466: Red Flags for an Economic Recession? Rick Sharga Joins Keith

In many world nations, if you’re born poor, you stay poor. I discuss how in America, you can be upwardly mobile.

Back in 2010, real estate prices had fallen, but rents had not. This created years of cash flow. Today, as prices have outpaced rents, cash flow keeps shrinking.

Our Investment Coaches have access to income properties with 4.75% and 5.75% mortgage interest rates. It's a way to "bring back cash flow". Get started at GREmarketplace.com/Coach

Terrific housing intelligence analyst Rick Sharga joins us for the first of two consecutive episodes.

Rick & I discuss the condition of the American consumer, inflation and interest rates, concerns about a potential economic downturn, the housing market, the impact of consumer confidence on spending, and the actions taken by the Federal Reserve to control inflation. 

There’s flagging consumer confidence and a yield curve inversion. Are these finally harbingers of an economic recession?

Rick’s informal survey of economists find that there’s a 50-50 chance of a recession this cycle. Earlier this year, 80% of economists felt that a recession was imminent.

If there is a recession this cycle, Rick thinks there’s a probability that it will be mild.

Average hourly wages are $28-29 / hour. Wage growth is 4-5%. Wages are finally running higher than home price appreciation.

Timestamps:

The Future of Real Estate Investing [00:01:33]

Discusses how owning real estate can help individuals move into a different wealth class and the benefits of owning rental properties.

Changes in the Real Estate Market [00:04:06]

Explains how the real estate market has changed over the years, with property prices catching up to rents and the decrease in cash flow opportunities.

Taking Advantage of Low Mortgage Rates [00:07:53]

Highlights the opportunity for investors to take advantage of low mortgage rates offered by builders and the benefits of using their preferred lenders. (Yes, even here in 2023. We have 4.75% and 5.75% rates that builders buy down.)

The housing market correction [00:11:31]

Discussion on the correction in the housing market and its localized impact on different regions.

Economic landscape of the United States [00:16:09]

Overview of the US economy, including GDP growth and the strength of consumer spending.

Wage growth and home price appreciation [00:20:16]

Comparison of wage growth outpacing home price growth, impacting housing market affordability.

Consumer Confidence and Spending [00:21:24]

The correlation between consumer confidence and spending during the pandemic, the impact of subsequent waves of COVID, and the role of pent-up consumer demand and government stimulus.

Red Flags in Consumer Spending [00:22:25]

The disconnect between consumer spending and low confidence scores, the record level of consumer credit card use, and the decrease in personal savings rates.

Inflation and the Federal Reserve [00:25:44]

The high inflation rate in 40 years, the actions taken by the Federal Reserve to control inflation, the impact on housing costs, and the potential for a recession.

Yield Curve Inversion and Recession Predictions [00:31:07]

Discussion on the yield curve inversion and its historical correlation with recessions.

Impact of Recession on the Housing Market [00:32:04]

Exploration of the potential impact of a recession on the housing market.

Part Two: State of the Housing Market and Future of Investment Real Estate [00:33:03]

Teaser for the next episode, which will analyze the state of the housing market and the future of investment real estate.

Resources mentioned:

Show Notes:

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Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) - Welcome to. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Today, it's part one of two of my exclusive interview with one of the nation's foremost housing intelligence analysts. How's the condition of today's American consumer? What's the future of inflation, the Fed interest rates? And should you really be concerned about a downturn today on get rich education?

 

