Inflation, Market Cycles and Where to Invest Now | Real Estate Investing
In this interview, host Jason Hartman and a Florida market specialist discuss how macro‑economic forces, especially the Federal Reserve’s tapering of asset purchases, are influencing the U.S. mortgage market and real‑estate cycles. They explain that the reduction in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s purchasing limits has been offset by a surge of private and portfolio lenders offering competitive, less‑bureaucratic loans. A massive wealth effect—homeowners in high‑cost states like California and New York cashing out equity and moving to cheaper markets—has driven up prices in many secondary markets, particularly in Florida. The conversation moves into concrete market‑cycle indicators (inventory levels, days‑on‑market, population trends) and how rents typically lag price appreciation but are now rising sharply. The specialist outlines their build‑to‑rent and new‑construction strategy, detailing off‑market land acquisition, the split between raw and finished lots, permitting timelines (10‑12 months post‑pandemic), and partnerships with national home builders. Specific Florida metros—Jacksonville, Palm Coast, and Ocala—are highlighted for their affordability, population growth, and strong rental demand. They discuss rent‑optimization tactics, including re‑tenanting, 1031 exchanges, and the advantage of institutional landlords (e.g., American Homes 4 Rent) who can raise rents more aggressively than mom‑and‑pop owners. The interview concludes with a bullish outlook for Florida, describing the state as being in the “second inning” of a nine‑inning real‑estate game, while legacy high‑cost markets are in “overtime.”
Chapters
To get a cracker box in the socialist Republic of California or New York or whatever, it's a million bucks or more. There's like an instant wealth effect. Everything looks so inexpensive to them that they're bidding up the price of properties in all of these markets that we operate in. Today. We are going to talk with one of our great local market specialists about the market cycles, the economy, what states have the action, where are people going, what does that all mean? And are we about to fall off a real estate market cliff? Why? Because the Fed is reducing or outright ending itself long asset purchase program that some say got us through the pandemic. You know, in addition to printing a bunch of fake money out of thin air. So first thing I'd like to jump into with you is some are saying and the doom and gloomers always get more attention than everybody else, right? That this situation with the Fed planning to end their purchase of mortgage backed securities and other assets, that that is going to cause the mortgage market to dry up and in turn cause a real downturn in the real estate market. I don't really think so because of course we've got the Hartman comparison index that asks the question compared to what? And shows people that houses are actually historically still pretty cheap. They're not as the cheapest they've ever been, but they're pretty cheap, believe it or not. And you know, look at prior episodes for more information on that. When you compare it to a whole host of other things. But also, and this is what's interesting, and you see it every day, is that people are using equity. They're trading equity that they have in other properties or in stock accounts. There's just a huge wealth effect. People are sitting on assets and cash and they just don't know where to deploy it. So that's the thing that is hard to interpret and it's also the thing a lot of the naysayers and the detractors miss about the marketplace. What are your thoughts?
It was interesting if you remember several months back, I remember you and I chatting on it when Fannie and Freddie announced that big purchasing decrease to where a mortgage company could only they were only buying 7 to 9% of their portfolio investment property. And that became kind of a big concern going wow, is it going to dry up? The interesting thing that we saw happen was all of a sudden all of these non conforming which just basically means non Fannie, non Freddie, people stepped up and, and Jason, the products they were creating were almost.
They're not bad.
No, they're Very close to Fannie Freddie. And why? Well, because these same groups did the subprime back in 06 and 07, which we all know didn't end well. Now they're saying, okay, maybe we can't make those big yield spreads we were looking for, but investors who are putting 20 to 25% down, gosh, we can make a pretty good spread still on that. Maybe not match Fannie and Freddie, but pretty dang close. And we'll let you go over 10 or we'll look at that. So I saw a lot of new money sources step up months ago when that announcement happened. And that gives me some comfort because I think now the Fed is not as almighty as they sometimes think, that there's other people stepping up around them.
