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485: The Creeping Silent Depression and Current Economic Realities with Doug Casey

Complete episode transcript:

Keith Weinhold (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. California and new renter protections. My own property manager had my tenants rent payments stolen from his drop box, and he wants me to take the loss. Then Tom Wheelwright joins me for a discussion about can we abolish the property tax today on get rich education? If you like the Get Rich Education podcast, you're going to love our Don't Quit Your Daydream newsletter. No, I here I write every word of the letter myself. It wires your mind for wealth. It helps you make money in your sleep and updates you on vital real estate investing trends. It's free. Sign up and Get Rich Education. Com slash letter. It's real content that makes a real difference in your life, spiced with a dash of humor. Rather than living below your means, learn how to grow your means right now. You can also easily get the letter by texting GRE to 66866. Text GRE to 66866.

Speaker 2 (00:01:06) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:01:13) - This is get rich education.

Keith Weinhold (00:01:22) - Welcome to GRE! From Montpelier, France, to Montpelier, Vermont, and across 188 nations worldwide. And Keith Weinhold, in your listening to get rich education across the United States, it's fortunate for us that states with landlord friendly policies also tend to be those states where the numbers make sense to. And for landlord tenant relationships, it's the state and local policies that often trump the national ones. Now, of course, in residential real estate or any real estate for that matter. I mean, you can make money in all 50 states, of course, but there's a reason that we generally avoid certain places, and that includes California. One difficulty in California has long been the process of getting a prompt eviction. It can be hard to do that even if you have just cause, where it can take months and months, or even longer than a year to get an eviction. Let's listen in to this minute and a half clip on how tenants rights are being strengthened in California. Just a little more.

Speaker 3 (00:02:30) - Well, every month, renters in California spend a hefty portion of their paychecks on housing. And as we kick off, 2024, seven is on your side with the new laws. Renters should know to save some money and also protect themselves against eviction. Before you lock in an apartment, you usually need your first month plus a security deposit in advance. Well, now the amount you have to pay up front could potentially drop by thousands of dollars.

Speaker 4 (00:02:54) - Landlords can now charge just one month of security deposit up front, and previously they could charge two months if the unit was unfurnished or even up to three months of the unit was furnished.

Speaker 3 (00:03:05) - Renters are also getting new eviction protections. Soon, it will be harder for landlords to evict a tenant under the no fault, just cause policy. Currently, a tenant can be evicted if the landlord or landlord's family is going to move in, but starting April 1st, the landlord or their family will have to move in within 90 days and live there for at least a year.

Speaker 3 (00:03:24) - Local governments are also now banned from crime free housing policies. Cities and counties can't mandate penalties or evictions against people who have been charged, convicted or had police called on them. The ban also applies to the family members of tenants. Now, renters are not the only ones benefiting from the new housing laws. Homeowners will now have more options when it comes to so-called granny flats or accessory dwelling units.

Speaker 4 (00:03:50) - Now they can separate and either build or sell an Adu and accessory dwelling unit and sell that separately as a condo. Lawmakers think that that's something that's going to help the state's housing crisis.

Speaker 3 (00:04:02) - And with housing prices sky high, this could give many would be homebuyers the opportunity they need to afford a starter home.

Keith Weinhold (00:04:09) - Yeah. So there it is in California this year. Lower upfront deposit amounts for tenants and more protection from evictions. California landlords, they can now charge just one month of security deposit upfront. That's the most they can charge. Previously, they could charge two months if the unit was unfurnished and up to three months security deposit if the unit was furnished.

Keith Weinhold (00:04:36) - Now, on the flip side, you've got to give California credit for helping homeowners, existing homeowners. They will now have more options when it comes to so-called ADUs accessory dwelling units, which some people call granny flats, because now they can separate and either build or sell in Adu. They could sell that separately as a condo, and that might help California's affordable housing crisis and the housing shortage crisis that could give more California homebuyers the opportunity that they need to afford a starter home. So that is better for first time homebuyers in California. And whether you live there or not, this matters. California has the same population as all of Canada in between 11 and 12% of all US residents are indeed Californians. Let me tell you about a completely weird situation that I have with one of my property managers. Now, I own rental properties in different states around the US, and each of those local markets has their own manager, and you might have this situation as well. Or perhaps that's what you would soon like to do to have this situation of having properties in multiple markets.

Keith Weinhold (00:05:53) - Well, about 12 months ago now, I got a message from a property manager that manages a bunch of single family homes for me in this one particular area, and he let me know that I was not going to be seeing a rent payment for one of my tenants. And that's because the tenant paid the rent, but they paid it with a paper money order that was left in the manager's overnight drop box and the mail from that box. Was broken into by a thief and stolen. And then apparently the thief converted the money order at the bank by in this house. Unbelievable. By waiting out the name of the money order recipient, which I guess would have been the manager. And then the thief wrote in his own name on the Wite-out. Now there were three tenants that had their payments stolen from my property manager like this. So mine was one of the three from my tenant. And the thief also broke into two other real estate offices around the same time. So the thief broke into three offices total, apparently.

Keith Weinhold (00:07:01) - Now, the question that we're leading up to here is, I tell you more about this. Who is liable for this missing payment? And really, there are five parties here where you could give an answer. Is it the thief, the manager, the tenant, the bank or me? The investor who is liable for that stolen payment? Who should make good on it? Who will make good on it? Now, the amount that we're talking about is a stolen rent of $1,550. Okay. This is a rental single family home that I have. So I've been out this $1,550 for about a year now. And by the way, the tenant that had the rent payment stolen a full year ago, they still live there in their rent is now 1750, but it was 1550 them. Now I'm only making a thing of this a full year later and starting to ask my manager to make me whole now. And that's just because I've got a lot going on in life and $1,550. That's just not enough to make that big of a deal over.

Keith Weinhold (00:08:03) - But when life took a pause and I got to thinking about this some more, the principle of it is really bothersome. Wouldn't it bother you? I mean, if I let others like my manager get away with something like this, then I could get walked all over in other ways. Now, when I requested that the manager paid me because it was their drop box that it was stolen from, really, the only answer that they want to give me is that they can't pay because they don't have insurance to cover that type of loss. Well, I don't either. Now, should the bank be the liable party here for processing a payment where the pay to name was whited out, and then the criminal wrote over it with his name? And by the way, the criminal used his real name. And that's also part of how he got caught, which is unbelievable. And they also, though they do know who the criminal is because they have video surveillance of him at the bank depositing the money orders. I mean, how should he have been able to catch them? But the process of trying to get the criminal to remedy this or the bank to remedy this, those approaches have not worked.

Keith Weinhold (00:09:14) - And I think that the manager wants me to take the loss and pay because he doesn't want to take the loss. And you know, something? Admittedly, between the tenant, the manager and I, I'm probably the one that could most afford the loss, but that does not make it right now. At last, check the property manager who keeps refusing to pay up. They propose something ridiculous that I want to share with you in a moment. You're not going to believe it. Well, as you know, you have a written management agreement when you enter in an agreement to have your manager manage your property for you and that management agreement that's between you, the investor and your manager, just those two parties. And as we know, one job that your manager does for you is that they collect the rent for you. So I figured what I would go do is look at my management agreement, and I'm going to go cite that line where it says that the manager collects the money for the property owner.

Keith Weinhold (00:10:16) - But would you believe it? Nowhere in our agreement does it state that the manager collects the payment for the owner. So here's one lesson. The next time you're signing a new management agreement, see that that line is in there. I think it's just kind of easy to assume that it is. But, you know, those agreements, they're typically written by the property management company. So they might write it in ways that protect them. But here's the thing. The manager still doesn't want to pay $1,550 and was stolen from the drop box. They had proposed something that seems wild to me when I said I'm not going to let go. They told me that their plan is to ask the tenant to pay by adding an extra 150 or $200 to their monthly rent payment until the deficit is paid up. So that would be what, something like eight months of payments. Now, I doubt that the tenant would agree to something like that. If the manager is accepting rent in a drop box, it seems like it's the manager's responsibility to make sure that it's secured.

