike the big tech companies, unlike the Communist Party of Silicon Valley, I will interpret the chart in the real way. Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy. I will not have the fact-checkers Interpret it based on their opinion, which is fake facts. I will interpret the chart by just telling you what it basically says. So 20 years ago, there were only 130,000-ish, approximately, people in the world over 100 years old. And now, 20 years later, just 20 short years later, 2 decades, 573,000. Folks, that is absolutely staggering, amazing, unbelievable. It is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and I think we ought to all just, just give that some cheers. Let's give it a little more compared to what? And by the way, you might be asking, What does this mean to us real estate investors? Well, it means a lot. Wide-ranging effects on government, on entitlement programs, on housing needs, on inflation. This is big news. This is big, big, big time for real estate investors. Yes, it is. Okay, let's do another compared to what. So 20 years ago, we had About what? About one-third the number, or no, one-fourth the number we have now, right? Less than one-fourth. But guess what? If you just go back, let's go back to 20 years before that. Let's go to 1980. And in 1980, the number of people worldwide over 100 years was a meager A tiny, a teensy-weensy 40,000 people.
Wow.
So this just— it shows to goya, folks. It shows to goya that there's a lot of people living a lot longer. That's really good news. Let's do one more comparison and let's go 20 years before that. Let's go back to 1960. When— it's not exactly when, but it's right around the time that someone said, we will put a man on the moon and return him safely back to Earth within this decade. And by golly, we did it. We did it. That was, that was back when America was really great. It ain't so great now, but, eh, you know. That's when we used to actually build things. Now we just have software eating the world, which, you know, software is good too. But problem is we have a few big players controlling it all, and that goes back to my prior comments. Okay, but in 1960 we had— and I can give you an exact number here because it's noted— 20,119 people over 100 in 1960. So you can see that this is absolutely Unbelievable. Okay, now let's think about what this means for just a moment. When governments have to support these older people who mostly aren't working and they are getting government support, and that's fine, they deserve it for sure, right? That means that governments in, in a lot of countries, or actually just whole regions of the world, Are having ginormous struggles with this. Why? Because there's no birth rate. These populations are just going extinct. Western Europe, Russia, Japan, soon to be China. Okay, that's why I don't think you know someone asked me when I gave that speech last week. They asked me what I thought about the China situation. You know, is China really going to become the number one economy? Is it going to overtake the U.S.? Blah blah blah. You know, is there going to be a war with China? And I watched a Really interesting video on that this morning about what, what would World War III look like. It was pretty interesting. And the upshot of it was that let's hope there's not a World War III. Remember Einstein's famous quote? He said, I don't know how they'll fight World War III, but I do know how they'll fight World War IV— with sticks and stones. Meaning that we would annihilate ourselves and go back to the Stone Age, right? So do I really need to explain that to you? No, I don't. Jason, why are you explaining this to people? You have sophisticated listeners in your audience. These people are smart. They get it. They understand Einstein, no problem. Okay, so maybe I'm overexplaining, but you know, I've, um, in my lifetime I've had a few girlfriends that were school teachers, and you know what they always say? You always teach to the middle. Now, I don't know if that's actually a good idea, okay? But that's what they— that's what they're taught, I guess, when you're a— when you're a school teacher. I guess maybe, I don't know. School teachers, reach out, go to jasonhartman.com/ask and let me know about this. But what I always heard is you teach to the middle, and you know, and then the people Below the middle in the bell curve, they'll get it. They'll understand what you're saying, and the people above will easily understand it, right? Because they're super smart. So anyway, I don't know. For whatever it's worth, so I'm just trying to make sure everybody gets everything right. Okay. So a lot of people over 100. What does this mean when you don't have younger workers to support them and to pay for them? And when you have a Social Security system or whatever system you have in whatever country you're in, that is essentially a scam. I know it is in the U.S. I don't know if it's a scam. Everywhere, but our Social Security is a scam, scam, scam, scam. And there's, you know, in the