Renter Nation, CDC Eviction Flip Flop & The War on Homeownership

Well, welcome and oh, gosh, I shouldn't be sharing my screen yet.

Something for later.

Yeah, really, I wasn't ready for that. That's, that's what can happen with this software stuff. Sometimes you can be broadcasting something you don't want to broadcast that you're not ready to broadcast. But, hey, a bunch of you are here already joining us. So depending on where you are in the world, we've got listeners, we've got audience, viewers, followers, whatever it is, in 189 countries worldwide. And we feel honored to have all of you. And I just want to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or sweet dreams, depending on where you are in the world. In 189 countries. Ashley, how's it going today?

Very well, thank you. 189 countries. That is incredible. That is such an amazing international presence and audience and it really is.

And it just, it just shows to go you what an amazing time it is to be alive. Shows to go. You obviously intentional want to see if you're paying attention here. Depending on what time it is, folks. So. Yeah, well, it's good to have everybody today. We want to talk. Well about a bunch of things, but first I have a question for you. And that question is, do you think America is becoming a renter nation, a nation of renters instead of owners, you know, back. Well, I won't go back very far, but I'll just go to George Bush number two. And good old W. Bush, he. He said he wanted to make America an owner nation. And that was leading up to the Great Recession and the housing crisis and the subprime mortgage meltdown. And that's where the homeownership rate got up to, I believe, around 69%. And I was probably the only person in the real estate business. You know, it gets lonely here being. Being yours truly, being me. I get very lonely sometimes because I. Well, I have the guts to say things that other people don't want to hear. The. Against the official narrative. Now, I'm not talking about the current narrative of the, you know, you know, what's going on in the world. Right, the surveys of sickness, as our friend Gammon wants to call it. And you can figure out what that means for yourself, but against the real estate narrative. And the thing I was saying is that, you know, a long time ago, 15 years ago, I was maybe 17 years ago, I was saying I thought the home ownership rate was too high. That's really against the narrative. It's against the real estate. What do I want to say here? It's too early in the morning and I haven't had that third espresso not kicking in yet or what is it, Ashley? What are you going to say?

Well, but, but would you say the opposite now that home ownership, home ownership is too low?

No, it's too high.

Still too high.

I've always said that the homeownership rate in America should be 50 to 55%. So it is too high. But see, you gotta, you gotta really be choosy with what we're thinking about here and how we're looking at this. But here's the big but. Okay, Too many people with big butts nowadays. Here's mine. But that doesn't mean I want a winner take all society where giant institutions own all the rental properties. I would much rather see this evenly dispersed with a bunch of fragmented mom and pop owners of rental properties that they rent to other people. That's what we help investors do. We help them build nationwide portfolios in good prudent markets, nationwide. If you want help with this, if you want to learn more about it, of course, go to jasonhartman.com or check out my YouTube channel. I don't know where you're watching now, if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube or whatever, but you can find our information out there. The Creating wealth podcast can help you with a lot of that stuff. And all this stuff is going to be much more controlled in the future. So listen and learn while you can. Because the big corporatocracy is taking over. And when they don't like what we say, just as far as real estate, right? I'm not even talking about current events, right? I'm just talking about real estate. They will control the thought, the thought police, right? So subscribe, listen, learn while you can. Because that freedom is disappearing quickly. Ashley.

We're moving into an era of corporatism and we've got, you know, these private equity firms just buying up everything, even, even neighborhoods, entire neighborhoods. How do you compete with that?

Well, you know, there, there will be several phases, the way I see it, and it is happening now. So let's get, let's get some perspective to answer Ashley's question, how do you compete with that? So the perspective is that number one, right now there's about 18 million single family properties in the hands of mom and pop investors. And the, the, the corporatocracy is a drop in the bucket currently, but the size is increasing fast. They are gobbling up properties at a very rapid rate. So the first phase of it, I think it's actually quite good for mom and pop investors. And why do I say that? And I think this phase will last for quite a while where it's actually quite good for mom and pop investors. And that's because mom and pop investors aren't very good at increasing the rents. They are too soft softies. And these institutional investors have software that helps them optimize rental portfolio rates and really causes them to increase these rates quickly, to raise prices, to raise rents. Every single renewal, maybe that's every year, probably when, when tenants go on to a month to month deal, they give them rent escalations. And mom and pop investors can learn a lot from them. So learn from them. And they help set higher comps. So rental prices are going to continue to increase quite dramatically. They already have been. And that's largely because of the mass migration to suburbia that I predicted last, well, a year ago, February. I was the first one I know of out there predicting that. Way ahead of the curve. Most people weren't talking about it in the, in the lamestream media until maybe July or August or September of last year. So I was way ahead of the curve on that. And it has certainly come true. It has certainly happened. But how do you compete? Well, these companies are using fake money because they are borrowing at lower rates than we can to acquire properties. And they are overfunded because they're raising money in the public markets so they can spend money in an irrational fashion. And that's what they're doing now. This is driving up housing prices and it's driving up rents. But we are still at the very beginning of this, in my opinion. So you as a mom and pop investor, right, and maybe you shouldn't say mom and pop because that's bound to offend somebody who's going to be offended by that. If you're offended, comment below. We'd like to hear why you're offended. Okay, so, so, so in this phase it will actually be beneficial. And of course, the sooner you're in and the sooner you're an owner and a landlord, the better for you. The later you come in, the less of these spoils you will gain. So take advantage of that. And if you want to learn more about that, at the bottom of your screen you see scrolling across the bottom of your screen, pandemicinvesting.com my free mini book@pandemicinvesting.com that will tell you how to use the techniques I've been teaching for a long time in our current era, which there's Some modifications, some tweaking to those techniques that has to be done in the current environment. So get that. It's totally free, 100% free. Just go to pandemicinvesting.com and that free mini book will be emailed to you right away.

Very quickly you're saying there is still time in this market and you have a great event coming up as well.

Thank you for the reminder on the event. See, we're giving you lots of places to go on the interwebs here today. The interwebs. So for our event, our conference, it's in September, mid September. And that's empowered investor.com I don't have that on the screen for you, but empowered investor.com for the upcoming conference and you can still get early bird tickets for that. So I know we're giving you a lot of directions to go in today, but you know, a lot of resources. We want to provide you with a lot of resources. Ashley, what's happening with the comments? Anything we should be talking about?

Yeah, we have some, we have some from last, last live stream that we'd like to, to get to because we always have so many great ones. We never get to all of them. So I'd love to bring those up on the slides and if you are watching us, please comment in the box there and say where you're watching from. We love to see, you know, where everyone is and most of all, we love your questions. We like to hear your experience, how you are living this unprecedented time in history. Good or bad, we want to know it all. You know, we're really interested, I'm certainly interested in the human experience in all of this because this, I think this last year and a half, these last two years have marked a profound change in everything in humanity, in politics, in economics, in everything. And I think the world is not going to be the same going forward. And there's a lot to talk about and we want to know your thoughts, we want to hear your experiences.

So comment below. So thanks for that, Ashley. Ashley, I kind of think it sucks, right? A lot of stuff in the world, I mean, other than business. Business is great. Rents are going up, properties are appreciating the ma. All the investors that have been following my plan for years and years are just profiting from this massively. But the quality of life itself and especially if you live in, in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, these beautiful places, right? I mean, it sucks if you live in California, New York. I mean, the, the level of control and intrusion into your lives. I, I feel so bad about it. I, I mean, I'm, I'm so sorry what's going on. It's just, it's just, it's pathetic. This is a dictator's dream. As I said early last year, it checks all the boxes. Tracking control. I mean, nothing is under your control today. Unlawful search and seizure. Right. The Constitution prohibited unlawful search and seizure, but now they can literally do search and seizure of our bodies, testing our blood passports for things. Yeah, I don't want to, I can't say the words because you know. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about, folks.