Corey Coates (00:00:28) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get rich education.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:00:51) - Welcome from Orange County, Florida, to Orange County, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. You're listening to one America's longest running and most listened to shows on real estate. With nearly nine years of weekly episodes. You're listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Wine expert, housing and mortgage analyst Rick Sugar is back and he is figuratively waiting in the wings. Here to give us an update on the economy shortly. In many nations of the world, if you are born poor, you stay poor. It's really hard to change wealth classes because you can't own anything in so many world places.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:01:33) - If you're born middle class, you also stay middle class. There's no way out of that. Owning real estate is the number one way to move yourself into a different wealth class. Owning your own business is another way, but with owning real estate, it's quite easy to follow a template and do what someone else has already done. Within a proven system. You don't have to have a new out-of-the-box business idea. For example, in the US, if you start collecting assets that pay you each month, you can quickly become upwardly mobile. In America, even if you were born into poverty and have a long line of impoverishment in your family, you can own your own home and that can help you go from poor to middle class. You can add rental properties and go from poor or middle class to wealthy because if you're in the US you are allowed to own things. Yeah, keep accumulating properties and keep getting rent money from tenants. In so many nations of the world. If you come from modest means, you just cannot get dozens of people or hundreds of people to pay you one third of their income every month.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:02:52) - But here you can get all these tenants to pay you one third of their salary in rent so you can close that class divide. It's up to you. That's what makes the US great. You can move into a different wealth class, the GSEs, the government sponsored enterprises. They will even give you backing on a bank loan so that you can do this. They're really encouraging this and enticing you to do this with as little as a 3% down payment on your primary residence or 20% down on rental properties. It's like they're almost forcing you to succeed. And there's even a 1% down program for primary residences now available in some places. So the bank gives you the loan, the tenant pays you the rent, and the government gives you the tax break. Like I say, that right there is using other people's money three ways at the same time, the bank, the tenant and the government, it all sort of falls in your lap if you want it to, but you do have to ask for it and you do have to do some arranging and you need to be diligent and attentive to.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:04:06) - But most Americans, they just aren't wise to this. Now, the real estate market, it has changed from a few years ago. It was spring of 2020 where we had that big inflection point, as you know, because I often discuss it. That was that supply crash. And since that time, home prices have run up faster than rents. But I'd like to give you some broader perspective here. There's something important with real estate investing that you may not have realized coming out of the global financial crisis 2008, 2009, 2010. At 2010, when we really started to lift up out of the rubble because by 2010, property prices were still down low. They were near the rock bottom. They're even lower than replacement costs in a lot of markets, which was artificially low. But see, rents didn't really fall much in the GFC. Rents stayed the same. So you know what happened in 2010 and all the years following it will cash flow began. And that's because all over America you then had these high rents and low purchase prices that had been beaten down by the GFC.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:05:18) - Cash flow like that wasn't really normal, but by now property prices have caught up to rents and even surpassed them. So besides investors being used to low mortgage rates, these ultra low rates, they also got used to this ultra high ratio of rent income to purchase price. That's just not there like it used to be. So today, in more places, you can't expect much of anything for cash flow now with a few years of. Income property ownership. Say if you bought something late this year, a few years later, now you shouldn't count on it. But rents, as we know, historically rise to then start providing you with cash flow to complement the other four ways that you're simultaneously paid. So my point is that today the deals aren't as good as they were ten years ago and five years ago, and that is all part of the provenance and perspective that I'm sharing with you from the real estate investing landscape starting from back around 15 years ago. But today I posit that it is still difficult to find a better place to invest a dollar than with a loan on carefully bought income property.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:06:31) - And I have some really good news for you here. All right. We know higher mortgage rates. They're not just a pain point for first time homebuyers and second time homebuyers for that matter, but they're a pain point for you, the investor. Well, if you didn't already know, we have largely sort of that problem here at Gray. And that is why investors like you are still snapping up rental properties fast. From Marketplace today, owner occupied mortgage rates are about 7% in income. Property rates are about 8%. But because of the strength of our marketplace networks and relationships here we have one new build provider offering a mortgage rate of 5.75%. Yes, they will see that your mortgage rate is bought down to 5.75% for your purchase. Yes, right here in today's environment, another new build investment property provider is offering a buy down to 4.75%. Yes, you heard that right. And we have another builder provider where our investment coaches have been sharing with you a 2.99% seller financing option. So is cash flow back? Yes, a lot of times it is.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:07:53) - The builders know that it's a pain point for buyers and our coaches and I hear a Gary know it too, So we have rubbed salve on the wound here, I suppose. 