CW 998 - Portfolio Reviews, Return on Equity & Global Real Estate with Eric Pichet

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome listeners from across America and around the world. This is episode number 998 and your host, Jason Hartman with episode 998. So we are coming up on episode 1000. We got a couple special things for you. We're going to do a, a review of course, which would be very apropos for this kind of momentous occasion. So that is coming up next week. So get ready, get ready, get ready for that. And today we will do part two of my discussion with Doug as we talk about portfolio reviews and portfolio makeovers. We have created a nice little piece of mini software, if you will, a little mini piece of software for this exercise. And I'm glad to have private one on one sessions doing portfolio reviews and portfolio makeovers with any of you who come to our Philadelphia event on May 9th 19th. So meet us there and enjoy the event on Saturday. And we will go from about 9am to 6pm registration at 8:30 Saturday morning. This is at a gorgeous hotel, by the way, that you'll love. And if you've already registered, you know the hotel name. We keep this highly classified for registered guest and attendees only. So that's why I'm not saying the hotel name. Just so you know. And, and so we've got that and we'll go about 6pm we've got two local market specialists coming to this event. They will be presenting their properties, talking about their markets, their management. And then of course I will be doing my Creating wealth original seminar. You know, I am the original investment counselor for this business. I am also the person who named them investment counselors. Now, many people in our little tiny cottage industry have since copied my name of investment counselor. You know, someone had to think of that originally and you know, someone is patting me on the back right now because I thought of that name. No Nobody else did. It was yours truly. Thank you for giving me credit. Okay, I will shut up about this now. Had to get it out of my system a little bit. So thank you for indulging me. But yeah. So we'll do one on one portfolio reviews and portfolio makeovers for you and I can't wait to use our snazzy software for that. As we sit down and do that on hopefully Sunday morning, that is the time we would like to do it. After you have attended the event all day Saturday, then the following weekend. I know that several of you have purchased guest tickets for the Venture alliance weekend in New York City. So thank you for doing that and thank you for joining us. We have one of really the best attended Venture alliance events coming up in New York City. So I'm really excited about that too. In the Big Apple Memorial Day weekend with the Venture alliance. If you're interested in that, go to Jason hartman.com really if you're interested in either event, click on events or talk to your investment counselor named by yours truly with our company and get more information about either of those events or both of them. Okay. Anyway, let's go ahead and dive in and continue this conversation with Doug. And then we have a guest today that will be talking about European markets. European European economy. Obviously, when you look at the European economy, that has a huge impact on the US Economy and the overall world economy and real estate markets. And we will also be talking a little bit about cryptocurrency. Oh yes, we've all heard just way too much about cryptocurrency lately, haven't we? But we have a guest expert on that today. So this will be kind of a three part show. So let's go ahead and dive in. And here we go, continuing our discussion from Monday with Doug talking about portfolio review and portfolio makeover.

So look it, let's take people through and just give them a little taste quickly because we got to get to our guest on what I'm gonna do for them if they want. It's optional on Sunday morning in Philadelphia, Sunday the 20th.

So basically what you're going to be doing is you're going to say, okay, we have this simple spreadsheet where I just want you to list out your kind of what your personal assets look like. You know, what's your primary residence, do you have a second home? Do you have any investment properties? Do you have stocks and bonds and IRA personal property you're checking and savings or your FICO score, because that's an asset.

I asked you to add that one, because that's an asset. Your ability to borrow is a big asset, folks.

Correct?

Say it. Yeah.

So then we'll say, right, what's the asset value? What's the loan balance? And then if you're going to disposition it, you know, what kind of haircut are you looking at? Because, like, if you want to sell a property, that's probably going to cost you about 7%. If you want to break open an IRA, that's going to cost you about 10%. If you want to sell a vehicle, that's probably going to cost you more than that. But then what that's going to get you to is, right, what's your real gross equity? And then look at what's your cash flow per year that you're producing on that? And then you divide those two numbers. That tells you what is your return on your real equity. And so in the case of, like, your primary residence, that number is going to be zero, because nobody gets cash flow on their primary residence. And for investment properties, that'll be higher. For your stocks, that'll be something because you get dividends. But then when you add all that up, you're going to say, for my whole portfolio, what is my return on equity? And for a lot of people, it's pretty low because you have a lot of equity sitting in assets that don't produce a very high cash return.

