Understanding the Economy & Markets: Inflation, Rate Hikes & Real Estate, Chance Finucane

Welcome to episode 2029 and thank you for joining me today. So we have talked a lot over the last 18 years about the national debt. And I just wanted to make something clear because I think it is important, of course, having almost $35 trillion in debt and maybe depending on who you ask and how long you're projecting out $220 trillion in unfunded liabilities or unfunded mandates, unfunded entitlements, whatever you want to call them. That is a lot of debt. It's a lot of obligation. However, people might think that I am in favor of a gold standard because that would provide a tether in terms of how much the government is allowed to spend and how much they are allowed to inflate and how much they are allowed to print. I want to answer that question. The answer is no, I am not in favor of a gold standard because just from a practical point of view, it could not possibly work. Since 1971, since we lost the last vestige, the last tether to gold in this country, when Richard Nixon on that fateful day in August 15, 1971, took us off the gold standard, we have expanded the supply of currency to such a degree that it would literally be completely impossible to have a gold standard. There ain't enough gold in the world to have even the US Dollar on gold standard, much less every other currency on the earth. Right. I mean, it's, it's totally impossible. So that's not going to work. Okay, so the second step is, you might think, and I thought this guy I'm about to mention was a pretty great president. I mean, listen, he wasn't perfect. None of them are. But that's Ronald Reagan. Okay? Ronald Reagan wanted a line item veto, which I am in favor of. That idea. Never got it, sadly. That's why we have pork barrel legislation and all these ridiculous things tacked on to every new bill. Right. We all know that. Disaster. But he also was in favor of a balanced budget amendment, at least as far as I can recall. If I'm wrong on that or right or partially right or wrong, comment below. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're not watching on YouTube or another video platform, just always feel free to send a Note to jason hartman.com ask. We always love to hear from you. We love your comments, the reference material you provide. I look at all of it, by the way. Don't always get to respond in any great detail to it, but you normally hear my responses kind of woven into the show. And this is one of those times. So the balanced budget amendment, you know, that seems like a good idea. It seems like, hey, you know, this would control the radical government spending. It would tamp down inflation. That would all be good news. Right? And you might think I'm in favor of that. And I'm here to tell you that I am not in favor of a balanced budget amendment. Why? Why? Why? It seems so prudent. You know, I'm always complaining about the government overspending and all of this type of stuff, but here's why. Look, if the United States had to balance its budget all of these years for decades past, it would be a dramatically smaller country, smaller economy, lower gdp. Per capita debt is a tool used responsibly. It is a tool that can create big, big growth. Now, we don't have to get into the whole conversation and the rabbit hole about how the US has the reserve currency and it's able to exploit its position in the world. It certainly exploits it. No question about it. And that has the effect of exp. More of the inflation burden to other countries. It's not fair. I'm just saying it is what it is. I agree, it's definitely not fair. But you know, on balance, the US does a lot for the world anyway, right? So, you know, it does some good things, it does some bad things, it does some unfair things, it does some really generous things. Okay, you know, remember the Marshall Plan? You know, I mean, there's just so much. Right. This is not a history lesson and I'm not a history expert, so I'm not going to teach you a history lesson. But just wanted to clarify, in the balanced budget thing now, how far can we go if we have, you know, around 125% debt to GDP ratio, how far can we push that? Can we push it as far as Japan at what, 285% debt to GDP ratio? Yeah, we could actually probably go a lot further than Japan because we have that special place in the world, that special good fortune of having the reserve currency. Right? So I don't know the answer and Peter Schiff doesn't know the answer. And nobody knows the answer. That's the problem when you hear these talking heads, they all present it as though it's the end of the world, but it just. The world just keeps on going and they've been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And they just continue to be wrong. And they're going to continue to be wrong for a long, long time. Because although this is a house of cards, all economies are a house of cards. So the question is, compared to