EP 682 - Sin City Blues: Analyzing The Las Vegas Real Estate With Josh Galindo

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property. For panties on the dollar, get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson, Excited to be here today. And you guys know that I love focusing on markets out there and bringing in experts in specific cities, specific market states who are just killing it, but also really have their, you know, their nose to grindstone. They have the ear to the ground knowing what's going on because they're in it on a day in, day out basis. And so we're excited for our special guest today. He's original Sin City. He's born and raised in Las Vegas where he's had split and this is the biggest thing, he slipped more than 700 homes. He owns over 30 rental properties and is a broker and owner of Galinda Group Real Estate. Said retired by age 40. I doubt he retires cause once you're in real estate, you never ever really retire. Proud father of four runs his business and his wife Chris with his wife Crystal by side. The man, the myth, the amazing Las Vegas, Cincinnati lives. And Mr. Josh Galindo join us today. What's going on, Josh? How you doing today?

Holy cow, Scott, that was a hell of an introduction. I am doing well, man. You got the whole scoop on me.

Try to, that's the thing. We do our research, our due diligence on folks, making sure we got the right people in our audience. So man, 700 homes. When did you get started as as an investor or realtor there in Las Vegas? When did you kind of get kick things off, Josh?

So I started out in, I got I was license in 2005. Real estate was pretty relevant in my life growing up. And I started in 2005 getting my license. I started out syndicating commercial land deals. It was a pretty simple model, which is why I like the house flipping model. It's a five acre piece of dirt. It's five million bucks. You put five people together, each person puts up a million dollars. You buy, you flip it to the home builder and you move on down the road. So that's how I started and then obviously and I did pretty well, built some, built some credit, learned a few things and then 2000, 2006, 7, 8, I mean 6 isn't really it, but 7, 8, 9, and then obviously the rest is history. And I had to pivot and learn a different way to make money. So I understood the fundamentals, real estate, which was to find the highest and best use for the piece. So obviously they're distressed homes. How do I bring them back to their maximum potential? And I felt that I was capable of doing that. So I jumped into the house flipping business and absolutely fell in love with it and love it today. And I think it's one of the greatest ways to preserve capital and make money and safely make money and doesn't require a lot of speculation and time. And I love it. I love it for many, many reasons. Yeah.

And going through. That's why I love having you on here. Because you've been through the recession.

Oh yeah.

Pivot and figure things out. And I remember Vegas was like a ghost town in a lot of cases. You know, a lot of people were laid off. People weren't traveling to Sin City for vacation or the shows. I mean you could fly. Southwest was giving away tickets in a lot of cases.

And then you get it. And then you get a hundred dollar credit when you get to the hotel.

Exactly.

Free room, free flight and 100 bucks.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know what's funny? We've bought a lot of distressed debt out in Las Vegas and Nevada during that period and, and saw the opportunity there and you know, it's rebounded back very strong. Very. And a lot of opportunity out there. And you also, guys also, you're getting a lot of influx. A lot of people moving out of like the Bay Area, moving to Vegas and other. In California too, correct, Josh?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The joke out here is that Gavin Newsom is, is the realtor of the year in Nevada. Literally. I mean, California, they came out here with a bang in about, I would say probably the end of January is when I started to sense it. I mean there's a lot of other factors. Low interest rates, low inventory. A lot of people's inability to sell because they were in forbearance or whatever their circumstance was. A lot of people not being able to buy. There just wasn't any movement because of all the pandemic related things. And then the end of January I was like, you know what I'm going to do this year? I said, I don't know what's going to happen because I've been through a recession. A lot of the people that are around me that are my age, that are in my industry in Vegas A lot of them didn't get to experience the recession.

Right.

