CW 842 - Interest Rate Hikes, Zillow Accuracy, Most Market Values Still Low & More with Elisabeth & Jason

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Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host Jason Hartman with episode 842 842. Thank you so much for joining me today as we've got a couple of good events coming up. Our Venture alliance event in Chicago is right around the corner and you can still join us. Come as a guest. Check out venture alliancemastermind.com or Jason hartman.com in the events section and also our Oklahoma City Jason Hartman University, which is our seminar that goes into the details of how to analyze an investment. We're going to do some panel discussions. That's a new thing we're going to. We got some real pros there that are going to do some panel discussions with us. Some of them don't even know it yet, but I volunteered them and one of them is probably here with us today. Get tickets for that@jason hartman.com events. But I'd like to welcome back to the show Elizabeth Embry, one of our clients. Elizabeth, welcome. How are you?

I'm great Jason. Thanks for having me back.

Good. How do you like that segue?

I'm like, oh, great, I'm going to be speaking on a panel. Good to know.

Yeah. See you are. You didn't even know that. So. But you've got some interesting articles that you brought to the table to discuss today, Elizabeth. And we're going to talk about several important things for investors. Number one is Zillow and liability. They create for themselves when they estimate or zestimate prices and rental amounts. We're going to talk about, well, as much as we can of all this. But here's what's on the table. Trulia. And they're out with a survey about how the majority of homes still, even in this booming market, remain priced below the pre recession peak. Okay. Only, only 34.2% of homes have recovered the values they had before the housing crisis. So that's an amazing number. It's, that's startling. Most people would not think that. Pretty counterintuitive. And Elizabeth, you got a couple others. What else do you have?

Yeah. So also for the, another large real estate company.

The CEO of Redfin, is talking about the fact that it has record low inventories. And so that's impacting their ability to sales. They feel like they're competitive, but yet their sales numbers in general are down because of the lack of inventory.

That is. You know what, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I want to do a Mythbusters thing right now. Mythbusters, here we go. You ready for mythbusters, folks? I liked it. Okay, everybody, listen to this one. You may think that in a booming real estate market, everybody in the real estate business is making money hand over fist. They're making a fortune. They're rolling in it. Right? You are wrong. And I will tell you why you're wrong. Because, you know, if you're in the business of selling widgets and you don't have enough widgets to sell, that is a problem. That is a constraint. That is a bottleneck. And guess what? It very hard to operate in a market like this where inventory levels are so extraordinarily low. Number one, it's frustrating for us because we literally have way more clients than we have properties. And number two, it's frustrating for the clients because they've really got to be persistent. You know, less, less selection. Just. Yeah, just because you have money doesn't mean you're going to get. You're going to be lucky enough to get a property. Now, granted, you can go buy all kinds of crappy properties all day long. And I hate to break it to you, but our competitors, the few that we have are starting to reduce their standards, as would be expected. They're selling these offshore properties, they're selling these, you know, vacation condos. They're selling condo tells. I mean, folks, this stuff, this stuff is not prime real estate, okay? This is not the stuff you want to buy. Look, if the deal's good enough, you could buy anything. You can rationalize buying anything if the deal is good enough. But these deals are not that good. I've looked at them. You know, there's just all kinds of crap out there. So buyer beware. Don't buy junk, even though, you know, just. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead, Elizabeth. Sorry, tangent.

You know, I think what you're talking about with the fact that you would think that if the prices are all pushed up, everybody that's in the real estate business is making a ton of cash. But it makes sense. There's more competition for the fewer deals that are out there, which is driving prices up. But there's a certain element of volume that people would need in order to meet their numbers, so to speak. And that makes sense. You're right. It's very counterintuitive, but it makes a lot of sense. Then back to competitors showing less than favorable product. I've been looking at, at various sites over the last couple of months and I was shocked at the quality of some of these places that people were selling because they're true. I mean, if you, if you know the area, you know, you know that they're a C or D, potentially neighborhood.