5.75% interest rates, 4.75 or even 2.99. At times you'll have to use the builders preferred lender to get those terms. Otherwise I like to use Ridge lending Group because they specialize in income property loans. There is even more to it. These builders are in business to move property, so take advantage of it. And besides buying down your mortgage rate for you like that, some are even waiving their property management fee for you for the first year, in addition to buying down the rate and don't know how long all this is going to last. So this could be a really good time for you to contact your investment coach. Your coach will help you shop the marketplace properties, tell you where the real deals are and tell you how to get those improbably low mortgage rates for income properties. Your coach guides you and makes it easy for you If you don't have an investment coach yet, just go to Marketplace slash coach and they're there to help you out.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:09:11) - Hey, it's really great to have the savvy and the experience of Rick Shaka back on the show today. His mind is always in the market. He's often doing these public speaking appearances informing audiences about it. He's been the executive vice president of markets at some of America's leading housing intelligence firms. We have so much to discuss that Today's episode is part one of two back to back episodes with Rick. This week, we'll discuss the direction of the economy. Next week, we'll go deep on the housing market. But even our discussion on the economy today is probably going to be viewed through the lens of having real estate investors in mind. So this intelligence is fresh and it is timely here in fall of 2023. But even if you're listening to this, a decade from now, in 2033, you are going to get lessons for all time. It's the economy this week and the real estate market next week. It could be a day or two until we have today's episode on Get Rich Education YouTube. But you can watch us there as well if you want the visuals and charts that complement our discussion.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:10:19) - Many of the sources that he cites today will be from Trading economics in the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. What's the present and future of the economy, especially as it pertains to real estate investor interest with Rick and I straight ahead. I'm Keith Reinhold in this is get rich education. Jerry listeners can't stop talking about their service from Ridge Lending Group and MLS 42056. They've provided our tribe with more lows than anyone. They're truly a top lender for beginners and veterans. It's where I go to get my own loans for single family rental property up to four Plex's So start your prequalification and you can chat with President Charlie Ridge personally, though, even deliver your custom plan for growing your real estate portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending Group. You know, I'll just tell you for the most passive part of my real estate investing personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in. Returns are better than a bank savings account up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:11:31) - K. You don't even need to be accredited. For some of them, it's all backed by real estate and I kind of love how the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 668660, and this isn't a solicitation If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to 66866. This is real estate investment cogeneration. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your day dream. And you're going to get a fantastic market update today. And you're also going to learn lessons even if you're consuming this 5 or 10 years from now. Our expert guest was first with us here six months ago. He's been the executive VP of markets at some of America's leading housing intelligence firms. He was twice named to the Inman News Inman 100 most influential real estate leaders.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:12:54) - He is one of the country's most frequently quoted sources on real estate, mortgage and foreclosure markets. You've seen him seemingly everywhere CNBC, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, ABC News, Fox, Bloomberg in NPR got about just every letter of the alphabet in there on that one. Today, he's the founder and CEO of J. Patrick Company. They're a market intelligence firm for the real estate and mortgage markets. He has 20 plus years of experience in those industries. Hey, welcome back to Rick Saga. Thank you for having me, Keith. Happy to be here. It's an interesting time. Rick. I think some people are rather confused because you have such unusually low housing supply still. You have higher mortgage rates and we're careful not to call them high mortgage rates because we know historically they're pretty normal. And you have what I would characterize is a rather distinct regional variation in home price appreciation. So we're going to get some clarity today from that confusion. Now, if you're listening on audio only, Rick will describe the charts in a way that gives you a good experience.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:14:03) - If you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and give us a like. So we really anticipate, Rick, your take on both the broader economy first and then the real estate market. That's exactly what we're going to go over today. And before we get started, I think you said something I'd like to emphasize a little bit. And this is something we talked about. I believe the last time we chatted is I've been saying all along that we were not going to see a housing market crash. We were going to see a correction of sorts and that the correction was going to be very, very localized. That the results you see in coastal California, in the Pacific Northwest, in markets that were overpriced, like Boise and Salt Lake City and Phoenix and Austin, we're going to be very different than what you saw on the East Coast, particularly the southeastern states, places like Tennessee and Florida and the Carolinas and virtually everywhere else in Texas other than Austin. So it's really worked out that way. There are some markets where we're seeing double digit price declines and other markets where prices continue to go up.