Yeah. It's been very interesting for me because I know, I know people at both ends of the spectrum. I know very wealthy people who've done very well in this environment the last year and a half and I know very unwealthy poor people and who have been drastically affected and then I know kind of middle of the road people. So it's been an unbelievable kind of thing to see how everyone is living this, this situation.

You know, I guess I'd ask one question to sum that one up, Ashley, and that would be. And maybe people can comment. This is a good question for comments, so comment below. Other than like, compared to, compared to normal life, how it was before 2020, did you, did your wealth accelerate during these times or did, did you get richer or poorer or just maintain. Right. Three answers. Richer, poor or maintain the status quo? And what is sad about this, even though I personally benefited. Right. I have, I've been doing great. Right. I'm not complaining at all, but I just don't want to see more concentration of wealth. I remember when I grew up in Los Angeles, we were pretty poor. It was not pleasant, my childhood in terms of the economic part of it. But when I was in high school, I went to high school in Long beach for two years. Long Beach, California, just south of la. And I lived in a very sort of middle class or lower middle environment, you know, homes built in the baby boomer era, the 50s mostly. And a lot of that area was built in the sort of baby boom era and, or late baby boom era, whatever you want to call it, after World War II. And I just really realized at that point that I really liked the middle class. The middle class, number one. Obviously when a country has a large middle class, it leads to stability and just people relate to each other. When there's a large middle class, there isn't this fragmentation. But that's what the powers that be want to do. They want to fragment society. They want to Cut people up into little tribes. They want to get them arguing over the left and the right. They stage basically what is equivalent to a fake wrestling match on through the news media. Matt Taibi, who is a left wing journalist, but really he writes some good stuff. He wrote Hate Inc. H A T E Inc. I believe is the name of his book that I read. And it's all about the news media and how they want, they want to sell hatred, they want to make everybody hate each other. Because if they, you know, look, folks, it's the oldest thing in warfare. What is that saying? Divide and conque and conquer. Divide and conquer, Right. And so if they can split people up and fragment them, then those people who are fragmented never sort of rise up with their pitchforks against the powers that be. Right? Because they're too fragmented. They're all busy arguing with each other. Well, the powers that be who run the world, the banksters, the politicians, the folks at Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, who, I mean, they've done it on Zoom recently, but before that they would fly 1100 high carbon footprint private jets into Davos to talk about what they can do about the environment. Oh yeah, I know, Schwab. And, and these control freaks that say, you will own nothing and be happy. Yeah.

Bill Gates will own it all at that point.

What's that?

Bill Gates will own it all at that point.

The whole concept of private property rights was the key thing that led to this explosion, this wonderful explosion in human liberty over the past couple of centuries. And the cornerstone of that is nothing other than private property rights. And you know, if you, if you read Ayn Rand, and I know Ashley, you're a fan, and I am too, I don't agree with everything about her, but you basically really begin to understand that all we have in life is our time, and we use that time and we do labor in that time. And that labor converts to income, and that income converts to private property while the income is private property. But then what we convert it to is also more private property. Right. And by saying we don't have the rights to private property is saying we don't have the rights to our time, we don't have the rights to our labor, and that's all we have. Right. That's our life. Right. You know these idiots out there that think it's all, oh, well, don't be so money conscious. It's not all about money. There's more to life than money. Grow up, okay? Seriously, grow up. Your money is created by your time and by your labors, that is all you have. It's all you own. And you are sovereign or should be sovereign in that, in your labors, in your time, that should be yours. And the powers that be want to change that. They want to take it away from you. So what do you think? Comment below, folks.

Well, and speaking of private property rights, you know, what about our recent ban on evictions? Do they, do they, do they have the authority?

Yeah.

Contracts. And so if you go to, if you go to slide number, slide number 18.

All right. Well, you know, Ashley.

Yeah.

It's, it's funny. You tell me the slide number, but the slides aren't numbered.

Never mind. Oh, sorry.

I'll tell you, you remind me of that Billy Joel song, Always a Woman to me. Right. She can do as he she pleases. She's nobody's fool. Right. That's me. That's you.

I now go to advance two more slides and we have an opinion survey. Okay, for our audience here. So how do you think the extended eviction ban will impact the nation's single family housing market? And do you believe that the federal government should intervene in the rental housing market at a national scale? Do they have the right? I mean, pretty sure they didn't, but you did.

Great questions. Well, so what do you think, folks? Comment below and answer Ashley's question. But I will tell you this, Ashley. As you know, I was on, I've been on several times. But, you know, a recent interview on RT television, I was talking about how they lifted the eviction ban and no sooner than a day later, they put it back into place somehow through government fiat. Who of us ever thought that the CDC would be dictating housing policy?

Right, right, right. I understand the motivation. I completely understand. But at the same time, shouldn't it be, you know, Congress putting these kind of things into law?

Yeah, it's absolutely, it's absolutely nuts. So. So, Ashley, you getting some answers to your question here?

Yes, I think so. Yes. They. JBL says they do not have the right, but if they do not. Finish his thought there. Yeah, finish your thought. Oh, but if they do not keep buying securities, they know if the housing market collapses, then the US Economy gets affected a ton due to housing.

Yeah, yeah, yep. And JBL's comment about the middle class. Yes, it is what makes America great. I couldn't agree with you more. It's interesting because we've been pitched over the years. I've had a lot of pitches for us to recommend properties all over the world in, in lots of different places, which we could easily do. You know, there's nothing stopping us from helping people invest internationally. And I'm, I'm not saying it's all bad, we haven't done it yet, but the US has a pretty special housing market. And I'm going to knock on wood and say so far because it's always a question of compared to what. And as controls get more draconian in the US it may make alternate choices look better. We're not there yet, but it could happen someday. And we'll be here to tell you when and help you with it, if that makes sense. But, but you know, I go to, I go to these other countries and you know, as probably everybody knows by now, I've been to 87 countries. Ashley beats me. She's been to 110 countries. And you know, you just, most of them, you just don't see much of a middle class for. I remember one time, I mean, there's a lot of examples. I don't need to just use this one, but I'll just give you one. I remember once we were being pitched heavily to recommend properties in Costa Rica, which a lot of Americans retire in Costa Rica or buy second homes there. And you know, that's not uncommon. It's pretty stable place if you can handle the potholes the size of a VW Bug, potholes the size of an entire car in the road. Belize is the same way, by the way. But you know, you see these people have these houses. They'll have like a what, what would be their considered a nice house. And there's razor barbed wire around them, bars on the windows. You know, this to me is not the way to live. Right. It's, it's. So what if you're the richest guy in town and you win the rat race if your town is a dangerous slum. Right. You know, I don't, I don't want to live that way. I'd rather live where there's a large middle class, a lot of stability. And you know, it's interesting because in the US people can flaunt their wealth. And I'm not making a judgment whether that's right or wrong. Right. But you can drive around in a Rolls Royce and, you know, live in a mansion and wear all kinds of expensive jewelry and the likelihood of you getting kidnapped is pretty low unless you're near the border in Arizona with the Mexican drug cartels and so forth, or Texas, same thing. But you know, I mean, it's just this big middle class is, is a really Nice thing for stability. Right. It just, it's good. The middle class makes America great. I agree. And it's been under attack, by the way. Read Lou Dobbs book that I read maybe back in 2005 called War on the Middle Class. It's a great book by Lou Dobbs, War on the Middle Class. And actually if we have time, maybe I'll share just a couple things from that book today, time permitting. But we say that a lot and usually don't have time.