what? Compared to what? That is always the question. And you just don't know how long they can kick this can down the road. And I say it's for a long, long time. Probably longer than any of us will live. So just keep that in mind. When you think about the debt and all of this, what will happen is the slow boil of just more and more inflation. This is very much inflation. And the standard of living will continue to erode for the poor. But see, the poor have the government to take care of them, right? They have all the handouts. So it's really the middle class that takes on probably the biggest brunt of this burden, of the inflation burden. And what am I dedicated to? Why did I not retire years ago when I became financially independent? Well, I'm dedicated to helping you. If you are in the lower class, like I grew up, I grew up in the lower class class. Right. Or if you're in the middle class, I'm dedicated to helping you play the game defensively and offensively so that you can move up the socioeconomic ladder. That's what we're here for. All right. That's why I don't retire. It's a big reason for it because I love your thank you notes and I just love the great comments and the great reviews and all the great stuff, you know, that keeps me going, doing this, right? I don't need to work. I haven't needed to work for many, many years. Okay, So I saw this meme and I thought it was one, and it just, you know, it just says, so you started investing in real estate and you need a network of investors for advice. Well, folks, this is what Empowered Investor Pro is. This is what our live virtual event over the weekend was. And by the way, I want to say thank you to all of you who attended our live virtual event. Just had a great time with you. We spent about eight and a half hours together. It was only slated to be seven hours, but when I was looking at the recording, which, by the way, will be available for those of you who purchase them here in just a couple of days, probably. When I was looking at those, I thought, boy, we went for about eight and a half hours both Friday and Saturday. I stayed longer. I answered questions after I sort of officially ended the event. Really loved all of the participation. So thank you for all of you who attended. If you didn't attend and you didn't get the recordings when you got your ticket, we will make those available for you as well. So look for an announcement on that. Now, I also want to remind you, Besides the main YouTube channel that I have, most of you do not know that I have a couple of other YouTube channels and one of them is this one. It's the Rent channel. That's an acronym and I thought it was a pretty clever one. It stands for Real Estate News and Technology. And this channel, I have done a whole bunch of software demos where I've interviewed the founders of all of these great technology tools that help us become better investors, whether it be Door Loop, Zebo, Landlord, Studio, Hemlane, Do It Yourself, Cost Segregation, Pay Rent, or so many others in Nago. Many, many others. Okay? And all of these are available to you. So go to YouTube and type Jason Hartman, Real Estate News and Tech or Jason Hartman, R E N T and subscribe to this channel because there's a lot of great stuff here. All of you who've told me you've checked it out have really said great things about it. That was very helpful to you. So I just want to remind you to subscribe to that one. Okay? We have got a guest coming on today, but before we get to the guest, I want to tell you again that and we talked about this over the weekend at the live virtual event, that the rent is too damn low. Yes, I know. Contrary to popular belief, because that's only the small short term belief, right, that you're thinking that actually rents are going up a lot more. Folks, I know in the multifamily market, in the larger apartment complexes that has been oversupplied recently and it's going to continue to be oversupplied for a little while and it's going to take a couple, maybe even a few years to work its way through the system. But in the single family home market, rents are low, they are undervalued. Remember, it always works this way. First we have big price appreciation and the rents lag the prices and it takes a couple of years for the rents to catch up. And those rents are going to catch up and you are going to see higher rents. And for most people, they unfortunately are going to see a lower standard of living as rents outpace income increases. That's just the way it is. I'm just here to report it. I'm not saying it's good, it's fair, it's right. I don't think it is. The only way we solve this problem is by creating more housing supply. That's it. Period. That's it. Right. And we're not doing a very good Job of that. And the government is getting in the way of that at every turn, so it's not likely to correct itself. But remember this funny guy from 2010 in the New York Gubernator editorial debate? This guy's funny.

