CW 981 FBF - Landlord Friendly Markets for Income Property Investors & US Dollar Power

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 hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing, fresh new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors. Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode 482. Thank you so much for joining me. Episode 482 today. And gosh, there's so much going on. It is amazing. I'm traveling, I'm at my Mastermind group here in Tampa, Florida and just been learning so much the past couple of days. It's amazing, truly amazing the power that happens when you put a bunch of bright people, myself excluded, I'm being humble for once, a bunch of bright people in a room together and let them brainstorm on things. For example, and this is what I'm really excited about with the Venture Alliance. And by the way, thank you all for your interest in the Venture alliance which if you're a new listener, the Venture alliance is the new mastermind group I'm launching and the tagline is your financial friends. Your financial friends. And I want to solve really one of the biggest problems that relates to commandment number three about why you should maintain control, why you should be a direct investor and solve that problem by putting bright people in rooms together who have resources, including financial resources and connection resources and knowledge resources and getting them together so they can do things together. They can evaluate deals together and do big deals. So yes, I met my real estate mastermind group. I proposed the idea here I'm with a bunch of people in a room that are all in the real estate business. They're in the trade, not consumers. I guess that's probably the way to refer to you, our listeners, as the consumers who are investing. And these people are also investing, of course, but they're also in the business of providing inventory to investors. So they would be. This would be like a business to business meeting, if you will, versus versus. When I talk with you, it's mostly, and I know not completely, it's a B2C a business to consumer type of discussion. So I'm in this meeting yesterday and I suddenly think, gosh, you know, look at all of the resources in this room. Look at how much real estate all of these people, about 30 of us in the room are responsible for. And I did the math and you know, just taking some educated guesses and I came up with the 30 people or not the 30 people in the room, but all of the different people, which adds up to about 80 in the entire group. Not all of them were there. And from my calculations, it looks like we are all responsible for over $700 million per year in real estate moving around. Okay. And being transacted maybe a lot more than that. That's probably actually a conservative estimate, but it's somewhere near the one billion dollar mark. And I'm thinking, you know, I've been thinking about starting a crowdfunding company and you know, I always go back to my commandment number three and think, you know, that's not really what I want to do. But if you can put some controls on it and make it more workable for the investor, it has some possibilities. I'd much rather be looking at something like that from people I know like and trust. Okay, Than sending my money to some Wall street criminal. Right? And criminal is used in the loose sense. What they're doing is mostly, but not always legal. But it's still a crime in my eyes because the investor just gets so ripped off. So just wanted to clarify that definition. And you know, it's amazing what you can do when you just put the resources of people together. So anyway, that's where I am. And I guess that was already the first tangent of the show because. Because what I was going to talk about is how when I walked out of my hotel room, of course there is either always a copy in the hotel of USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. Well, this morning it was the USA Today. And the front page article says bad advice costs billions. And then it says, Obama calls for new rules for financial advisors. Now here's the problem, okay? Whenever there's a new rule, it always seems to backfire and hurt the people it intends to help. One of the examples that I've cited many times, and most people, you know, they can't see the big picture. Most people are always Just looking at the micro picture, the people that are getting something from government who have the entitlement mentality are saying, well, you know, government should do this for us or it should do that for us, or it should give us free health care or it should raise the minimum wage. Well, on the micro picture, for a short time, you know, that usually works out very well and it's a good deal for the recipient. But on the macro picture, in the long run, it always works out poorly. So minimum wage, that's maybe a good example. All of the minimum wage increase pressure, which, by the way, you know, I'm all for people earning lots of money, but people really decide what they're worth in society. They decide whether they want to sacrifice a little bit of security for a little bit of opportunity. And they're always weighing that balance or they, you know, will improve their skills and get better jobs. Right? And so all of this is always at play. But I mean, you can see it as soon as that $15 minimum wage thing happened in