Keith Weinhold (00:11:20) - So to me, of the five parties involved here, it should be either the criminal, the bank for processing the payment that way, or the manager that should be held liable. One of those three parties, not the property owner and not the tenant. So you've got to believe that I consider firing this property manager and using someone else. And by the way, whenever you have to do that, if you ever do have to do that, and I've had to do it before, you can ask the provider that sold you the property for new property management recommendations, or you can find some new property managers by checking online forums with other clients that have actually used property managers. If you replace your manager. What that does is that your manager, they're going to lose more than just that 8 to 10% monthly management fee. They'd also lose future leasing fees. They lose any arrangements that they have with service providers to service your property, like plumbers and electricians. When it comes time for you to sell your properties that your manager manages for you, that manager might also lose the ability to collect referral fees at that, manager has the real estate license so you can make firing your manager hurt them more than you might think.

Keith Weinhold (00:12:40) - Now, I don't like hurting anyone in business. That's why I'm trying to find a constructive way to resolve this. But the manager has had a long time to make this right with me. They're probably just hoping I would forget about the whole thing. The property manager does not want to take the loss, and I will not either. I'll keep you updated on how this weird situation concludes here, but yeah. Hey, I'm an investor just like you. I want to dig in and get involved sometimes and see if something like a stolen rent payment happened with a stock that you own. I mean, you might take the loss there and you wouldn't even know that it happened. So I like real estate investing trends agency with a manager. I don't have the day to day involvement responsibility, but yet I can see a lot of what's going on with the monthly statements that they send me. Or if I have a concern, I know who I can directly contact to remedy something. And if you're a new real estate investor, please be mindful that this situation with my manager and the stolen rent payment is not typical at all.

Keith Weinhold (00:13:45) - In 20 years of doing this, I have never had a situation like this. In a few minutes here, we're going to discuss how feasible it is that America could eliminate the property tax altogether. And our guests. He's also going to tell us why he's been seeing more people like you paying tax on the gain from the sale of your primary residence. Hey, would you like to see me at breaking down real estate investing concepts on a whiteboard? Yes, a magic marker in hand with a whiteboard and an easel. Well, you can watch me do that from the comfort of your home. Over on our YouTube channel, we recently launched our explained series, and I begin it by breaking down basics and just showing you an actual net worth and actual cash flow statement, and then figuring out how you can take those and learn exactly when you can quit your job and retire. It's easier to do the numbers over there than it is here on an audio format, and later I'll whiteboard some more advanced concepts for you soon, like explaining an inverted yield curve.

Keith Weinhold (00:15:00) - Watch me on the whiteboard in our explained series. It is free on YouTube right now and our channel is pretty easy to find because it's called get Rich education. Eliminating the property tax. Next I'm Keith White hold. You're listening to get rich education. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge lending group and MLS 42056 in gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. 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 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them.

Keith Weinhold (00:16:20) - It's all backed by real estate and that 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 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.

Speaker 5 (00:17:02) - This is author Christine Tait. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your Daydream.

Keith Weinhold (00:17:19) - A renowned tax and wealth expert is back on the show with us today. He's also a CPA, and he's the CEO of a terrific tax firm called Wealth Ability. He's the best selling author of the Mega-popular book Tax Free Wealth, which you may very well want to check out again, because he just updated that book with a third edition. I have the original tax free wealth on my bookshelf.

Keith Weinhold (00:17:40) - Welcome back to Dr. Tom Wheelwright. Thanks, Keith. Always good to be on your show. Tom, we have a lot of real estate investors listening. Why don't we talk about property tax? It applies to one whether they own income, property or whether they own a primary residence. Tom, I thought about the discussion that we were going to have today. I was thinking about it yesterday. And you know what happened? I looked out my window and the garbage had just been picked up from the curb, and this was shortly after my driveway was plowed of snow. Okay, now, if an alien came down from another planet and we described that there's a property tax in the United States, so we'll probably believe, oh, all right. Well, they're going to like, pick up your trash and like, plow your driveway for you and everything for that property tax you pay. It's like, oh no. Well those are separate services that I pay. So really what I'm getting at is maybe more philosophically in big picture, should there be a property tax? That's a big question.

Keith Weinhold (00:18:37) - Yeah. But let's do talk about what property tax funds. So property tax funds schools. It's the primary funding mechanism of schools. If you talk to an old timer they still call it school tax sometimes. Yeah it funds schools. It funds fire departments. It funds the police. So those are the three big services that have funds. This is why, by the way, Keith, when there was that group in Seattle that took over that section of the city and the government refused to send to kick those people out. I don't know if you remember this a couple of years ago. And I'm going, wait a minute, why are we paying property taxes? Because the police force and the fire department were being paid by property taxes on the buildings that had been taken over by this renegade group. Wow. And so I have a commercial property. I pay a huge property tax on that commercial property doesn't house children, so I don't send children to school, but I still pay tax for education. Why? Because I need educated employees, so I'm happy to do that.

Keith Weinhold (00:19:37) - I pay for fire protection. I pay it for police protection. I think what the money is used for generally is fine. I don't have an issue with that. The challenge I have with the property tax is twofold. One is it is a true wealth tax. If your property goes up in value, you pay more tax and it's a tax on inflation, because if you're a property goes up in value because of inflation, you pay more tax. And then second of all, you're out to sell your property. But it's also a regressive tax. So people who have no more income, they're on fixed income, they're Social Security. They have a pension plan whatever that their property goes up because of inflation, not because it's a better property and they're paying more tax even though their incomes not going up. That's my biggest challenge with property tax. That's really a good point. I had never thought about it that way before. The property tax can be a regressive tax. Therefore you pay a higher rate with a lower income, which is what a regressive tax means.

Keith Weinhold (00:20:40) - I know that some jurisdictions try to help senior citizens out with that. Maybe you both say like the first 100 K of assessed property value is exempt. But yeah, on basis you're right about that. With it being a regressive tax. Tom, I kind of look around the landscape. We deal with a lot of markets and properties and providers nationwide here at gray, and I seem to see a national effect of property tax rate of about 1%, something like that's pretty common 1% of value on a 500 K property. You're going to pay about $5,000 in property tax. Of course, that varies substantially. New Jersey is a really high one. So the states in the Deep South are really low ones. But what are your thoughts about that 1% average national effect? Think about that tax rate. Let's say you bought that property for $50,000. You bought the property for $50,000 based on your income. You bought it for $50,000. Now, because of inflation, it's $500,000. Now it's really a 10% of what you bought it for.

Keith Weinhold (00:21:34) - So it's not really 1% anymore. It's 1% of the price value. It's not 1% of what you paid for it. This is where California with prop 13 they apt their property tax. Right. If you didn't move into a new property. I loved that proposition. Frankly, I love prop 13 because what I said was, look, if you're staying the same home, your property tax isn't going to go up. Because you get no more value out of it than you did when you bought it. So why are you getting more tax even though you're not getting more value? That makes no sense. I'm not a big fan. You know, like Texas has a they rely heavily on property. Remember we have three types of taxes. We have an income tax. We have a transaction tax which the biggest one is sales tax. But it's also excise taxes. And then we have property tax. And property tax and estate tax are the only two wealth taxes we have. And property tax is a true wealth tax.

Keith Weinhold (00:22:29) - Why is it allowed. Why can we have a property tax in our hometown. But we can't have a federal property tax because Constitution doesn't allow a federal property tax. But our state constitution probably does allow a state property tax. And so robbery taxes are really interesting. I talk about in tax free wealth. Tax wealth has a chapter on property sales and property tax. It's my least favorite tax because again A it's regressive and B it's a tax on something I've never realized. The only benefit I have is that I live in it. But that benefit's not gone up even though the property tax goes up. You brought up so many interesting things there. Sure, that proposition in California is what kept people staying in their homes for a very long time. But we think about property tax and should there even be one? As we ponder that big question, what do other nations do? Because a lot of times I know you look at foreign nations tax policies. Most localities. A lot of them have a local property tax.