So a lot of them have very optimistic views on the way things go. You know, buy everything, gamble all the way. The market only goes up, leverage everything to 95%, you know, go as. Take as much debt as you can, you know, live broke, but have a ton of property, you know, And I watched. I was blessed enough to be able to watch a lot of people exercise that model in 2003, 4, 5, and 6. And then I was blessed enough to watch those people that did exercise that model get absolutely wiped off the planet. People I didn't believe were capable of getting wiped off the planet got scraped off the planet after the recession hit. So I'm a big believer in being very cautious and how you just use leverage. I think it's a very powerful tool, and I think it's a very productive tool. I just think it's something that needs to be highly considered. And where was I going with that? I was telling you about, but the influx and things. Okay, so then I say to myself, I don't know what the pandemic's going to do, and I don't want to get buried. I got four kids. I'm the only provider for my whole family. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to play it safe. I said, I'm going to go buy the best product I can buy and overpay for all of it, because I think something big's coming. But at the very worst, if I get stuck holding the bag, it's with the highest quality type of product. And for example, for your listeners in Vegas, that would be considered like a single story, three car garage, pool, spa. 2,400 square feet. You know, if you got a view, cul de sac, corner lot, something, you know, it just marks four bedrooms. It just hits all the buttons. So I went out and I just acquired a ton of that type of product, and then it went my way. And because I had the premium product, I got, like, uber rewarded for it all. Like, I was selling some of the stuff for prices I'd never even witnessed ever. And so, yeah, and a lot of that was California.

Yeah, we've seen the same thing here in Austin, Texas. Yeah, paying for that premium quality of product because they're walking in with a bigger, big housing budget and it's a bargain to them. We necessarily wouldn't buy for ourselves at overpriced in a lot of cases. But others that are coming with a $900,000 budget or whatever they've got the opportunity to do that now. Where you mentioned about the forbearance. Where are you guys seeing everything in Vegas? We know you guys, Nevada was one of the big states that really shut down foreclosures and evictions immediately to give everybody kind of some opportunity out there. Where are you seeing things out there? You seen an increase in. In defaults? You see an increase in days on market distressed listings or not? What are you seeing out there in Vegas right now?

So I started buying at the auction in 2009. 2009, I was jamming. 2010, life was great. 2011, life was great. And then they came out with what's called AB284, which is an assembly bill that stopped all foreclosures. And I was forced to go and re develop the way that I was buying property. A lot of people just either made so much money they retired at the auction or they just gave up and they went back to doing regular real estate. Well, me, I was like, I'm too passionate about flipping. I got to find a plan B. So I jumped on the MLS and I just said, you know what, I'll just work harder. And that's what I did. And I said, instead of being able to stumble, trip and fall and go down to the auction, throw a dart in the air, and wherever it landed, I can make money on. I had to go on the MLS and write 100 offers a week and hope I found that weak seller that was willing to allow me the margins I needed to make money. So when that happened, there was tons of reo on the MLS, lots of foreclosures. About 2013, 14, 15, I will say probably 2016 or 17. I haven't bought one reo off of the MLS. It's wild. No short sales, no reos. So that's just to create some perspective. Now we go to the pandemic. Same thing. Is the answer. I know it's not as sexy of an answer as I would have liked to be able to explain, but Nothing. There's no REOs, there's no foreclosures, no short sales. Maybe there are but just a few. But if they are out there, I think there's so much demand right now that the REO doesn't get an opportunity to sit at a low price. Because if it does, now it's this extreme deal that the whole city sees, not to mention the consumer, and then they bids price right back up. I'm actually not a big believer and I think it may be good for your audience to Hear. And I'm going to go back to this Vegas question. It's not about the product when it comes to flipping. It's about the price you could buy it for. Because how many times I'm sure you've seen this, is the house just torn to pieces, looks terrible, looks like a good flip. And it's listed at full retail. How many times have you walked in and bought a house or a property or some investment that you've got that needs no work? And it's listed at 65,000 below market. So people get so hung up on the visual effect that they see on the computer and get all excited and start trying to bang on a seller that's listed at full list. Your job is you gotta find 70 grand between what that seller's wanting and what you're willing to pay versus look at the price, forget the property and let the seller do most of the work for you is one of the big things that I say. So if the house is worth 300 and it's listed at 270 and you gotta get it for 250, now you only gotta find 20 grand. So I work a lot with just traditional sellers that are on the mls. I actually don't tap into that REO market very much. And then. So what do I think about the forbearance or what am I seeing? I'm seeing that there's so much equity in the event that the banks, which I don't believe people, I believe I didn't get enough background on you, but I'm going to assume that you've seen it all. Yeah, you know it. You buy distressed notes, the banks aren't going to do that. Again, I wholeheartedly believe that. And if I think someone, if somebody has an objection, I'd love to hear it because I'd love to get educated. The other direction, if these banks go and just start foreclosing on everybody, the whole thing starts again. It's been made pretty clear by the federal government that if they see any funny business by these banks, they're going to publicly fine them for doing so. I think that that's also protecting the consumer. The reality was is there wasn't a lot of people getting foreclosed on. And then since there wasn't a lot of people getting foreclosed on, those people, houses weren't being listed in our inventory. A healthy market for us out here roughly is probably, you know, like a super balanced market would probably be like 10,000 available homes available, whatever you want to call it, single family Condo, townhome, whatever it is. About 10,000. This is. Okay, now I'm going to go. Okay, I'm going to be specific. Single family homes, about 7,000. We'll just talk about single family. That's a pretty decent, balanced market. Still a little in favor of the seller, but it's decent. We got down to 1800. We had like two and a half weeks of inventory. And for your listeners, if they don't understand what that means, if not one seller put a house on the market to stop putting houses on the market, we would be out of houses to sell in two and a half weeks.