Seattle, all of the talk was, you know, McDonald's is experimenting with more robotics to make burgers. And, you know, the robot never gets sick and it never sues you for unlawful termination. And, you know, all of these things and it always hurts. And then, you know, on the other end of it, the minimum wage increases always cause inflation. They always create inflationary pressures. And so, you know, you've got all these things at play. So here we go with, you know, Obama calling for new rules on financial advisors. Now, you know that I think the financial services industry is basically corrupt, okay? And he does, you know, he, in the article, they did quote Obama a few times, point out some good things here, and I'll just share a little bit of it with you. It says, Washington, President Obama called Monday for new rules requiring financial advisors to put their clients interests above their own. Now think about that. How can you make a rule about that? What kind of rule could you possibly quantify, delineate and enforce that would do that? I mean, this is human nature. You know, if, if people want to take advantage of someone, they're going to figure out a way to do it, okay? But it says, especially when it comes to retirement savings plans, quote, there are a lot of very fine financial advisors out there, but there are also financial advisors who receive backdoor payments or hidden FE for steering people into bad retirement investments that have high fees and low returns. Obama said in a speech to supporters at the AARP headquarters. Now, aarp, you know, they lean to the left, so you should know that. Okay? AARP headquarters in Washington. Obama said that, quote, conflicts of interest in retirement advice results in annual losses of 1 percentage point for affected persons. It can cut your savings by more than a quarter over the course of 35 years, unquote. Now, that is amazing because, you know, that shows the compounding effect of investments, and the compounding can be positive or negative. And it really is, when you play it out over time, very, very significant. So when you're looking at investing in income property and you're thinking, gosh, you know, I've got to make some sacrifices so I can buy a few more properties, is it, do I want to do that, or do I want to go on a nice vacation or do I want to buy a new car that will depreciate, or do I want to make some sacrifices today for the longer term? Delayed gratification, greater good for the future. And I say that it's appropriate to live a somewhat conservative lifestyle so that you can do something bigger. Capital formation has got to occur. That is how all wealth is created, through capital formation. Okay? And it's either your capital formation or it's somebody else's capital formation. And how does capital formation occur? Well, almost always, but there are a few exceptions. Through savings, through delaying gratification. That's where capital formation comes from. And so we've got to have capital formation. So, you know, I've given maybe the metaphor of the telescope before. And if you're. Everybody's looked through a telescope and maybe you're looking at the moon, and if you just accidentally hit the telescope and knock it off the moon, well, you're, you know, zillions of light years into interstellar space, right? And that's the same thing that happens, you know, because of that lever. The same things Archimedes talk about when he said, give me a lever long enough and I will move the entire world. It's the concept of leverage. So that's what happens when you form capital. When you delay gratification, you increase leverage. Don't be a spendthrift, because spendthrifts never get anywhere. However, I want you to balance that with this concept. And that is the balanced concept of rewarding yourself with small, reasonable rewards along the way of your journey. Make things a celebration. So you've acquired one more property. Have a small celebration. If you want to buy yourself, you know, a swanky pair of new shoes, then buy yourself a swanky pair of new shoes. You know, you want a new suit, get a new suit, whatever it is, you know, these Small, reasonable rewards along the way so that you set up your psychology to interpret things the way you want it to. You know, we need to trick our mind a little bit sometimes, don't we? So we need to reward ourselves so that we will keep doing the behavior that we want to encourage. And we know that delaying gratification important to long term goals. So just a thought there on current events there Obama is seeing that people are getting ripped off because of bad advice. And, and that's one of the problems, you know, with the Wall street investments. There's so many layers and levels and you got to peel back the onion and look at it in all these different facets. So it's not just the financial advisors, that's just the front door. Okay. Once you go into the house or go into the building, okay. When you're past the financial advisor, the front door and you know, if they haven't ripped you off, well then you've got all of these middle people. You've got to get past the high frequency traders, you've got to get past the investment banks that underwrote the stock. You've got to get past the board of directors that is always trying to reward themselves above the shareholders and get past all those conflicts of