And I have a couple of names for that. I call it lazy money or sleepy money. And the important thing is, you know, look, if you owned a business or if you're a boss or a manager of any type, you would never want a lazy employee or sleepy employee. You want that person working for you. Right. You want them being active. Why do we let our money get lazy? It's. It's crazy. We got to make our money work for us, too.

Exactly. And so the. The whole idea is to say, okay, you know, you have a certain distribution of your net worth and your net capital, and let's say, if we reshift that around, can we create more value? Because ultimately, right, that's what entrepreneurs do. The actual textbook definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who takes resources and deploys them to their highest and best use. So you are taking your resources and finding their highest and best use and then taking those actions, and then in exchange for that, you're going to earn a higher rate of return. Yeah, this is what a company like Uber does, right? They take people's cars that they're not driving, find a higher and better use for it, and now they're disrupting industry and creating value for consumers. You're going to do the exact same thing, but create value for tenants because you are going to be providing a reasonable place for them to stay at a reasonable price. And hopefully you're not going to be a jerk landlord. And in exchange for that, you're going to get a rent that will help make you wealthy.

Absolutely. Okay, good, good stuff. So what does it look like? I mean, maybe share just an example quickly of, you know, what it looks like once this review is done, like from where to where, how much difference did it make in someone's life?

So, for example, I put a hypothetical example together where you had a combination of, say like a home, a local rental, etc. And you end up with about, I think, $700,000 of gross equity. Well, if you take that $700,000 and you said, okay, I'm going to invest in properties that average about $150,000 with a 20% down payment, a 4% cash review, and that are going to produce a return on equity of about 15%, which is I think, pretty standard for most of the stuff on your portfolio. That's going to result in a portfolio of about 15 properties. Well, if I do that, then the annual cash flow goes up by about $30,000 a year. And of course there's appreciation too. The appreciation is about the same. But I think the thing that's really important is if, when you get to where you're increasing your portfolio return on equity, now what happens is you can be producing enough cash per year to where you can purchase another property every year that will in turn help you produce more cash per year. The thing that's important about that return on equity construct is that not only does it tell you how to distribute your portfolio, it tells you when to redistribute your portfolio. So like, for example, one of the.

Questions, another way to put that is rebalance, right?

Balance your portfolio.

Because what happens, which is a great problem to have, and it's happened to me many, many times and I've shared on the show the example that I personally, with my own portfolio where I'll have a property that has appreciated the rents, never keep up with the appreciation. So I'll 1031 exchange out of that and do the two for one. I'll get two properties for one. Another client of ours shared on the show, they did a three for one. So they had highly appreciated property. And you know, it was an income property. But the rent never keeps up with the sales prices. By the way, folks, this is one of the things that's much better about residential real estate or single family homes than commercial real estate, because the vast majority of the time they just appreciate so much faster. Why is that? Well, because they're not sold based on the income approach. Commercial property is sold based on the income approach. And I'll freely admit that, you know, the income approach changes and cap rates go down in a highly appreciating, crazy market, but not to the extent that a residential property does. I mean, these just get way out of whack, which is good for you when you're a seller. It's wonderful, right?

Exactly. And another way that I'd articulate your point is to say that commercial properties are purchased and sold rationally, whereas residential properties are purchased and sold emotionally.

Embrace the irrationality. Like I say, embrace the fragmentation. Yeah, absolutely. And you can add value in, you.

Know, sort of fluffy ways.

You know, you put some paint on it, you put plant some flowers in front versus a commercial property. You got to go and actually create income. That's much harder to do.