I know. All right. Yeah. JBL just made an interesting comment. He said middle class in America is getting decultured and de industrialized.

Now I know what de industrialized means because their jobs have been offshore to mostly China. But what is the, what does he mean by deculture?

Maybe that our culture is being dumbed down and that's for sure.

And, and there's no class anymore. I mean, you know what, what happened to manners and etiquette and class? Good luck with that one. It's completely gone. Yeah. It's in fact, the media portrays. It is cool to be a classless loser, you know, and. Yeah, it is. Okay, Ashley, you got a couple things we didn't cover last week. Let's do that. So I do.

Yes. So let's get to our questions from last week. So go back two slides now go backwards.

Yeah.

Okay, so we've got this great Italian name, Matthew Diono.

And Ashley speaks Italian, by the way, fluently.

Yes. He asked last week if you could talk to your younger self Right. When you first started your real estate investing journey, what advice or info would you have for him?

Well, that is a loaded question because there's too much. We don't have enough time. Right. But basically I would have done fewer speculative style investments. And what I mean by that is, of course I teach about the three types of markets, linear, cyclical and hybrid markets. When you're investing in cyclical markets, the markets that get all the attention, the west coast of the us the expensive northeastern markets, or where I live in South Florida, those markets are very speculative because you don't get good cash flow because the land values are so high. And so you're really an appreciation investor. Right. It's. The strategy is buy low, sell high. That's the basic strategy. And in those markets, being a speculator, you're taking a lot of risk and you're not getting income. I would have been more of a linear and maybe a hybrid market investor, which I wasn't for many, many years. At the first part of my investing career And I would have invested in cash flow oriented properties. I would have invested more for yield than for appreciation. Not to say I didn't make money on appreciation. I did, I made a lot of money, but it's just not a, it's not a true investment. Remember my definition of investment? An investment is something that produces income. Okay? If it's, if it doesn't produce income, it can never be considered an investment. So gold, silver or other precious metals, they don't produce income, they're not considered an investment. Expensive real estate that has either break even or negative cash flow is not an investment because it doesn't produce income. Right. In terms of a good rent to value ratio, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, etc. Not an investment doesn't produce income. All of those things that don't produce income are a speculation. Now look, you can make money on a speculation, but that requires luck, right? And look, I'd rather be lucky than good any, any time but you know, you can't count on luck. No one I've met can reliably predict appreciation or depreciation in real estate markets. That, that is a gamble. Now you know, it's, it's not completely a gamble. Of course you use data, hopefully use my new index, the Hartman comparison Index to help with this. But again it's pretty hard to predict cycles of appreciation and depreciation. Cash flow on the other hand is very reliable. So hope that helps. That's definitely one thing I would have done differently.

Sure. All right. Everton Brian or Brian Everton. Not sure which way that one goes. He asked what do you think will happen with interest rates on investment loans with the adverse refinance fee going away in August? First of all, can you tell me what that is? Because I'm a student and can you talk about that first and then.

Absolutely. So they're basically. This is not a huge amount of money we're talking about. I think it's like $1,400 or so. It's just not a big deal. Right. So you know, look, I think the bottom line is, I think that, you know, we'll see interest rates higher long term. They really have to be higher because number one, they have to reload the gun. Right. The Fed is used all of its ammunition for the current crisis by these negative interest rates, these artificially low toxic interest rates. They've got to raise interest rates to sort of re assimilate their ammunition for the next crisis, which by the way may be upon us. We're talking about, you know, new Variants, new problems, new situations and in the future we'll probably have climate lockdowns and all kinds of things. Look, you've probably heard about that if you're listening to the smart media versus the dumb media. And so you know, ultimately higher rates. Exactly when who knows. I've been terrible at predicting interest rates. I've made a lot of very good solid predictions over the years but interest rates are not one of them. It's very hard to predict interest rates because this game is so manipulated and the U S Central bank, the Federal Reserve and the U S Government has so much power to manipulate the market and sort of look, rates are artificially low, they're toxic, they're too low, they shouldn't be this low. These low interest rates are actually bad for the economy, they are bad for savers, they are bad for a lot of people. We as real estate investors however love them because we get these 30 and even 40 year fixed rate mortgages at negative, literally, quite literally negative interest rates. Wonderful. Take advantage of it. Well, you can take advantage of it but it is not good economic policy. It is bad. So rates have got to go up overall when it's anybody's guess. But if you want the sort of the one maybe most reliable source that is is still wrong many times it would be Grant's interest rate observer. So look up Grant's interest rate observer on DuckDuckGo. Do not use the other one because they're evil. So go to DuckDuckGo and look up Grant's interest rate observer and check out their content. They've got some good content on that on interest rates. But predicting interest rates is, is a fool's game overall it's very hard to do.

Now you just mentioned how you know how everything is manipulated and you were also recently on the rich dad, Poor dad radio show with Robert and Kim Kiyosaki and Robert said, he said I remember when inflation numbers were real and now they are fake. And what did he mean by that? He think he was talking about the CPI as not really a reliable index. What did he mean by that?

Ashley? That's a great question. So the consumer price index, the CPI and by the way remember there are multiple CPIs but the one that is used is the CPI U the urban CPI and that is a highly manipulated index. They manipulated in three major ways, weighting, substitution and hedonic indexing and it was pretty reliable. I would, I mean there are differences of opinion on this but I would say it was, it was pretty reliable until the late 70s and I did some podcasts on that many years ago. I should really find that episode to run as a flashback Friday episode because it was a good one. I had Tom Keene, who is with Bloomberg, and he does some great stuff, some great shows. I played a segment of his show where they talk about this Fed chair we had only for a short time, and how in the 70s, remember in 1971, Nixon took us off the gold standard. By the way, that anniversary is coming up next week. Ashley, I believe it's August 15th. Will be 50 years, five decades since Nixon temporary, temporarily suspended the convertibility of the dollar to gold 50 years ago. Temporary thing.

You know what else is funny? On. On this day in history, August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced that he was resigning. Yeah, that was my. One of my slides today. On this day in history.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. So it was August 8th. Yeah. That he resigned, but before that he took us off the gold standard. Right. So the 70s is a really interesting decade to study if you're into economics. All kinds of stuff happened in the 70s, took us off the gold standard. Inflation went rampant. Nixon instituted price controls. A Republican. That's kind of amazing. Like, price controls. That's what they do in communist countries. Right. Because, you know, nothing makes any sense. So they instead they institute price controls. And of course, what do price controls lead to? Shortages. You know, and Zimbabwe is a great example of this. Ashley, guess what I've got. You know what I'm going to pull out right now, I bet.

Oh, yes, Your Zimbabwe dollars.

Yeah.

What is it, a trillion? A million.

How's this one? 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.

Wow.

One of our podcast listeners to the Creating wealth show sent me these Zimbabwe dollars years ago. It's truly incredible.

Incredible. That's funny because today I actually wore my. This necklace is from. From Myanmar, former Burma. And when I visited, I found this. This shop and the artisans there had taken the coins. The value of these coins was just fraction of a fraction of nothing. And they were taken out of circulation, completely devalued. And so they made jewelry out of the coins from. From Myanmar. So that's fine.