interest. You've got to get past the conflict of interest of the executives after you get past the board of directors. Right, because they all want to pay themselves huge bonuses and they all want to spend money on corporate jets and all of that stuff just whittles away the investors profits. You've got to get past Steve Jobs, you know, the late Steve Jobs, right. I mean everybody thinks Steve Jobs was this great guy and I do too. I mean I love Apple products and you know, he's obviously a visionary but you know, the experts talk all about his options backdating schemes and all of this stuff he did that wasn't kosher. There's just too many conflicts of interest. Be a direct investor, you know the drill. Right? Okay. Another thing I've predicted and I've been talking about this for many years and it goes back, it harkens back to commandment number nine. I know, I'm always talking about commandment number three. Thou shalt maintain control. Be a direct investor. Don't have the three major problems. You might be investing with a crook, you might be investing with an idiot. Assuming they're honest and competent, they take a huge management fee off the top. But what's the other one? Commandment number nine, that's another one. Well, there are 10 of them. Obviously, actually there's 20, but of the first 10 commandment number nine, thou shalt only invest where there is universal need. Thou shalt only invest where there is universal need. And where is their universal need? Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Remember the old saying that people need three basic things? What are they? They're food, clothing and shelter. So I say let them buy or rent because we're really long term buy and hold investors. Let them rent that shelter from you. I've talked many times about how office space is less needed because it can be outsourced overseas. I know lots of people that are engaged in the Filipino outsourcing movement where they're outsourcing to workers in the Philippines. And just as a side note, I have not had any success with that. I have tried it many times and you know, the offshoring thing has not worked for me. Okay. You know, I do know people that do it. They say it works. I'm not totally convinced, but whatever. We know that a lot of office jobs have been outsourced and offshored to India and the Philippines. Right? No question about that. But we also know that a lot of this office space demand has been outsourced to people's homes as people have home based businesses.

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I mean, I remember I was at a national. I used to be a member of the National Speakers association, otherwise known as the NSA, which is located in Tempe, Arizona. I was a member of NSA for 10 years. I remember I was at one of their meetings or their conferences and one of the speakers was asking a question of the speaker who was up on the podium, up on stage, and they were saying, well, you know, when I'm running my speaking business, I just don't know what to do. I mean, you know, I'm sort of ashamed of saying I work out of the house. And it's funny how things change, isn't it? Because that was probably 15, maybe 18 years ago that I remember someone asking that question of the speaker, thinking like, what do I do? Do I go to. I think back then it was mailboxes, etc. Or something, not the UPS store. Do I get a PO box or do I just not print my address on my letterhead? Like anybody even uses letterhead anymore. See how, see how things have changed. And she was really, you know, concerned about her image and about how this might be perceived by potential clients. And now, like, you know, half the population probably works out of their House, you know, it's, it's amazing. I mean, I work out of the house. You know, three and a half, four years ago, I gave up our last office and made my company virtual. And everybody likes it and it works great and there's lots of technology to support the that type of thing. And it's changed so much. But there's an article here on the Newser app and Newser website and it says you're losing your office space. And so this is another factor. And this just plays into the market of office space investing. So we didn't even talk about industrial properties or retail properties. And those are under huge pressure too. But it says the American workplace is getting smaller. In 2010, there was an average of 225 square feet of office space per employee in North America. In 2012, that figure was down to 176 square feet, according to the New York Times. And this is based on data from a real estate association. The group expects the number to drop to 151 square feet by 2017, according to Time magazine. Okay, and in New York City, things look even tighter. Now there you've got a very expensive real estate market. Obviously. A survey of 10 new office spaces cited by the Times found that the average amount of room per worker was 120 square feet. Okay. With the maximum at 178 square feet and the minimum at 93 square feet. So this may not sound like a big deal to you, but think of the percentages. Remember how I talk about how everything should be quantified in relevance in a relative matter in percentages? So if the average size is just five years ago, this is only five years was 225 square feet per employee. And now it's 176 square feet. That's a huge difference from a percentage