I think you're right. So just to explain a little bit about what you're talking about, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Fannie Freddie are the two big secondary mortgage market players that really support the mortg and make it so unique in the entire world, the US Mortgage market. And they're government sponsored entities that essentially when you're buying real estate in the United States, if you're getting a Fannie Freddie loan, or even if you're not, because there's a knock on effect, you are getting a form of welfare and you should take advantage of it. Look, you pay taxes. This is why you pay taxes. And you not only pay taxes directly by a check to the IRS every year or your state as well, and in a million other ways, but you also pay it in inflation because they're inflating away the value of our dollars and that essentially is a tax. So they curtailed the investment property loans months ago as you were mentioning. But that just didn't have any big huge effect on the market like some thought it would, which is great. But what, you know, these other players, these private companies, these portfolio lenders, whether they be private equity groups, hedge funds or just other businesses of different sorts, have come into the mortgage market. And they've come into the mortgage market over the past decade or more, but they even stepped up more so recently when this happened. And they make pretty darn good loans. The deals are, they're not as good as Fannie Freddie, of course, but they're pretty darn good. And the rates are very competitive, the terms are very competitive, the qualifying is much eas, a lot less paperwork, a lot less hassle. But this is a result of the fact that there is so much capital sloshing around in the world looking for a place to Go. So those investors are essentially making these loans to people, right?
Yeah. Where can they go right now? And again, you have to look at the last crisis to where we are now. We can't tell what's going to be ahead, but going, wow, we decided to go with owner occupied people with bad credit scores and no money down and even sometimes a check at closing that didn't work out so well. So they're saying, okay, hold on, let's look at this investor market. How can it perform? Okay, we're not going to ask for 5 or 10% down. We want 20 or 25% right there. Their risk goes down. And now also what they're getting their money at, this size makes a difference of what these hedge funds and other big institutions are getting their money at. They can charge us, make a nice spread and we're seen as a lower risk factor, right?
Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of alternative mortgage products out there nowadays and that's just great for investors. It's great for the entire market. So you've studied market cycles quite a bit. Where do you see the market now? And of course, I have to make the disclaimer before you answer. The United States doesn't have a national housing market. All real estate is local. There are over 400 MSAs or metropolitan areas in the U.S. there are over 3,100 counties and way more than that, cities and neighborhoods. Of course, I don't even know the numbers. So a lot of markets, and we like to work in those linear and maybe hybrid ish markets too, not the cyclical markets. We're both recovering Californians, as you like to say. I love that. I love it. One of my best life decisions was leaving California 10 years ago. It really was.
Ditto, ditto.
When did you leave California, by the way?
I left California, it was around 04. I started journeying to Florida and buying property and saying, huh, maybe I should be here. So. And then I was fully there by 05. So.
But in Florida, right? Yeah, yeah, good. By the way, let me just throw one anecdote in there. Some of you may remember the late Ronald Reagan's famous speech when he converted from Democrat to Republican. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild. And in this speech, it was a great speech, by the way, he said, I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me. And I'd say the same thing about California, you know, and you probably agree, I didn't leave California. California left me. Okay?
And when I left, it was 9.9% state income tax, I believe by the time you left it was like 13.5.
13.3.
Yeah, 13.3. So they continued to get worse. So it's funny you bring up California. Unfortunately, there is no way to put on colorblind glasses and not look at political climates. Now there's just. There's just no way. It doesn't matter what side you fall on. But certain areas are very unfair and unjust to landlords. Right now I have friends in upstate New York who have not been able to collect rent for 14 months. Now the moratorium is on their rents, but not on the mortgage payments that they owe to the big banks, not on insurance premiums owed to the insurance. And God forbid you went after the property taxes. Taking a moratorium. No, no chance. So you have to look at these things. So that affects the cycles, Jason, and this is something very interesting about property cycles we don't see. And one of the main things that you and I have talked about time and time again, we have to look at a couple of factors. What are the days on market? What are the inventory levels now in 06 and 07? And again, looking at individual areas, areas like in California, where I used to be, Bakersfield, all of a sudden it went from 4 months average on market to 11 months. And then all of a sudden, you know, it went from 1800 houses on the market to 6000. That was in just the central coast of California, Central Valley of California. You have to look at these things. And right now it's different in other areas. You know, I'm seeing especially again population growth or deduction in these areas, there's deduction. So you have to look at that. I would not want to.