Keith Weinhold (00:23:27) - I don't think it's uncommon. What's interesting to me is that Missouri is looking at getting rid of their property tax and putting in a transaction tax instead. So in other words, you don't pay a tax for owning the property. You only pay a tax when you sell it. Well, that actually makes more sense. You know, in previous episode we talked about more versus United States. We talked about that whole idea of a wealth tax and realized gain. And some states do this already. California does this, Hawaii does this, Pennsylvania does this where you have a tax when you sell the property, an excise tax when you sell the property, or a transfer tax, if you will? That makes some sense because you did get the money. You actually have the ability to pay the tax. It's not coming out of your earnings. It came out of the sale of the property. So it's a tax on the sale. Frankly, if I had to choose, I would probably choose the transaction tax.

Keith Weinhold (00:24:23) - I mean, I would choose to have very little tax. I think we need fire. We need police. Those two things we absolutely need we need roads. We should have taxes to pay for those school. I'm a fan of school choice. And should we have property tax pay for those? Or is that something that we ought to pay for some other way? I don't know, there is argument that, again, that should be maybe you ought to pay that out of sales tax or a transaction tax. Yeah. I think I'm feeling your vibe on that one time that a transfer tax of real estate is somewhat more palatable than this ongoing property tax that you have to pay, because the transfer tax probably is realizing a gain there. Along with that, even though we probably don't like that piled on top of ongoing property tax, for sure. We think about property taxes, something that applies to every homeowner, whether they own income, property or not, is the pretty well known primary residence capital gains tax exemption for quite a while.

Keith Weinhold (00:25:16) - That's been 250 K if you're single and 500 K if you're married. Can you tell us more about that and where the direction of that's going? And is that adjusting with inflation or what are your thoughts. Yeah, it's not adjusting for inflation unfortunately. It's interesting. Some things adjust for inflation. Some things don't. Tax brackets adjust the exclusion for your primary residence doesn't. And your deduction for miles driven for charity doesn't adjust for inflation. But your deduction for miles driven for work does adjust for inflation. So it's very interesting to see what does Congress say. We're going to adjust for for inflation. What they don't. That came into effect under Bill Clinton prior to his presidency. You had to actually put your new house, had to be worth more than your old house is very much like a 1031 exchange where as long as you bought a new house that was equal to or greater in price than the sales price of your old house, you paid no tax but the minute you went down. So when, for example, you're retiring and you decide, well, I don't need all this house, my kids are gone, I'm going to go move into a condo on the golf course, or I just don't need that much space.

Keith Weinhold (00:26:25) - Then you had to pay tax. What happened in the Clinton era was we actually got this exclusion, which is as long as you live in the house for two years, two out of the last five years, you get 100% exclusion on the gain, up to 250, like you said, 250 single, 500 joint. I would love to see them index that. I think it needs to be indexed. Frankly, they need to adjust it retroactively because too many people got caught in this last run up where for the first time ever, I saw a lot of people paying tax on the gain from the sale of their house. Yeah, that's something that you hope that you don't have to do. We'll see if and when they do adjust that for inflation. I'm not always talked about property tax bill. Why don't we open it up somewhat more and talk more about what we discussed the last time you were here on the show with us? Well, I think we already learned then whether Americans, just over time, over the long term, are more likely taxed or more heavily taxed.

Keith Weinhold (00:27:24) - It seems like they're always piling on more and more taxes. What are your thoughts with where we're going on lighter taxation or heavier taxation? I said, well, we rarely get taxed less. We're actually taxed less than just about any other country. Just to be clear, we pay a lower share of our income in taxes than just about any other country. But of course, we have much, many fewer benefits. We don't have national health care. We have Social Security, but it's a small amount, right. In France, remember, they had these big protests, right? Because the French president raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. Why were so many people protesting that? Well, it's because in France the salaries aren't enough to keep up. And so they're relying on that. They can't save up and say, I'm going to retire earlier because I've saved up money. There's not enough income for them to save. So they're relying on the government to save for them. That was a hard thing for them.

Keith Weinhold (00:28:18) - We have a hard time understanding that in the US because our tax rates are so much lower. France, for example, I was. Reading. That's the other day. 50% of GDP goes to taxes in France. In the US it's about 26% of GDP. So we're almost half of what percentage of our GDP goes to taxes. So they're the highest. What's happening is you're seeing Germany. There's this going up Korea. Theirs has gone up, Japan theirs has gone up. And the US, they expect ours to be up. It's 28% of GDP within a few years. So it's all relative, right. The problem is, is that the taxes are more and more as a proportion of our gross domestic product. If you think the government should stay out of our lives, then you're on the wrong end of that stick, because that means that the government's getting more and more involved, and more and more money is being spent by the government instead of the private sector. Well, Tom, you've been here on the show with us a lot of times.

Keith Weinhold (00:29:16) - We've talked about how your rental income gets taxed. We've talked about capital gains tax and property tax and sales tax and income tax, one tax type we haven't talked about. When we think about whether things just get worse as the government piles on more taxes, is there any threat in your mind of a tax for those that don't know what that is? That's basically a head tax. That's a tax that's imposed on you just for existing. Is that a possibility? Zionist capitation tax and not a decapitation tax. It might feel like one. Yeah. It's, uh, commonly called the poll tax write poll. As in poll. You go to the polls that the number of people that is actually allowed, the government could impose that that is allowed under a constitution, a poll tax. Great Britain has a poll tax. So it's not unheard of. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about. The problem is, is that a poll tax is a tax on voters. And we know politicians don't want to put a tax on voters.

Keith Weinhold (00:30:16) - Right. So where's the incentive to vote? They're more likely to put a tax on corporations who don't vote. I'll tell you the favourite tax. The favourite tax is to put a tax on out-of-towners. Somebody who's coming into your place like a travel tax. One of the key policy points of any tax unit is you want to export your tax to people who don't vote for you. So you're always trying to put the tax on somebody who doesn't can't vote for you. Because if you put on people who do vote for you, you will soon lose your job. Interesting point. That's why you see taxes on Ubers and taxis and hotels, resort taxes. You see those kind of tax skills are basically export tax, right? They're taxing people who don't live and vote in your state or in your location. A poll tax would be a tax on people who do live in your state or location. I have a hard time seeing that one coming down the line. More likely is you really wanted us to be more competitive with the rest of the world.

Keith Weinhold (00:31:17) - We'd have a value added tax in the United States, we do not have one. And if you wanted to make us more competitive with the rest of the world, if you really want to raise funds or you want to pay off the deficit, or you want to get rid of an income tax, the best way to do it would be a value added tax. Well, maybe you, the listener, just have a shred of a little something to be thankful for. There are tax types you've heard of that we don't actually have yet. There actually are some remaining. It seems like they'll all get used up. Europe has a. Europe uniformly has a 20% value added tax that just goes to increases the price of your meals at a restaurant, increases the price of every product you buy. That's a value added tax. That's a national sales tax that is common in the rest of the world. We're the only major developed country that doesn't have one. Well, at least in Europe, they're not asking that.

Keith Weinhold (00:32:06) - When you get your restaurant meal bill that you add a tip onto the tax about, like what's happening a lot of times here. And I think a lot of people aren't even aware of that. That's another absurdity. Yeah. Another absurdity of being a consumer in the United States today. Tom, you're really an expert in helping people understand that there are so many parts of the tax code out there for reducing one's taxes. The tax code, mostly most of the pages are about tax reduction. There are just a few pages about the tax tables. And then basically the rest of the tax code says you have to pay the tax in those tables if you don't do these other things. So tell us more about how one and everyday people can learn and get informed by being matched up with the right professional, so they can learn about all those exceptions to paying those taxes in the tables. I appreciate your promotion of tax free wealth because that's the starting point. You really do need to understand the concepts, and the concepts are all in tax free wealth.