Right?

So, I mean, I had houses I bought thinking they were worth 450. I listed it thinking I'd be a little aggressive. At 480, I'd sell for 580. I mean, literally like 120,000 more dollars in what I thought it was worth. And that just all goes back to supply and demand. I mean, there was nothing to be able to be bough lot. So what does it look like today? The market's loosened up a little bit. But I had to create that perspective for the viewers. Understand 7000 is roughly healthy. 1800 was the extreme of as a result of the pandemic or low interest rates or all the above or whatever it is. But that was the most recent low was 1800, something I'd never actually witnessed. And then we've kind of gone back to about 3,000. And then I started really paying attention at 3,000, because that's a big indicator that I would encourage anybody out there that's wanting to grab a nugget from this episode is watch the availables. People get so hung up on all the statistics and all this crazy stuff, and they're analyzing all that, and then they get into analysis paralysis, which is something that I don't believe in. Just watch the ERs, excuse me, we call them ERs, watch the available homes on the MLS. And when that number starts ticking up, it's just simple supply and demand economics. So at 3,000, which really what that meant was that our inventory had gone up roughly 100% from 1800 to 3000. That's a big number. So still extremely beneficial seller's market. And I started watching it there and I saw it go to 31, 32, 33, 34. And I literally paused all buying in my office. I said, we're stopping. We're going to wait and see what happens. We had probably 25 homes at the time. I said, let's just stop buying for the moment. And see what happens. Market's still strong, we'll be able to get out of these. But if this thing goes up 200%, then that's going to probably get national attention or at least local attention, Spook a lot of people and then it just accelerates. You know how that goes once it's out in the media. And then what ended up happening as well as it was, it just, it stuck at 3500 last like eight weeks. It goes like 3550-3450-3650-3500. So I think it's wild to me that this appears to be a balanced market at 3500 available homes. To me that if you'd have asked me this three or four years ago, I just said that's crazy, ludicrous, but that's what it is. And prices have gone up about 20, 25% out here, at least some areas substantially more. There's homes I'm selling for 320, I was selling for 230 a year and a half ago. Rents are through the roof. Investors are flooding in which the hedge funds are going ape shit out here buying stuff. So here's something that I found to be interesting and it's a little technique that I use in my life is if I'm a house flipper and I'm investing my own capital or investors capital and my job is to be responsible for that capital, what do I use to make sure that I'm being responsible and paying attention to it? Well, I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars a year to invest in market analysis and all of these other resources that these big hedge funds do. So I pay really close attention to the open doors and the offer pads. I don't know if you have those out there, but the ibuyers for the listeners that don't know who those are, what I did is I said I'm going to go and understand their business model. So I literally googled excessively, obsessively the offer pad open door business model. And when I understood it, I knew that a portion of their model depends on appreciation. They need that appreciation to hit their margin. And so as long as you're driving down the road hearing offer pad open door radio ads in your local market, there's a really good chance that they've got a lot more money than you do to determine if they should be continuing to buy in those markets. So that's something that I really pay close attention to. In addition to the availables on the market, but back to the hedge funds. So that was a nugget I just wanted to drop for the viewers. The other thing is about a year ago, when they were talking about inflation being transitory. Transitory. Transitory. Transitory was a logical thought. It was like, okay, I could see it. All the bottleneck stuff happened, and maybe we are going to work our way through that relatively quickly. But I also understood that printing $9 trillion of bullshit money wasn't going to be good for anything. But I'll just take their word for it. So I'm just still doing my deal, doing my work, flipping homes, and the hedge funds just start coming in like wild animals. I put a house on the market, I think it's worth 315. I get a little zealous. I put it up for 320. They come in at 355 and buy cash in four days. I'm like, whoa, what just happened? So then I'm like, I got to catch one of these guys ears because I got to hear what's their logic? Because one, I understand rentals, and two, I understand the Vegas market. It's one of the most volatile markets. I mean, it could go to 300 and those houses could be worth 25,000. So I'm like, what are these guys understanding? Or what is their understanding? So I get ahold of one of the guys and I go, hey, what's your model? He says, last time inflation hit, what was it like, the early 80s? Late 80s. Somewhere in the 80s.