So do you know what metal those coins?

I have a feeling it's aluminum or something like that. Yeah, it's. It's not extremely precious or anything like that.

I'll tell you an interesting story about aluminum, though. You know, history. This is why everybody's got to know their history, because it's just such a good guide or context for present day. So good old Emperor Napoleon from the Old days, the. The thief with an army who was very good until Waterloo. And. And that's. He has this great saying that I. I love and I often repeat. Napoleon said, the most dangerous moment comes with victory. The most dangerous moment comes with victory. Why? Because, of course, that's the time we become complacent and arrogant. Cocky. And we think we've won and then we let down our guard and that's the time you just get destroyed. Right. So the most dangerous moment comes with victory. Great Napoleon quote. But Napoleon. And the funny story about aluminum is this one. Or for our foreign listeners, aluminium. Remember the first time I heard an Australian say that, I thought, really, that's the way you say aluminum. Aluminium. But. But he used to entertain, of course, and would invite people over for these lavish dinners and he had two types of silverware. He would. He had utensils made of aluminum and utensils made of gold. And aluminum was so precious back then that his guests and. And Napoleon and his guests ate using the aluminum utensils and the servants ate using the gold utensils.

Imagine that. Wow.

Isn't that funny, though? Yeah. So everything is in context. That historical context. Change. Change the way you feel about that. But yes. So Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Burma. And I'm so jealous that you went there and I have not been there because that had to be fascinating.

And right now you can't go. I believe it's. Or very difficult. I don't think you want to go right now.

I think it's inching back toward communism, isn't it.

Really? Sadly so. But how can we compare today's inflationary environment to that of the. Of the 70s? Is it similar? Is it different?

So in the 70s, one of the things Nixon did is he instituted price controls and then the powers that be, government central banks, they thought we better revise the way we count inflation, because if we count it the way we had been doing it in the cpi, number one, the population will get the pitchforks and they'll be in the streets. They'll be so upset and so disappointed and so upset with the way we're running things that it will undoubtedly lead to violence as prices are skyrocketing. And number two, government entitlements and government employees being such a large part of the economy, their benefits, salaries, Social Security, etc. Etc. Are all indexed to inflation. So if we can make everybody believe that the inflation rate is lower, number one, it'll help us stay in power. Right? They won't vote us out, they won't rise up in the streets. Number two, the government does not have to spend as much money on these entitlements and government employee salaries because they don't have to raise them as much. So they revise the way they counted inflation through the CPI and, and manipulated it heavily. And ever since then, it just keeps getting manipulated more and more. So it's not a reliable way to count inflation. But the one thing I did want to say about Zimbabwe and price controls is that there was a time when Zimbabwe's currency was becoming so devalued and so out of control that the merchants selling food on the streets and food carts were raising prices so quickly. Literally, if you went to lunch earlier in Zimbabwe versus going an hour later, you would pay less. So, so going to lunch earlier was the thing to do. And the minute you would be paid from your job, you would want to just spend all your money right away so that you could get the maximum value out of it. Because if you waited to spend your money, there was no incentive to save. And so if you waited to spend your money, it would be worth less, given the inflation rate was just insane. So what they would do is the government instituted price controls in Zimbabwe and said to all the merchants, it is illegal to raise prices without government consent. And. And you will literally be arrested if you raise your prices. So what did the merchants do? They said, well, this doesn't work for me. I'm just going to stop being a merchant and I'll just stop selling stuff because I can't afford to sell it anymore. And so then that, of course leads to shortages. And you know, we're seeing that happen to some extent now, not because of direct price controls, but remember, price controls happen in all sorts of indirect ways. Take housing, for example. So if it's harder to produce lumber because there's all sorts of environmental regulations that won't let you cut down a tree or operate a mill because. Because that mill creates pollution when it's milling the lumber. Right. And what about trucking the lumber to its location? What if the gas tax goes up? Or I mean, in that case diesel. But you get the idea. There's all these ways they do price controls, right? Or they cause the price of things to increase and they want to hide that through the regulatory policy. So it's just super complex. Right. And through tax policy as well. But just, just know that it's happening. I think that's the important. Okay, so I don't know. Did we answer the question? There, There's a lot. Long, long tangents. That was A long tangent.

But, but a good one.

But a good one.

That's all right. There's a lot to talk about there. There really is a lot to talk about there. So yeah, the, the, the original question was what do you think will happen with interest rates on investment loans with the adverse refinance fee going away in August?

Yeah, I think we did answer that one. Ultimately they're going to go up, get them while they're low and they're artificially low now. So Stock up on 3 decade long fixed rate mortgages, get as many as you can get attached to good quality assets that make sense. And by the way, you know, I haven't mentioned this before but we now have a free, free, totally free 100 free version of our property tracker software. So if you go to propertytracker.com you can now get a free version of that. It doesn't have all the cool stuff that the paid version has, but it has some really cool stuff that will help you analyze properties and know if you are getting a good or a bad deal, if that property makes sense the day you buy it, which it should. Yeah.

All right, I've got another question for you from, from last week. Hi Jason, have you discussed buying Real estate vs rights Real estate investment trusts? Would love to know your take on that.

Yeah, great question. So REITs basically are pooled money. So you're going to do much better buying your own properties, being a direct investor so that you are in control of your investments and in control of your future. Commandment number three of my ten commandments of successful investing is thou shalt maintain control. And when you relinquish control of your your investment to somebody else, you leave yourself susceptible to three major problems. Number one, you could be investing with a crook. Number two, you could be investing with an idiot. And number three, assuming they're honest and competent, if you pass those first two hurdles, they take a huge management fee off the top for managing the deal. And now that leads to a good way for me to discuss Lou Dobbs book War on the Middle Class. Ashley. So I'm glad that Michael asked that question and that you posed it to me because in chapter two of War on the Middle Class, I just pulled it up on my phone here. Remember I mentioned three problems when you don't maintain control, when you don't listen to commandment number three, thou shalt maintain control. Number one, you might be investing with a crook. We're all familiar with Bernie Madoff, Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, just a zillion scams whether they be in, in real estate funds or syndications or REITs or Wall street, in stocks, whatever it is, right? There's a zillion scams. We don't even have to go into that. Everybody knows. Number two, just sheer stupidity. If you're investing with an idiot, you'll lose your money because of their incompetence. But number three, assuming they're honest and competent, they take a big management fee off the top for managing the deal. So here's an example of that on Wall street from Lou Dobbs, excellent book, War on the Middle Class. And this is about Wall Street CEOs. And he says the standard rationalization for these astronomical salaries by CEOs, boards of directors and their consultants is that these CEOs are worth it because the companies they run benefit from their leadership and they bring great value to shareholders. How then do they explain the fact that over the past five years the CEOs of AT&T, Bell South, Hewlett Packard, Home Depot, Lucent, Merck, Pfizer, Safeway Time Warner, Verizon and Walmart were paid in aggregate of $865 million in compensation, while their shareholders lost a total of $640 billion. And this is the same time period. Clearly these CEOs were not being paid for delivering value to those who held stock in their companies. It's, it's, it's just insane. Lou Dob says, in fact, CEO compensation is awfully directly inverse to the performance of the companies they lead because their compensation is not tied to how the business performs. Their pay isn't a reflection of their executive ability, but an aberration. I mean, just listen to some of this stuff, folks. The former CEO of Time Warner, Jerry Levin, walked away with a, a 163 million dollar pay package after his last year at what was then called AOL Time Warner. It's, it's insane. And, and he talks about how, you know, that company went into the tank. But here's the best example. I love this one, Ashley. He says, I'm just skipping ahead now. And then there's Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle from 2000 to 2002. Larry's personal take from the company. Are you sitting down, folks? Larry's personal take from the company was $781 million people billion dollars in two years.