Darn right it is. So now, when we keep going on this example here, we've produced a significant amount of additional return on equity per year. Well, I think the thing that's really important about that idea is that, say, as your properties appreciate, or let's say the price of something goes down, people say, okay, well, the price of my property just compressed. Do I sell it? I go, okay, well, one way to look at it is to say, say the price of property just dropped by 10% and your equity position just went down really low. Well, now your return on equity for that property is sky. As long as it's producing income, there's no point in selling it. Now, on the other hand, let's say that you have a personal residence that's doubled in value. You have a whole bunch of equity sitting there that's producing no income. Well, do you want to sell your residence? Maybe not. Maybe you like living there. Well, maybe you should refinance your residence so you reduce your equity exposure there and then redeploy that equity somewhere else where you can earn a higher return on equity and increase your portfolio. Roe. Sorry, it's roe, not roi.

Return on equity is the metric. Yes. And by the way, for those of you who've been listening a long time, you've heard me say that I don't think there is any return on equity. Return on equity is a false metric. Well, you know, sort of. Okay. I mean, the point is that the more equity you have, the worse the return gets. And the less equity you have, the better the return because it means you're more leveraged. Right. Everybody should understand that idea. And the concept of it not being a legitimate metric at all is the concept that the property will perform the same way regardless of the amount of equity you have. In other words, it will either appreciate in value or depreciate in value regardless of the amount of equity you have. And it will rent and produce the same income regardless of the amount of equity you have. And so to that point, I'll just give you the example. Does any tenant, or maybe when you've been a tenant, did you ever ask the owner or care about how much equity they had in the property or what their mortgage payment was every month? Well, you know, your mortgage payment is 1,500. Let me help you cover that. No, but no renter ever asked that. Okay. They do not care. They go by the market rent. They do not go by the seller's circumstances or the owner's circumstances.

Exactly. I mean, and in corporate finance, one of the reasons why return on equity is tracked so much is because it actually creates an incentive for corporate managers to reduce the amount of owner's equity on the balance sheet, either by paying out dividends, doing share buybacks, or by increasing debt leverage. So that the.

Which is exactly what we're telling all of you to do. Right. Exactly the same way the corporate finance bigwigs, and I'm sure we've got a few of those listening, by the way, reduce that balance sheet equity to create more diversification and better returns is the. Exactly. The technique we're using here, right, Doug?

Exactly. Yeah, it's the corporate types don't have to all be evil. There's plenty who are evil, but they don't have to all be evil.

Yeah, well, there's plenty of non corporate types that are evil too.

So, yeah, it's an equal opportunity state of mind.

Absolutely. Okay, good. What else do we need to know?

Well, I think the next thing we need to know is to have people come to Philadelphia because I think we're actually probably out of time for this, for this intro, but yeah, let's continue this conversation and definitely come to Philly so you can do this with Jason.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, Doug, thank you so much for sharing that. And let's get to our guest interview portion and hear from him and dive into that. So here we go. And by the way, for Philadelphia, jasonhartman.com click on Events and get your tickets thanks for joining us, Doug.

No problem.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Eric Pichet. He is professor and director of specialized master's program in wealth management and Real Estate management at the Kedge Business School. And he's coming to us today from Paris, France. Welcome, Eric. How are you?

Fine, thank you.

And you? Good. It's good to have you here. I love your accent. I guess I have an accent to you.

I hope that your auditors can understand my French accent.

Well, French is likely the most beautiful language on earth, so it's. It's great to have you here. You know, let's talk a little bit about the global real estate market. It seems like things have been booming in many parts of the world for. For quite a while now. Where are we in the cycle and what is your. Your global outlook?

You know, there is no such thing as a global real estate market.

In fact, I'm glad you said that. In fact, there isn't a national real estate market. All real estate is local. Good answer.