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:15:05) - And we'll get into the national trends in a minute. But thought that was a really important point. Keith Yeah, Thank you for adding that, at least for a while there. Rick. It was one of the most unusual home price appreciation maps I have ever seen. There were some exceptions, but generally the nation east of the Mississippi River, you had rising home prices and recently west of the Mississippi River, you had falling home prices like a river divided it. It was really weird. To your point, it's normalized a little bit. I live in California. Speaking of weird and the pricing out here, the month over month prices and year over year prices went down for the first time in quite a while for about four consecutive months before normalizing in July. Now, even within California, you see different price trends depending on where you are in the state. But the point is really important for investors to remember that you almost threw the national numbers out, that they're important from a trend perspective, but you really need to become an expert in whatever market you happen to be investing in because the local conditions really determine how successful you're going to be.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:16:09) - Like the national outdoor temperature average is pretty useless, almost somewhat like the national home price average is. I guess the national home price average Still has some meaning to it though. Yeah, and you don't find quite as much variation in home price trends as you do in temperatures, but your points well taken. And again, it's important to be looking for economic trends. It's important to be looking for housing market trends and the markets that you're interested in investing in because that makes all the difference. So we're just going to talk about the general economic landscape of the United States, and then we're going to pivot into real estate and just what's going on with the housing market and getting the latest there. Yeah, why don't we jump right into it at this point, Keith, We're going to do a fall update on the housing market for this year. We're going to take a look at the economy. We'll take a look at what's going on in housing. I have a few slides to share on what's going on to delinquencies and defaults because I know a lot of investors are interested in foreclosure properties.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:17:11) - And then we'll have some closing thoughts and then you can chat a little bit more about some of the observations we're making in the market today. Let's start talking about that economy, including that part where some people anymore, year after year, they're always predicting this recession that never quite seems to happen. Well, we have predictions of a recession that are very much like predictions of a housing crash. And if you keep predicting that terrible thing long enough, someday you'll probably be right. It'll be right eventually. Just like a broken clock is right. Broken clock. It's right twice a day. So the GDP, the gross domestic product is the way that that most economists measure the strength of the economy. And the second quarter, this number was just adjusted downward a little bit, but we still had over 2% growth for the second quarter of 2023. That was a higher number than most economists had forecast. It was certainly a higher number than what the Federal Reserve was expecting. But it really shows you the strength of the US consumer.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:18:09) - A lot of people probably don't realize that almost two thirds of the GDP is comprised of consumer spending. There's other factors that go into it business spending, government spending, productivity, trade and the like. But two thirds of it is consumer spending. So when you see the GDP showing strong numbers, it typically means that the consumer is doing pretty well. And that's an important consideration as we move forward. Yeah, that's right. One of those reasons consumers are spending is because we're in this economy where pretty much if you want to have a job, then you've got a job. Yeah. The headlines read about tech companies doing layoffs and mortgage companies doing layoffs. Bottom line is the most recent unemployment numbers we saw were 3.8%. I think we're getting a little spoiled by some of these low unemployment rates because people forget historically, anytime you were under 5% unemployment, it was considered full employment. And the fact of the matter is there's still more jobs open than there are people looking for work. There's about 9.5 million open jobs in about 6 million people who are looking for work.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:19:11) - So employers have to compete with each other for those employees. And so these low unemployment levels are actually one of the things that's causing wages to go up, which continues to stoke inflation when there are more open jobs than there even are workers that makes employers want to entice employees with higher pay. Yeah, they need to do that to keep employees on the payrolls and they need to do that to hire new employees. So whether you look at hourly wages, which at the moment are up around 28, $29 an hour, or you're looking at annual wage growth, which is running around 4 to 5% a year. Wages are very strong right now. And this is the first time, Keith, in many years that I've been able to tell people that wage growth actually is running higher than home price appreciation for well over a decade. We saw home prices appreciate much more rapidly than we saw wages. And this is the first time in a while where that situation has been reversed. That's a really interesting takeaway, Rick.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:20:16) - Wage growth that's outstripping home price growth and that's going to be important going forward because one of the big headwinds that the housing market faces today is affordability. Despite what we just talked about, home prices nationally are running at all time high levels. We're going to talk about the cost of financing be much higher than it was just a year ago. And wage growth is the one positive in that category. As wages continue to grow and if home prices settled out a little bit, affordability ultimately will be a little bit better for potential homebuyers. Average wages at 28 to $29 an hour, Americans are basically making a dollar every two minutes now yet could be worse. And that varies, again, market to market, shock to job, but it shows you what's going on on average, partly because of this, consumer spending continues to be very strong. But one of the the real unusual situations we're looking at today is that there's usually a direct correlation between consumer confidence and consumer spending. And the more confident consumers feel about things, the more willing they are to spend money, particularly on big ticket items like cars and houses.