Mr. McMillan, would you like 30 seconds more?

Allow me to introduce myself. I represent the Rent is Too Damn high party. People are working 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week to summer. Third job, women can't afford to take care of their children, feed their children, breakfast, lunch and dinner. My main job is to provide a roof over your head, food on the table and money in your pocket. This is politics as usual, playing a silly game and it's not going to happen. The Rent Damn High movement. The people I'm here to represent can't afford to pay their rent. They're being laid off right now as I speak. They can't eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. Listen, someone's stomach, child stomach just growl. Did you hear it? Gotta listen like me.

Okay, let's talk about the issue. Pretty funny stuff. And it's even worse today. And it's going to get worse than it is today from their perspective. But from a landlord's perspective, this is going to make your investment work better and better. Remember income properties, just like corporations or any business, they are pass through entities. What do I mean by that? When the expenses go up, they are always passed through to the customer. When the cost of labor goes up, it gets more expensive to go to a restaurant. When the cost of food goes up, it gets more expensive to go to the restaurant. When the cost of construction materials go up, the house gets more expensive. And when the cost of ownership goes up through higher interest rates, through construction materials, higher prices, the cost of rent goes up. When property taxes go up, the rent goes up. This is always the way it's been, it will always be this way. Everything is always a pass through entity. So be sure you realize that. And let me tell you, the rent is too damn low and it's going up a lot, lot higher. Folks, the rents you see today are gonna look cheap in the rear view mirror. I got this one right. My predictions have been so spot on the last 18 years. Don't believe me? Don't take my word for it. Just go listen to some of my old episodes. We play them for you on Flashback Friday every week. But you can just go back into the back catalog of the podcast episodes on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and listen to the old shows. Go back five years, go back 10 years. Go back 18 years and listen to those old episodes and you'll see that I have been right about almost everything except interest rates. Not very good at predicting those, but otherwise I'm pretty good. All right. I wanted to get into housing supply, but we have got to get to our guest. So I'm going to cover this probably on our next episode. Okay, so let's get to our guest. We've got some good insights on the overall economy and the markets. Let's go get to that because we've got a 10th episode show on Wednesday. So we've got to finish our guest interview today. Here we go. It is my pleasure to welcome Chance Finucan to the show. He's with Oxbow Advisors and he's got some deep knowledge into the economy and the markets. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Chance, how are you doing?

Doing great today, Jason. Thanks for having me on the show.

Good to have you. Where are you located?

We're based in Austin, Texas, and we've also got offices in Houston, Corpus Christi and San Antonio. So based throughout Texas, but we have clients across the entire country.

Good. Well, just for the record, for people not watching on video, he is not wearing a 10 gallon hat. So even though he's a Texan, good stuff. So, Chance, everybody is obviously very concerned about the economy nowadays. Boy, have things changed from a year ago. Less than a year ago. These rate hikes are, I think, surprising a lot of people. I don't know, they certainly surprised me. They're pretty radical. Inflation is still a problem even in light of these rate hikes. What do you make of that?

We've been defensive for the last 18 months and really are continuing to have that same approach. So you're right. There's a lot of different ways to try and track what's happening in the economy and what could be on the horizon over the next year or so. And whether you're looking at leading economic indicators or the recent update on the percentage of banks that are tightening lending standards on commercial and industrial loans, which goes to a lot of small businesses that's seeing a lot of tightening, there are a lot of things like that that point to continued slowdown in economic growth over the next year. And to your point on inflation, even though we peaked in June of last year, it's still coming down at a pretty slow rate. And some of the data that we keep an eye on is suggesting that we may get down to about a 3.5% inflation rate by sometime in the next few months, but it might stay in that range between 3.5 and 4% all the way through the first quarter of next year. And that's going to put the Federal Reserve in a tough position as to. Are they going to continue to try to keep rates high to fight inflation or if you really see the economy slow, are they going to try and cut rates to stimulate the economy but then it would bring the inflation rate right back up again?

Yeah, well, I mean, of course they're playing the Phillips curve, right. And if, if they succeed in their mission to increase the unemployment rate, maybe the lower inflation rate is a little sticky. Right. Even in light of lower rates in the future. Of course we're trying to predict a lot of interplaying factors here, but would you say that's a possibility?