basis. So if you were an investor in office space properties, you would see how employers are just not tolerating big office expenses anymore. I mean, that's what that says to me. The trend is moving away from office space. It's moving toward the mobile virtual worker. And listen, I understand this is not exactly news, I get it. But when it's quantified in these types of numbers, it's really interesting. I mean, you know, 93 square feet per employee. Wow, that's a big difference. So invest where there is universal need. Invest in housing. That's where a lot of this office space need has been outsourced. Besides being outsourced to India and the Philippines and other offshoring locations. And other less expensive real estate locations around the US So very, very significant. And don't forget, when it comes to retail property, the other type of investment, and I love talking to these commercial real real estate people, you know, oh, I'm very sophisticated. So I'm going to buy some shopping centers or some high rise skyscraper office buildings, you know, and right in front of you, you have the most historically proven asset class. The good old humble but lucrative single family home. Right. Housing, housing, housing. I love housing. Okay. And you know, of course people make money and all sorts of real estate. I understand that completely. Apartments being my second favorite, mobile home parks being my third favorite. And after that it gets kind of murky. Okay, so let's talk about the humble US dollar, the one that I'm gonna pick on them again. Peter Schiff and all the doomsayers predicted would just be die, you know, and all the people I interview on my holistic survival show, they just predicted that the dollar, the end of the dollar, you know, the dollar crash, the dollar complete dollar debasement. And all of the gold bugs and all the bitcoin people, they all say the dollar is doomed. Really? Well, according to Business Insider our just a couple of days ago, it says the US dollar is the most crowded trade in the world. Hear that again? The US dollar is the most crowded trade in the world. It says going long on the US dollar is the most crowded trade in the world. And over the last several months, this has been among the best trades in the world. So here's a quote in that article. It's by someone named David Rosenberg, and it says there are certainly plenty of reasons why the greenback should be the world's currency darling. But at some point, all of the news is in the price. In other words, it's priced in to the asset, okay? Whether it be the dollar, whether it be real estate, whether it be a stock, whatever. That concept of being priced in the news is already priced into it, whether it be up or down. We may well be there in terms of the US dollar story, which looks long in the tooth, even if not totally over. So now it's interesting, right? This guy is saying that, you know, long in the tooth means it's old, right? It's old news. And he's saying that that doesn't look good, okay? And it's just too far. It's a bubble. Maybe it is, okay, maybe it is. But still, the dollar, I mean, just think about it. The dollar is backed by the most powerful military the human race has ever known. And If. If people who are gold bugs and bitcoin believers and bitcoin bugs and cryptocurrency and alternative currency and cyber currency, you know, call it by whatever name, think that the US Government, the US Military, and the central banking cartel, which is led by the US Central banking, you know, the crooked cartel, we have the Federal Reserve. Right. If anybody is silly enough to think that these most powerful entities on earth will stand idly by, well, people destroy or allow their currency to be destroyed. They are out of their mind. I mean, you know, I love how the bitcoin people and the gold bugs talk about this. They say, oh, you know, they can't control it. You know, the government doesn't know how much gold anybody has. It's stashed away in safe deposit boxes or under the mattress or buried in the backyard. And using the. The midnight gardener thing that Howard Ruff, when he was on my show, talked about, these gold bugs have been basically wrong for decades. And, you know, I totally see their arguments. I completely get it. I've entertained their arguments for years now. And. And then they say, well, the government can't control cryptocurrencies. It can't control bitcoin. Are you kidding? It can just make it illegal. I mean, you know, oh, well, bitcoin's got such unique characteristics. It has this cool technology called the blockchain. So what? The blockchain is open source. The government can make a new cyber dollar tomorrow. It can put a blockchain in it, and it can have all the characteristics that make bitcoin so great, theoretically. And they can stamp the label on it, you know, call it bit dollar or cyber dollar or whatever they want, or just call it the new dollar, and boom, there it goes. Okay, now why is this important? Why does it matter to us as investors? Because while the dollar may be strong now, the ultimate business plan of governments and central banks has to be inflationary. And I know they're defying gravity at the moment, and they really weren't defying gravity until about one year ago. About one year ago, they started to kind of go off the reservation. And the spending hasn't really seemed to