You mean the population's declining? Right.
That's what you mean to say deduction in population. So they're going down right now. So I think that's going to signal. I don't see how there'd be not a downturn in that market or an absolute softening, whereas other areas are going to be propelled into a second linking of an upswing.
Yeah, right. And that's what people have to realize is that no matter what happens externally, the Fed is tapering asset purchases, interest rates, you know, not really going up in any significant way yet, but they will sometime all of these other factors. The fact is, people have a wealth effect. They have a lot of capital, whether it be an equity in properties or stocks or savings or whatever, cryptocurrencies, doesn't matter. And that capital is looking for a place to go. And when These people leave the. These coastal markets. And I'm kind of not including Florida because Florida, even though many of the markets are coastal, they're still very inexpensive comparatively. They leave and they think, oh, well, to get a cracker box in the socialist republic of California or New York or whatever, it's a million bucks or more. There's like an instant wealth effect. Everything looks so inexpensive to them that they're bidding up the price of properties in all of these markets that we operate in. So all of this macroeconomic doom and gloom stuff doesn't matter to the individual who thinks, okay, how much more can I get in Florida or Georgia versus coming from one of these states? That's very business unfriendly, that's overpriced. That's how they think on a microeconomic level. Right, for sure.
For sure. And I think that you can't deny that there is such a power. And you and I, as you joked, we're recovering Californians. If you're willing to pick up equity and move it to a different area with different fundamentals, it just gives you an unfair advantage. If you're trying to pick up equity and move it within an hour of where you are or two hours, and those hindrances that you just talked about are still there, it's really tough. But just like you and I said, hi, I could sell a house in Bakersfield, California, and buy three houses, almost cash. And this is again, 17 years ago.
Or what if you're selling a house in New beach or Irvine or Los Angeles or Santa Barbara, San Diego, there.
You know, you can actually move into a nice place here, almost buy five properties that produce an instant business for you and cash flow. And it's just what people say, oh, it's a. Well, but it's humid. It's not that humid.
Yeah, no, it's. It's really not. Actually, the weather's been quite nice this year. It has. You know, and I went to the beach this morning and I do that a couple times a week, and it's just quite nice, you know, I mean, maybe you don't want to be at the beach in the middle of the day. Right. That'll be a little bit hot. But the rest of the year, it's much better here than it is in California, and certainly it's always better than it is in New York. So. Yeah, yeah.
No snow shoveling here. That's for sure.
That is for sure. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. So what else is there to that market cycle? Talk to us more about that.
An Important part is also return on investment. Will you still be able to, as you said, get into an area with a good affordability index, meaning the average wage compared to the average median price home? And what is return on investment for an investor? Can you still get an ROI for buying a property? And the answer here in Florida is yes. Again, with these property cycles. What we've seen, Jason, inflationary times, as things cycle through, there is a jump in material costs. Then if you're in the right areas, there's a jump in values, which we saw in Florida. And then the last thing that trails behind is a jump in rents. And the last 90 days has been stunning. You know, like we were talking before we got on, we feel like the old guy is saying, oh, I remember when I could rent a house in this area of Florida for this much. And that has started to happen. So when you're looking at property cycles, it's when there's too much inventory, the money's not available and the interest rates are really high and, and the rents are going down. We have no inventory right now. Rates are great and rents are indexing up at an incredible speed right now, which historically has happened in inflationary times.
Yeah, right. And so the rents always lag the prices, but rents are just, I mean, they're insane. I cannot believe how much these rents have increased. And here's something I want to say to listeners, and this is very important, folks. Usually the game is reduce tenant turnover. Keep your tenants. Right? Keep them, reduce turnover. Tenant turn is expensive. We want to keep our tenants. So we're careful about how much we increase rents because we want them to stay. However, I tell you, I learned this lesson many, many years ago, probably, I don't know, 23 years ago or something like that, when I had a property where the tenant gave me notice to move. And I was kind of bummed out. They'd been there about three years and after they moved out, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I raised the rent over $300 a month on that property. Okay. And a lot of times you're just going to need to retenant your properties to get the market rent. The market rent has increased so much that the tenant you have there, regardless of what they feel the property is worth to them every month, maybe they just can't any longer qualify for that house. They can't afford that house anymore because the market has passed them by. Example, I've been moving my portfolio around, selling some properties, buying others, doing 1031 exchanges and you know, my property managers and some of these properties have just totally under rented my portfolio. Like I was shocked. The rental value on this property is like hundreds of dollars higher. So give tenant notice, you know, get them out, get a new tenant, maybe fix up the property a little bit in between. It's your opportunity to do that or consider selling it, doing 1031 exchange and rebalancing and re optimizing your portfolio. Of course we can help you with that. We're always happy to do portfolio makeovers and portfolio reviews for you, but really people shouldn't be scared to re tenant their properties today.