Keith Weinhold (00:33:00) - Okay, so really inexpensive way for you to get an education. Once you've got the education though, you do need a team around you. And what I think the most important person, well outside of your bookkeeper, who I actually think is the most important person of that team, I think your number two person is your CPA. And I'm going to be very specific. There are a lot of people who hold themselves out as tax advisors, and I would not touch them with a ten foot pole. Whether it's I don't want a financial planner giving me tax advice, nor do I want a CPA, give me financial advice. Let's have a specialist do the specialist work. I don't want an enrolled agent. And the reason I don't want enrolled agent. If I'm really simple, that's great. But remember enrolled agent, they have very little education. They took a test. An IRS test that takes a couple of hours. That's all they did. If you're a business owner, you're a serious investor. You need a CPA and you need a CPA who cares more about you than they do about protecting themselves from the IRS.

Keith Weinhold (00:33:59) - This is one of my big complaints about some of my fellow CPAs is they seem to be so concerned about an audit. And my question is, if you're so concerned about an audit, does that mean you're afraid of the IRS? And if your CPA is afraid of the IRS, it's probably time to get a new CPA. That's right. Well, please, I tell you, we have a resource on our website where you can connect with Tom's team and get messed up with the right advisor. That is it. Get rich education complex. But like Tom said, a good thing to do is read his book, Tax Free Wealth first. That way you'll be able to ask the right questions so you can get the right answers from the right professional that you can be messed up with. Tom, do you have any last thoughts? Here is we're still relatively new in a year here when it comes to taxation, and one taking their plans forward through the year. Let's remember that we have an election coming up this year.

Keith Weinhold (00:34:54) - And one of the biggest issues in this election is going to be taxation. There's certain politicians that would like to take the 2017 tax reductions and extend them. There are others that would like to eliminate them and actually raise taxes. A couple of years ago, we had a proposal called Build Back Better. Great. Started as a $6 trillion proposal and ended up being $2 trillion and change the name to, quote unquote, the Inflation Reduction Act, or as I like to call it, the Inflation Enhancement Act. But that's going to be back. So you may love one party. You may hate the other party. Just know that when you go to vote, think about you are voting for a tax increase or a tax decrease depending on who you vote for. Look at their policies. Look at what they propose. Look at what they've been talking about. Don't believe for a second that they're gonna all of a sudden say, well, we're not going to raise taxes, when in fact they're looking at you and they're going, is that my money in your pocket? It is a presidential election year.

Keith Weinhold (00:35:59) - The good news is you now have a way for your voice to be heard this year in taxes are part of that, Tom. We're right. It's a great having you back on the show. Thanks, Keith. Sometimes I hear people that pay property tax but yet don't have any children themselves. They say that, well, since property tax often funds schools that they're opposed to paying it. Well, let's look at it this way. I'm a person that doesn't have any kids yet. And even if I never do have kids, well, when I was a kid myself, I attended public school. So therefore I was the beneficiary of adults paying property tax to fund the school that I went to. So therefore, when you think of it in those terms, it's more palatable for a, I suppose, non father like me to pay it forward, pass it along and pay school tax for others. So though there may be other objections to paying property taxes, not having children, that's often not such a valid reason when you think about it that way.

Keith Weinhold (00:37:07) - Now, I think that the Liberty First Society's Christian Hall, she has an interesting take on property tax. Here's what she said. And I quote, property tax should end when you complete the sale or purchase, just like you do when you buy groceries or a bicycle. It's theft of ownership to keep paying property taxes, especially when government has the authority to take your property. When you don't pay your taxes for three years. That's not property tax, that's rent, and you're a tenant in your own home. Property tax makes government the owner of your property, not you. End quote. And again, that is from the Liberty First Society's Chris Ian Hall, thought provoking, if nothing else. Now, when it comes to finding the right professional to get real estate investors, all of our generous and legitimate deductions that we enjoy, I mean, it is one of the five ways real estate pays. After all, you do need to find the right pro so that they can find all the deductions for you.

Keith Weinhold (00:38:13) - And this is just the time of year to get that right. For more than ten years now, I have had the world's number one tax firm do my wealth strategy, my tax strategy and my tax preparation. I even use my bookkeeper through them. They understand what real estate investors need. They make sure that I don't miss out on optimizing benefits and deductions for mortgage interest and tax depreciation and property tax and cost segregation, which accelerates my deductions. And they make sure I get infinite capital gains tax deferrals and bonus depreciation and so much more. All the good things that real estate investors get when you work with an investor centric tax professional. In this way, you can also legally write off many of your expenses for property management and maintenance and utilities and even your travel. So you can do that by connecting with Tom's team by visiting get rich education.com/tax. That is this week's actionable resource. Until next week I'm your host Keith White. Hold don't quit your day dream.

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Speaker 6 (00:39:29) - 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.

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Direct download: GREepisode486_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:00am EDT

Mon, 22 January 2024

Has America already descended into a depression worse than the 1930s Great Depression?

Today’s guest, Doug Casey, suggests that we have. He joins us from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where inflation has been 100%+.

Is real estate cheap, adequately priced, or overpriced?

America’s national debt is so bad that we must now spend $1T annually just on the interest alone.

Keith Weinhold and guest Doug Casey explore the silent economic depression in America, discussing signs and impacts on daily life.

They compare real estate affordability across locations, viewing housing as a consumer good. Doug offers insights on Argentina's housing market, inflation, and the new president's influence.

They critique government intervention, fiat currency, and advocate for gold-backed currency, emphasizing moral values.

Strategies to counter currency debasement, like investing in durable goods and property improvements, are shared, alongside the benefits of spending on experiences and potential tax advantages of real assets.

Timestamps:

The silent economic depression (00:00:00)

Discussion on the concept of a silent economic depression and how it may be affecting America.

Real estate and property management issues (00:02:32)

An unusual property management incident and the impact of inflation on real estate in Argentina.

The guest's background and consistency (00:03:53)

The guest's background, consistency in views, and a discussion on diverse viewpoints.

Comparison of housing costs (00:04:59)

Comparison of housing costs and other expenses between the Great Depression era and the present day.

Real estate in the United States and Argentina (00:06:08)

Comparison of real estate prices and living expenses in the United States and Argentina.

Housing as a consumer good (00:09:29)

Discussion on housing as a consumer good and the impact of government policies on housing and wealth creation.

Comparison of housing costs and amenities (00:10:56)

Comparison of housing costs, amenities, and political changes in Argentina.

Impact of inflation on standard of living (00:14:37)

The impact of inflation on capital, standard of living, and the unsustainability of the current economic situation.

Government deficits and inflation (00:18:05)

Discussion on government deficits, inflation, erosion of the middle class, and the role of the government in creating inflation.

A Currency and Gold (00:20:22)

Doug Casey discusses the benefits of using gold as currency and the potential impact of government involvement.

Investing and Loans (00:22:42)

Keith discusses investing in real estate and loans, providing insights and tips for beginners and veterans.

Government Numbers and Inflation (00:24:54)

Doug challenges the accuracy of government unemployment and inflation figures and predicts higher inflation levels due to excessive money creation.

US Involvement and Financial Meltdown (00:27:57)

Doug discusses the impact of US military involvement, potential financial meltdown, and the unstable foundation of global debt.

Strategies to Counter Currency Debasement (00:32:05)

Doug presents the concept of saving in durable goods as a strategy to counter currency debasement and avoid capital gains tax.

Beating Inflation (00:34:41)

Keith proposes spending money as a way to beat inflation and improve quality of life, while Doug emphasizes the importance of saving for the future.