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:21:24) - And that was all true. And the correlation held true until we hit the pandemic. And as we started to come out of the first wave of Covid, you saw consumer confidence start to go up, but then it came back down as we had subsequent waves of Covid. Then we had the war in Ukraine that we had high inflation and all sorts of other odds and ends. And consumer confidence has really never recovered back to pre-pandemic levels while consumer spending has continued to go up. And part of that is pent up consumer demand. We still hear people talking about supply chain delays, trying to order appliances and the like and having to wait for months. Part of it is all the stimulus money that the government poured into the economy during the pandemic and probably overstimulated the economy to a certain extent. One of my economist friends refers to what the government did in terms of stimulus, is trying to stuff $15 trillion into a $3 trillion hole. And the numbers may be a little lost. But think the visuals is image is kind of good.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:22:25) - But this disconnect we're seeing between. How much money consumers are spending and their relative low confidence scores is a red flag of sorts in a couple of ways. It's a red flag, among other ways, in that if consumer confidence doesn't recover, consumers ultimately could pull back on spending, and that really could ultimately lead us into a recession. Consumer spending outpacing consumer confidence. There are other two other red flags with this consumer spending, and we'll cover them pretty quickly. What is that? Consumer credit card use is at an all time high in the last quarter. For the first time ever, consumer credit card use topped $1 trillion. And the concern here is that consumers in a high cost of living environment may be tapping into credit cards to make ends meet. That's not a good scenario and ultimately is not a scenario that would end well. So part of what we're seeing kind of backstopping or enabling consumer spending is an increased amount of credit card use. The other red flag, Keith, is that consumer personal savings rates have gone down below historic averages.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:23:33) - So we hit an all time high in savings rates during the pandemic when the government sent out stimulus checks and unemployment benefits were enhanced. And candidly, there wasn't a lot consumers could buy. So they socked away a lot of this money post-pandemic. We saw savings rates drop down to almost historically low levels and they haven't come back much up from that. So the two red flags that we really are looking at right now, that could be indicators of trouble ahead for the economy are record level credit card use and lower than average savings rates. And again, both of those suggest that families who are sort of on the margins financially might be tapping into credit cards, might be tapping into their savings to make ends meet. In fact, I read some recent research that suggests that on average, most households have higher credit card debt than they have savings. It's not a great scenario, and this is consistent with many sources citing the fact that between 60 and 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Yeah, and it almost doesn't matter how high that paycheck is, which is a little bit counterintuitive.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:24:43) - I remember doing an interview on CNN years ago when Evander Holyfield mansion was being foreclosed on. It was a $30 million mansion outside of Georgia with two bowling alleys, swimming pool, indoor boxing rinks, basketball courts, the whole nine yards. I had to explain to the reporter that just because you're wealthy doesn't mean you're not living paycheck to paycheck. It's just sometimes there's more zeros to the left of the decimal point. Their cost of living tends to be much higher. So expenses are keeping up with income. All right, Expenses keep up with income. What's been going on in terms of consumer spending, in terms of wage growth, in terms of the GDP being strong has all contributed to inflation. And we had the highest inflation rate in 40 years. Not too long ago, we were up over 9% inflation year over year. And the Federal Reserve has taken very aggressive actions to try and get inflation under control. The primary tool they use is raising the Fed funds rate, which is basically what sets the rates on all short term interest.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:25:44) - And they've raised it more rapidly and higher than it pretty much any time in history. If you go back to the 80s, they actually raised the Fed funds rate higher because inflation was completely out of control then, but not as quickly as they did this time. So typically what you see is something more like what the Fed did say back in the 2015, 2016 period, where inflation ticked up a little bit. So they raise the Fed funds rate a little and they waited a while to see what kind of impact it would have. Then they raise it a little bit more and it's kind of a step by step process until they feel that inflation is peaked and they can then drop off the Fed funds rate. This time they raised it at higher increments they'd ever done before and much more rapidly. The good news is it does seem to be having its effect. The most recent inflation numbers are around 3% year over year, which is close to the Fed's target rate of 2% year over year. And a lot of the inflation rate that is reported on is housing costs.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:26:42) - And most of the housing costs are actually rental rates or what the Fed refers to is the rental equivalency. If you have a mortgage. And what we have seen is rental rates have gone back down from ridiculously high, asking prices. A year or so ago, it wasn't unusual to see an asking rent 15% higher than the prior rent rate. And that's in a market where the usual increase is 1 to 4%. So it was just completely off the charts. Those numbers have all come back to normal. And in some markets, we're actually seeing slight declines in year over year rental asking prices. The reason the Ric is bringing rents into the inflation discussion here is because rent and something called owners equivalent rent are a substantial contributor to the. They comprise more than a third of the CPI basket. Exactly right, Keith. And thank you for reminding me why I started this dissertation. The fact is that that decrease in rental costs has not hit the Fed's inflation numbers yet. There's about a full year lag in the housing numbers that the Fed uses in its CPI analysis and what's going on in the real market.