Oh yeah, yeah. And not even that, that you're just talking about regular single family type properties. I'm talking about the overall category of properties they're selling, you know, these properties out, out of the country, which are just, you know, I have always thought, you know, I would love to be selling international real estate, but I just can't find Anything after visiting 81 countries now, you know, and some of them, many times there's just, we just can't find anything. Looking all over the world that makes any real sense compared to the special American real estate. And number two, then they're selling these properties that are really just kind of not very good. Categories of properties like condo tells where you just, you know, the first problem you have with condos is you have the hoa. You have the problem of being, you know, it's really collectivism is what it is. And you, you get in with all these other people and your future and your fate and your investment and your money is tied to them. So if that HOA gets into A lawsuit, that homeowners association, you know, that's going to drag your property values down. And they always get in lawsuits. Okay. HOAs are, are just, it seems like they're always litigating something, whether it be construction defects or some angry homeowner that sues the hoa. And many times when they get into litigation, the lenders will not lend in there. And when they don't lend in there, you know, this whole real estate thing, it's a credit based asset and if there's no financing, the buyers dry up and the values plummet. And that's what happens when you're in an hoa. That can happen. It's a bad, big danger. And there's all kinds of other problems. So unless the deal's incredible, stay away from condos. I've told you that many times. And a lot of our competitors are selling that. They're selling properties in some really crappy cities, some really crappy areas of some decent cities. You know, they're selling properties that are like really expensive properties that don't make any sense for investment purposes. There's all kinds of stuff. And you know, we're just, we're just not going to do that. So that's why we don't have as much inventory as we'd like because we're not lowering our standards by that much.

Okay, but.

You said was not buying in foreign countries. But what about the territory of Puerto Rico?

I mean, it's technically that's not a foreign country.

No, it's not a foreign country. But what are your thoughts? Because, you know, I've been in some conversations recently about whether going to Puerto Rico from an investment perspective makes sense because of the great tax opportunities there. What are your thoughts on that?

Okay, great question. So we are already on a tangent. So we may not be get to cover all those other topics, but here's the Puerto Rico thing. So first of all, some of you may know that I have, well, I have many other podcasts, okay. But one of them is called the Jetsetter Show. And this is where I gain my world perspective. Not just from traveling to 81 countries, but from talking to experts that, you know, the tagline for that show is exploring lifestyle friendly destinations worldwide. Okay. So tax havens, investment opportunities, business opportunities, real estate opportunities around the world, you know, travel deals, things like that. Because I love to travel and I really do kind of consider myself a citizen of the world. Okay. On that show, I've done two episodes with one particular expert about Puerto Rico. And Puerto Rico being A US Territory has some very compelling tax incentives. They're complicated. You know, you got to set up a business there, basically. And there's all kinds of complexity we could talk about for hours. But buying real estate there will not give you the tax break. You don't have to own any real estate there. That's not part of it. But you do have to, at least under one of the programs, live there for just slightly more than six months per year, like six months on a day, I believe, per year. And you can get some really good tax incentives. The problem is I've been to Puerto Rico now four times and I don't want to live in Puerto Rico. Okay. I don't like Puerto Rico. And Puerto Rico, as you may well know, is broke there. I believe they defaulted on their bonds or they were rescued. I think they defaulted.

I think they defaulted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I'm just not a fan. So, you know. But yeah, and I, I don't really hear much about the real estate there. I can't honestly say I've explored it intensely, but it would, I would feel more comfortable there than going to say Nicaragua, Belize or many of these other jurisdictions that many people are selling properties in and so forth. You know, Argentina, Brazil, whatever Puerto Rico would be, I would choose it above any of those, that's for sure.

Okay, so one of the things that the, that the article mentioned about the Redfin CEO was the fact that people are choosing to rent out their house or portions of their house rather than selling. And that was actually a podcast that I just recently recorded for the Women Investing Network podcast where I talked about the decision to rent versus sell your home and the fact that it's just based on numbers and cents. But do you think that that's enough to cause the inventory shortage? That seems kind of a one off.

That's kind of a one off because the inventory shortage, well, it applies in almost all price segments, but when we talk about it, we're only talking about investment grade property, which means ideally property that's single family homes or plexes, you know, small duplexes, four plexes, that kind of stuff. But ideally, single family home that's priced below the median price in that marketplace. Okay. And those are sort of the ideal investment properties in good quality areas. Not the 30 and $40,000 house, the real rough neighborhoods, you don't want those either. You know, a lot of these people that are renting out their homes, Elizabeth, are taking their 3 and 4 and $500,000 home and renting it and you know, they're just speculators because one of the things we have to do as investors. And you're selling your home in Seattle right now, as we speak, Elizabeth. So this is an interesting thing. We always have to realize that whenever we own something every day, that we continue to own it and we do not sell it. We essentially buy it back. We bought it. Right. If you don't sell your home, you bought it. Okay. And buying a $500,000 property as a rental does not make any sense. Okay. So that's what, you know, they're talking about in this article. In a lot of cases, buying properties that don't make sense. These properties need to, to make sense, be definitely below $200,000 so that they have a decent rent to value ratio. And your home, I mean, would you want to keep that one as a rental? No way.