affect the dollar. And maybe it's because of technology. Maybe it's because of everything Jim Norman talked about on the show recently in terms of oil, in terms of the futures market, and that being the reason that oil is controlled as a weapon of war. I mean, look what's going on in Venezuela right now. It's a disaster. I mean, Venezuela's new leader, a relatively new Leader, I guess has basically come out and said that he will not tolerate dissent, okay? Frickin dictator. You know, see how long that lasts. You know, these dictators used to be able to do this for decades and decades and decades, but they never even last. I mean, the Soviet Union never lasted. China, you know that. The Cultural Revolution. Don't you love the labels people give this stuff? The People's Republic, the Cultural Revolution, you know, the Democratic Republic of North Korea, it's just hilarious, right? Talk about a total misnomer, right? They never last. But in a connected world, and you know, Venezuela's connected, Iran is connected, North Korea not so much, Cuba not so much. But ultimately these whole things will just fall apart. And basically look at what's happening. I mean, Venezuela is falling apart because of the oil prices. Now granted it was falling apart before, but it's really falling apart now. So, you know, as Jim Norman talked about, maybe deflating oil temporarily is the way to just kill the regime and to ruin it. I mean, Hugo Chavez is gone. I guess he was Obama's friend. Who gives Obama his books? Remember that? You know, I don't know. You know, maybe that's overplayed in the media and the conservative media, I'm not sure. But the ultimate plan is that the dollar will probably remain the reserve currency of the world for many, many years, if not many decades to come, and the dollar will be slowly inflated away unless. And the only thing I think that can really stop that ultimate inflation is an incredible exponential technological revolution that is evenly distributed to all classes in the United States and really all classes of people around the world. And this may happen. This may be the thing that saves us from the inflationary pressure that is totally baked in already. For the real inflation to happen, the government does not need to continue its poor management and its poor spending for the next 30 years. It's already baked in. It's there. And the only thing that can legitimately stop it for the long term is technology. So we shall see, you know, how much impact that technology has. It's impossible, impossible to estimate. I don't know the answer. You don't know the answer? Nobody knows the answer. But whatever happens, I'll bet the dollar is still going to be the reserve currency. That's where I place my bet. And apparently a lot of other people think so too, because it's the most crowded trade in the world. Okay, what else? Gosh, let's just review a couple of these commandments for just a moment. I want to go back to that. So before I go today. Let's just talk about a couple of these other commandments because I've been thinking about them a lot lately here. I gave a speech to my mastermind group yesterday and talked about just a couple of them. You know, we talk about commandment number three. Let's review number five. Well, actually number four for a moment. Thou shalt use prudent financial planning techniques. And you know, I haven't talked about these in a long time. You know, maybe. Did we do a Flashback Friday episode recently on the Ten Commandments? I don't think so. I think someone asked for it, but we didn't get to that one yet. So that'll come up, we'll get to it soon. I mean, look, this Ten Commandments stuff, I wrote this ten years ago, okay? This is ten year old stuff. And it's amazing how it's written in a way. The Constitution was meant to be written with something called abstract flexibility so that it could apply 200 years later or 235 years later or whatever the exact number is. Our country is. It's got applicability in all market cycles, you know. And so number four is thou shalt use prudent financial planning techniques. So in commandment number three, I talk about the evils of Wall Street. I talk about how Wall street is the modern version of organized crime. But in number four I talk about something that Wall street brings to us that is actually valid and good and that is financial planning, the concept of financial planning. So rather than the financial planning being diversify, have that pretty little pie chart of modern portfolio theory. And by the way, two little notes on diversification.

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Generally speaking, diversification perpetuates wealth that someone already has and concentration or focus not being diversified, bedding the farm, if you will, that is what creates wealth. So diversification is largely considered to be a prudent conservative strategy and concentration is largely considered to be a risky strategy. But I remind you of Dale Carnegie's famous quote and I think it's a very good one. And I remember when I read how to Win Friends and Influence People, I think I was 17 years old when I read that book. My mom gave it to me and you know, it's a classic. Obviously it's a great book. They probably need to update one and write it for the modern world because nobody has that much time to win friends and influence people anymore.

