CW 1102 - Controlling Money Supply, Changing Demand for Debt & Using Smart Home Technology for Self-Management

When you're in your car and you're listening to that podcast, you're not really thinking about the fact that people are real and accessible on the other end. Maybe you've reached out and you've gotten contact with an investment counselor. Again, I wouldn't say they have star Persona, but they, but they're really not these tangible, real people. When you go to these events, all of these people become real. You get to look them in the eye and shake their hand. And then you're surrounded by like people that have a passion for real estate and it all becomes more real and it creates a sense of community. And so I would really strongly encourage people that have more than a casual interest about real estate that are wanting to do more than just be that passive investor through their investment counselor. And like you said, that's great if you're doing that, but if you have an interest to do more. I really do strongly encourage people to come out and be in person. The experience is very different from when you're listening on the podcast and when you're in person hearing the conversations.

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. 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.

Merry Christmas and Welcome to episode 1102. 1102. This is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you so much for joining me today. You will be listening to this show likely the day after Christmas, but it is being recorded here on the evening of Christmas. Had a big dinner tonight in Palm Beach, Florida, my new home. I guess it's not that new, but anyway, it was very nice, very nice at the, at the Breakers Hotel. If you haven't been to the Breakers Hotel, you must go go there. The place is just spectacular. It's absolutely stunning. I've been there a few times now and wow, what a place. You know, I love modern architecture. In fact, you've probably heard me say that architecture is the most important art form. But some of this classic Architecture from days past is just incredible. And certainly the Breakers Hotel is, is one of those places, no question about it. Beautifully decorated, just wow, what a place, what a place. Every time I go there I think that. And it's just very impressive, especially with all the decorations and so forth. Really, really impressive. So this is probably the most economically or financially newsworthy Christmas I can ever, ever remember. Why, why is that? Wow. Well.