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:27:52) - So if the Federal Reserve does nothing else, these housing costs get caught up. We will see inflation come down a little bit more. A lot of us are hoping that the Fed is done with its increases because of what's happened historically. Historically speaking, if you go all the way back to World War Two, the Federal Reserve not counting this cycle, has raised the Fed funds rate 11 times to get inflation under control. Eight of those times it's waited a little bit too long or it's waited for inflation until inflation got too high and it was a little bit too sticky and they had to overcorrect. And that ultimately steered us into a recession. There were three times once in the 60s, once in the 80s and once in the 90s where the Fed acted proactively to try and get inflation under control. And in those three cases, they were able to steer us into a soft landing and avoid a recession. In this case, they've already admitted they waited too long. They admitted that inflation got much higher than they expected.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:28:48) - It certainly wasn't as transitory as they'd hoped. So the likelihood is that they've already overcorrected and we will see something of a recession. They may get lucky this time. They may have actually walked the tightrope correctly. And assuming they don't continue with this aggressive course of action, they may have actually managed to work us into a soft landing this time. Yeah, and that is a terrific history lesson that you gave us, Rick. I often like to tell my audience about when you want to predict the future direction of something. I'd like to take history over hunches. It's easy to have a hunch that something's going to go a certain direction. But you look at history. You talked about basically how the Fed was late to identify inflation because they had called it transitory for a while, so they started hiking too late. Now, maybe they've overhyped or maybe they haven't. But if they have, maybe they will need to lower them too quickly. If they don't have that desired soft landing. The economists that follow right now are split about 5050 on whether we'll actually see a recession coming out of this cycle.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:29:51) - It was more like 8020, looking for a recession just a few months ago. Right. The economy is slowing a little bit. The last jobs report had about 187,000 jobs created, which was a good number, but it was lower than what we've seen in recent reports. So the economy slowing down, but not going to full stop or going into negative terms is an indication that maybe we do escape a recession. Good news, by the way, is even if we do have a recession, the rest of the economic measures that you look at are also strong, that it's very likely it would be a very short and very mild recession, and unemployment probably wouldn't get over about four and a half or 5%. So that's something to keep in mind as you go forward. You talked about history, Keith. I big on that too, history as a predictor of what might happen. Yeah. The other thing that points to a recession is something called a yield curve inversion. And without getting too inside baseball on people, people track the yield on a ten year US Treasury and they track the yield on a two year US Treasury and typically your yield on a short investment like a two year Treasury is lower than your yield on a ten year or longer investment because there's more risk involved in the longer time period and so forth and so on.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:31:07) - Every now and then, the bond market senses a disruption in the force. Darth Vader is looming over the market and you see these things switch places and suddenly the yield on a ten year US Treasury is lower than the yield on a two year US Treasury, and that's called a yield curve inversion. Now yield curve inversion doesn't cause a recession, but the last seven times we've had one, it's correctly predicted that a recession was coming and this current period we're in is one of the longer and deeper inversions that we've ever seen. So again, if you look at history as a predictor of the future, this yield curve inversion points toward us having a recession at some point before we get through the cycle. And I know yield curves can confuse a lot of people. If you're the listener or the viewer here, make a very long term loan to a friend, well, you'd want to get compensated with a higher interest rate for that higher risk amount than if you made a short term loan to a friend and he was paying you back.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:32:04) - Tomorrow, you might not charge him much of any interest at all because there's more certainty that you're going to get paid back. But that condition has been inverted, where when you make the long loan to the buddy, you're compensated with a lower interest rate yield. That is what is known as a yield curve inversion. Yeah. And I think yield curve throws people off. If you just think of it in terms of the yields, that probably makes it simpler. But again, if you're looking at recession predictors, these are the two. That I typically look at. And that's kind of important to know if you're going to be investing in the housing market because recessions can have an impact on the housing market. Rick thinks there's a likelihood that the Fed has already overcorrected with too many interest rate increases. If we do have a recession, Rick believes that it's most likely to be mild without many layoffs. Rick and I, we actually seem to agree on a lot of things. We see a lot of things the same way.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:33:03) - Maybe it would be more interesting for you if we disagreed a bit more to stay up on the latest moves in the real estate market. You can follow Rick Saga on X, formerly known as Twitter. His handle there is simply Rick Saga. Well, Rick made a Darth Vader reference there. And, you know, much like the original Star Wars movie had the sequel, which was called The Empire Strikes Back. You know, that was one sequel that some people liked more than the original. And that is atypical because usually people like the original more. But The Empire Strikes Back was a fantastic sequel, and I think that could happen here next week. Rick and I are back together for part two of two, the sequel. We are probably going to analyze and break down the state of the housing market and the future of investment real estate. And we should go on for twice as long on that as we did for today on the economy. So therefore, next week is kind of like the Empire Strikes Back, although I don't expect that next week Darth Vader is going to cut off Luke Skywalker's hand like what happened in the movie.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:34:10) - That just wouldn't be proper. And we're clearly not into improprieties around here.