Yeah, I'd be at 0.3 or maybe 0.4 if I'm lucky. And then I'd have somebody in my beautiful pristine house that probably won't treat it the same. So there's no.

Yeah, no way. No way. So your house in Seattle is going to sell for somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars, give or take, it sounds like. Right?

Yeah.

Okay, so you got your million dollar home. You could rent that. When you said you would be in that, you're talking about the rent to value ratio, meaning it would rent for 3 to $4,000 per month. It probably rent for 4,000, you know, maybe even a little higher possibly.

But I think that, I think that it would probably be around 32 or 3600 petition that I'm seeing. I mean, it might be creeping up now because it's a great school district and so there might be people that are, you know, wanting to get lined up for, you know, the new school year. Yeah.

It'S so disproportionate. I mean, it just absolutely makes more sense for me to get that money working for me in other places.

Yeah, yeah. No, it does. Because think about it like we've talked about before on the show. You could take and you could buy a million dollars worth of real estate, which is essentially 10 single family homes. You could diversify in three different markets so you'd be more diversified and rent those for $1,000 each and you'd have $10,000 a month in income versus $3,600 a month in one house where there's no diversification. So way better deal. Yeah, definitely sell it. Definitely sell it.

Yeah. I'm excited about it so the, a local company, Zillow, who's based out of Bellevue. One of the articles that we were going to talk about is the fact that they might be getting sued based over their Zestimen.

Their rent estimates as well as their price, you know, the house value estimate. And what are your thoughts on that?

Well, first of all, if this is their first lawsuit over Zestimates, which are estimates, but their brand for its Zestimates, it would amaze me. I mean, really is this, I mean, I can't imagine it's the first time they've been sued over this kind of thing because, you know, putting that out there is a pretty high liability thing. You know, saying the house is worth this much or the rental value of the house is that much, because people act on those decisions and you know that can, you know that maybe they act in a mistake because those estimates on rent or sale are very wrong a lot of times. As I've said before, many times, look, Zillow is better than nothing. But don't, don't hold it out as though it's the gospel either. It's not the gospel. It's better than nothing, though. I mean, it's good to have. It's good tool.

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, but. So here's one of the challenges, challenges that I have as you know, as a person who came in through your network long ago and started buying house after house. So now I have to do a personal financial statement every year or so because I have commercial loans. And one of the things that I need to do on the personal financial statement is write the current value of my single family homes. And quite frankly, Zillow is one of the best tools I have for getting the ballpark price of those values. Are there other tools out there that I could be using instead?

Well, sure. Here is the way you value a property and if anyone wants to know the best, absolutely best appraisal you can possibly get, it is the most accurate appraisal in the world. You ready? Sell the property. Because. Because that is the most accurate appraisal ever and what, what a buyer is willing to pay. Right? Yeah.

And I know I'm waiting on my, the edge of my seat. And then you're like, oh, Jason, I don't want to sell them just to know what you're done.

You thought I was going to give you some website you could go to that would tell you the answer, right? Yeah. I knew it. Yeah. No selling the property. When you get a ready, willing and able buyer and a ready willing and able seller, and there is a meeting of the minds, and the money changes hands. That is the ultimate appraisal. Second to that would be, you know, hiring an appraiser to come out and actually do an inspection. Zillow, of course, uses an algorithm, and it's better than nothing. The errors, the areas where Zillow really has a hard time is when properties are unique. So I'll take, for example, my old house in Orange County, California. If I. The last house I actually owned and lived in. Now I'm much more of a believer in renting my own nice home and owning lots of other less expensive rental properties that other people rent from me. Right. Because the rent to value ratios are in my favor on both sides of that equation. And. And you and your husband, Neil, Elizabeth, are doing the exact same thing. Yeah.

We're following in your footsteps.

Yep. Good for you. Good for you. It's been a great decision for me, so. So.