Late 80s, yeah, late 80s.

He said everything went up and real estate, goods, gas, the whole nine. The only thing that didn't come back down was real estate. He said, I never seen it. He said, I watched it happen and everything else got control. But real estate prices generally stayed strong. So my guess is, and then come to find out, I think if we speak today, based on Today's date, the 21st, I think inflation is real and is going to take off. And now all those hedge fund guys that are buying all that property made the right move.

Well, it also helps them. They've got very, very cheap money as well, too.

So 0.5%.

Yeah, yeah, 0.5 at that. And they can overpay because if you figure in appreciation or even staying stable, they're going to end up outlasting. You know, we just had Zillow announced yesterday or stop buying in the Austin market here.

See, and they did in Vegas. And I was going to bring that up and that my. In my office, they're all like, aha. Zillow, Zillow. They're not buying. I didn't look at it like that. I looked at it like, we better pay attention. There's a reason they're not buying. Yeah, but go ahead. What is your opinion on that?

Well, they gave the reason that they've bought all these houses and they don't have the manpower. The people come in and rehab them and the cost of goods to go in rehab and they don't have the money or they don't have the manpower to implement that. So they stopped buying to get caught back up on that. I think it's bullshit because the price point they're buying at that, the average days on market and those variations, we've already started to see that dip started to come down where people are reducing the, the listing prices of those homes. So I think they've realized that hey, we're not buying anymore because it doesn't. We're not seeing that appreciation or we're not going to see that appreciation in the short term and go from there.

So that's their model is based on short term.

Yeah, they're especially if they're fixing flipping. It's definitely a buy and hold rental aspect. Kind of like Blackstone is doing, holding those properties for long term and doing it. Now. We are seeing the same thing here in Austin as you mentioned, about rents going through the roof, which really leaves that non first time homebuyer, a lot of the service industry professionals struggling. And we're seeing that all across the country with people not being able to afford, you know, entry home levels or people, four groups coming together to rent a two bedroom house or you know, they're really trying to maximize it because the, you know, the base, you know, the hourly wage or something like that isn't. Is below. Is that below? You know what I mean?

Sure.

Are you, you're seeing that there in Las Vegas as well.

Yeah, you know, I. Yes, of course the answer is yes again. Homes. I was renting my homes. Now, I mean, frankly speaking, I've got to do what's best for my business. And it may not sound beautiful or great, but I've got tenants that are paying 1200 bucks a month that I didn't raise the rent in the pandemic because I didn't want to ruffle any feathers.

Right.

Literally that same house now is renting for $1,700 a month. And for me, it's not just one house. If I can get even, let's say half my portfolio, 15 homes, an extra $500 a month, that's a substantial lifestyle change for me or an influx of additional cash that I can go and do something with. So, yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting thing. And where I'm curious is a lot of these investors are buying based on these inflated rents. So they're coming to Vegas, and who knows if they're inflated? I mean, I would love to just pick someone's brain that knows more than me, because I have a lot of questions in this field. Are they inflated? I would argue that, yes, they are. Why? Because there's not an abundance of them. If there's not an abundance of something, then obviously the price goes up. Well, what happens when there is an abundance? But is there going to be an abundance? Like a lot of people, what I go back and forth with myself is I ask Scott, did you refinance your house during all this? Okay, I bet if you're comfortable sharing. What's your interest rate?

I don't know. It's low.

Under three, probably, right?

Definitely under three. Yeah.