He's no fool.

But listen, shareholders are the fools because during the two years where Larry Ellison took almost a billion dollars out of Oracle, shareholder return was negative 61%. That's just unbelievable. So there is no connection anymore to CEO pay and stock performance. So if you invest in a reit, you are relinquishing control. You are not a direct investor. You will be susceptible to one of those three major problems. Might be investing with a crook, might be investing with an idiot. Assuming they're honest and competent, they take a huge fee off the top for managing the deal. And there are your examples. So hope that helps. Be a direct investor. Go to Jason hartman.com and learn how to be a direct investor. We help people buy properties nationwide. You own them, you control them. You decide what to buy, where to buy, when to refinance it, how to finance it, who to rent it to, how much to rent it for. It's your deal. Okay? We just help you with it. We help make it easy. That's what we do.

Right?

So follow the commandments and become an empowered investor. That's the key.

Sure. All right, Randy Haley says, Jason, thank you for your service to the real estate. To real estate investors, what are your thoughts on building and developing a small commercial space with residential rentals and your thoughts on the future of small commercial buildings?

Okay, so the problem with Randy's question is I don't know what you mean by commercial. I'm assuming in this question you probably mean retail. Retail and residential mixed use, which has been very popular and I'm glad to see it because I love mixed use projects. I think they're fantastic and that's been very popular over the last couple of decades to see mixed use. But my first thought on it, Randy, is have you developed anything before? It is hard, hard work. Being a developer is fraught with risk and it's like running a business. It's complicated, okay? Like my favorite Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. So being a developer is, is complicated. Obviously there is a retail apocalypse going on and the current situation we've had for the last year and a half or so has really accelerated that. It was already underway for over a decade because Amazon is putting all the, you know, small retailers out of business through all sorts of aggressive, disgusting, unethical tactics. But hey, this is the big corporatocracy. They're just evil. I mean, they're, they're all evil. They are not capitalist. They are the robber barons of our era. They have armies of lobbyists to sway votes in Congress and to get what they want. Well, basically screwing all of the small businesses. And so this is, this is the winner take all society we're in. And you better be very careful. So remember your tenants in those retail Properties will be under attack from the big corporates. And the big corporates are winning. Sadly, it's just the way it is. And development is hard work. If you've been a developer before, you know, hey, more power to you. Every deal is very individual. So the answer is, I don't know. You know, I'd have to look at your individual deal. Okay, hope that helps.

Okay, so at 11:44, I want to get to this question from JBL, who's been wonderful contributor to our chat today.

Hey, JBL, what's your real name? And by the way, can everybody, I know there, there are hundreds of people watching right now at this moment. I know. Please click the like button. Click the like button. I know we have to ask. It's all about the algorithm of the big corporacy and we are slaves to the algorithm, so slaves to the, to the thumbs up like button. Please do us a favor and click the like button. You're here listening, watching. We're working hard for you. You know, look at it like the tip jar.

All right? Leave your inflated pennies or deflated pennies in the tip. Trillion Zimbabwe dollars. Okay, so at 11:44, JBL wrote, are there limits to how many investment property loans banks, for example, can have versus loans for primary residents?

Yes. The answer is yes. So if you are single, you're going to max out through the mainstream loans. As you are clicking the like button, you're gonna, you're gonna max out on your mainstream loans, meaning the agency loans, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans that have the best, the best rates and terms. At 10 loans, all right, 10, 10, that's your max if you're married, your spouse, if they can qualify, can get another 10. So you can have 20 in the family and that's it after that. We can help you, we can help refer you to lenders that do portfolio loans that are pretty good. They're not quite as desirable as these Fannie Mae Freddie Mac loans and these portfolio loans. Portfolio lenders or commercial lenders that lend on single family homes. Now, there aren't that many of them that do that. Most commercial lenders want to lend on commercial properties, meaning housing that is over four units. So could be five units or could be a giant apartment complex with 700 units. Who knows, right? Or retail or industrial or, or office properties. But some of them lend on single family homes and we can refer you to them. We know the sources for this financing. And then you can do the portfolio lenders that are usually funded by hedge funds or private Equity groups, and we know those too. So if you want to build big portfolios like we help, lots of clients do, we've got one client right now who is up to, I think about 70 or 80 properties through our network and wants to go to 500 properties. So lots of lending options out there and we can help you with them. Just reach out through pandemicinvesting.com, get that free book or go to Jason hartman.com and one of our team members will help you and contact you. Also, one more our upcoming event mid September in Orlando, Florida, Empowered Investor Live. Just go to empoweredinvestor.com for info on that.

Thank you, JBL for that question.

Yeah, good question. Great.

Okay, 1151, we have dull body or something like that. Not sure what, how to say that.

Why do you not use your real names?

Yeah, we want to know your real names.

But I will say, I will say the handles are great.

Yeah. Thoughts on Airbnb investment in California? Or even you could extend that and say, you know, anywhere. Do you think vacation rentals is a good idea right now?

Yeah, that's another great question. The answer is it's mixed. It's mixed. It really just depends on a whole host of factors. But remember, no matter what you do, and we help people do short term rentals in, in a, you know, really one main market in, in St. Augustine, Florida, we've done a lot of those. But you know, just remember something, a big tech company is controlling your future when you're on their platform and you can be kicked off and a lot of stuff can happen. Of course, remember when there were regulations put in during our crazy times? We're in where they said that if you have a short term rental, it has to be vacant for at least 24 or 48 hours in between guests. So that's a taking basically where the government is, is taking your income potential. And then to answer your California question, California is kind of the last place I would want to be doing this because California is a regulatory nightmare and a tax disaster. And also one thing that people don't think about too much is asset protection. California has terrible asset protection availability. But in other states, you can really protect your assets from, you know, from lust and lawsuits and litigation. And what I mean is lust, that was the title of, I don't know the exact title, but in one of Robert Allen's old books he had how to protect your wealth from like lust and litigation. Those are things that usually get people sued. So. Yeah.

Yeah, good stuff.

All right.

Keep your real Estate questions coming. Let's, you know, put Hartman in the hot seat. Let's see, you know, what else? What else? You can ask him. But in the meantime, I want to show you a couple things that I read this week regarding your favorite four letter word, which would be debt. Debt, of course. All right, so you can pull up slides, you can share a couple things with your.

Is this the one you can see on the. On the green room screen? Ashley, Is this the slide?

I have no green room, actually.

You don't see what's waiting.

They're numbered. Yeah, I can see the numbers, but yeah.

Is it the chart, the colorful chart about housing debt?

It is that one.

Okay, let me put that one up there. Okay. There you go.

All right, so we've got. This is a visualizing U.S. household debt. And collectively, American households have a debt pile of 14.5 trillion. And mortgages represent the majority of that debt at 70%. However, the types of debt vary significantly for each generation. Of course, the leading source of debt for Gen Z millennials like myself are student loans. Of course. That's a very real thing.

And you don't have them.

I don't. I paid them off. Greatest day of my life, by the way, folks.