Right, I agree. And with that we, I think we assume right now that if we ask for oh, maybe I could raise it $25 or maybe $125 or maybe $250, it could be, it could be way more than we feel comfortable with. And the tenant might say, okay, because even still, if you raised it $200, it still might be $150 below what other things of new construction in the areas we are is renting for. And they're going, well, they look at their choices and say I can't really move anywhere for this price they're raising it to anyway. And this is a new construction home. So you'd be surprised with again you're just going with what is the market dictating. And by putting that out there, that's not a bad thing. And then like you said right now one of the things of the most promise is how fast we're renting properties, qualified tenants. I mean, the influx of population here in Florida is stunning right now. The amount of applications we're getting is impressive.
It is, it is. So you're talking about for your property management business, the number of tenant applications, right?
Yeah, the number of tenant applications. And they like new construction. As you know, Jason, all we do now is new construction. I rehab shoes. After 17 years, five years ago, the new construction has made sense. We're able to go to better areas, get better long term fundamentals for everyone involved. And so we focus on that. Fifteen different markets now in Florida.
Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Okay, so which markets do you want to talk to us about? I know Jacksonville, maybe Ocala, Palm Coast. Talk to us about some of the properties you have. And we've got an upcoming property tour as well. All of you have probably heard about that, so we won't go into it. But just tell us about some of the inventory you have.
Sure. I mean, let's go back to square one. When you and I first Started working together over a decade ago was in our hometown of Jacksonville. You know, I love Jacksonville. The fact there's an economic powerhouse like this next to the ocean and the price point for houses doesn't make sense. I mean, still, people from California, from coastal cities go, I can't believe I can buy a new construction home in Jacksonville with cash flow in the low to mid-200. So Jacksonville is a city I really love. That's where we started and then branched out into 14 other markets. But you know, getting back to Jacksonville, we have what's called an off market land acquisition team. So we have about 14 people looking for land deals that are off market and it's working really well. We had a record buying lot month last month which allows us to get into the properties the right price so we can build the right house and still get our investors with the whole group out there in Jacksonville. So I actually did a video with your team, I guess that was two weeks ago. About Jacksonville is back. We're building again single family homes and duplexes here. The cash flow is there, the fundamentals are there. The growth in Jacksonville again has been fantastic. I still, again coming from California to look at a large coastal city at the price points and the affordability index, it's still here. So I still feel we have room. And the rental demand here has not gone down. It's actually doubled upward.
So tell us specifically about the properties though, if you would.
One of the things we're working on with you together is it's an 800 lot community. 800 lot community was a defunct.
That is big. It's big.
So here's what we did, Jason, because I don't like to bite off more than I can chew, we saved only 150 of these lots for build to rent of the 800. So 650 are going to be. They're sold off to the national home builders. They're going to build their nice houses. We're going to build our nice houses, but they will be btr build to rent of only. So we're talking a small percentage. It's going to have the amenities, it's going to have the infrastructure that a lot of our places don't have. But it's still going to have cash flow because we got into the land right. We offloaded lots to the national home builders who paid premiums and we're able to keep ours at a lower lot price then to get our investors in for a better deal. Now those will go quick. You know, we had a, we had One larger group buy out 50 of those lots. So we have about 100 in there that we're going right now. We have about six or seven we've released to the Hartman team. But that's a great example of the things we're starting to be able to have the wheelhouse to do.
Give us an idea of who bought those 50 of them from you. Was that a hedge fund or what was that group?