Doug Casey's Novels and Publications (00:36:44)

Doug promotes his novels and encourages listeners to subscribe to internationalman.com and watch his YouTube channel for more insights.

Improving Quality of Life and Beating Inflation (00:38:03)

Keith suggests making improvements to one's home as a way to beat inflation and improve quality of life, without incurring higher tax assessments.

These are the timestamps covered in the podcast episode transcription segment, along with their respective topics.

Resources mentioned:

Show Page:

GetRichEducation.com/485

Doug Casey’s YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@DougCaseysTake

Doug Casey’s blog:

InternationalMan.com

Doug Casey on Donahue in 1980:

https://youtu.be/uAk6_74m_kI?si=qeQw0404xcTIAsOU

For access to properties or free help with a

GRE Investment Coach, start here:

Get mortgage loans for investment property:

RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE

or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com

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484: How to Avoid Living Below Your Means and Leverage Debt

Complete episode transcript:

Keith Weinhold (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Is America suffering from a silent economic depression? It's gradually creeping into your life, but you just haven't noticed. That's what today's guest believes. Where do you look for signs of this? And what do you do about it? A silent depression today on get rich education. If you like the get Rich education podcast, you're going to love art. Don't quit your day dream newsletter. No, I here I write every word of the letter myself. It wires your mind for wealth. It helps you make money in your sleep and updates you on vital real estate investing trends. It's free! Sign up a get rich education.com/letter. It's real content that makes a real difference in your life, spiced with a dash of humor. Rather than living below your means, learn how to grow your means right now. You can also easily get the letter by texting gray to 66866. Text gray to 66866.

Speaker 2 (00:01:06) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:01:13) - This is get rich education.

Keith Weinhold (00:01:22) - Welcome to GRE, heard across 188 world nations, including Equatorial Guinea. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. This is get rich education, the voice of real estate investing since 2014. How can your quality of life and your one and only standard of living actually be getting worse today, especially here in the United States? From your iPhone, with fast Wi-Fi to a stable electrical grid to a bounty of produce for you to select at the supermarket, well, we'll soon learn why today's renowned guest and prolific author feels like we've already entered a silent depression. He is going to make his case. We have plenty to get to with our guest. But first, I've got a problem with one of my property managers, and this is a really weird one. In two decades of doing this. This is among the weirdest. What happened a while back is that one of my ten ends that this manager manages. Okay, the tenant paid his rent with a paper money order and he placed it in the property managers drop box.

Keith Weinhold (00:02:32) - They're at their offices. The money order was stolen out of the drop box by a thief. The manager doesn't want to take responsibility for it. And I'm the one that's been out. The rent money, the $1,550. I've told the manager, no, I'm not going to be pushed around like that. So there are more details on that, which I expect to tell you about next week. It is an interesting situation to say the least. I'll give you more on the payment stolen from the manager's overnight drop box. Now today's guest will join me from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they currently have inflation of perhaps 100% or 200% per year. We're going to talk about real estate and probably more with what he calls the silent, depressed. Now I'm probably a more upbeat, optimistic sort than our guest in general, but that does not make him wrong at all with this silent depression. But here, in a world where we've increasingly heard the word diversity a lot for the last decade, well, there are a lot of ways to think of diversity, and I like to champion some diversity of thought around here with our guests viewpoint today.

Keith Weinhold (00:03:53) - Now, I just recently saw a YouTube video of today's guest on The Phil Donahue Show in 1980. It was probably about the best known talk show that there was back in that era. And by the way, I'll leave that link in the show notes for you so that you can watch it too. And since today's episode is episode number 485, you can get the show notes either it get Rich education comp 485 or on your pod catcher. But yeah, Phil Donahue, he was kind of before my time. But yeah, really well-known show. And it's interesting to see today's guest and what he looked like back then. And from watching that video myself, I can tell you that one place where I do need to give this guest credit is with consistency. Now, does every single the world is going to end sort of thing that he says will happen? Does that end up happening? That's up for you to determine. But, you know, he has been consistent on promoting his ideals for a smaller government and more he's returning.

Keith Weinhold (00:04:59) - Guest. Let's meet him and discuss the silent depression. Are we on the verge of an economic depression known as a silent depression, where you're not aware of it? Today's guest has pointed out that during the 1930s Great Depression, the average home cost just three times the average income, but today it costs about eight times as much. The average car costs about 46% of a year's earnings back then. Today, it eats up about 85% of the annual average wage. Rent, which previously claimed just 16% of yearly income, now demands an astounding 42%. So by these metrics and others, you might wonder if the average person is actually in a worse position than during the Great Depression, which was the most challenging economic period in the last hundred years. A lot of people feel it. You might be getting squeezed, and by the end here you'll hear some new ideas for what you can actually do about it. We have a rather revered guest here with us today. He's been here a few times before to discuss other economic and real estate concepts.

Keith Weinhold (00:06:08) - He's a very popular author, often writing around the topic of crisis investing and known as the International Man. He hosts a podcast on YouTube called Doug Castaic. He's known as the International Man because he's extremely well traveled. He has residences in multiple nations today. Hey, it's great to have back on GRI the incomparable Doug Casey. Thanks. Okay.

Doug Casey (00:06:30) - It's a pleasure to be here. At the moment I'm in Buenos Aires, where I've lived part of the Earth for a long time.

Keith Weinhold (00:06:38) - Truly the international man living up to it today. Doug, I touched on housing to start with. With real estate show housing is one's biggest recurring expense in life, unless it's taxes. But today I actually think it's a valid question. Is real estate cheap in the United States? Is it adequately priced or is it overpriced? Now, depending on how you slice it, the median U.S. home value is 450 K, but if your mind shoots right to dollars like that, when you consider valuation, the dollar has been debased so much that it's a pretty poor measuring stick.

Keith Weinhold (00:07:15) - I know you like gold. A bar of gold is the same today as it was 100 years ago and a thousand years ago, and today it takes about 40% fewer ounces of gold to buy a home today than the long run 100 year average. So what we just did there is we got rid of dollars. We compared the relative cost between two real assets gold and real estate. You brought up a really good point in one of your articles, though. I think it's a better way to measure the cost of housing as a percent of one income, it takes two and a half times to three times as much of that annual income to own a home or rent a home today than it did in the 1930s. So when we think about housing costs, what are your thoughts?

Doug Casey (00:07:58) - It depends on where you are and where should I start? Right now, as I said, I'm in Buenos Aires and the apartment that I'm in here is about 5500ft² in a part of town, which is very much like the Upper East Side of New York.

Doug Casey (00:08:16) - It's called the Recoleta. Now, what would a a very classy top building with 24 hour security apartment of 5500ft² cost you in, uh, on the Upper East Side of New York, I'd say probably $20 million, roughly here in the Buenos Aires. This apartment is really got a current market price of about $1 million. In other words, 5% of what it is in New York. Yeah, costs of maintaining it are in line with that. That's point number one. Point number two is in most of the world, or certainly here in South America, when you buy something, you buy it for cash. In the U.S., when you buy something, it's usually for a mortgage. And the old saying, I'll give you the price you want if you give me the terms I want. Right. Not quite as attractive as it was just a while ago, where the average mortgage, now 30 year mortgage fixed in the US 7%, and for a while it was 8%. What do I think of the price of housing in the US? That's where most of your listeners live.

Doug Casey (00:09:29) - First of all, housing is not, in my opinion, an investment. It's a consumer good. It's very expensive. Consumer goods are not throwaway consumer goods like toothbrushes. Longer live consumer goods like a suit of clothes longer yet like a car and a house is just a longer alive consumer good. But an investment is something that produces new wealth, right? Housing doesn't it? Can? I mean, if you use it as a business. Yes. Okay, look, treat your house like a consumer. Good. That's the first mistake that everybody makes. They think it's an investment. That's going to go up. It's not. It's like a car. It should depreciate. It's got expenses to maintain it. That income that maintains you. I know you can rent it out and so forth, but.