Yeah, it's interesting to hear the Fed talk about. They actually are targeting an increase in the unemployment rate to 4.5% by the end of this year. And one of the Fed governors today did some press and said that he expects 4 to 4.5% compared to the 3.4% you're seeing now. Well, if you look back through six decades of history, whenever you had the unemployment rate go up by at least half 1%, you are starting a recession. And so they're still saying there's going to be some sort of a soft landing. But I think you're right, they are trying to slow things down. They can't have short term interest rates stay this high because the interest expense the government's going to be paying on that debt is just going to create too large of a deficit. So they really need to slow the economy and get inflation down as quickly as possible so they can try and get back to more of a lower interest rate that we'd seen in recent years.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean three and a half percent inflation, that seems pretty optimistic to me. Of course the real rate is much higher. I like to call the CPI the CP lie. I mean, feel free to differ with me on that by the way. But it just seems like in terms of housing costs, inflation is going to be pretty sticky. Some may differ, but it's really, really shocking to me and I was just saying this on my show yesterday, Chance that how do you have these type of rate increases and still have such low housing inventory? The fact that we haven't had a housing crash in light of these high rates and some say it's still coming, I call them the Crash Bros. And I think the Crash Bros are just going to continue to be wrong unless Something else extraordinary happens, which it could, but it really shows you the amazing durability and resilience of the asset class. And if we want to have a housing crash, we've just got to have a massive increase in inventory, don't we?

Yes, you're right. At some point you would need something like that to happen. The difference this time, as I'm sure you've been pointing out to all of your viewers, is you've got a lot of people carrying a lot of equity in their homes, so you don't have that many distressed sellers. So I was talking to a friend yesterday who at some point may have to move for family reasons in a few years, but they're sitting on a home with a lot of equity, with a below than 3% mortgage rate, and there's just no reason to change until you absolutely have to move. And we think that's why the existing homes for sale has stayed so low. It's made it a good environment for homebuilders because they're not competing with as much existing inventory. So by offering some mortgage rate buy downs, they're actually able to move through their inventory better than they would have in past cycles. That's why you see a lot of the homebuilders still up near their, their highs in the public markets. But one thing that actually we saw a piece of research is instead of comparing this housing market to 2005 and the housing bubble, look back at sort of around 1978 to 1982, when you actually didn't see a crash in nominal home prices. It was more that you just had a downward wave in terms of real home prices because of the higher inflationary environment. And in that case, it took about seven years for real home prices, adjusted for inflation to get back to the prior peak. And we're kind of going through that right now. We're in the middle of year one of this sort of drawdown in real home prices. And that may have a bit further to go before you see some stabilization.

You know, 25% of the country has a mortgage at or below 3%, 65% of the country has a mortgage at or below 4%. 42% of the country has no mortgage at all. So there's just no way there's going to be some massive increase in inventory unless they either have some new breakthrough disruptive technology that creates a ton of new construction at lower prices or the mortgage rates go down again to match somewhere in the vicinity of all those existing mortgages. Because the whole country refinanced and guess what, what you mentioned at the beginning of that last salvo, we've got 28 to 29 years left on those mortgage loans. I call this the poison pill the Fed has put into the housing market. And I just don't know how you ever cure it. Unless extremely low rates again, which I don't know that that's even possible because it would just drive inflation through the roof. Powell didn't want to admit inflation for the longest time. I thought he was delusional. He was okay at the beginning of the transitory narrative, but later on he just kept saying it and it's like he just didn't pivot soon enough.

Just talking about the mortgage rate. We would expect mortgage rates to come back down if we think there is going to be a continued economic slowdown and eventually a recession. Historically that means your long term treasury yields are going to come down and the 30 year fixed mortgage rate, just as an example, will come down with that. The problem is the mortgage rate is higher than you would normally expect with the 10 year treasury yield around 3.5%, say right now, because the move index, which is kind of like the Vix, but for bonds, the move index is more than double the average that you saw in the 2010s. So the move index was about 60 on average throughout the last decade. Right now it's still above 130. And when you have that much volatility in interest rates, the banks and other even non banks that are doing mortgages, they're not going to want to give quite as low of a rate as they might have the last time you saw 10 year treasury yields around this level. And we think that's also preventing an increase in transactions. So you would not only need to see a decline in long term treasury yields, you also need to see just the volatility come down back to normal. We're not sure when that might happen. It will eventually, but right now there's still too much fluctuation in terms of economic policy and what's happening overall in the economy.