And to be that courteous, it's just not the way the world works now, there's still some very, very good principles, obviously, and that's, you know, that's a perennial best selling book. And so Dale Carnegie said, put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket. Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket. Well, I submit to you that you can do both, that you can have the best of both worlds when it comes to income property. Because with income property, all real estate is local. So you can diversify geographically, yet have all your eggs or most of them in the asset class. Okay? So you can own in Memphis, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and you can be diversified into three good markets. And it doesn't have to be those three, you know, could be three different markets, you know, could be Little Rock and Dallas, you know, it doesn't matter, whatever markets, but you can diversify geographically in the most historically proven asset class. So that's something to think about. But when it comes to financial planning, we all need to consider our investment goals. Are they appreciation, are they income, are they tax benefits? What is the investment goal? What is the time frame for that goal or the time horizon? And then what is your risk tolerance as an investor? So we have lots of investors come to our firm and they will say that they're not sure what they are, you know, they're not sure what the risk tolerance is. And so we never put people into highly risky markets like California, New York, Miami, you know, those are too crazy, too risky. Okay? But what we do is we put them into, we take this sort of middle ground and within that middle ground there are, are some markets and some properties that are likely, we think at least, and we could be wrong, but we think from, you know, vast experience in doing this and doing business in 48 cities nationwide and doing this for more years than I want to even admit doing this for so long. There are some markets that we think will have better capital appreciation potential and other markets that, that we know right now today have better cash flow potential. And so we'll take the more risk tolerant investor and we will help them design a portfolio of properties that is in this more capital appreciation oriented market where if we have a bump in the market where we have silly, loose money supply and inflation, they're really going to benefit. You know, if they're really conservative, we will put them all in the cash flow oriented markets. If they're somewhere on the middle of that scale, we'll put them into a blend. And then we also take into account what I didn't mention here as part of financial Planning, but it should be part of it is the psychology of investing and the personality of the investor. So probably most of you, or maybe even all of you listening, have studied the Myers Briggs Temperament Sorter or the DISC profile or the Kolbe. And I think that's K O L B E the col. A lot of people in my mastermind group talk about the Colby. I don't know what it's called, Personality assessment test or really character assessment. And so you've taken one of these tests or you know, maybe you just read about your horoscope. Something there is probably pretty accurate, right? It's interesting. So, you know, are you the investor who likes to roll up your sleeves and doesn't mind getting your hands dirty and wants to, you know, do a little bit of this themselves? Now, when I say that, I don't mean swinging a hammer and fixing up a house because our, our clients never do that stuff. I mean, all our clients are professionals that are entrepreneurs. They're too busy with their own stuff or their retired and they just want to build a big investment portfolio and have a bunch of income properties. So it's not doing it yourself in that term, but it's doing it yourself, being maybe more engaged in the process, more emails, more phone calls, more decisions. Or is the personality of that investor the other way, where they don't want to deal with anything, they just want the done for you program. And so we will try and pick. And you may not even know we're doing this, but we are. Okay. We're gonna try and assess your personality type as the client and guide you to the markets that we think you will be best suited in. And it doesn't always go right because there can always be an outlier property or an outlier situation even in the market that is the easy market with the really good, easy provider, you know, and maybe that provider is super great and they make the job of investing easy. And by the way, you know, I want to one of the speakers today in my mastermind group, he said, there is no such thing as passive income. And I cheered. I couldn't agree more. It doesn't exist. It doesn't even exist in the bank. It does not exist. True. A truly passive investment is. It's a unicorn. It doesn't exist. Okay, but you can get pretty close with income property. It's about the most passive great investment out there. And you can be as engaged or as unengaged as you want to be. And if you want to be really unengaged, that means you Gotta have people do it for you. Okay? So we're going to assess the personality of that investor and try and be a matchmaker and match them with the right local market specialist and the right market at the same time doing both of those things. Commandment number five, thou shalt not gamble. The property must make sense the day you buy it or you don't buy it, period. Thou shalt not gamble. If you're the kind of person listening who is looking to throw the dice and to gamble on big appreciation and have, you know, massive negative cash flow today, then you go by in Orange