US, because of immigration, at least we have, you know, people supporting the older workers, right? But, you know, the politicians have, have raided the Social Security system. So even if we do have younger people paying in through taxes, you know, it's, it's not gonna help much here. And around the world, I don't know what the scenario is, but I know they don't have enough younger people paying in. So of course, Western Europe, Russia, And China, but they're a little bit behind. But, you know, 10 to 15 years, you're gonna see it. Okay, that goes back to my prior remarks about China. I don't think China is going to take over the world. I'm not that bullish on China. I'm not concerned about China taking over the world. They are doing certainly some incredible things, but they have a population time bomb that is going to start really becoming apparent in 10 to 15 years. Because of the one-child policy. Just remember, as I've always said, folks, if you want to have a country, you got to have people. If you don't have people, you don't have a country. Period. End of discussion. Full stop. Japan cannot continue to be a country. China, Western Europe— meaning all the countries in Western Europe, you get it— Russia, You know, these countries are going extinct. You can't have a country if you don't have people. So that's the problem. So when you have this imbalance where you have all these people aging— now maybe Bill Gates can change that. Maybe he will find a way to extinguish a large part of the human population. Scary thought. But hopefully you've seen the TED Talk where he stumbles about 27 minutes in. It's not a conspiracy. The words came out of his own mouth, and he made a mistake, and he tried to walk it back. But it was apparent the mistake he made in that notorious Bill Gates TED Talk where he wants to reduce the population. Of course, the Rockefellers have been you know obvious about this too. So you know there are people that want to do it right. So this is not some wacko theory. It's you know there there are definitely people. I mean look listen that great book that I've encouraged you to read called *The Bet*, which was about Ehrlich and Simon. The, you know, the big bet that they had and how they wanted to reduce the population and, you know, this Malthusian ethic, end of the world, blah blah blah. You know, it never, never comes. They're always wrong. But there are still people that think that, you know, the Earth is overpopulated and we got to reduce the population. So it's imbalanced in many countries where you don't have enough younger workers paying taxes, paying into the system to support the older ones. So what does that mean?
It means Inflation.
It means inflation because the governments have to create fake fiat money to pay, and they have to inflate their currency. And as real estate investors, we know we can get the double inflation arbitrage. We know we can get inflation-induced debt destruction. And we know that just from a simple perspective, our real estate assets Our income property assets are inflation indexed, so we're going to do fine. This is great news for us. And hey, you know, it's great news just for humanity that people are living longer. There's a lot more people who are able to celebrate their 100th birthday and get, you know, 3 numbers on the cake, 3 digits on the cake. I think it's awesome. Some people don't like it, but I think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And hopefully we'll see human lifespan extended even Further. And of course, there's an app for that. Now, there's not an app for it. There's a show for it though. It's called The Longevity and Biohacking Show, and, uh, that's one of our shows. So you can check it out wherever you get your podcast. All right, so that is pretty exciting news. A lot more people living a lot longer, but it also has huge impacts for the economy, for housing demand, for inflation. And government entitlements and all sorts of stuff. But it's all good news for us as real estate investors, so we love it. Bill Gates be damned, I guess he doesn't like it. Another guy we probably have to like kiss his feet, and you know, he's probably going to send us to re-education camps too if we complain about his vaccine or anything. Okay, so let's get to some more of these comments and questions. We only got one on Monday, but today I've dedicated a little more time to cover some of these because I really got to catch up and I love your comments. So send them in, go to jasonhartman.com/ask. If you're connected with any of us on Voxer, you know, leave us a message with your comment. You know, it's best to say your, your first name and the city you're located in. People always kind of like to hear that for context. And make a comment, ask a question, tell us you love the show, tell us you think we're crazy. Or maybe just me, not us. Tell us you think I'm crazy, uh, you know, whatever you want. And we always love your feedback. So here we go, let's take a couple more of these and let's go down the rabbit hole.