Not even at the national level. For example, in continental Europe, you have so many differences between. If you take the capital of each country, for example, in Paris, we have the prime rent at about $1,000 for square meter. For the office in Vienna, it's $300 per square meter. So it's completely different. But what you say is, in fact, effectively, we can see now that the cycle is about. We are probably at the same timing in the cycle in the different areas in the different countries. In America, probably you are a little ahead, and in continental Europe, we are just behind you. And that's probably the reason why there is some interesting investment still possible in continental Europe.

So let me just do a little conversion as to square meters and square footage, it's about 10 square feet to the meter, very roughly. If you say that the rent in Paris, for example, that would be.

I'm sorry, what?

The prime rent.

The prime rent. Okay, what do you mean by that?

The prime. The best. The best quality for. Right, for office. Yes, of course. In the center. In the center of Paris.

Got it, got it. And. Oh, now you're talking about office rents, not residential.

Office.

Okay, okay. We need to know if that's monthly or annualized, obviously, but forget about that. Can we talk about residential? On the residential side? That would be of greater interest.

Yeah, the same. But for example, in residential, you have so many differences. For example, between Paris and the big German cities, Paris is much more expensive, you know, probably two or three times. And if you compare Paris with the provincial cities, In France it's the same situation. You have a price of €10,000, so about €12,000 per square meter in Paris. After that, in Nice it's probably 4,000 and in the other provincial cities it's between 3,000 and 4,000. So you have very important differences. You have a big difference.

I talk about this on a global level constantly, Eric, but I'd like to get your perception of it. So we help investors from all over the world invest in properties all over the US and we basically divide real estate markets into three categories. And I think, I think it'd be interesting to hear your perspective on this. We talk about linear markets, cyclical markets and hybrid markets. And the cyclical markets are the high flying, high priced, high land value markets. So when you talk about prime rent, for example, in Paris or the German cities, etc. And I was born in Germany, by the way, when we talk about that, those would be the cyclical markets. And then the linear markets are sort of these kind of boring markets that kind of chug along, they appreciate. But it's moderate appreciation. When there's a downturn, the downturn is very moderate versus the high flying cyclical markets, the high price markets, the fluctuations are much greater. They're more like a, you know, if you were looking at a chart, they'd look like a roller coaster. Right. Or a graph, I should say. Can you speak to that at all? The cyclical linear and hybrid market. Hybrid just being in between the two. Kind of a, you know, in between the two. Do you view markets that way in Europe or around the world for that matter?

Not. It's, it's relatively stable, I think we don't have so, so important changes. As you can see in the United States, the market for housing markets, of course I speak about housing market, it's relatively stable, but we have huge differences between cities. That's absolutely clear from Paris and the other cities in France. It's completely different. For example, in Germany and the six or seven cities about at the same, at the same price, you know.

Yeah, and I'm not really addressing the issue of price directly. I'm more addressing the issue of appreciation and depreciation during the economic cycles over the course of decades. That's how we, you know, know which markets are linear versus cyclical. But it's kind of interesting because in Europe the real estate market is so different than in the US I would venture to say, and just correct me if I'm wrong, that the real estate market there is a more slow moving market. And I would say this for a couple of reasons. Number one, people, it's not as active. You know, people just don't sell their houses like they in the US It's a more sort of, to put it negatively, a disposable mentality like, hey, you know, we're gonna move. I mean, the US Is a very mobile country. I mean, the brokerage industry is much smaller in Europe because there's just not as many transactions that would be one factor. So you'd agree with that. And then the next factor would be that, you know, you have a lot more government interference in, in European markets. For example, you mentioned Germany. I mean, there's tons of rent control. I heard that in, in Germany you can even will your rented apartment. Wow. I, I may be wrong, but I have heard that for speak to some of that stuff, if you would.

Yes. And don't forget that in Europe, in each country you have a different language. So you people will not change. It's not so easy as in the United States.

More friction.

Yeah, yes, absolutely. Also the problem of taxation because when you buy a house in France, you pay about 8% of fees for buying the flat. You know, so it's very important.