Keith Weinhold (00:10:20) - Yeah, we champion residential income property around here. Something that I think you and I do consider an asset. But yeah, you're completely right. When you talk about the primary residence side, a home is primarily a liability, not an asset.

Keith Weinhold (00:10:32) - Why is that? Because a home takes money out of your pocket every month. Rather than putting money into your pocket every month like you touched on. Doug, before we go on about that 5500 square foot apartment there in Buenos Aires, I'm not familiar with the area. Can you just tell me a little bit more about the amenities that you have there? Are there very steep condo association dues? Is there a doorman? Tell me more about it.

Doug Casey (00:10:56) - Well, we have a doorman here in the building. We only have six apartments in this building. I have a two story penthouse, so it's probably the best apartment in the building. This area, the Recoleta. Like I said, it's like the Upper East Side of New York. We have lots of fine restaurants with short walk away. I pay my maid. We have a full time maid here. In addition, she earns $1,000 a month. Where can you get a full time maid in the US for a thousand bucks a month? Let me point something out.

Doug Casey (00:11:25) - That's very interesting. In Argentina, they elected a new president. And this is one of the most radical political changes in all of Western history. The new president of Argentina is a chap named Javier Mula. He identifies radically and openly as an anarcho capitalist. In other words, what he's interested in doing is basically tearing apart the government of Argentina and getting rid of as much of it as he can, all of it that we can. Now. Argentina is full of taxes, full of regulations. That's a delightful place to live. But if you want to do business or create wealth, it's a very bad place to live.

Keith Weinhold (00:12:10) - Well, with inflation.

Doug Casey (00:12:11) - Yeah, exactly. I mean, right now they have inflation of about, they say 140% per year, but it's more like 200 or 300% per year. You can trust the Argentine government's figures at all. You can only trust the US government's figures marginally more. But Melaye, as we talk, is firing massive numbers of government employees. It's eliminating agencies and so forth, and the government and the next step will be radically reduced taxes, radically reduced regulations.

Doug Casey (00:12:41) - So this department here is, I think, within the next five years, going to be selling for about what one what its sister on the Upper East Side of New York might be selling out. So I hope to make 10 to 1 on my money on this piece of real estate as a speculation. And it's a nice place to live in the meantime.

Keith Weinhold (00:13:01) - Yeah, with Malay in Argentina, it'll be interesting to see if he sticks with their currency moving from the Argentine peso to the dollar. It sounds like he might already be backing off of that. But getting back to your condo there, Doug. And yeah, that would be a terrific arbitrage play if you indeed bought low in the Buenos Aires market goes up, it sounds like an exceptional value you get there. We talk about our homes overpriced today, especially in the United States. Or are they underpriced? We talked about how one spends more of their proportion of income on housing today, and if that might make them trend toward this silent depression. But of course, you also get more home today.

Keith Weinhold (00:13:39) - I mean, 100 plus years ago in the United States, a new Victorian style home, it had sparse amenities and maybe 950ft². And today, an American home averages 2415ft². That's the figure. So you might pay two and a half times more of your income, but you might get two and a half times more square footage and of course, maybe like you're finding in your place there in Argentina, Doug, the average American home, it has features today that would have been considered unthinkable a hundred years ago. Luxuries, things that would have been considered luxuries back then like air conditioning and multiple bathrooms, quartz countertops, closets so vast that you could play pickleball inside them. So you're getting more home today, and it really hardly feels like a depression era lifestyle for many. But there are some less fortunate people, and inflation has widened this gap between the haves and the have nots. So what are your thoughts, especially when it comes to housing and the fact that you're getting more today? But not everyone is.

Doug Casey (00:14:37) - Because advances in technology, number one and number two, the fact that the average person is wired to produce more than they consume and save the difference, of course, we have more today than we did 100 years ago. That goes without saying, but it doesn't seem that way because even though workers are more productive than they were in the past, everything is fine. As with debt today, people talk about inflation as if it's just part of the cosmic firmament. It just happens. It doesn't happen. The government is the sole and entire cause of inflation. It does it by printing up money directly and indirectly. And what that does is it destroys the capital that you save. Americans save in dollars. Okay. You want to get ahead. You use more than you consume and you save the difference in dollars. But when the government destroys those dollars through inflation, your standard of living goes down. Now, that's been disguised through that. It used to be that when you bought a house, you paid cash for it.

Doug Casey (00:15:52) - Then many years ago, it started out with the. A five year mortgage with 20% down. Now we're talking about 30 year mortgages so that you really never own your home. Inflation is the real problem. It destroys capital. It destroys people's standard of living. The standard of living, generally speaking, in the US is going down. It's disguised by the fact that when you borrow money, you're either taking capital that people have saved in the past and you're using it for consumer goods now, or you're mortgaging your future for a higher standard of living. Today, all of that we have in the US, I think is unsustainable. And we could have either a credit collapse if they don't create money fast enough, or if they raise interest rates too high, or we can have something resembling a hyperinflation we have down here in Argentina. Either way, it's going to be very, very bad news because in an advanced industrial society like the US, to poison the money supply with inflation is asking for economic catastrophe.

Doug Casey (00:17:06) - So I think what we're looking at over the next ten years, and this is true for a number of reasons, not least of them, is the fact that Americans have elected in Washington people that are the equivalent of Jacobins during the French Revolution. I mean, they have the same ideas. I'm looking for very, very tough times, quite frankly, not just in the US, but almost everywhere in the world.

Keith Weinhold (00:17:32) - Today in the United States, compared to 100 years ago, one spends more of their income on housing and transportation and healthcare, and less on food and clothing. And yet, Doug, to your point about inflation, like dollars are such a poor measuring stick. That's why earlier, when we look at the cost of housing, I tried to discard dollars by going ahead and looking at the ratio between the home price and the gold price. I brought up the point last month with our audience that actually there's no such thing as grocery inflation or rent inflation. It's the government that creates the inflation.

Keith Weinhold (00:18:05) - So it's not landlords or grocers that are creating inflation. Those higher prices are just the consequence of the inflation that the central bank creates. And that's creating this erosion of the middle class, because those in the lower middle class and the poor, they don't have assets that benefit from the inflation. Yet they have the same fixed consumer costs that we're talking about here, like housing, transportation, health care, food and clothing. Talk to us some more about the problem in the government and how that could help lead us toward a silent depression. I know you brought up the point that the US government is running embedded deficits of $2 trillion per year, and that number is going to go much higher, if only because the interest cost alone is $1 trillion per year.

Doug Casey (00:18:49) - Yeah, people have to stop looking at the government as being their friend. It's not. It's a predator. It's a dead hand on top of society. It's certainly not a cornucopia, which is the way most people see the government. The government will give them stuff, right? The government will do stuff now it doesn't.

Doug Casey (00:19:08) - The government produces absolutely nothing that it doesn't take away first from society as a whole. So they have people have to stop looking at the government. It's a friendly big brother. It's more like increasingly the kind of big brother that you might have discovered in George Orwell's 1984. If we want to save the idea of America, which is one of the best ideas that humanity has ever had, we have to get rid of the government or as much of it as we can, and go back to the values, moral values, social values type of thing that this country had 200 years ago, what it was founded. I mean, that's my answer to the question. And the money, the dollar itself is a floating abstraction. It's a fiat currency. It's an IOU. Nothing on the part of a bankrupt government which can't even tax enough to give the money value. It just prints up more money and people out of inertia accept them. Well, there's nothing else they can use to trade Buck. We should go back to gold as being money and even a gold backed currency.