That was the, I mean, I can say who it was. It was America's Home for Rent, who is a hedge fund who is the largest single family homeowner in the nation. So they're building right alongside us for their own things. So we will give them a chunk of lots they were wanting to get in, but we even get in at better pricing because we're the only project.
Okay, here's the thing. I don't. Tell me if you agree with this. I have already found this to be true and I think it's going to even be more true in the future and great for investors. Okay, look, the bottom line is, folks, mom and pop landlords are not very good at raising their rents. They just aren't good at it and they should be better. I think part of it is that the property managers mostly suck and they, you know, they, they suppress rents, frankly. And you, you go to any city, okay, any city. I have seen this for 30 years. This, this way. I've noticed this trend. Apartments will always be more expensive than single family homes because the apartments are controlled by institutional landlords. And I don't mean the two bedroom smaller apartment is the same price as the, you know, four bedroom single family. I, you know, I don't mean that. I mean it's never apples to apples, okay? But just look it, you look at a single family home that's mom and pop landlord about, you know, and you think, okay, I could rent this from them. It's offered for lease and then an apartment. You think I get so much more value in the single family home than I do in the apartment? Well, the reason is, is because the landlords are just not good at optimizing their rents. They're too shy, they're not willing to raise them. They're not using software like the institutional investors are to increase rents and really perform of their portfolio. So when American Homes For Rent owns 50 lots right next to your properties, guess what they're going to do? They're going to be good at raising their rents and it's going to make you better. It's going to set a higher Comp. As the years go by, I think that's great that they're next to me, because then if they're next to the properties I own, I'm just going to look around and I'm going to say, gosh, you know, over there, they're renting them for, you know, 1800amonth or 2000amonth. And, you know, what am I thinking? I can only get 1650, right?
Oh, no, it's right. It's right there. I think you either sent it to me or I sent. I don't remember. I sent it to you. It came to both of us. America's Home for Rent in the month of April, across their portfolio, which is tens of thousands of houses in just the month of April, raised their rents almost 12%. That's shocking.
12% in April.
Just the month of April from their. Their. Their re signups and that across the whole thing, that is a stunning amount. And so when I hear that, I know we're in the right placement.
As an investor, I am happy to be their neighbor with my investment properties next to theirs. That's great.
Well, that's why we like what we have. When we have control of the project now we have them in which they're going to do that. And the National Home Builders. That's great. They've bought us out of most of the lots. We don't want to risk something. We don't want to build that many rentals in one area. Now we have 650 very nice homes going in around us in place with community center and two pools and all the amenities that normally you don't get. But we wrote the HOA so we're allowed to have rentals in there as well. And so we're sitting side by side with these. And that's, you know, you've been through our projects. We're going to position ourselves. I like to say we're in A areas, we're building A properties and B plus areas.
Yeah, good. That's a good. That's a good model positioning.
We want.
Okay, good. Okay. Tell us more about the inventory.
Yeah, we are not having an inventory problem. I think that's one of the things we're most excited about. When the pandemic started, we really double tripled down. I'm going to give credit to a couple of the people you're interviewing ITR and conversations we had. I said, I think this is very unlike 0708. So we doubled down and went into about 22 million in land. So we have enough land to be building for the next three years as it gets approved and we're releasing it. We're bringing out probably at least 20 to 22 properties a month for the Hartman team, which we're pretty excited about. Again, we love. Our home base of Jacksonville, Palm coast, which we've been to together, is right down the road, one of my favorite markets that's experienced the most growth. And then Ocala, which has been our steady eddy since we started new construction. You know, we have plenty of inventory in there. Our main focus right now, Jason, is single family and duplex. Those are kind of our one, two punch where we're seeing a lot of desire, a lot of usage, and that's what we're sticking to. Again, only new construction. So there is a little bit of a waiting time. But as we've done the numbers before, that waiting time is always, always shown to be beneficial. So we're excited to keep going. But we have strong inventory right now, you know, so of course you want to talk to, to your counselors on that. But we have, we have not had a shortage of inventory, which has been a real, real pleasure to.