Okay. I did the same thing. Under three. I don't know why I would ever sell this property that I live in. Literally, my. I could rent the property for substantially more than what I owe or than what I pay in a mortgage. So all that translates to that piece of real estate will never see the open market again. And so where does this. And I think if you times the Scott scenario, the Josh scenario, times, you know, all the people that took advantage of the refinance opportunity, those homes are also not going to come and see the light of day. They will become rental properties, most likely. Because, you know, when you have that kind of cheap debt, why would you ever get rid of it? So then I asked myself, maybe it will never go. There will never be an excessive amount of homes again. And maybe, I mean, I don't know. You know, I just. I play this yin and yang and try to analyze each scenario and take into consideration all the things I understand about real estate. And I don't know the answer at the moment, though. Rents are through the roof, housing prices are through the roof, and it's just kind of what it is in Vegas.

When you're looking at the price points in Vegas, is it they number that you see where something just is days, like anything below 300,000 or anything below 400,000, the Vegas market just gets gobbled up immediately. Is there a price point that.

Great question. 330 and below is the new 200 and below. Okay, so 200 and below out here, if I were to Put that in on the MLS a year ago, two years ago, let's just say I bet there'd be 18, 25 homes total. Just very. And then if they were, they're one bedroom, they're two bedroom, they're just older, not very attractive properties today you type in 300 and below. I would argue I'd have to do. I should have done it just for fun. But I would argue that there's a very small amount of them and then you know, then it goes, you know, 3:30 and below. You bump it just a little bit. But now you need something you can like be proud to live in. You know, you need a three bedroom, four bedroom, maybe a garage, maybe you know, a little renovation or a decent sized lot that shrinks even smaller. So it's easy to say there's a lot of stuff under 300 but then when you narrow it down to what would somebody willing to live in or doesn't need to put any money into, you know, it really, really shrinks it down. So yeah, that's our price point. I'm actually curious just out of curiosity, what because your guys prices are higher than ours? Substantially is my understanding.

Well, we've gone from the 390 range, the mid, the mid-400s.

So 390 was your 300 here?

Yeah, well it used 300 before COVID It was roughly a year, year and a half ago. It was like 295, 300 in a lot of cases. And it's just skyrocketing. I mean they say Austin is like 50 to 80% overpriced because of such a demand. I mean our house has appreciate over $150,000 in the last 12 months.

Yeah, it's bananas.

It's bananas. But the reason I bring up we are seeing. I agree 100% with what you're saying. Hey, people aren't going to see the REO aspect of things. I just don't think they're going to go that route. We do have forbearance rooms. But what I think we're seeing, and we're already starting to see a lot of the stuff happen is the stuff that is distressed where the people are in first time homebuyers. They bought a new home and it's a tax appraisal default where they were budget mindset. But in figuring that the taxes being changed on that or they've been out of work that first time homebuyer we are seeing an influx of defaults in Nevada and the Vegas market which is kind of surprising, which is really interesting looking at that market because the biggest thing is it tells you that either people are trying to hold on in some sort of fashion with a forbearance or even. But they're not being able to complete that forbearance to fruition, whether it's six months or 12 months. And they're not, they're not looking to sell because they have no place to go either. Rent rates are too high for them, you know, and they can't obviously buy a new house because their credit shot from the delay. Because we see a lot of FHA loans out that neck of the woods are in default. We've also seen a lot of non, non owner rock stuff, you know, investor loans, some hardy money loans, which is surprising default with a market being sold out out there. So it's kind of interesting. I love talking markets because, you know.

And it's funny, we got. I carried away on that side of the argument. I love going down your side of the argument. I would agree with you. I mean, you know, okay, let's talk about. We were being, at least I was being optimistic of what the optimistic view looks like. Let's talk about what the other view looks like. And I would agree with you. You know, these people that bought these homes in 2020, let's just call it 300,000 brand new from KB Home. So now they paid 25% more than what they should have anyway for a box, you know, with a one car garage and no backyard, you know, they paid 300. It was really worth 260 on the open market. Then the pandemic hit. Then they went into forbearance. They tacked on another, let's call it $20,000 worth of payments on the end of their loans. Now they owe 320. And now all of a sudden the bank's going, hey, we got to get back to real life here. And they're still saying I don't have a job because I don't have to have a job in this economy. Because that's just the new norm. And they're like, and I'm not paying because I read on the news that I don't have to.

Right.