This, you know. You know what's funny is the way the world is getting on. You read articles about dating sites, okay? And literally now the big thing is, you know, do you have the shot or not? Right. And are you willing to wear the thing over your face or not? Right. That's literally the thing on dating sites now. It's absolutely pathetic. But also, you know, it's. Do you have health insurance? Do you have student loans? Seriously? Those are literally criteria. And, you know, I guess that's okay. So if you don't have student loans and you do have health insurance, that makes you a better catch. So there you go. Yeah, but, but, yeah, so, so, Jen. So millennials, they're. Now are these. This is total household debt, not mortgage debt.

This is total household debt. But they do break it down to see which is the most important debt factor for each generation. The most significant debt in millennials and Gen Z are student loans and credit cards, whereas Generation X, the leading source of debt are mortgages.

Yeah. So that's my generation, Gen X. So, yeah, you know, so it looks like millennial debt went up 11.5% from 2019 to 2020. That is a pretty darn big increase. Gen X debt went up by 3.5%, a little less. The baby boomers, pretty steady silent generation. It went down that's, that's good.

But yeah, look at the increase in debt from 2019 to 2020.

Yeah. Gen Z. Wow, that's terrible.

It's terrible. Go to the, the next slide and you can see, you can see those numbers on the top there. Growth. 67.2% year over year. Yeah.

Okay, so, so the, the typical Gen Z, I mean, I'm thinking about back to when I was 18 to 24 years old, right? I didn't have any debt. Well, no, I had a car loan. I remember my, I bought a brand new Volkswagen Jetta and I, my mother couldn't believe that I agreed to. You ready for this folks? Drum roll for this one. Here's a drum roll. She was really upset with me. That I agreed to a 5 year car loan with monthly payments of $189 on my Volkswagen Jetta. So. Yeah, and, and then I did have a mortgage when I was 20 years old. I bought a rental property though, so that really couldn't be considered debt because it wasn't a mortgage on a house I lived in. I had income against that debt. But yeah, if this is credit card debt, which it probably is in most cases here.

Yes. Or student loans. I mean, but the, the younger generation, they're witnessing their debts growing at a much, you know, faster pace.

This, this is pretty scary. That's, that's bad news for Gen Z.

That's a huge number. I couldn't believe that.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

Portion of mortgage debt in the chart below that you can see, obviously the Generation X has the largest portion there, 42%.

Yeah. See the thing here that's interesting is that the mortgage debt isn't that bad. You know, I mean, the mortgage debt is basically your way to short the US dollar and it is a great way to short the dollar because you're basically paying that debt back in cheaper dollars through inflation. And all of us know inflation is here and most of us think it's here to stay and most of us think it's going to get worse. Of course there are differing opinions. We'll see what happens. But your, your mortgage debt is not that bad. It's, it's definitely an asset if it's on rental properties. But even if it's on your own home, if it's low interest rate and you've got a somewhat sensible house that you could easily resell even on your own home, the mortgage debt is not that bad. However, in the final analysis, we do have to consider your home loan a liability really, because it's an expense. But you have to live somewhere. So not all that. Okay. Right. You look at, you look at the portion of mortgage debt, and it is. That's interesting. For the millennials, it's a really small part of their debt. Most of that's probably student loans, most likely.

Yes. But, you know, but let's compare this to a bigger stage as well. So although you know that the debts are rising for most US Households, but they're still paling in comparison to other countries. And so if you go to the next slide, you're going to see how U.S. household debt ranks on the international stage.

Ashley, you brought us some great stuff. Thank you.

This is household debt to gdp, of course. And a lot of these countries, too, are among the richest in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Yeah, but. Yeah, 131% Switzerland.

So it begs the question, why would household debt to GDP ratio matter? Well, the gdp, the gross domestic product, measures really the economy of the entire country. And I've done many shows on my podcast about GDP and how GDP is really manipulated. I was actually just listening to an audiobook yesterday about this. Think about it. When. When we build a road in this country, the expense. The government. If the government spends $10 million to build a road, right? And who knows which government it is? Is it the state government, the federal government? You know, it's all different, right? Is it county government? It depends on. But we'll just call it the. The government. Okay. The government spends the money to build a road. They spend $10 million. That $10 million is counted as part of the GDP. Yet the. It begs the question what productivity actually takes place. No one bought the road from the government. Whereas inside the economy, Ashley, if you sell me something and I buy it from you, there was velocity to that money. It changed hands. Right? You sold me a widget, and I bought the widget. That's definitely part of gdp because that shows that you're selling more widgets. Right? And the economy is growing, and that should be counted. But when it's something like government expenditure and it's counted toward gdp, you could make a lot of arguments that that's not really part of the gdp because the government spends fake money it doesn't even have. It prints it into existence. It loans it into existence. And when I say government, I'm really talking about the unholy alliance crossing my fingers between the government and the Federal Reserve Bank. So it's, it's a. It's a faulty number, but when you measure this one and household Debt to gdp, it's basically a marker of, you know, how well is that economy in the given country doing versus how much debt did those households take on in whatever form of debt, credit cards, student loans, mortgage debt, auto loan, whatever it is. Right. So that debt to GDP ratio does have some meaningful discussion points. And you see in the US compared to so many, so many countries. And I love how they say Hong Kong SAR stands for Special Administrative Region. Okay. Sar, because it's not counted the same as very communist mainland China, a little bit different. Obviously the US has pretty low household debt to GDP ratio, so not bad. Yeah.

All right, so let's get back to questions from our current viewers. All right, so 11:59, we have a question from Gu Watchi. Please tell me your real name. Go watch it. Because is that. And where are you from? So, Jason, what steps would you recommend taking for long distance real estate investing?

Well, that's easy. Easy, easy, easy. Ashley, you probably know what I'm going to say, right?

Yes, but they want to hear you say it though.

So the first step is open another tab on your browser right now and type in Jason Hartman.com, go to Jason Hartman.com and fill out any form on our website or go to pandemicinvesting.com and, and get the free, free book download and just get in touch with our team members. This is what we do. I've been in this business for 18 years now and have helped thousands of people invest nationwide. There's a lot to it. There's a lot to know. In addition to contacting our team to help you, to counsel you on literally every aspect of this, subscribe to my Creating wealth podcast totally free, three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You're going to learn a ton of stuff listening to the Creating wealth show. I've got some great guests on that show and just a ton of great techniques. And come to our conference in Orlando in September. You can get a ticket for that@empoweredinvestor.com and there are some great starts right there. Okay? Just learn more, connect with us. Let us help you. We have really, really helped a lot of people grow their wealth by investing nationwide.

Thank you, Ray. Ray Chan from California. He told me his real name.

Did you get the real name?

Ray. Ray. Thank you. Ray.

Hi, Ray.

Okay, so this is a question. Okay, this, I'm interested in this question. Questions. Well, this is from Jason stupak.

What time?