I gotta tell you, I gotta maybe differ with you a little bit on that because the way we view inventory is stuff that people can buy and close on relatively soon. Your inventory, they gotta wait a while. So, you know, it's. I mean, they've gotta wait till it's be built. So what is the, the wait time on one of these properties order to.
Build a new construction right now, whether it's with us or a national home builder in Florida?
Shortages, you know, all kinds of problems. Yeah.
10 to 12 months, however.
And what was that before, before the.
Pandemic, we were about at six months.
Yeah, right. So it's almost doubled.
Almost doubled. And the people go, is new construction worth the wait? I mean, you and I have done case studies on numbers of taking my old properties next to my new ones. I know it is. And I also know that the call for the Florida growth for the next five years is incredible. So as your deposit is sitting there and we're again, there's no construction loan needed. All you need is that Fannie Freddie loan. We take the construction risk on our shoulders. You are locked in. You have your deposit down. You're saying, well, is it performing well? Normally rents are indexed to inflations and values are going up. So you're in a pretty good position with this. And again, we have example after example, client after client who says, now I get it. It was worth the wait. And New construction. As you know, I own a lot of older properties. I call it the three year curse. If I buy a 1950s property, Jason, I know how to do new roofs and heating and cooling and plumbing and all that new and new kitchens and baths. Somehow I just usually have a higher maintenance and repair bill after year three and new construction. We haven't seen that reset happen because we're building them from scratch. We're able to make them a lot more durable and positioned and usually for better tenants as well. So all these things play into avoiding that three year curse when your maintenance and repairs and turnovers really start to jump.
Okay. All right. Do you want to talk about any other properties in some of the nearby markets?
Yeah, I think Palm coast has been a very popular market with the Hartman Group, and I understand why. I love it. It's a beautiful coastal area. I got engaged there and the growth patterns have always been set there for it to be a great lifestyle place, but also now a friendly business environment. So we've seen an incredible amount of growth. We're still doing both single family homes and duplexes there. And that's one of the markets we're getting the fastest permits to be released so that we can build faster.
Okay. Are those a shorter wait time?
They can be a shorter wait time. You know, again, when we're building, Jason, we're always dealing with government entities. You're dealing with individual building departments. So different ones go hot or cold. So right now, yes, but that could switch in six months. As you know, we're rotating into fixed 15 different markets.
I want to ask you a question. And it's important for investors to kind of understand the supply chain. And I'm not talking about lumber or, you know, the fact that people can't get doorknobs or hinges or cabinets or lumber or sinks or toilets. It's unbelievable how disrupted markets have become. I mean, with automakers, you know, they've got cars sitting in these huge lots, just thousands and thousands of cars that they can't sell because they can't finish them because they don't have the computer chips to put in the cars. Right. And all the electronic components in the car. So these cars can't be finished. So don't feel bad. It's not just the home building business. It's a lot of other businesses. But I want to discuss land, because you're a land buyer. So when you buy land, are you buying finished lots or are you buying raw land and finishing those lots yourself? And let's define what that means to the listeners, raw land is just that, it's raw. You know, you don't know what you're getting. You got to start turning over dirt, grading, and you can discover things that really hold up your project. Environmental issues, this, that and the other thing. But finished lots are where they bring utilities to a curb. They've got streets, they've got lots surveyed, and they're entitled. They might have a tentative map. So tell us about that and how that's going. Give us some, like, background into the supply chain of the land that comes first.
Sure, sure. Well, and it's interesting. We use the double approach. There's undeveloped land and there's something I call spot lots, meaning that you'll drive into a neighborhood that's already all set up with utilities, with homeowners living there, and there'll be an empty lot. So we look for those individual lots in these already existing areas, and we buy small tracts of land and develop them. And then normally we will keep a piece of them to build, to rent, and then others will sell to national home builders because we want them to build nice houses around us. It helps keep up the area. So we will do both. Now, the nice thing, like Palm coast, we find a lot of spot lots, meaning these lots are existing neighborhoods. Those can start to get approved and built on pretty quickly. So those are a great advantage. Usually you'll pay a little bit more for those, though there is a trade off if you have an off market land acquisition system. Those are great to find and build with. And we've built a number of those, like in areas like Palm Coast. But in the tracks of land, Jason, it is like planting a tree, watering it, fertilizing it. It takes a while to get the fruit, you know, projects that we're normally bringing out to you. I remember that, that example of when you, when you turn the wheel on one of those big ships, you start turning the wheel, but it, you know, slowly follows behind the actual turn of the wheel.