Jason, on a separate topic, you know, uh, in your show you, you mentioned a lot about how, um, there's really no, no viable alternative right now to the, the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. You know, you're Your famous question, compared to what, always comes up. And, um, you know, I'm looking at a really interesting article right now in the South China Morning Post. The title of it— and I'll send you the link after this— but, um, but the title of it is Rush for US Dollars Forces Hong Kong Moneychangers to Turn Away Customers in Droves After Supplies Run Out. And I just think it's really interesting because the first thing that people are thinking about is how, how do we get to US dollars in a time of crisis. Uh, that's their first default, for better or for worse. Um, so if, you know, people were saying, oh well, you know, US reserve currency status is, is up in question, it's like, well, it's not really what the, what the common practices are telling us. It seems like everyone's looking to the US as the, uh, means of security here.
Yeah, they did. They definitely are. That's Johnny from, uh, Virginia, and no question about it, he's absolutely right. The dollar— listen, you know, everybody wants to— I, you know, I think because the United States has this tradition of free speech, it is the First Amendment to our governing documents, right? And free speech is allowed in the country, it's just not allowed by the Communist Party of Silicon Valley, okay? So the tech companies don't allow free speech, but, you know, the Constitution allows it. So people are outspoken to criticize the government, criticize the dollar, all of this stuff. I've been to 87 countries. I'm an avid traveler. And so I don't hear this kind of stuff in other countries as much. Now granted, I'm not as deep in those countries obviously, but I just think it's kind of the tradition in the US that we really do criticize our government a lot. Our government's main product is its currency, its dollar. Okay, but compared to what? I mean, what else are they gonna do? Yeah, maybe there. Of course, there's this like libertarian movement for cryptocurrencies. I get it. You know, I I hope it happens. But I just don't think the dollar is going to be displaced by anything other than maybe another government and cent and Federal Reserve backed currency. And it might be called you know the the Amero. It might be. called the digital dollar. It might be called the, you know, the Federal Reserve note, or, you know, whatever it's called. It doesn't matter. This idea is the same. And the likelihood is that the dollar, or whatever U.S. government-sponsored currency is, will continue, albeit it will be inflated away in value. Uh, no question about it. But the dollar has— regardless of what anybody says, it has a lot behind it, and it's not just gonna arbitrarily go away. So if, uh, you know, there's that old saying, never bet against the Fed. And even now, even with the massive amount of currency debasement that took place in the last year, this, you know, printer run wild, money printer run wild, still, you know, the dollar has a very strong foothold.
Yeah, I listened to that podcast episode, which was really good. Thank you for that and everything. Um, and I just reached out to Dino Yeah, I really appreciate all you do. I mean, this is, uh, you know, I've, I've been kind of a novice investor in real estate for, I don't know, 5, 6 years. But yeah, just thanks to your content and events and, and all this, I really feel like, uh, you've really helped me shortcut a lot of things and just do this a lot faster. And also just the introduction to great people, the trust that comes along with that, it's a really big deal. So I really thank you for all you do.
Okay, so what he's referring to, and you know, I don't know who that Is now because the message was so long ago. But, uh, what he's referring to is we referred him to a 1031 exchange company. And, you know, one of the big things that you've got to do as a real estate investor, and you've probably heard this before, is you've got to have a team. There, there are a whole bunch of experts you'll need, and we're kind of your one-stop shop to provide a team for you, a team of people Lenders that specialize in investment property financing, sellers that have vetted investment properties, property managers, 1031 exchange people. We can help you with self-management of your property and our own team that is area agnostic and can help you invest nationwide and help you really evaluate different opportunities from an area agnostic perspective. Remember, If you talk directly to a broker or a seller in any given market or that has any given property that they're trying to sell, you're not going to get any sort of objective advice. I, I mean, look at our only goal is to have you invest. Listen, that's how we make money. We like money. We're capitalists over here. But you know, we don't care where you invest. We just hope you'll do it through our network. And so if Florida is the right market for you, I mean, we have many cities in all of these places, right? Or if Tennessee or Alabama or Texas or North Carolina or Pennsylvania or, you know, whatever, any of these markets, or Indiana, you know, we can help you invest in all of these different markets around the country. And we can provide you objective, area-agnostic advice. And not only in terms of the market, but in terms of the specific properties and in terms of the specific sellers and the vendors and the providers. So we're really one-stop shop for all of that stuff. So that is why we're here. So take advantage of it. You know, we, we get paid by our referral partners, and, uh, and so, you know, it doesn't cost you anything. So definitely avail yourself of these opportunities.