Doug Casey (00:20:22) - A currency is money. It's just a medium of exchange and a store of value. You don't need to insert the government and a central bank in between you and what you do with your fellow citizens in a country. That's why we should use gold, which for thousands of years has proven to be the best thing to use is money. It's one of 92 naturally occurring elements. And just as aluminum is particularly good for building airplanes, uranium is particularly good for making nuclear. Power plants. Gold has unique characteristics that make it unique. Almost unique. Uses money so the government shouldn't be involved in this. In all, this is a radical thought. I know that's something that most people have even thought about. They'll say, oh, this is completely ridiculous off the wall. This is unrealistic. This is the direction that the country should be going, but it's going the opposite direction at an accelerating rate. So yeah, we're looking at a nasty depression and it's been building up for many years. This isn't a recent phenomenon that's come up just since Biden, although the Biden pieces are making it much worse.

Doug Casey (00:21:37) - This is a trend that's been building up slowly for decades.

Keith Weinhold (00:21:42) - With the government having all of that debt that I just mentioned, that would create the propensity for them to create even more dollars so they can pay back their own debt, which could create more inflation and just this perpetually vicious cycle. Doug and I are going to come back and talk more about where all this is headed. When you think about the profundity of some of these things, if our currency went on to a gold standard or a Bitcoin standard, the fact that the government would not even be involved in currency issuance anymore, as you think about that, Doug and I have more on the silent depression when we come back. This is Jeffrey situation. I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256. In gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four plex's.

Keith Weinhold (00:22:42) - Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge. Personally, though, even customized plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com. Ridge lending group.com. 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 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains in 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 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, six eight, six, six.

Speaker 4 (00:24:04) - This is Rich dad, sales advisor Blair Singer. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Winehouse. And above all, don't quit your day dream.

Keith Weinhold (00:24:22) - Welcome back to get Rich. And we're talking with Doug Casey, the international man, about the Greater Depression. That's really a silent depression as he sees it. And Doug, I want to know where you see us headed, because a lot of people see today unemployment under 4% in the United States, we have GDP growth that's decent. The rate of inflation is still higher than the fed target but has come down substantially. The Fed's even talking rate cuts this year. So where do you see this all headed with the silent depression.

Doug Casey (00:24:54) - First of all, it's a big mistake to trust the government's numbers. If you look at the way the government computed unemployment and the way it computed inflation back in 1980, it's very, very different from the way these numbers are computed today. And if you computed them the way they did way back when in 1980, you'd find that our current unemployment is something more on the order of 10%, and current inflation is not I don't know what they say.

Doug Casey (00:25:27) - It is not 2%, 3%, 4%. It's also more like 10% or more. But with the amount of money that they've created, I mean trillions of dollars that have been cranked out of Washington in recent years. I expect we're going to see inflation go back to much, much higher levels. There's no limit to how bad it can get. And since the government has promised all these things to various pressure groups in the US, they have to be paid. The taxes aren't there to do it. The borrowing they can't borrow anymore, especially as interest rates go up. And incidentally, I point out that because of the debasement of the currency, that's a better phrase to use than inflation. The basement of the currency is an actual thing that's done by the government and its central bank, whereas inflation people think, well, maybe inflation falls on the butcher or the baker or the gasoline maker. No it's not. Those people fight the effects of inflation. Inflation is something that comes out of Washington because the government has all these pressure groups that get all kinds of benefits.

Doug Casey (00:26:43) - They're going to have to keep printing up money to pay for these things, and you're going to wind up in the same position as Argentina has wound up. In fact, it's going to be worse because unlike Argentina, which doesn't have any foreign involvements, they had a war with the Falklands 40 years ago. But there's basically no Argentine Army. There's no Argentine Navy to speak of. But the US has 800 military bases scattered all over the world. They're very expensive to maintain. The natives aren't particularly happy to have foreign soldiers in their lands. In addition to the war in the Ukraine, why were involved in a border war between two countries is a mystery to me. And now we have Israel and Gaza dusting it up. Literally, I feel sorry for both sides, but on the other hand, I don't epoxide both their houses. It's not our problem. This has been going on between these people for 2000 years, and the US getting involved in it is going to add on to our ongoing bankruptcy and maybe start World War three.

Doug Casey (00:27:57) - There's new wars popping up all over the world that are going to cost us huge amounts of money. And of course, the Defense Department spends giant amounts of money building high tech toys, which are basically useless in today's military world. It goes on and on. It's a big problem, and I suspect we're going to reach a crescendo by the 2024 election, assuming we have one. I don't know who's going to win that election if had anybody, quite frankly. So it's we're looking at chaos, political chaos, economic chaos, the potential for a financial meltdown because the whole world is built upon a foundation of debt, which is a very unstable foundation to build things on. And of course, you've got all kinds of sociological problems, starting with total and absolute corruption of the US educational system, which is spread like poison throughout society. We're seeing that now, incidentally, with the presidents of Harvard and Penn, MIT, but all of the higher educational institutions in the US suffer from the same problem. This is like a many headed hydra.

Doug Casey (00:29:10) - Where are we going to take any one instance of a problem in society? And when we examine it, you find that it's even worse than you might think. Like I was talking about education. Your kids are being indoctrinated a great cost. I think it's the University of Michigan has 161. I believe that's the number for the University of Michigan D administrators. That's the diversity, equity and inclusion administrators. All are earning over six figures. And what are they doing? Well they're justifying their positions by doing absolutely ridiculous things in education that shouldn't be about educating as opposed to. Enforcing somebody's goofy ideas of diversity and equity and inclusion. So anyway, we've got lots of problems beyond real estate and beyond the high level of rent that people have to pay today. But listen, it's so hard to build a new house. God forbid, build a new apartment building today by the time you jump through all the hoops. Local. County. State. Federal. The cost of construction is probably twice what it should be.

Doug Casey (00:30:21) - Because of inflation. Because of regulations. I hate to be so gloomy, Keith, I do, but.

Keith Weinhold (00:30:28) - Well, there's a lot there. We talk about diversity. We're in an era where people are very conscious of that. But a lot of people think of it with regard to race or gender or perhaps religion. But I like to champion diversity of thought as well. And then when it comes to we.

Doug Casey (00:30:44) - Don't have any of that anymore.

Keith Weinhold (00:30:45) - Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. But when it comes back to the root of productivity, I think that's really important because whether the government gives away money to programs in the United States or outside the United States to Ukraine or Israel, whether you believe in that or not. And a lot of the giveaways have been in the hundreds of billions of dollars to those nations were now running a national debt of over $34 trillion. And my point is, is that the United States doesn't produce as much as they used to. However, the United States produces a lot of dollars and a lot of debt.

Keith Weinhold (00:31:17) - And when the government has giveaways, either domestically or internationally, a productive person is the one that has to end up paying for that. So, Doug, we think about a lot of the problems out here, much of it coming back to the root of inflation. But you tell us more about what can be done. In fact, I know you have a practical, common sense way where you don't save in dollars. You and I have talked before about how real estate or gold can give you a hedge or even help you profit against inflation, but you've talked about the importance of real material things, like food that you can store, or light bulbs that you can put away, or tools that you can use because you're also not taxed on those sorts of things. So can you tell us more about that?

Doug Casey (00:32:05) - There was a book written years ago, and it's still available on Amazon by an old friend of mine named John Pugsley, and the book's name was The Alpha Strategy. The point that John made in that book was that rather than trying to save in dollars, you should save in things that have a long shelf life that you're going to need and use.

Doug Casey (00:32:30) - So, for instance, if light bulbs common thing, they burn out if you wait until there's a sale on light bulbs. Get them cheap. Buy them in quantity, buy them extra cheap, put them aside. You're not going to have to buy a light bulb forever. Whereas if you don't plan ahead and do it that way. If your light bulb burns out, you don't have one. You got to get in your car or in gasoline. Buy it at the convenience store where it's going to cost you. License much, and you can do this with many areas of your life planning ahead. In other words, this is a variation, if you would on the old Mormon idea. A lot of people are aware that Mormons or their religion tells them that they should put aside three months or a year worth of food, and it's storing food which is properly canned and so forth, so that no matter what happens, they'll always be able to eat. Well, the alpha strategy is something that you take that attitude towards food and you apply it to all the consumable things that you have in life.