Right, right. So in other words, when transaction costs are higher and languages vary and sometimes currencies vary, but not as much as they used to with the euro, obviously. And you know, countries and things vary and government level of government intrusion in the market varies, you have more friction. So the market is less fluid than it is in the States, Right?

Absolutely. And people are happy to stay normally in their flat or in their house for 30 years. They like to keep in the same place. And another thing is, for example, if you work in Paris, you can work 40 years in Paris without any problems with your spouse. It's very easy, you know, another important point, just to stay in the same place.

That's an interesting point too. So I would argue, and I don't mean to speak negatively about Europe when I say this, but I would argue that the US is a more upwardly mobile country and people can change their status more easily here because there's less government intrusion, there's less interference in the labor markets and so forth, and that makes it more fluid. And whenever there's more fluid, there's more volatility because things can change more quickly. Whereas like you said, in Europe, you can work for the same or in France, you can work for the Same company for 40 years. You got very strong labor unions and very strong labor laws protecting people and making it hard to Fire people and you know, so there's a good and bad to this, obviously. Right?

It is changing. It is changing. But you can change your job and stay in the same place. Yes, that's important also.

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, the friction is much more important.

Right. So the friction slows down, it lessens the cycle. Right. It smooths it.

The taxation section. Not only the taxation section, also.

Okay, well, talk about taxation. What about that?

Because when you buy a house, you pay 8% of taxi. Of taxes, you know.

Yeah, and that's very important. That's taxes only. That doesn't include the real estate broker.

The broker fees.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other thoughts about the linear cyclical markets? The changes, the volatility, where we are in the cycle or anything like that?

The problem, the cycle. In France, for example, you know, in principle we have seven years cycle. It's relatively easy if you see the history. For example, we had High in 1990. After that we had a low of the cycle in 1998 and a new high in 2006. And for France in general, in housing market, you have after that a low in 2014, you know, and now we are quite in the upside. But for Paris it's completely different because with the crisis in 2008, you know, people were very afraid from securities, from everything, you know, securities or the stock market and so on. They decided to buy exclusively real estate. And that's the reason why for 28, Paris is a city with an important upside. You know, the trend is always up probably because French people want to buy real estate because they are afraid from buying something else, you know.

So in other words, the money flows out of other investments because of fear.

Out of the stock market, out of the bonds. Because bonds, you know, in, In France, the 10 year bonds, it's 0.7%.

Right, right.

Okay, 0.7%.

Yeah. So. So the money, there's definitely a high level of interest in owning real estate there. But let's maybe compare that. And let's talk about the cryptocurrency mania. Reminds me of tulip mania that is going on. What, what is the view toward bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies there and around Europe in general?

Problem with Bitcoin, it's an asset. But it's interesting because a lot of people compare bitcoin with real estate, but in fact it's completely different. Real estate, it's a tangible asset and bitcoin, it's intangible assets. And the problem with the bitcoin, I think the technology is very innovative and probably useful. And I'm sure that the legacy of the bitcoin will be the use of the blockchain, the possibility to exchange with a decentralized system. It's probably something which is very important. But as people, for example, my students, you know, young people and educated people, not educated people, want to buy, to use these cryptocurrency as an instrument of speculation. I'm sure that we are now inside a typical bubble. You know, we are in the bubble. It was not the idea, probably not the idea of the founder, but now it is used as an instrument of speculation.

Oh, I agree. It's highly speculative and many people.

Assets.

You know, and when you buy, for example, collectibles, you buy stamps. Okay, you can see a bubble on the stamps.

Collectibles is what you said.

You can buy stamps, for example, if you have a bubble on the stamps, when the bubble bursts, will go burst, you have something material, you still own a stamp. With the bitcoin, you have absolutely nothing. It's zero. So that's the reason why the intrinsic value of the bitcoins is probably zero.