Gosh. Japan's Nikkei is down, down, down. I mean, this is mind boggling what's going on. A thousand points today, 20% off, I believe. October high officially entering a bear market. Of course you know that the US stock market is down, down, down. Virtually all of the gains have been wiped out. Our Treasury Secretary and another Trump administration official are calling and talking to the banks. Reuters did an article about the Plunge Protection Team. You heard about that before, right? The Plunge Protection Team. The team that makes sure that the stock market doesn't have any big, big dips. And that was always considered somewhat of a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but I guess it's not anymore. Look, Reuters is not Infowars, okay? But hey, you know, you learn a few things on infowars too. As much as, oh, I don't know, the host is kind of a blowhard, but he's not all wrong. He's definitely got some real points out there, no question about it. But yeah, this is truly amazing what's going on. Now, of course you're hearing this political soap opera and drama play out and Trump is blaming the Fed, he's blaming Jerome Powell. There have been rumors that he's going to try to fire Jerome Powell, not that he has the authority to fire him anyway. And then you hear people say, well, you know, we don't want the President to be able to interfere in the Fed because we want the Fed to have its independence. Oh, now look, you know me, folks. You know me. I'm not in favor of a government run currency, okay? I think a currency should be a free market phenomenon and the market should control the currency and the currency should be backed by something real. Now you've all heard me say I'm definitely not a gold bug. You know this if you've been listening for any length of time, I have utterly slaughtered the gold bug arguments. Slaughtered them. They are crazy, ridiculous. You know, Peter Schiff and the rest of these people out there, right? All of the gold bugs. Because look, you know, this is another thing like cryptocurrency, right? I was so right about cryptocurrency, at least right? Now, who knows what inning we're in? Maybe we're still in the third inning. Maybe we're in the ninth inning. I don't know. But, hey, was I right about cryptocurrency or was I right about cryptocurrency? Right. I told you not to mess with it. They say the dollar's not backed by anything. Well, cryptocurrency is definitely not backed by anything. Okay? And again, I'd love to be wrong about that. Why would I love to be wrong about all of this? Because, of course, I would love to see a currency that is a free market phenomenon, not fiat, the way virtually every currency on Earth is. Right. Every currency on Earth is a fiat currency. It's all a race to the bottom as they all eventually devalue, devalue, devalue. But look, I know I'm not going to change this. I'm not out of my mind. I'm not going to be shouting about my philosophy forever. I'm going to invest. As you should, and hopefully you do, probably most of you do, in a practical way that aligns interest with the most powerful forces the human race has ever known, governments and central banks. Right. But these calls that the President should not be able to interfere with the Federal Reserve are almost absurd as the arguments on the other side. Why? Why is that? Because they say, well, the Fed needs to maintain its independence. Oh, you mean. So instead of the currency being run by the government, which, as you know, I'm not in favor of, it should be run by some mysterious private corporation that's never been audited. Give me a break with this, you know, secret society and the Rothschilds and, you know, the Bush family and Skull and Bones and the Illuminati. Right. Which is what it's run by now. Okay, look, as much as I'm not in favor of having the government control the currency, I think I'd rather have the government run the currency than some private, mysterious corporation. Definitely, definitely, definitely. But I'll tell you something. Mr. Trump has a very good chance of being overthrown by a coup or an assassination attempt or something, because that's what they said happened to JFK when he spoke out against the Federal Reserve. This is pretty scary stuff. Again, these are very powerful forces. Maybe that's not true about jfk. Maybe it was really Oswald acting alone. You know, I went after seeing the Oliver Stone movie, I got quite fascinated by that story. Was it over 20 years ago? And I flew out to Dallas and I went to that book depository and I went up to the museum up there. And I stood at the window where Oswald allegedly took the shot from, right? And then you can't look right out that window because it has, like, a plexiglass thing and a display with some crates there and the gun, you know? But the next window, you can look right out of it. And let me tell you, I'm no marksman, but that's a tough shot. Okay? That's a really tough shot. Then I went and stood on the famous grassy knoll, and that's an easy shot right there. So who knows what happened? The world will never know. But remember the late Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis, Jacqueline Bouvier, whatever name from whatever marriage or her maiden name she wants to use at her funeral? They talked as the news was reporting that her notes and memoirs on the JFK assassination topic will be released 75 years after the death of her last child. So listen to the longevity and biohacking show if you want to find out what she thought about it, because you're gonna have to live a while, Caroline. These Kennedys have been beset by all kinds of tragedy, sadly, but Caroline is still around and still with us. So that's the story on all of these conspiracy theories, and who knows what's true and what's not true. But I'll tell you something, Trump better be careful talking about the Fed, because I worry about him. And that's something you don't want to do, is mess with the Fed, because the Fed is super, super powerful. Okay, so let's see here. Little comic strip that I thought was really good. You know, I had Katherine Austin Fitz on the show years ago. She worked in the Bush White House, and she's an interesting lady with lots of very interesting thoughts and theories and topics. We got to get her back on the show again. She was on the show many years ago. This little cartoon that I'm