 

Darth Vader (00:34:18) - You are unwise to lower your defenses.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:34:23) - Oh, Luke lost his hand this week. Not next week. Well, that's not even the scene where Luke loses his hand, But, hey, that totally worked. So. Getting back to real estate here, you need properties to be an investor. The builders know that higher mortgage rates are a pain point for buyers. Our coaches and I hear a know it too. So we have. Yes. Rubbed salve on the wound 5.75% interest rates, 4.75% or even 2.99%. And at times you're going to have to use the builder's preferred lender in order to get those terms. But really some remarkable Bibles that we've negotiated for you. So take advantage of it since I don't know how long that is going to be around. In fact, I'll even bring up those rate by down terms to Rick Saga next week and get his take to help you out on the cash flow side. We also have access to properties that would make good mid term corporate rentals in the southeastern US midterm rentals.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:35:27) - They often have higher cash flow than a traditional long term unfurnished rental. For any and all of that, contact your investment coach, you're probably working with one by now. They'll help you shop the marketplace properties, tell you where the real deals are and tell you how to get those improbably low mortgage rates for income properties. Your coach guides you and makes it easy for you If you don't have an investment coach yet, just go to Marketplace. Com slash coach and they're there to help you out until next week I'm your host Keith Winfield. Don't quit your Adrian.

 

Speaker 4 (00:36:08) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.

 

Keith Weinhold (00:36:36) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.