Yeah, I could see a whole lot of those guys out there. The thing that I would follow closely that I think would maybe inspire me to believe that we may be heading that direction again is a notice of sale. Because I think at this point, I think that the banks, it's kind of like with our rental properties, hey, your rent's due. Oh, I'll get It Friday. Hey bro, it's Friday and your rent's still due. Oh, I didn't get paid. Okay, I'm hitting you with the five day pay or quit. All of a sudden the rent shows up. I think the notice of defaults, there may be a psychological play there for that. Hey, the party's over, guys. The party's over. So what would frighten me, frankly speaking, is that the notice of sales started skyrocketing. Meaning, like, hey, these people are still ignoring the writing on the wall. So may I ask, that's your bread and butter. Are you seeing notice of sales?

I don't target the foreclosure auctions. We buy the debt to become the bank. That's the idea, is that we buy that debt at a discount, $0.70 of value or less, because we take on that problem borrower and we make our money by modifying, reinstating, letting the borrower start back up again.

Okay, let's entertain that for a second. You're the carp of the lending world. I'm the carp of like the crappy houses in the neighborhood. I go to the bottom of the lake and I clean them up. And we just clean up.

We clean up the bad borrowers, we rehab the borrowers versus rehab the property.

There you go, man. I love it. So my question, Scott, would be, do you hide all of this? Does that make sense? Is there enough Scotts out there that, you know, all of these people start foreclosing in Vegas? Let's just say not all these people. Let's just say 100,000 people are going to default. That's quite a few people. But let's just say, let's just use that number for easy math. Are there enough Scots out there that can quietly come over and just grab that debt and then pick the phone up and go, hey, Mrs. Smith, listen, we bank of America and they're out of the country call center. I get why he didn't answer their call. I get that they wanted all their money, but I'm different. You know, let's work this out. And you just. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And all of a sudden to Josh Galindo and the rest of the world, there's no foreclosures. Right?

Well that's, that's, we've already been doing that. I mean that's a big thing, is that we start, we start with it being the fourth quarter here as we're recording this now moving into the first quarter, that's always the busiest time of the year for debt sales. And when I see the likes of these big banks or these big ibuyers stopping to buy because they overpaid. That breeds especially adding increased rents and default rates. Because we track default rates, we track banks default rates and there's several big banks there in Nevada that have a higher percentage of defaults on their portfolio. 25, 30% of their overall lending is in default on the residential side.

Default or forbearance?

No, it's in default 90 days plus past due to because we're not tracking forbearances with those individuals but we are able to because they're disclosing these things on a quarterly basis to the fdic. They literally opened the kimono. So I can see, oh hey, it looks like Beal Bank's got 30% of their portfolio in default across the country and a big part of it being there in Nevada. So that's the thing that we track and that's when we buy a note it doesn't affect the sales price of the property because we're not technically buying the property, we're just buying the debt at a discount and we've got the same rights to go back in and modify. So we see a pretty good modification rate. 50, 60, 70% depending on the borrower still going to have those at foreclose but then a lot of those may never even go into foreclosure because you may do a short sale or do a deed loom and take a cash or keys and then keep the property back. So it's always interesting to see what different markets. Now Dallas is a very large market, much bigger than Austin but they've seen a big increase in short sales. They've seen an increase on days on market because it's just not moving. It's just so big compared to a lot of the other station. I mean let's face it yet Las Vegas and Henderson really in one market there. There's not a lot of surrounding markets in Nevada for the most part. But that's the, that's the ugly stepchild down the road.

Not even close. People don't realize Reno's an eight hour drive. I mean it's not even. You don't just stroll over to Reno.

No, not at all, not at all. But that's the thing that we're seeing and I'm glad that you brought it up about people that hadn't lived through 2008, 9 and 10. Oh it's just going to keep going up, keep going up, keep going up. And we all know that's not the case. Things have to Change at some point. And I think we're already in the process of seeing them. We're already seeing with defaults. I mean, the default rate is still, you know, three times what it was pre Covid for the most part, across the country. I don't know exactly what is in Nevada to look at it, but with the foreclosure and eviction work ended October 3rd, I believe is when the final date was there for Vegas.

Something around there, you know, it got moved so many times I quit paying attention to. Yeah, it's either that and I was able to evict, so I don't. I didn't pay attention.