looking at is pretty telling, right? It's a movie theater showing a double feature, right? Or not a double feature, but two different theaters, right? You could pick one or the other, right? And in one, what is playing is the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Well, a lot of inconvenient lies in that movie, but that's another topic for another day. But then the other movie where people are lined up around the block in this little cartoon is called A Reassuring Lie. And that, sadly, is. Is what most people all around the world, including Americans, all of us sheeple, would like to believe is a reassuring lie. But things, yeah, things are a little crazy. So look At Minuchian, Steven Mnuchin, our Treasury secretary. Right. I'm looking at a tweet from him. Twitter. A tweet from Twitter. I don't have to really explain that, do I? You know what a tweet is? It says, today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation's six largest banks. And here's a statement attached and all kinds of theories about this, saying that maybe it's because the EU banks are on the brink of disaster. I've talked about this before on prior shows. There's a Financial Times article talking about how, you know, credit markets have frozen up last week because there's this, this demand for high yield debt, you know, it's collapsed largely. Right, because people don't have a lot of faith in that debt. So times, they are a changing. Now look, what does that mean to us as real estate investors that buy these basic necessity housing type properties in affordable linear markets, not cyclical markets, not even hybrid markets, but simple, conservative, good linear markets. What does that mean to us? Well, not much, frankly. Not much. Why doesn't it mean much to us is because that game really isn't very affected by any of this stuff. Now look, I've said this before, that I love a great recession, okay? Well, not a great recession. Take it back. I didn't say that. I said I love a good recession. Okay? You know, you don't have to wait in line as long as you can walk into a nice restaurant and get a table right away. You know, it's a lot of things get a little easier. And in terms of my business of sourcing good quality investment properties, good quality income properties for you, our dear listeners, well, it's been pretty tough lately. It's a tough market to operate in. Now, has this change in the economy, in the overall economy and in the real estate marketplace, has it affected us yet? Nope, not much. Not much. Still in the price range in the markets in which we deal and we recommend not much has changed. Not much has changed. It's pretty much the same game for now. Now I hope it will trickle down a little bit and we'll see a little bit of a loosening of inventory, a little bit of give in the market. So it's just a little easier to operate. You know, there's a buyer's market, a seller's market and a broker's market. And you know, frankly, I think the broker's market is the best market for us, but it's also the best market for you because it's A reasonable kind of balanced market. When it's a crazy buyer's market, the then no one's making a decision because everybody's scared that it's going to get worse. Now reference the last episode where we talked about this in great detail when Doug was on the show. That was our Christmas Eve episode. Okay, so check that one out. Number 1101, episode 1101. If you didn't catch that, you must catch it. But then we have the seller's market, which everybody commonly calls a good market, which that's just psychotic. I have no idea why they say that. But somehow the seller's market is considered the good market, right? And we've been in a seller's market for several years now. It is too imbalanced. Right? We need a more balanced market. We need a market that's more of a broker's market, frankly, because I think a broker's market is pretty much the same as an investor's market. It's either a broker's market or a buyer's market. But look, at the end of the day, you buy in properties that make sense. You're not speculating, you're not doing this market timing bs. That just does not work. Yeah, it works a couple of times, and you hear some great stories and you think, why wasn't that me? You know, why didn't. Why didn't I make 40 grand on that deal instantaneously, right? Why wasn't that me? Why can't I do that? Well, you know why? Because those stories are extremely rare and they are bandied about like crazy. They are not the norm. They are not something everybody has access to. They are rarities. They are total, total rarities. Those types of stories. I think the broker's market is pretty much the same as the prudent income property investors market. Right? That's the good market. Okay, So I like that one the best, personally. That's my personal opinion. So the banksters, right? The banksters. The criminal banksters, right? Fraud, Inc. Right. This is basically what the large banks are, right? Guess what they are now. I mean, how many banking scandals are there? Banks, Wall street, it's all the same. It's all the same, you know, modern version of organized crime, as I say, right? Well, they are suspected of collusion in rigging eu, European Union bonds. Right? Okay, so I mean, look at, like, Wells Fargo in America, of the big banks, Wells Fargo is the most disgusting bank of all. If you bank or do business with Wells Fargo. Get out. Out, out, out. This bank is awful you know, I mean, I mean I've done a lot of business with Wells Fargo for a lot of years and they kind of sailed through the Great Recession pretty well. The other banks had some problems. They all seemed to take their turn in the rotation of being the most hated banks in America. And they all have their scandals. Look, Chase had their scandals in the robo signing scandal. Lots and lots of people were victims of the robo signing scandal where they weren't even evaluating foreclosures, they were illegally dual tracking people. Dual tracking, of course is when the borrower is negotiating a short sale or a loan modification and then the bank just boom. They just surprise them with a foreclosure while they're negotiating in good faith. And the banks never negotiate in good faith. Right, because when the borrower says, hey, will you do a short sale? Will you do a loan modification? Will you do a workout? Then the borrower