And to add to that, we've got a presidential election coming up in the not too distant future here. But I'm glad you mentioned the banks. The Fed has painted themselves into a corner without even talking about the banks. Right. But as soon as we talk about the banks, then we really get a complicated, you know, we just complicate the issue at another level. How many banks do you think have real distress based on these higher interest rates? And is that going to force the Fed to pivot you know, it's just, it's just very hard to tell. I mean, I've seen the numbers and I'm sure you have on the amount of these hold to maturity assets that banks have. I think those are very misleading because they may have X percentage of assets tied up and hold to maturity oriented investment vehicles, but it doesn't tell you what the rate on those different assets are or when they bought them, or how they're laddered or when they mature. Right, that's, that's very hard to unpack because you have a whole mixture of a bunch of different things. I don't know if the bank distress is really as big as it might seem. I mean, Silicon Valley bank opened our mind to those hold to maturity assets. But you know, what do you think about that?

Sure. So if you don't have depositors pulling out all of their money, they'll probably be able to last just sitting on those unrealized losses and they're held in maturity bonds. But you're right in that these loans they've been giving out and then what they might have invested some of their assets in, these things are maybe only yielding like 3% at what they were giving out the loans at when you had interest rates back at zero a couple of years ago. So that's the problem. What they should be trying to do is offer customers a 5% interest rate on short term deposits, but they can't do that because they would have zero profits at the actual company. They'd be churning out losses. And so that's the difficulty right now is even if you don't have these run on the banks like we saw with Silicon Valley Signature and First Republic, even if that doesn't happen for any others, you still don't know if there's any real normalized profits that these banks can generate when they're relying on the spread on their loans versus the deposit rate. But the interest bearing deposits are going to keep going higher and higher. So for us we get questions about whether now is the time to really get aggressive and trying to pick out our favorite regional banks to buy. And historically you never want to do that heading into a recession and especially now where you've got an inverted yield curve, it's not the right environment to try to pick out your favorite regional bank and hope that it works out. We think that volatility is going to continue.

Well, when you say pick out your favorite regional bank, do you mean as a depositor or do you mean as a shareholder?

As a shareholder, I think for A lot of people, I think it's a lot of small businesses that are the relationships with regional banks that matter. I think if you're an individual to the extent that you can just stick with one of the four systemically important banks, that's probably the safer place to be. And you saw with the headline today that it's pretty remarkable. The big banks, the big four banks are offering up bonuses that are 20% higher than a year ago to their key employees. And on the opposite side, the regional banks, the bonuses are 20% less than a year ago. And that tells you all you need to know about who's really thriving in this marketplace.

Yeah, and philosophically I just hate to see that because there's just going to be more and more consolidation. After the Great Recession there was a, a ton of consolidation. A lot of these banks went under, of course, like I think there were 501 banks that went under during the Great Recession. And we're just going to see more of that. So it's, it's a sad state of affairs because it's anti competitive. But I think that's what the elites want because they can just corral and control, you know, a few big players a lot more easily than they can a bunch of small players that, you know, might go off the reservation. So bank failures, I mean, bringing it kind of back to that. Are we going to see a lot more of that? A little more of it? No, more of it. What do you think?

It's hard to predict on something like that. It would not surprise us at all if you saw more things like what we just saw with First Republic here in the last couple of weeks. Usually what we'll do is you kind of know which would be the next couple dominoes to fall. So right now the ones that have been in the news the most since First Republic are Pac west banks and Western Alliance. So we're tracking those two. And then we also keep an eye on what are historically some of the strongest regional banks that are behaving in a way in the public markets in terms of their common stock or their preferred stock. That is just different than history. So US Bank Truist, Financial Key bank in Ohio, those are ones that have a good track record of performing well, but you're just seeing weakness that you wouldn't normally see from them. And so we're not trying to make any prediction. It's more just knowing the risks that you're taking as an investor. And for us, we don't own the common stocks of any banks. Right now. And the only preferred stocks we would want to own are in the four systemically important banks, because we think those are the ones with deposit inflows that are relatively strengthening right now.

Yeah, I know, but I just hate to see it happen that way, unfortunately. But is it going to force the Fed to pivot? Is that going to be an ongoing problem with the banks? The high rates causing their assets to be devalued because other interest rates are high?