Hey Jason, my name is John Datora, and I've been a client of yours for a number of years now, and I have to say it's been a great experience so far. You guys Do great work and provide just invaluable service to your clients. I'm working with Carrie, who's great, by the way.
Okay, so let's hear the next comment. Great, I'm glad we could help you, John, and let's go on to the next comment or question.
So Jason, I have a— I'm the president of a co-op here in Brooklyn, and the building is doing well. We had a board meeting and the president of the management company was on the Zoom call. It's kind of really interesting. They manage a lot of buildings in New York City, a lot of rental buildings. And I haven't followed this stuff, you know, with all the crazy developments, with all the socialists coming to power, but it's been getting progressively worse, like really progressively worse from the point of view that these socialists, they're creating all kinds of mission impossible elements on the landlords, making it more and more difficult.
By the way, I want to tell you, The person who is speaking, you've heard him on the show before, and he grew up in Eastern Europe under communism. Okay, so that's, that's kind of his perspective, but he's talking about these New York co-ops and these buildings and how they're managed. So, uh, there's some interesting lessons in here for us real estate investors.
Uh, including basically people are required to make buildings completely lead-free even though these are all buildings from many years ago. It's almost impossible to do, extremely expensive with like no real benefits. That lead paint dries, you know, and it's useless. Well, at least risk.
Yeah, what he's trying to say— so look, I, I believe it was 1978 that lead paint was outlawed. Uh, so, uh, you, you could, you could, you couldn't buy lead paint, I believe, after 1978. You know, if, if someone had some and, you know, it was a year old, they could still paint the building with it. I believe that was the demarcation point. And if the lead paint is on the walls and undisturbed It's no problem. Okay, lots of old houses have lead paint, but you know, as long as you don't chip the wall and start eating the paint chips, you're gonna be okay. So, so now they're instituting all these new requirements. And guess what else I just heard about New York City? They've got a new requirement I think AOC wants to implement, or she's introduced a bill or something. I don't know, forgive me, I don't know the details, but, but basically they're saying Every building that's over 40 feet tall, which, I mean, in New York, that's the vast majority of the buildings, right? So, you know, 4 stories, 40 feet basically, uh, right, about 10 feet a story, would have to retrofit and add fire sprinklers. I mean, do you know how much that will cost? That is absolutely staggering, the cost of that. It's prohibitive, you know, you, you just can't operate in that environment. So let's keep listening and learn from this.
Low risk years ago, but now they're pushing more regulation. So what I heard is something, uh, staggering, that first of all, the prices were completely out of whack initially. They were just way too expensive. People were overpaying for these old rental buildings, obscene prices. And recently, due to all these additional requirements They've become less and less profitable. In fact, they've become significant money drains, losers, and landlords are ignoring these buildings, not investing in them, and basically milking them. And probably they're going to go to foreclosure.
That's exactly what rent control does, and that's what big government does. It causes the landlords to lose interest in their properties. I mean, why should they upgrade them? They're not going to get any more money, and, you know, they'll just get whatever rent they can out of it. And what he's saying is many of these landlords will just let the property And this is what happens when you have political risk, all right? When you invest in these business-unfriendly areas, in these landlord-unfriendly areas, in these Democrat-run areas, you have significant political risk with your investments. They can change the entire nature of your investment. By passing some crazy new regulation or law.