On that house, I've looked at Zillow a few times after selling it, and I tell you, folks, if you've owned properties in cyclical markets and you want to get depressed, go on Zillow and look at what they're all worth now, and you will instantly say to yourself, gosh, why did I sell that place? Well, I'll tell you why you sold it, okay? Because had you kept it, it would have cost you a fortune in cash flow losses. Maybe you could say something like that. The very naive statement that most real estate investors use to rationalize their bad decisions. They say, well, the mortgage payment was only this much, and it rented for enough to cover the mortgage or even make a profit. But that means you have a bunch of equity in there and you have an opportunity cost on that money. So that's dumb. Okay? So, yeah, you know, these houses I used to own and Irvine and Newport beach, they're more expensive now. And on the one hand, I instantly get, like, depressed. And then I think, well, if I had kept it that, you know, the last 10 years, and I had these terrible rent to value ratios where I was essentially feeding the property for the privilege of owning it versus what I have now, which are properties that actually make sense from a rent to value ratio perspective, you know, you're not looking at the whole equation, okay? But my point with Zillow, Elizabeth, was that that property I had, the last one in Orange county that I owned was a very unique property. It had a very big lot. It had a nice view. Other homes in that neighborhood did not have that. So to get A Zillow estimate to try and, to get a computer program to try and figure that out is very difficult, okay? And, and those estimates will be way off when you have uniqueness, okay. Because the computer just can't make that judgment like a human can. Okay? Not yet, at least. And so that's one area where it really fails, the other area where it fails a lot. And we see this in our areas where, where our clients buy properties is in, in a market where you have a big investor market where you have a lot of people, people and companies buying properties and rehabbing them and fixing them up and reselling them. The properties, they, the prices they buy those properties for is obviously lower. And then they do a rehab and they, you know, hopefully have a really good business and a very well organized business and do a lot of volume. So they get really good prices from their contractors. They buy everything in bulk and real cheap. And then they can afford to have an economy of scale and they'll spend 15, $20,000 maybe on a rehab. You know, they'll buy that house for 60,000 and they'll sell it for 100,000, right? So they'll make 15 grand net on the sale or maybe 10 or 12 grand. Right? And when you look at Zillow and you look at this estimate, they're thinking, well, every house in this neighborhood is worth 60,000. No, it's not. Okay? It's worth a hundred. It really is. Because, you know, these, these are improved fixed up properties and they, you know, they're. But just looking at the comps will deceive you, okay? It's deceiving because those are comps of distressed sales or really ugly houses that needed rehab. And so, you know, it's, it's difficult. I mean, anyone that expects a computer program to figure out the value of a house is really, it's, you just can't do it. Not yet.

Not yet.

It'll, it'll come, you know. It'll come. Yeah.

So there was an other article from Trulia and that was around the fact that the majority of houses are still not up to the pre bubble price. And that really surprised me because in all the markets that I, you know, have friends and you know, where they live, their houses have gone well past the bubble point. I mean, the house that I'm selling is almost, I wouldn't say doubled, but it's almost doubled from that peak of the pre or peak of the bubble point here in the Seattle area. It just seems strange to me that people are thinking that the houses haven't reached that pre recession peak.

Yeah, well, number one, you don't have many friends like Garth Brooks has. He has friends in low places, okay? It's a song.

Where the whiskey pours and the beer chases. I got friends in low places, you know. Anyway, so you, you have friends that live in these, what's called creative class cities, right? And these are places like Seattle, you know, Denver, San Francisco, or the Bay area in general, L.A. you know, these are cities that are very expensive, right? And they have very educated populations. And so they are in bubble territory because those are the cyclical markets, right? Now here's one thing the article says right here, and I'm quoting, While a full 98% of homes in Denver and San Francisco surpassed their pre recession peaks, this is not the case across metros in the US in where I am, where I live, Las Vegas, Tucson, for example, where less than 3% of the homes have reached their pre crisis peak. Okay? And if you look at a chart of real estate values over decades, you will always see in cyclical markets that the, the market does have its cycles and it, it will crash and it'll have a trough and a peak and the, the peak of each cycle is always higher than the last peak. Okay? If you look at that chart, it always looks like that in the cyclical markets. And this is one reason, Elizabeth, that I think this market has quite a bit of juice left in it. Every, you know, there you've got all these people out there talking about bubbles and, and I think that is true in the cyclical markets. I think we're well into bubble territory. But in linear and hybrid markets, okay, you know, things are, the fundamentals are there. I mean, the rent to value ratios are still very healthy in all of the markets we specialize in. And you can find those@jasonhartman.com properties, okay. And I mean, you know, properties make sense in our markets. They really make sense. Right?