11:58Am Jason wrote Hey, hey. The other Jason wrote, hey, Jason, how should we position ourselves if we anticipate stagflation down the road. Thanks for your excellent content as usual.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And, and you know, last February, I was one of the early predictors to predict the, that we were moving into a stagflationary environment. And, you know, earlier today we were talking about the 70s. And one of the other really interesting things about the 1970s is the horrible stagflation that occurred. So first off, what is stagflation? Stagflation is a terrible economic malady. It's, yuck. It's no fun at all. Stagflation is where we have high inflation, so prices are going up, the cost of living is going up, the standard of living is declining, our dollars are worth less and less and less. The paycheck does not go as far as it used to. It's bad. But to add insult to injury, it's worse when there's stagflation because not only do we have high inflation, but we also have high unemployment. And this is when people started once again using an old term. They whipped it out in the 70s again called the misery index. And Jimmy Carter was largely associated with this. Now, Jimmy Carter, I believe, was a good man. He's still around, so is a good man, I guess is the proper term. But he was not a good president at all. And he was a Malthusian, basically. You know, he believed, and I hope I'm not speaking for him too much here, that resources were scarce. Remember, in the 70s was the time when you heard a lot about peak oil and the Malthusian idea of economics. Malthus was from, you know, I don't know, 200 years earlier or something like that. And, you know, his whole idea was that more people would cause economic misery and scarcity and shortages because there were just too many people to feed. And what he didn't count on is that people actually have ideas and solutions and people are a resource, right? So you, you, you know, Jimmy, Jimmy Carter would go on the air in our stagflation area environment when the misery index was peaking, and he would say, you know, turn off your heat in your house and wear a sweater around the house. Bundle up, you can't afford to be comfortable. We're running out of oil, right? We're running out of resources. You know, don't turn on your air conditioning if you had it now. You know, a lot of people in the 70s didn't even have air conditioning, but live with less and wait in line for gasoline for three hours and don't drive so much and you could only get gas for your car depending on whether your license plate had an odd or an even number. I mean there were all kinds of scarcity things and the misery index is terrible. And folks, I believe that's where we're going. I believe we are going to wake up from this bad time that we've been going through with a greater concentration of wealth with the people at the lower end of the spectrum dependent more and more on government assistance. And they will become impoverished through inflation because remember, the long game is yeah, the government gives them a few bucks to keep them from rioting. But what they do by giving them that money is they create more inflation. And so ultimately that money keeps, it's, it's just constantly debased. It's, it's attacked, it's worth less and less in terms of what it actually buys people. So the stagflationary environment I believe is coming, if not already here. And what you should do about it is you should buy good quality income properties in markets like you will see@jasonhartman.com in the properties section and you should get three decade long fixed rate mortgages at artificially low interest rates and take advantage of what I call the ultimate investing equation. We can help you do this. That's what my real estate company does. We can help you do this. So yeah, it's going to be a very unpleasant time in the future for a lot of people and my goal is to help help fewer people fall into that trap. Right. But a lot of them will, sadly. And, and the way you can do it is with good quality income property, that is the best plan. It's the way to short the dollar through inflation and, and basically become enriched by inflation. And I call that inflation induced debt destruction. By the way. Learn lots more about this on my podcast, my other YouTube videos, and of course at Jason Hart.

Does anybody watching right now or listening right now, did any of you remember the period in the 70s when that was happening and you couldn't get gas unless your license plate ended in a certain odd or even number? That's, that's, I'd like to know if you remember that if you had how old you were and your experience with that. Actually my parents do talk about that. They, they remember it vividly. They were, you know, teenagers but, or young 20 somethings, but they, they remember it very well. They often talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, that was before your time, Ashley. But have you watched, you know, gone online and watched videos about it? Of all the Cars in line?

No, but it sounds like a Nightmare.

Yeah, the 70s is a really interesting decade. You know, what I always say to people is you've got to watch old movies, old TV shows and read old books, listen to old music and, you know, watch some movies from the 70s, you know, and just look around and see how people's life was and their environment and, you know, their clothing and their car. And you just notice all this stuff and how people thought about things, how they interacted with each other. It's, it's very interesting.

All right, let's go back to a question by Scott Smith. He wrote it in there a couple times, Scott, at 12:01pm he asked, he, he said, I have a seven acre commercial property and only about three acres is being used. The rest is an open field. Any advice on how to extract income without too much additional investment on my part?

So, Scott, I don't know where that property is located or if there's demand for it. And, you know, three acres are being used. So what is it being used for? You know, it's the, again, this is the generic word you hear a lot, which is commercial. And I don't know what that means. There are many segments of commercial property. Commercial real estate could be office, retail, industrial, multifamily is considered commercial, you know, if it's an apartment complex. So I really need more information. But you know, with, without in you, the key thing, the great part of your question is, you know, how could I extract income from it without too much investment on my part? Well, that unused part of the property could be a parking lot. That's easy, right? And I don't know if there's any demand for that in your area. It could be turned into agricultural property and you could rent it to a, you know, to someone who was farming it, who could farm it potentially. I don't know if that is applicable in your area. You might be able to get some tax benefits from it or lower your tax bill, for example, in the great state of Texas, the Lone Star State. And this is probably true to, you know, other things in other areas, but in Texas, for example, and by the way, don't rely on our advice here today, okay? You know, we talk about tax and legal concepts and these things are complicated, folks, okay? There's a lot to them and they vary area to area, city to city, county to county, etc. But at least from some parts of Texas, what I know is sometimes you'll see a little piece of land that's not even very big and It'll be in the middle of an area where you'll see commercial properties or residential properties and you'll see a lonely cow on that land. And the reason there is a cow on that land is because if you let a cow roam around, you can classify it as agricultural property and have a massive reduction in your property tax bill. So there are, there are things you can do in a lot of places that are kind of odd and funny. The other thing you could do potentially is you could refinance that property and pull cash out. And even though you don't think of refinancing as income, right. It does turn into income. Because if you pull cash out of the property, Scott, and then you use that cash to buy rental properties@jasonhartman.com Little shameless self promotion there, you can get income from those properties as well as tax benefits, inflation, induced debt, destruction, etc. So in that way you could produce income. Reach out to us. Our team can help you with this. Okay, so definitely do that. Yeah, good question.

Yeah, he, he, he wrote some other things in the comments, Scott. It's an outside of metro Atlanta medical related use. Atlanta suburbs.

So yeah. Well, how about selling off part of it? Is it, can you subdivide it and just sell that part off from, you know, if you don't want to develop it yourself? Medical office is the one area of office properties that's actually doing pretty well through all things that are going on in the world. And I don't want to say what's going on because then we will be controlled by the thought police. But you know what's going on. So, so yeah, medical office is pretty good. A lot of people like medical office. They do well with it.

Okay, so we have some really great contributions from dancing Alone with rentals. Hello. Dancing alone. That's great.

Okay. Is it this one?

Dancing alone? Yes. How would you apply your rule of thumb calculations on residential homes that are unencumbered but need remodeling?

Unencumbered but need remodeling. So I guess maybe you're talking dancing alone with rentals. You're talking about a fix and flip or which calculations. I mean, look at my, my only real rule of thumb, and I got my thumb up here, calculation is rent to value ratio, the RV ratio, which we used to say should be ideally as close as possible to 1% per, per month, meaning that if it's a $200,000 property, you get $2,000 per month. That's almost impossible nowadays, but that's okay. And why is it impossible? Well, because prices have gone up so much. Right. But it's okay that it's impossible. And the reason I say that is because the rent to value ratio has largely become kind of irrelevant. And why is that? It's because with the interest rates so low, it's sort of reworked the deal. You can get a property with rent to value ratio now of 0.5 or 0.7, meaning $200,000 property that rents for $1,400 per month. And you can still do pretty well with that given the super low interest rates. So the rent to value ratio kind of needs to be revisited given very low interest rates. So that's that. But other rules of thumb. Look, dancing with rentals and everybody watching. Go get a free, it's 100% free property tracker account and use the software to evaluate the deals. You can just get a free account. It's great, it's totally free, no strings attached. And then if you like it, you can upgrade later and get some of the features of the enhanced account. But you can do all kinds of great analysis with a Freebie account for PropertyTracker. So go to propertytracker.com and sign up for that. And, and then you can look at those performas that have all the metrics on them and will really help you be a great investor.