It doesn't respond quickly, right?
No. And neither does land development.
It's Porsche.
It's not very Porsche. And land developments over here, a piece of land, and you won't hear about it for two years. Yeah, because it takes that long to divide it, to go through all the approval systems to get everything laid out. I mean, there's a lot of engineering to it.
A lot of engineering, legal work and sometimes even lobbying, hiring a PR firm to let you build what you want on it and get the neighborhood to expand, accept it and agree with it. I've been through that process. I've seen it happen.
Yeah, we've had to have lobbyists and even hire people who are specialists at walking things in the right way to county departments to make sure they can't say this one t was not crossed the right way. You have to fall back in line for another two months to get it approved. So it is a very delicate process that wasn't part of my world when I did rehabs for 15 years.
And don't forget about the brown paper bag full of cash that you have to bring them to.
We haven't had to go to that luckily, but it is quite a process of steps for the land. But those larger tracts of lands, especially in high growth areas, if we can get into them right, we can get our people into great areas. We can sell off some of the lots to owner occupied home builders who are going to build a nice house right near us, which keeps the integrity of the area up. We save great lots for ourselves and our build to rent portfolios and it comes out. The thing is this took time as you know what I really feel advantage. Look, it took some convincing when we started doing this together seven years ago. I said, look, I want to go new construction. The wait times will not be 60 days, they're going to be six months.
That was a big difference.
Now we see if there's some patience and now that we have the wheel turning on these big ships, we have projects we started two years ago or even the beginning of the pandemic that are coming approved and now people are just our competition and other build to rent people are just wanting to start finding land now. Well, good luck. Especially if you're looking on just the MLS and you know you're getting a track of land now. And we know it could take two years to even just start doing that. So we really feel like we have a jump. But land development is its own beast. Yeah, an extra added part of this, but it is what makes build to rent so great because the area of barrier to entry is high and it allows us to really focus on what we're doing and do the best job possible.
Good, good stuff. Okay, so Jacksonville, Palm coast and do you want to talk about Ocala before you go?
Ocala is the solid soldier. I mean, you want to talk about the come around. When I first started to look in Ocala, I thought, oh, isn't there only like 10,000 people out there? I mean I just totally pulled that, that, that number out of thin air. No, there's almost 400,000 people in Marion county and it's to growing and just to where we build in Ocala, just to the south of us is the Villages, the second largest retirement community and growing. And just to the north is Gainesville with UF and a lot of other things. So Ocala has been an absolute gem for not only value increases but rent increases. It's still one of our most affordable markets, but it's also had some of the most growth. We really loaded up on land and they're seeing the growth projections and things are growing great there. So if people are looking to have probably some of our most affordable single family home purchases, Jason are in Inverness and in Ocala and as you know, we've built a lot of great portfolios out there with your people.
Good stuff. Well, hey, thank you for sharing all this today. Let's wrap it up and you can obviously find out more on our website, talk to our team members and they can help you with these properties. Closing thought on the market, on the properties you have, whatever you want to share.
Just think in Florida right now, the words that I heard at the big IMN conference, you know, in Miami a few weeks ago, they think we're in the second inning in Florida, it is a great time to get in. The demand is showing there, the rent increases are showing, the value increases and the fundamentals still make sense. So I think now is no better time. Of course, five years ago might have been better, but I think now is a very exciting time. And most experts are saying we're in the second inning.
Right? So second inning in a nine inning game. And if you compare that to some of the older places that people used to think had streets lined with gold like California, New York, etc. What inning are they in? They're in overtime, I think.
Yeah, it's not looking good right now. They're in the 10th inning and down by three runs, I think.
Yeah, right, right, right. So. So yeah, get in. You know, of course it's like the old saying. When was the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago. What's the second best time today? Okay, so there you go. You know, you can always only start when you start, but Florida definitely has a good long Runway ahead of it, I think.