Yeah, I, I think when you combine the concepts of this inventory shortage, the fact that there's still a Runway and the fact that you can't use a standard tool to really figure out what the heck of the price of the value of a house is, I mean, it's really good that you've got those investment counselors that can kind of help you navigate the waters. Because as, as, as much as we'd like to just automate everything, it really does take knowledge, experience and an overlapping of, you know, some, some helping hands, if you will, to, to make sure that you're investing in the right Way.

You know, you should approach everything in life with a high tech, high touch blend, right? And that's what we do, right. We're not just a technology company with a website. Right. We've of course got these tools, but then we've got people, investment counselors who really help people make decisions and guide them. And we have live events, I mean, if, if anyone listening, and of course many people listening already have signed up for our Oklahoma City Property tour and JHU and our Jason Hartman University live event. And if you come to that event, you're going to see properties that make sense. You know, you probably, many of you live in these areas like where Elizabeth lives, right, in an expensive market. And the thing to do is to diversify your equity out of that market. If you're lucky enough like so many of you to have a home that's appreciated dramatically, you've now got a bunch of equity in there. You know, get that equity out either by selling the property or at least refinancing the property so that the risk is now deferred from you. You know, you don't have as, as long as you've got a bunch of equity, you've got a very high risk asset there. If you've got less equity and the bank has more financing against that property, your risk has dramatically reduced. So at the very least get control of that equity, get it out of the property, strip it away from the property and buy sensible, conservative investment properties in places like Indianapolis, Little Rock, Jackson, Mississippi, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Atlanta, Jacksonville. Okay? Jacksonville, Florida, not to be confused with Jackson, Mississippi. Those markets are markets that make sense, okay, where you can get good rent to value ratios. And that's just critical because the bubble is coming for these highly overvalued markets. I don't know when it's going to come. You know, nobody knows the exact timing, but we are fundamentals are far in the rear view mirror in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle and Miami. I mean they're just, we're way past the point of being logical anymore and being prudent.

Yeah. I mean, it really does still create or it creates in my mind a vision of like there's two Americas, there's the ones on the coast, you know, that are these wild cyclical markets where there's lots of fluctuation bubbles that burst continuously, shortage of inventory, etc. And there's the stuff in the middle. And the stuff in the middle is just kind of got. It just chugs along and makes stuff happen.

Right, exactly. You know, it's just really consistent. I mean, it, it's what your friend Hillary Clinton called the flyover states. Okay, Those are the, those are the best places to invest, you know, I tell you. Okay, now we'll get political. See, Elizabeth and I don't agree on politics, listeners. Just so you know, we've had our, our spirited debates over this stuff. So anyway, but yeah, that's, you know, it is the flyover states.

I have one more question for you. There is another, another article that I saw that was talking about the Federal Reserve saying that there could be as many as three rate hikes this year alone. And as an investor, I'm going, oh, that's not great. What do you think that that's going to do to profitability for investors?

Well, like the old saying, Elizabeth, every cloud has a silver lining, right? The rate hikes are bad. If you didn't already already buy your properties, okay, that's bad because you're going to have to pay a higher cost to finance them. And just as a reminder, you know, certainly a lot of this stuff we talked about before, but every 1% increase in interest rates is equivalent to about 10% in housing price. Okay? So basically if the house is a million dollars and the rates go up 1%, then the price of the house needs to be $900,000. It needs to come down 100 grand to have the same cost of ownership. And that's approximate. It's not exact, it says estimate. How do you like that? Don't sue me. Okay, so you know, it's about a 10%, 1% ratio, okay? So that's the first thing. So the hundred thousand dollar house needs to come down in price $10,000 to offset the rate hike. Okay? Just so you know, the thing that happens with that is when you see higher interest rates, as we've talked before about the three dimensions of real estate, you see higher rents because all of the people who are now renting who have this dream of being a home buyer and owning a home, they get priced out of the market. Oh, and I got to mention something else, Elizabeth, let's just mention something else that's super important right now. This is interesting and you know, this is something I did predict and now it's happening. Okay? Again, credit scores are now the highest. The average FICO score in America is the highest it's ever been right now since they've been tracking it, it's about 700. The FICO, because here's what happened. All these people that declared bankruptcy or had foreclosures or had collection accounts during the Great Recession. Well, guess what? A lot of those things come off in seven years. So their credit reports now are awesome. And this means that now that's going to be such a stimulating effect to the economy, whether it means, you know, car sales, house sales, consumer credit, anything. But a lot more people are gonna be buying houses. And if your least favorite President, Donald Trump, okay, if he softens Dodd Frank and makes financing easier, there's gonna be, like, a tidal wave of money coming at real estate. And to slow that tidal wave, to cool the market a bit, the Fed will raise interest rates. Okay? That's what they do, you know, because that'll be an inflationary thing. Those other issues we talked about. And so the rate hike is actually great if you've already got your property, got your financing, your financing is fixed rate. It has the effect of pushing your rents up. You can raise rents much more aggressively, Elizabeth, in a market where you've got high interest rates because people aren't moving, okay? So you can really push those rents up. And that's a very important thing. When rates are low and everybody's running out, buying a house, you can't raise your rents or you can't raise them much.