I would agree. And you know, what's so interesting about this, Eric, is that the bitcoin people and the cryptocurrency people, they're like the gold bugs in the sense that they say, well, you know, the dollar and the euro and other currencies are just fiat money. Right. But I mean, at least they're back by first of all, a military.

Of their various countries, our respective countries. They're backed by the rule of law in those countries. In fact, they are the law in the United States, the legal tender laws requires that you accept them in commerce. It's just crazy how they talk about the, the, the fact that they can be printed forever, but you can create a new cryptocurrency and a new one tomorrow and another one the next day and another one the next day. You know, there's no limit whatsoever. There may only be 21 million bitcoins, but there's no limit to the number of cryptocurrencies that can emerge. And you see that from all these ICOs. Right?

But don't forget the bubble in 2000, the telecom and you know, bubble in.

2000, the telecom and the dot com bubble, Right?

Yes, yes, it was exactly the same. Every equity in this sector, we are booming. You know, not just one. You have, of course, a lot of initial public offer to feed the population, the people who want to buy everything. And you know, at that time, and I think it's exactly the same situation.

I would agree with you. I think it's a bubble. I think it's very dangerous. People are buying cryptocurrencies with their credit cards, with their home equity. Boy, when this goes the other direction, we're going to have a lot of very sorry people out there. But hey, like I've said, I'd love nothing more than to be wrong about it, because I'd love to see an alternative to the, the central banking cartel and, and the government's unholy alliance with them. And I'm talking about every central bank and every government. Let's talk about the regulatory side of that. How, how are the cryptocurrencies viewed by the governments and central banks both in Europe and around the world? I would think unfavorably. This represents competition for the currencies like the euro and the dollar. They're not going to allow competition to just exist and crowd out their currencies.

In fact, you have two problems. The first problem is cryptocurrency. You have the word currency in it. And the problem is, of course, that cryptocurrency is absolutely no currency. It's not a store of value, not a unit of account, and not a medium of exchange, because a lot of people don't want to accept cryptocurrency. I think in Europe.

Central banks, at the beginning, they didn't consider that the cryptocurrencies were something serious, you know, and now with, of course, an amount of capitalization of about $200 billion for the Bitcoin, they are looking inside the box and a lot of people are, you know, we have some famous, what we can say for famous young girl who asks followers to buy bitcoins, even if she had absolutely no idea of what bitcoins could be. You know, at that stage, I think the central banks and the authorities are thinking about how to, not only to monitor, but probably also to prohibit the use of bitcoins. And I think we are now at. At this time in the cycle. So if, of course, if the bank de France or European Central bank decided to prohibit the use of bitcoin, you can imagine the situation, of course, so.

They are looking for ways to monitor or prohibit.

Monitor. The first stage would be probably to monitor and why not?

And monitor is really just another word for regulate. So monitor, regulate and. Or prohibit the use of these cryptocurrencies. And you see that going on in South Korea. They've made a very clear statement about cryptocurrencies that people are going to lose their money. And I think that these central bankers and governments are, they're going to shut this down. They're just not going to let it go. You know, why would they, they hate it. You know, like you said at first, they probably didn't consider it to be a threat or any real competition for their, their fiat money. But I think that's changing.

I think we will probably see maybe in the couple of months a lot of big countries, the G20 for example, saying well the Bitcoin is a tool for money laundering, It's a tool for terrorism, terrorism financing. So we have to prohibits it because of these use, you know. An excellent argument, of course.

Yeah, yeah. No, I completely agree with you. I'm not, I'm not bullish on this. But again, I want to state that I would like to be wrong about this, but I don't think I'm going to be wrong. Give out your website if you would and close up with any, any comments you have. Maybe a question I didn't ask you. This has been an interesting discussion.

Eric. T shirt.

Eric. E R I C P I C H E T F A right.

Yes, exactly.

Fantastic. Any closing thoughts you have?

No, it's clear. Thank you. It's very interesting to talk about these important questions.

Yes.

And exactly the good timing to discuss on that.

Very good. Well, Eric Pichet, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to itunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.