So. Yeah, and that's the biggest thing is I think Vegas is prime for next year. I mean, I think as long as people keep coming in, still have that big influx of folks from, you know, the land of fruits and nuts, you know, California, move over. Get Gavin Newsom, realtor of the year. You know what I mean?

You're going to start using that one.

Yeah, exactly. And that's why I think Vegas is a strong market for those that see something in that market, if I can buy something, pick it up at 80, 70, 80 cents owed, that gives me the flexibility to work with a borrower to, hey, let's sell the property. It allows for us to adjust our numbers. Instead of trying to stay below 70%, which a normal fix and flipper would try to do that 70% of ARV and all that stuff. That's the important thing that we love talking about. Okay.

I want to make sure, because I don't want to miss out on this, on this Las Vegas topic, that it sounds something that I want to mention about Las Vegas. There's Las Vegas 2006, 2005 and 6, and there's Las Vegas 2021. It really is a different city. And it's such cliche statement because all of the sellers in the city are like, well, the Raiders are coming. You know, they've been saying that forever.

The Raiders are coming. The Raiders are coming.

Right. They love that line. And, you know, but. But the reality is, is that the Raiders are here was a huge thing. I think Covid almost benefited us because there was a spike of optimism when the Raiders were announced, and then there was a spike of lasting optimism as they built the stadium.

Yeah.

And then instead of the Raiders news being old news, the pandemic delayed it until it actually got to open because we never got to go into it. So now we're allowed to use the stadium. And I don't think Vegas understood what it felt like to have 70,000 human beings blow out of a building in 30 minutes. You know, I mean, and it's happening like, you know, every time I go to the stadium to go watch a game, it's $100 to the guy that owns the local warehouse that's using his parking lot as parking, you know, times 300 spaces. This guy went from, you know, his whole life changed when that stadium rolled up from parking. You know, so times that by a million other unique scenarios. But. And then there's Amazon is here, Google is here. We're not as heavily dependent on construction like we were like 2005 and 6. The workforce was building, was literally wrapped up in building City, City center in Echelon and Cosmopolitan and all of these different casinos. And then when they were done, and then the recession hit, I mean, it was like you were saying it was a ghost town. And today, thankfully, there's still a lot of construction. But I don't think. I think that Vegas got smart and realized that they had to diversify and attract other businesses in. So I just wanted to bring that up because you're kind of mentioning good opportunity, and I kind of wanted to double down on that with you. I think Vegas is an exception. It's a different city today, and I think it's a little more mature and real.

I think the city has learned from the past recession and diversified very smartly to make things happen like that, because that's, you know, you've got another attraction, another major attraction bringing people into the city.

Yeah. And they're talking with the baseball to mlb. They're. They're fighting. Oh, yeah, you're in Austin, out in the A's, Oakland. It's like, I'm laughing at Oakland going, didn't they. You just see what happened with the Raiders. Give these guys what they want or they're going to leave.

Well, you look at that, you get. The warriors are no longer really playing in Oakland anymore. You know, they're down by the bay in San Francisco. You've got the Giants that are there at the ballpark, but Oakland, you say Oakland with that lease situation, you know. Yeah, go Las Vegas A's.

Yes, sir. Man, that'd be great for us. That'd be great.

Amen to that. Well, Josh, thank you. I know you got a busy schedule ahead of it. Thank you so much for coming on the Note closure show, sharing about the insights of Sin City in the market and your experience there. And we look forward to having you on the future again talking more about markets and stuff that sounded right, Josh.

Yeah, I think we'd have a lot of fun. And if I could give myself a shameless plug here. If you want to hear more about what I'm up to and what I do and a little bit more specific to my lifestyle and how I got to where I'm at with real estate related items, please check out my podcast, Going Galindo Rugrats and Renovations. And you could check me out at Galindo Group Real Estate, Las Vegas, whatever it is. But thank you very much, Scott, for having me. It was a real treat.

Hey guys. Yeah, no problem.

Pleasure to have you.

Always love having like minded people on it. Check out the podcast, guys. Josh knows his shit definitely when it comes to that market. And he's like I said before beginning, he knows, he's keeping track of things. It's not always rosy, but you see, you got to know where the opportunities are and when most people are going one way, go the opposite way and you'll often come out doing well. So go out, take some extra buddy, and we'll see you on top, everybody.

Bye, Sam.