Yeah. I like how you gave me my silver cloud on my depressing little.

I tell you, folks, after the election, Elizabeth was so depressed. I was worried about you.

You left me some voxer messages that were pretty doom and gloom. I had to, like, cheer you up.

Yes, you did.

Yeah. Well, the world didn't end yet. Trump tweets anymore. It might end.

Trump could start World War III with a Twitter account.

Scary.

I gotta tell you, I wouldn't be surprised.

Scary. Scary. Yeah. He's a really immature guy in a lot of ways. I mean, he's a. He's like. He's like a schoolyard kid in so many ways, you know?

Yeah. The image of him pushing the Prime Minister of Montenegro aside the other day.

Montenegro is a small country. Who cares? I'm just kidding.

Jason, Jason, Jason.

I'm joking.

But, you know, some of the good things that his. I wouldn't necessarily say him, but his administration are doing are things like loosening up Dodd Frank. And, you know, qu. Frankly, there's a lot of those regulations in there that are just. I understand the purpose, I understand the intent, but the effect just hasn't been there. Like, I've been on the, you know, on the side of setting up the SOX program for banks and for technology groups, and other than adding a whole lot of Money to, you know, big consulting firms, there's very little value. I mean, it didn't prevent that garbage that happened at Wells Fargo.

Explained to people, people what SOX is.

Oh, Sarbanes Oxley. It's a lot. It's a level of accountability that's required to ensure that fraud isn't occurring from the officers or the people with, inside of the bank. That, that I don't have access to so much information that I can affect somebody's account. That's the intent. And yet we saw something like, what was it, 8 million accounts were created without people's permission at Wells Fargo.

Yeah, Wells Fargo Fargo. Disgusting. I mean, I, yeah, I hate Wells Fargo. That's a disgusting company.

Yeah, I'm. But I'm sure that they pass their socks audits with flying colors every year.

Right, right. Yeah. So, Elizabeth, it's fair to just have you explain to the listeners for just a quick moment, what is your background? What do you do? So you're a technology person and you used to work for Washington Mutual and you would implement these, you know, very complex technology solutions tying in with their legacy systems and so forth in banks. You worked at Amazon.com, @t mobile. Just explain a little bit like about the Sarbanes Oxley and, or as you say, SOX program and kind of what you did there a little bit, because I think that'll be interesting to our listeners.

Yeah, so at the time, Sarbanes Oxley was just getting put into place and so I was actually one of the few.

Tiger team. I was part of the Tiger team in order to establish the SOX program.

Why is it called Tiger? What's that mean?

Tiger team is just a group of people that are getting ripped out of their day to day job to go solve a problem. They're all just pouncing on the problem. So they're pouncing like tigers, I guess. I don't know.

Okay, all right, got it, got it. Okay.

And was me and like four other people and you know, a small group of consultants establishing, you know, policies and controls across the whole bank. And so this was something that would actually impact the business processes on the business business side and on the technology side for every person that worked there and every customer that experienced doing any type of transaction with the bank. And so that's an example of a large scale initiative that I did at the very beginnings of the time in which SOX was being established. But historically my focus has been on business and technology transformation at scale. So division, department or enterprise level scale.

Yeah, good, good stuff. That's a tremendous background. It's really amazing. The knowledge you have is incredible. Yeah. Very deep. Yeah. But you prefer real estate, Is that what you just said?