provides lots of paperwork to the bank. And then the bank of course conveniently loses the paperwork and you have to provided all over again. And you're talking with a call center in the Philippines and you're waiting on hold for you know, 261 hours and you know someone's reading a frickin script. I mean, this is what millions of people went through. And at the same time, the banks were dual tracking these people and foreclosing on them while they were losing their paperwork for the loan modification or the workout. Totally, totally ridiculous. Right? So Chase had the robo signing scandal, bank of America, you know, that absorbed Countrywide and you know, I don't know if it's all B of A's fault, I'm gonna give them a little bit of slack there because well, they bought Countrywide. Countrywide was definitely Fraud Inc. Okay, Countrywide was Fogamir. Get alone. You have a pulse. Get alone. Right. That was the, the most ridiculous ninja loan organization ever. Hugely successful and virtually no consequences whatsoever for these crooks. Right? When B of A absorbed them, they had a lot of crap to deal with. And B of A was a disaster. They dealt with it terribly. Lots of scandals, lots of dual tracking. But now it's Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is the scummy bank at the moment, but I'm sure they will take turns with someone else. But yeah, Wells has a pretty terrible reputation. Lots of scandals, look them up. It's truly, truly mind boggling. So pretty disgusting stuff. And all you have to do is follow the news. You see what these banks do. It's just totally unbelievable. But look, our plan is align our Interests, Right? Let's not sit here and rant about it, Jason. No, let's not do that. Let's invest in the same way the big banksters do and the Federal Reserve does and the US Government does. And when I say invest, you know, of course the banks invest. Right? The Federal Reserve, we don't know what the hell they do because hey, there's no audit. It's not transparent, it's very opaque. But we know what governments do, right? We know what the US Government does. It basically engages in international trade and then it buys things with US Dollars and then devalues its dollars. Of course, China is totally guilty of all sorts of crazy sleazy stuff too, right? And, and you've heard Trump pontificate about that. So, you know, it's just a big game. Everybody's playing the game really. At the end of the day, can you blame them? I mean, it's just the playing field, right? And everybody's got a. Gotta play their game. Sadly, really sadly, you know, so align your interest, get those long 30 year fixed rate loans, make them work for you and have real assets, hold real assets and then you will definitely, definitely benefit in the long run. Okay, so enough about all of that stuff. But to wrap this, this subject up, there is a lot going on in the financial markets right now and it's unusual. At least I have never seen it be this newsworthy over the holidays. It's amazing. So a lot of stuff going on out there and it's time to be very, very vigilant and to pay attention to things. But right now I still say my good old same plan of buying these bread and butter income properties, properties that work. The property must make sense the day you buy it. Following my ten commandments. That would be commandment number five, Thou shalt not gamble. It's the one I just referred to. But all of the ten commandments and you'll be in good shape and you'll learn a lot more about this game plan at our upcoming Meet the Masters of Income property that's coming up in Southern California here very soon, in a couple of months. And we've got super early bird ticket pricing right now. So take advantage of that and get your tickets@jasonhartman.com masters. That's jasonhartman.com masters. And then let's switch gears here as we kind of wrap up for the, for the day here. And let's talk a little bit more about self management of your properties. And one of the things where self management, of course, we've Talked a lot about this. You don't even have to be a self manager to use some of these technologies that will ultimately make you more independent because you need to use smart home technology so that you know what's going on with your property. And even if you have a property manager, you can track things, you can look at logs, you can know what's going on. And you know the innovation I am so looking forward to, it's out there now. It's already been invented, but it's not commonly used or accepted yet. But it's coming and we all need to start insisting on it. No, I'm not talking about pet rent to get you an extra 25 bucks a month, but hey, that one's okay too. I'm talking about smartphones with GPS tracking of photos and logs for property repairs and maintenance. So that you have a GPS stamp and a time and date stamp on the photo or with the photo's metadata. Okay? To prove that the contractor or the property manager was there at your property. So you'll know what that picture is. Right? You'll know it's your actual property, not another property. Right? And then also another way that you can outsmart them a little bit with some smart home features is with the electronic locks that. I mean folks, does it not surprise you that here it is the modern era and we're still using keys? Do you ever think about how primitive the concept of a key is really? Keys? You kidding me? I mean, we're still using keys after all these years. I can't believe it that we're still using keys. Keys are so primitive. Why are we using keys? Get rid of the keys. No keys. Okay, so electronic locks. Now I just want to play this little video. This is just one of many out there and some people love this one. It's one of the more advanced locks. It's the August lock. But there are many others. Our client, Drew Baker, who has been on the show many times and very kindly shared many of his self management techniques. He's been getting rid of his property managers and giving them their resignation papers and taking over his property portfolio. And he's doing really well with it. Saving a lot of money, making a lot of money. I bet you the turnover the tenant turns will reduce dramatically with him taking over this stuff. This is just one more of many tools and I'll just play you this short little video about some of the features of this electronic lock.