I don't know that their assets will be devalued from here because you already had the huge rise in interest rates. So whatever losses they're sitting on that are unrealized, I think will pretty much stay at that level. It might actually those losses might even come down a little bit if you see long term interest rates fall. But as long as short term interest rates stay high, if the Fed continues to keep the fed rate at 5%, that's going to continue to be a problem for their profit margins. And that is going to make it difficult for banks to perform well as stocks in that regard. So the banks would definitely would like to see a cut in short term rates. And I think for anyone in the economy, you would like to see any way that banks would feel more comfortable with lending. But that has a big factor for small business growth, which drives the majority of new jobs. So you definitely would like to see regional banks be a bit more comfortable with making those loans. We just got a lot of data that suggests the next four quarters might be difficult and we would actually expect loan growth to decline all the way through into next year.

Yeah, I do think credit is definitely tightening. I just wonder. I think that's mostly in the commercial real estate side, which is very dangerous, especially office space. And you know, retail has been long before COVID but office space now is just collapsing. I mean, you probably saw the headline about the Wells Fargo building. It did sell for 25% of its pre Covid value. I mean, the famous iconic building in San Francisco. That's just shocking. It really is shocking.

Yeah, there's a difference right now between the public REITs and then the private market values for all types of real estate. But just using the office as an example, we had just heard a data point that right now the private markets are pricing in about a 25% decline in office real estate. But if you look at the public office REITs, those are actually pricing in a decline of 55% in office values and the public markets run faster and it tells you where things are headed in the private market.

Okay, that is such an extraordinary disaster. It deserves a sound effect. Just being kind of funny here. Okay, look, I'd love to get your comments before you go on food and energy and anything else you want to share with the audience.

Sure. So I think energy is one that I think everyone's very focused on, both in terms of living costs and then also potentially investment opportunities. Historically, if you're heading into a recession or an economic slowdown, that's not a great environment for cyclical commodities. So oil and copper would be the two big ones there. But oil, you see, are down about 40% in price from its high last year. And we've really, we had owned a number of oil stocks that paid out good dividends in last year, but really we're trimming that position over the course of last year. And at this point, really all we own are oil pipelines that deliver a very good dividend and generate a lot of consistent cash flow because of the volume of oil and natural gas running through their pipes rather than what the price is in the underlying market. So there will be an opportunity again to invest more in oil and gas equities, but we would think that would be at the tail end of this whole slowdown right now would not be the time to get aggressive on food. It's something that we track actually kind of seen outside of just a couple of commodities like sugar cattle. You're seeing commodity prices come down by double digits almost across the board from their previous highs. So hopefully that helps bring down inflation a little bit. But as we talked about earlier, our data suggests that you're still looking at a 3 to 4% inflation rate on the CPI number over the course of the next few quarters.

Yeah. Which means the real numbers higher. Okay, good. Anything else you want to share before we wrap it up? Just on topic, I haven't asked you something you're working on, any research you're doing, predictions, thoughts that you have, whatever, it's just free form really.

All we'd say is obviously a lot of your viewers have their own portfolios of real estate that they've invested in in the private market. In the public markets, we're seeing that now is not a time that you really have to take a bun of a lot of outsized risk. There's good interest rates and dividends you can get in the meantime while waiting for better opportunities in the public market. So short term treasuries yield 5%. You've got some dividend paying stocks that are yielding 6 or 7% that have consistent cash flow. Like the telecoms, like AT&T and Verizon, or some of these oil pipelines like Enterprise Products and Magellan and Kinder Morgan. And even a few of the public REITs have 6% yields or higher, such as Physicians Realty, Omega Healthcare and National Storage Affiliates. So if you're trying to generate some income from the public market, that might be a good offset to the portfolios that all of your viewers have in the rest of their accounts.

Yeah, I have to admit I thought it'd be a cold day in hell before I'd be thinking even considering Treasuries, but here we are. You're not going to beat inflation. But the delta between the inflation rate before and the treasury rate, it's actually gotten quite a bit more desirable. So that's an interesting point, Chance. Go ahead and give out your website. Tell people where they can find out more.

Yeah, if you'd like to learn more about our firm, you can check us out@oxbow advisors.com and our marketing team has also built out a very good YouTube channel where we post a lot of our interviews and you just look us up at YouTube at Oxbow Advisors.

Excellent, Chance. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Jason.