Yeah, my passion for real estate really has taken over my. My passion for technology. So it's been. It's been really fun, you know, over these six years, getting closer and closer into real estate to the point that I can really, you know, that it's my day job now focusing on real estate, you know, hosting, co hosting with you the Women Network podcast, which is a lot of fun. Amazing guests going into that. Being able to have the time to participate in the Venture Alliance Mastermind group, which I adore, and it has added an incredible amount of value to me. And then also being able to have the time to go to, like, I'm going to the Oklahoma City property tour that's coming up, and I'm super excited about that.

Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. No, it's going to be great. And it's great having you involved with all that, Elizabeth. And you became a client of ours, what, about six years ago?

Yeah, yeah. I think 2012. 2012 is when we did our first purchase. I think 2011 is when we started, you know, attending meetings. Probably 2010 is when I started listening to podcasts. My husband was a little ahead of me, so he was probably, you know, late 2009, early 2010. And, you know, we've just. Just obsessively listen to. I think you're on episode 300 at that time, though.

Wow. Now we're on episode 842 today, right? So, yeah, really amazing. It's. I can't wait till we're on episode like 7362. It's. It's gonna be fun. I want to do this forever, so. Good stuff, Elizabeth. Well, hey, we gotta wrap it up here pretty soon, but folks, I hope you'll join us in our. Our Chicago Van Venture alliance event and also our Oklahoma City Property tour and Jason Hartman University live educational event there. Those are in June and July. The Chicago event is just right around the corner, literally. And then also I want to just say, Elizabeth, you kind of alluded to that, and we're going to be doing this with another one of our clients. If you're out there listening and you're a client of ours and you understand our content and what we do and our unique perspective on investing and so forth, you know, we'd love to be involved with you if you have something to contribute. You know, just let us know if you have an interest in real estate investing and what we do, we are helping incubate some more podcasts and so forth, and that's pretty fun. We're doing that through the Venture Alliance Group. You know, our biggest, best talent pool is always our followers and listeners. So we love all of you, and we'd love to hear more. I know so many of you have so much talent out there. We have so many clients that are these brilliant engineers, by the way, you know, and if you have something to contribute, if you're interested in what we do, you know, maybe it's not necessarily buying another property, although, you know, we're here to help you with that, of course. But just let your investment counselor know. Go to jason hartman.com, fill out a website web form, and introduce yourself, you know, and come to. The best thing is come to our live events. Okay? Come to Chicago, come to Oklahoma City, come to an event and meet us. And we'd love to meet you and hear more about you. And, you know, just maybe, maybe we can do something together. I mean, we're doing, you know, some creative business things with a lot of our clients. So. And we just love doing that. So I want to just let you all know that the door is open to you, and we just love to hear more of that. Elizabeth, where can they find the Women Investing Network podcast? Of course, on itunes and all the usual places. Right?

Sure. And then also we have a website, womeninvestingnetwork.com. all one word. And, Jason, I just want to make a comment about reaching out to the listeners, because, you know, we just talked about the fact that I was a listener, and when you're, you know, 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. Hearing the conversations.

Yeah, no question about that. You know, that's one of the things we really want to encourage all of you. Come to our events, meet our clients. A lot of growth in life takes place in really casual conversations. And that's what I learned from being involved in so many mastermind groups over the years, and then now starting my own is it's not always like the formal, although you learn stuff from the formal thing. Like, you know, when we're standing up there in front of the room teaching. Right. That has a value. But also it's the conversation you had with maybe me or, you know, one of our people, our staff at lunch or dinner, where you're having some drinks, or one of our clients who, you know, shares their experiences. Good, bad, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly. Right. And you get a real perspective, and there's something that becomes internalized. It's like a gut thing versus an intellectual thing. Intellect is important and. And, you know, that sort of empirical thing that's important, but also the sort of knowing that you can do it, too. When you meet these people and you get to know them in person and you kind of have this realization, either consciously or subconsciously, that, hey, look, you know, this person's doing incredible things. They've got a huge real estate portfolio, and they're just a normal person. I can do that, too. And that's at least for me. When I was in my first mastermind group, that was so. That's kind of what happened to me. And it really changed my life, I have to say that.

Yeah, it's really empowering.

Yeah, it really is good stuff. Well, Elizabeth, thank you for joining us again. And we appreciate you sharing all this stuff and bringing these articles up and letting me ramble on about them. And folks, join us for the events. Go to Jason Hartman dot com. Find out more there in the events section. And I want to wish everybody happy investing. Thanks for joining us.

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