County, California, where I used to live and good luck to you. That's just not our thing. We just don't do it. Okay? It's just not our thing. So we really focus on the conservative cash flow oriented investor. But there is a spectrum within that. Just like I was saying with the, the financial planning number six, thou shalt diversify. And we talked about that, all your eggs in one basket. Watch that basket. Diversify. Geographically, all real estate is local. And when you look around the country up until this last downturn, the historic Great Recession, the worst economy in seven decades, do you know there was never actually a national downturn in housing prices since the Great Depression seven decades earlier? That's pretty amazing. There were lots of little local downturns, but there was never a national one. At least from the stats I have. Pretty amazing investment, isn't it, that, that you could actually say that Number seven, thou shalt be area agnostic. Don't get attached to any one area. Be willing to shift. And just in closing here, because I do have to go and I've got to get this taped to the editor, I want to just Review the Lucky 13, the Lucky 13 Fundamentals of investing and how these all play in to market selection, property selection and as a bonus provider or local market specialist selection, okay, Cost of living, transportation, employment and job growth, education, regulatory climate. And that means growth, rent control, taxes, etc. And what I mean by that one, I'm just going to take a moment on that. Landlord friendly markets. We look for landlord friendly markets and if it's not a very landlord friendly market, then there's got to be something big to offset that landlord unfriendliness. So for example, Illinois, we just started doing business several months ago in the Chicagoland area that's not very landlord friendly. You compare that to Little Rock, Arkansas and you're going to have a much friendlier landlord climate in Little Rock, Arkansas. Because Arkansas is the most landlord friendly state in the Union, bar none. I mean, it's far and away the most landlord friendly state. There's got to be an offsetting factor. So what is it in the Chicagoland area? Well, I'd say it'd be appreciation potential and very, very good rent to value ratios. Okay, so, you know, you gotta weigh all of these things in the equation. All right, Number six, weather, crime, culture and arts, health and health care, fun and recreation, overall quality of life, population density and real estate market trends. And part of the real estate market trends issue and the growth issue, which we kind of touched on in two ways, number three and number 13, is something called the path of progress. Progress is largely considered to be growth and population, which, you know, there's an argument as to whether that's actually progress. Okay, but let's just use this standard definition. You know, growth in the economy, growth in consumption, growth in population. None of this stuff is usually very good for the environment, at least in the short term. But what the environmentalists don't realize is that those people become resources and they solve the problems they create. That's a good thing. They basically recycle in a sense there because they solve problems they create in many ways. So it's not that old Malthusian idea of, you know, we're gonna run out of resources and pollute the world to death because people are a resource, okay? And that's where most of the innovation comes from. I mean, people can think of amazing things and create amazing solutions. You know, they always do it for profit, for their own personal gain. And it just shows you the incredible power of capitalism. So the path of progress. This is why areas that are really, really, really deeply blighted just aren't really on our radar screen. And many people have asked, and I always make jokes about it and tease about Detroit, for example. Right. Well, you know, there are some signs of life in Detroit. There are some green shoots. I mean, I'm gonna be there soon, so I'm gonna check it out. Of course, everywhere I go, I'm looking at stuff. I'll let you know. So far, I'm unconvinced, but you know, all of my theories, for them to work, you've gotta have stable or increasing population. That's what I really submit to you. When you have a declining population.

You know, this stuff is all. It all comes up for grabs. It all comes up for question. Okay, well, that's it for today. Go to jasonhartman.com We've got some phenomenal properties up there in the property section@jasonhartman.com Take advantage of those last few Meet the Masters Home Study courses. They're almost gone. As I've said, they're deeply discounted. It's a physical product. I will ship it out to you and you can have that in just a short time here. So order those last of the Meet the Masters Home study courses@jasonhartman.com in the store section and I will look forward to talking to you on the next episode. We've got Flashback Friday coming up on Friday, and then on Monday we'll be back with a regular episode. So happy investing and thanks for listening. What's what's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn about investing in and managing income properties for college students, there's a show for that. If you want to learn how to get noticed online and in social media, there's a show for that. If you want to know how to save on life's largest expense, there's a show for that. And if you'd like to know about America's crime of the century, there's even a show for that. Yep, there's a show for just about anything only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store.

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