August lets you securely unlock and lock your door using the August app. It's that easy. You can Even set August to auto unlock. So August knows when you arrive using Bluetooth, you can set it to auto lock. So when you leave, August locks the door behind you, kind of like your own personal doorman. And with August proprietary door sense technology, you'll know your door is both closed and locked. Create secure temporary keys for family.

So if your property manager says they went to the property or you know they didn't go to the property or whatever, or they were showing the property, you will have a log. You can know now what's going on with your property even at a long distance. You'll all these tools are getting so awesome, right? And you know this video of course is geared toward the typical owner, occupant type of person, right? But this can be used as a management tool. That's what people in our investment industry are doing with these tools. They are using them for better management. And this stuff is so cheap it does not cost much money at all. And you know, you put it in and it lasts for years and years and years and years, right? Just continuing the video here and some of the the features and tools, friends.

Even service people grant access for a few weeks or a few hours. You decide you never have to worry about copies of keys getting into the wrong hands again, August attaches to your existing deadbolt on the inside of your door. Installation takes minutes and you can keep keep your existing lock and keys available on Android and iOS. August the key to your smart home.

So that's just one of many. And that's just one tool of many. There are so many smart home tools. Finally the home is becoming smart. And it blows my mind that it took so long. I remember back in, I don't know, what was it, 10 years ago, 12 years ago? You know, maybe it was 2006 or something like that. I remember driving on Barranca Parkway in Irvine, California, right where my office used to be, over at Baranca Parkway in West park in Irvine. That's the company that I sold to Coldwell Banker in 2005. You know, I would drive by this, this building and I never went in there, but I was fascinated by it. It had a big sign on the side. It said Smart Home. Now a lot of you listening live in Orange County, California. I know because that's where I got my start for so many years in traditional real estate before getting into the investment business in 2004, the investment only business. And I remember that building that said Smart Home. I mean, can you believe how long it has taken for the home to become truly smart. That time is here. It has arrived. It is an amazing time to be alive. So I just want to encourage all of you to listen to the episodes that we've recorded on self management to take advantage of these smart home tools to improve the value, the tracking and the monitoring of your income property portfolio. It is really amazing all of this great stuff that's out there now. So with that I will leave you for today and wish you happy investing and we'll talk to you on the next episode in just two more days. We are moving into a new year and it is going to be a good one, filled with opportunities. But of course you gotta stay informed and I know you will. So keep on joining us and listening and we will keep you informed and we look forward to seeing you in a couple of months at Meet the Masters of Income Property. This is our 21st anniversary meet the Masters of Income Property. Look forward to seeing you in Southern California for this jason hartman.com masters until next episode in two days. Happy investing.

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