As much as the values have appreciated in New York, some of these assets are actually falling in price as a result of the socialist government making it impossible for the landlords to run or make it very difficult to run profitable businesses. So it's gotten completely crazy from again. All kinds of regulations to various local laws that they come up. And then on top of that, very difficult evictions. So kind of really, really interesting stuff. And a lot of these landlords are multi-generational families who've been running these buildings well. They just never sold them and they passed them on to the kids. And it's a big issue now because it's very difficult to pay all those things that the city wants landlords to do and turn a profit. So, the prices on these assets have fallen as a result of this craziness. So, I think it'll, it'll be an interesting discussion for your, for your audience. Maybe we should do a podcast episode. Again, I'm not saying New York City is falling in price other than specific rental assets. The older properties have these type of issues where The city just— I don't know what the city wants. I think the city wants the following. They want the landlords to go out of business, the banks to foreclose, and then they did this years ago, I think in the '70s. They had these assets converted into some kind of co-ops. They want the residents to own these buildings, socialistic structures. Co-op itself is sort of a socialistic structure. It's not exactly. But they want the landlords to get a piece of the building by virtue of landlord failing, banks taking it, and then banks coming to the table with the occupants and come up with something. Anyway, that was an interesting discussion. When I heard this, like, oh boy, this is socialism, accelerated socialism in New York. Probably similar things are happening in— Illinois and California, these socialist republics, they don't understand they're destroying local businesses, economy, and ultimately these politicians will fail. But in the meanwhile, they just want more fees for the city, more regulation, more corruption, and then they empty the city coffers through controlling the expenditures with their friends and family and their buddies. It's just, it's a corruption. Uh, more power to the city, more power to bureaucrats, and more corruption by the bureaucrats. That's, that's what happens at the end of the day.
Yeah, that's basically, uh, you know, that's, that's what big government does, right? It runs the businesses out and then it comes in to solve the problem so they can be the people on the white horse that solve the problem they created, and, uh, and they can look like heroes. But, uh, we, we know that never works out. Okay, here is a message from one of our investment counselors.
Um, yeah, the interest rate is just something you can't standardize for many reasons. Okay, um, one is it depends on the loan amount. So I have gotten some quotes in the— at 4% for over $200,000, and then if you go, you know, and then, you know, if you go below $100,000, it goes up, the percentage goes up. Then it depends, are you putting 20% down or 25% down? We can't standardize that because some people have too many loans to put 20% down, so we tend to go with 25% down. If you put 20% down, the rate goes up even higher. If you put 25% down, you get a better rate. Then of course, the individual ability to borrow, you know, your interest rate might be different than my interest rate depending on what your debt-to-income ratio is, how many properties you have, et cetera, et cetera. So, okay, that's one, that's just one part of it. Then the other part of it is rates literally change on a daily basis. They fluctuate up and down. And then the other thing you could do is you could do a rate buydown. So on the podcast I talked about my 3 refinances. I bought down all those rates and got them into the 3s. So, you know, I could put all those pro formas at 3.375% and increase the, you know, um, out-of-pocket expense for the loan on the buydown.
Um, by the way, rates have actually declined since she left that message, so, uh, they're even better now. But basically what she's saying, and, uh, I just wanted to share that on the podcast, is, you know, it depends whether you're putting 20% or 25% down. You get a better rate when there's more security, when you have more equity. Uh, in the property. So that fluctuates. Of course, it fluctuates based on your credit score, your debt-to-income ratio, a whole variety of factors. And you can buy down the loan. So let's just talk about buydowns for a moment. A buydown is where you pay more points. A loan point is 1% of the loan amount, and a point, or points in general, are nothing more than prepaid interest. So you pay an interest rate, right? Say you're paying, just for round number's sake, 3% interest on the loan. If you pay 0 points, then we would call that at par, okay? Meaning you didn't buy anything down. But if you want to pay 1 point, you could buy your interest rate down a little bit. If you pay 2 points, you could buy it down a little bit more. If, um, Well, they're not really points credit back. They're not really doing that right now that I'm aware of. But in the old days, they used to. I've owned a few mortgage businesses over the years, and sometimes they'd even pay you points and you'd take a higher rate. And some people would do that occasionally. But just understand that points are nothing more than prepaid interest. You're just paying some of the