So, fellow Floridian, ty Smith at 12:10 he wrote. Hey there, Jason, fellow South Floridian here. What are your thoughts on acquiring land to utilize for boat or RV storage? Too many zoning issues. Land too expensive.

Yeah, well, you know, again, yeah, that, that's a tough one to answer because it just depends. You've got to make sure you really, really do your homework on permitting and use cases and demand. You've got to do, you know, deep demographic and competition research studies there to make sure that there's a demand for that in the given area. Now I've owned, I had a 38 foot motorhome years ago. I love the motorhome. It was a lot of fun. And I had a 48 foot yacht. I can call it a yacht. I'm not being snooty because when it's over 40ft, it's considered a yacht. Okay. So, you know, these expensive toys do need storage. You know, the yacht stayed in the water except when you pulled it out to paint it or maintain it in some way. But smaller boats are pulled out of the water on a regular basis and you can definitely make money with it. I looked at a marina deal that I was going to do it was just a little bit out of reach at the time. And I, I so wish I would have purchased that property because whoever did purchase it made a fortune. I'm sure. It had, you know, boat slips Marina. It had a, they said a $5 million boat storage facility with a crane, you know, that was like five decks high, five levels high of boat storage. And I did not do that deal because at the time it was a little too expensive. I should have stretched and just done it. Because that property that maybe could have been purchased for 6, $7 million then is probably worth $30 million today. And it hasn't even been 10 years yet. You know, again, that's an estimate. But retrospect, that would have been a huge home run. I, I really should have done that deal. I. I regret it. It had a mobile home park. I did. I do own a mobile home park near that property. That's why I knew about it. My client Steven and I bought that property together and we were looking at this other one and thinking, gosh, we could go in on this together, maybe get some other investors. Didn't do it. Oh, well, someone else made all the money because we hesitated.

Okay, one more question before we wrap it up. So Conrad 12:19, he wrote RVA home loans worth using right now for a house that has a really bad RV ratio.

Well, asking me if I would recommend that you invest in a house with a really bad rent to value ratio right now.

Yeah, yeah.

So our VA loans worth using right now. Okay, so a VA loan is a great loan if you can get it. That's for veterans and spouses of veterans, etc. The closing costs are a little more expensive, but you can get in with up, even no money down, which is fantastic. You got to live in the property though. So this is an owner occupied house you're talking about. So, you know, look, it depends where you are, Conrad, in your journey. Right? So if you are buying an expensive property with a bad rent to value ratio on a VA loan, look, it's. It's better than putting a lot of money down on the property. Yes, that's the benefit of using your VA loan. However, if you can get a good property that makes sense with a good rent to value ratio from a financial perspective, that's the better thing to do. But again, there's a lot of questions I would have for you if we were talking about this. So I can't completely answer the question, but those are my general thoughts.

Okay, yeah, we can wrap it up, Ashley. Let's do one More. Let's do one more last question. Yes, a question from Frances White.

But Ashley, before, before we answer this question, we gotta ask everybody to click the like button. Right? Click the like button. We see you folks. We know you're watching. Click the like button. Come on, give us some love. Love. Okay, go.

We need some love from. From the digital pacifier of social media.

Yeah.

Okay, so Francis White at 12:17 said, Jason, how long do you feel us. The US will experience a high cost renters market. Also, which of your videos shows how to find a quality income property? Thank you.

Oh, okay, so your second question there, and this is one everybody watching should do this, right? You know, we're going to wrap up in a moment here. So right after this, watch a third. I think it's now 31 minute video. Okay? It's right on the front page of Jason Hartman dot com. It's totally free. And it is the one video that you must watch that will tell you how to analyze a real estate deal. Like if there's only one video you watch, it's that one. You watch it in a half hour and it will take you through every single number on the property tracker pro forma. And then you can sign up and get a free account and you can do your own performance. This is what made me a really good investor. When I started using this Software back in 2004 and I eventually I loved it so much I bought the company, like literally. Okay. I started running those performers and doing the math myself and putting in one number, like, you know, the vacancy rate. And when I would change the vacancy rate, I would see how that would affect all the other numbers. What about changing the financing? How does that affect all the other numbers? What about changing the projected rent? What if it's $100 a month higher or $100 a month lower? What does that do with all the other numbers? Right. This is what will make you a really good investor. So again, here's what you do. You go to Jason hartman.com, you watch the video that is front and center on the front page. The most important video that will teach you how to be a great investor. And it's totally free. And then you go and you get something else for free. You go to propertytracker.com and you get a free account and you start putting the numbers in yourself. Right now you can see these static performance for this@jason hartman.com in the property section. But if you want to do your own performance, you get the free software. But first you watch the Video and you learn about it. Right? So that's the first thing. Okay, and then what was the rest of that question? How, oh, how long do I feel the US will experience high cost rental market? Well, I think it's only going to get higher. Now the question is, is that rental value when you say high price, right. Is that in real dollars or is it in nominal dollars? Remember, nominal dollars is just the name of the dollars, right? You know, $100 thousand dollars. Right? That's just the name. Real dollars mean what is the value of the dollars? And the value is constantly fluctuating or really I don't even need to say fluctuating. I should say declining versus other assets because of inflation. So I think in nominal dollars we will see much, much higher rents. And in real dollars we will also see much, much higher rents because inflation is attacking everything. Right? So in nominal dollars, really, really high and in real dollars higher. Right. But again, the value of those dollars is declining. So that's my answer. But go to Jason hartman.com, watch the free video and then go get the free property tracker software.

And read War on the Middle Class by Lou Dobbs.

Yeah, I gave you a lot to do folks. You got a lot of homework. So you know, is, I don't know what time it is where you are, but whatever time it is, you got some homework there, folks. So get busy, get busy. All right, Ashley, thank you for all of your great contributions today. As always, thank you very much. We appreciate that. Let's give Ashley a hand. And you do that by clicking the like button, folks.

And thank you to the audience and all our viewers for these, these great, this great contributions to this, the discussion. And I love how when people post questions, other users are also offering some solutions. And that's really nice. I like that, that sense of community here.

Yeah, I love, I love the community. And we do have a great community of investors. You can meet them at our Empowered Investor live conference. And wouldn't it be nice to just get out of the house? Orlando is a great place for a conference. This is at a beautiful resort hotel and you know, you can come there and you can go to the theme parks, make a little vacation out of it, A, a tax deductible vacation, at least in part. And yeah, take advantage of that. Go to empowered investor.com and you can get tickets for that. Orlando is a super easy airport because lots of cheap direct flights. Very easy, very inexpensive, quick flight from almost anywhere to get to Orlando and that'll be mid September. And there's a property tour, by the way, the first day of that is actually not even a conference. It's a property tour where they'll serve you lunch, provide transportation. You're going to look at properties on Friday. That's September 10th. And then Saturday and Sunday, September 11th and 12th, we have the live conference. And that'll. That'll just be a great opportunity. So empoweredinvestor.com and we will look forward to seeing you there. And you can join our community when you get your ticket. There's a community option that you can join kind of a social network. And so we, we'd love to see you for that as well. And thanks everybody for joining us. Wow. We had so many people and I can tell all of you just stayed on the whole time. So we really appreciate that and just want to wish everybody very happy investing. We'll have the podcast three days this week, tomorrow, and, and while we have it, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Okay, I'll just say that. So three days a week, the Creating wealth show is available to you and lots of other YouTube videos as well. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Yep. Bye. Bye.