interest in advance. And here's where it really makes sense to do that. Our philosophy is a buy-and-hold philosophy. Now, you know, you might sell your properties 10, 15 years in. You might keep them for the full depreciation schedule, 27.5 years. It depends. You know, you've got to look at what's going on in the market, what's going on with your personal life, what's going on with your own portfolio. Maybe you want to sell properties because you think there's better opportunity in another market, or maybe you're doing what I'm doing, which is trying to undiversify, right? And I've made— I've readily explained many times on the show over the years that one of the mistakes I made as an investor is I overdiversified. And we don't want you to do that. Don't make the mis— you know, the reason you're listening to me is to avoid the mistakes I made, okay? And, uh, you know, I certainly had a ton of success, but I've had a few mistakes too, for sure. And, uh, so, you know, I was in 17 cities and 11 states. That's too much diversification. We just want you to be in 3 to 5 markets. That's enough diversification. Don't be in 1 or 2. You need to be in 3 to 5 markets. Okay, so you could be too concentrated or you could be over-diversified. So one of the things I'm trying to do is reduce my diversification. I, I just want to be in like 3 to 5 markets, and I'm in— I'm still in too many markets from those old properties I bought, you know, 15, 16 years ago. So there are many reasons that you may or may not want to sell properties, but one of the things is when you buy the loan down, remember, you're paying a point now to get a lower interest rate for 30 years. And usually— and your investment counselor on our team can help you do the math, it's really easy to do— where you just calculate the time horizon to the break-even point. So if you pay an extra point, 1% of the loan amount, say that costs you $1,500. And if it saves you— just for round numbers, I'm not doing any real math here, just as an example— if it saves you $50 a month on the mortgage payment, that's $600 a year. So that's going to be what, just over 2 years before you're going to reach the break-even point? It's probably not going to be that good. It's probably going to take you about 3.5 to 4 years to reach the break-even point. And after that, You're benefiting from it. So you just got to commit to keeping the house long enough to get that buydown paid back, and it's usually a very good deal. A lot of our investors do it. Okay, we are already into this at a long length, so let's wrap it up for today. We've got, of course, several webinars going on. You can check those out. Reach out to our investment counselor if you want property profiles, if you want to learn about our Empowered Investor Inner Circle, which, by the way, we had But such a great, very intimate, small meeting on Monday. What we've done now is we're offering all of the courses, or the monthly calls that we do, the monthly Zoom meetings where I host those, and you can ask me questions, and we have a specific topic and focus of it. But we now are having those available in recorded format, just in a beautifully accessible format where people can get those all on recorded. So not as many people are coming, imagine that, because they'll just watch the recordings. But it It was really nice to just have such a small intimate group and really be able to talk to people. And, you know, one of the things I can do in that group is because it's not broadcast to the whole world like this is with people in 189 countries— hi out there— I can really speak maybe a little more frankly sometimes. And someone asked me a great question about, you know, one of my prior show guests, you know, about what that person is publishing versus what I'm saying. And I could really speak frankly, but I can't always do that on the, on the public forum like this, right? So, uh, join our Empowered Investor Inner Circle. It's just a great group. And by the way, um, Scott, who's one of our members, just posted this today at 3:02 PM. So Scott, I'm going to share what you said. He says, To Jason and the team, I wanted to thank you for all the new value you are adding And this is to the Empowered Investor Inner Circle. I've been looking through the videos on Kajabi— that's our course platform— and the new education tab inside of Property Tracker. Outstanding to bring the information together like that, and I know it must be a ton of work.
Thank you.
So if you're a Property Tracker user, also by the way, we've enhanced that dramatically. So go into Property Tracker click on the brand new Education tab right at the top, and there's just a ton of content there. There's a whole knowledge base, videos, just all kinds of stuff. We're just going to make these memberships so valuable. And with the Empowered Investor Inner Circle, you get a 1-year membership to Property Tracker included with that. So if you want to check out the Empowered Investor Inner Circle, we've got a free informational webinar on that which also has some good education in it about self-management, just go to jasonhartman.com/empowered, jasonhartman.com/empowered, and you can check out that webinar there. And until Friday, thanks for joining us and happy investing. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, HartmanMedia.com, for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes. ITunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
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