Doug Casey (00:33:37) - And as they go up in price, lightbulbs go up from $1 to $5. With inflation, if you made an investment that kept pace $1 to $5, you'd have to pay capital gains tax on it. But you don't on the consumable that you put aside. So, I mean, this is just one of a number of strategies that you can use to counter the effects of currency debasement.

Keith Weinhold (00:34:03) - I love that as a strategy on what you can do. You are not taxed on the gain in price or value of an entire pallet of food or tools, like a tractor or ladder or table saw. So it's a really elegant way to beat inflation. Doug, I have an idea, and it might not be one that you heard before. It might even make the listener laugh a little bit. Here. I have an elegant way to beat inflation and improve your quality of life at the same time. And it's something really simple. And that solution is to spend your money. It's an elegant way to beat inflation and improve your quality of life.

Keith Weinhold (00:34:41) - At the same time. If a mediterranean cruise for you and your wife is going to cost $18,000 this year, and you think it's going to cost $22,000 next year, spend beat inflation and get an experience that you'll never forget that as long as you've got something set aside already spend, it's a way to beat it and live a better life.

Doug Casey (00:35:01) - I can't argue with that case. But on the other hand, it's wise to put aside capital for the future, because once you consume that grows, the capital is not there anymore, and you may need it in the future. But this is one of the problems created by currency debasement. People start thinking in terms of live for today, because tomorrow we might die with their money, and that's not a good way to get wealthy. Although it's true, you do beat some of the effects of currency debasement that way.

Keith Weinhold (00:35:34) - Yeah, if there were no inflation, there would be less incentive to do something like that. In spend would also be less incentive to invest.

Keith Weinhold (00:35:41) - But Doug, you've given us a lot of good ideas today for this creeping of the silent depression fueled by inflation and some actionable things about what we can do about it. Give us any last thoughts and then how our audience can learn more about you.

Doug Casey (00:35:56) - I've written a series of novels. Well, they're quite well written that explain a lot of these principles in the form of an exciting story. They're called speculator, where our hero, uh, gets involved in gold mining in Africa and a bush war and so forth, and it becomes a drug lord. Or we show a drug lord can also be a good guy, and then he becomes an assassin because he's so pissed off. There are four more novels to come. So I suggest people go on Amazon, pick up those three novels that are out there. That's one thing they should do. Second thing, I'd encourage you to go and subscribe to International man.com, and you'll get a great free daily blog from me and other people. It's really a good publication.

Doug Casey (00:36:44) - And the third thing on YouTube is we have Doug Cassie's take where once or twice a week I, uh, talk about different subjects.

Keith Weinhold (00:36:54) - Though our subject is depression, our conversation has not been thoroughly depressing. So thanks so much for coming back out of the show.

Doug Casey (00:37:02) - I see you again, Keith.

Keith Weinhold (00:37:10) - Well, you might wonder what kind of prepper weirdo is going to save a bunch of durable goods like tires or crescent wrenches, or even store an extra car, or a few extra cords of firewood that may or may not be feasible for you, some of it having to do with your storage capacity, whether you live urban or rural. But what you can do if you're really concerned about persistent inflation is to beat it by making improvements to your own home, and you can do that sooner rather than later. And see, that way you might actually get to enjoy the item and integrated into your lifestyle. For you, that might mean getting yourself new windows, or a new water heater, or renovating a bathroom, or remodeling the kitchen.

Keith Weinhold (00:38:03) - And if you can avoid activities, though, that create a higher tax assessment, then you will not get taxed on those real assets, all while improving your quality of life at the same time. So there's an idea, some real guidance, spurred from today's chat with Doug Casey. Big thanks to him. Next week, I'll tell you more about the weird problem with my rent payment that was stolen from my property manager and what I'm going to do about it. My manager says he's not taking the loss. I'm not taking the loss either. Interesting stuff. Until then, I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Don't quit your day dream.

Speaker 5 (00:38:44) - 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. The.

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Direct download: GREepisode485_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:00am EDT

Mon, 15 January 2024

Join our live, virtual event for Alabama income properties tomorrow at: https://gremarketplace.com/webinar/

Learn a lesson from a story about when I was a landlord. My neighbor was a fourplex owner-occupant, just like me. We built a fence together. He told me that he can’t wait to get his building paid off.

Don’t pay down your mortgage debt. In most cases, you can invest those dollars elsewhere for a higher return.

I discuss two things build wealth: 1) Leverage. 2) Borrowing against your assets, tax-free.

You don’t have substantial equity in your properties because you paid them down. You have substantial equity because its value has appreciated.

Today, you can report tenant rent payments to the credit reporting agencies.

Alabama has low property prices and the nation’s 2nd-lowest property taxes.

GRE Investment Coach, Aundrea Newbern, MBA, joins me.

Join our live event for Alabama income properties Tuesday, January 16th at 8 PM Eastern. The provider is offering 5.99% interest rates and 3% PM fees on your first three properties. Sign up now at: https://gremarketplace.com/webinar/

Timestamps:

The introduction (00:00:01)

Keith Weinhold introduces the podcast and mentions the topics to be covered, including lessons from being a landlord, a formula for wealth, and a focus on a lucrative property market.

Keith's early real estate experience (00:02:46)

Keith shares his early experience as a landlord, comparing notes with another landlord and discussing their strategies for living for free in their fourplexes.

Debt mindset and wealth building (00:05:30)

Keith discusses his divergent mindset from his fellow landlord, emphasizing the importance of leveraging debt for wealth building and portfolio expansion.

The power of leverage and portfolio growth (00:10:08)

Keith explains how he leveraged equity to expand his real estate portfolio, emphasizing the benefits of using accumulated equity to acquire more properties.

Real estate market diversification (00:11:22)

Keith advocates for buying properties across different states and markets to access better deals and maximize portfolio growth.

Tenant management and credit reporting (00:13:42)

Keith shares tips on tenant management, including the option to report rent payments to credit bureaus to incentivize timely payments and manage tenant relations.

Financial perspectives and real estate strategies (00:16:12)

Keith discusses contrasting financial perspectives with a CFO friend, highlighting the benefits of leveraging debt for real estate investments.

Market pulse and expense control (00:20:26)

Andrea discusses the market pulse for income properties, focusing on the Southeast region, and addresses the trends in controlling investors' expenses, particularly related to insurance rates.

Conclusion and invitation (00:22:02)

Keith and Andrea conclude the segment by discussing the migration trends in the Southeast and the importance of controlling expenses for real estate investors.

Lower Property Management Costs (00:22:55)

Discussion on the stabilization and decrease of property management costs due to technology and institutional investment money.

Investment Timing and Market Trends (00:25:01)

Encouragement for investors to take advantage of the current market conditions, including interest rates, prices, and inventory.

Alabama Market and Incentives (00:28:24)

Details about the Alabama market, including low property prices and incentives such as the 333 property management fee and 5.99% interest rate.

Live Event and Registration (00:32:33)

Information on how to register for the live virtual event to learn about the Alabama market and have questions answered in real time.

Final Encouragement and Event Promotion (00:33:27)

Encouragement to attend the live event to learn about the Alabama market and connect with an investment coach.

Resources mentioned:

Show Page:

GetRichEducation.com/484

Join our live, virtual event for Alabama income properties at: https://gremarketplace.com/webinar/

For access to properties or free help with a

GRE Investment Coach, start here:

Get mortgage loans for investment property:

RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE

or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com

Invest with Freedom Family Investments.

You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866

Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”

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Complete episode transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Welcome to Dr.. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, with lessons from being a landlord myself including some tough ones. A simple formula for how to get wealthy and stay wealthy without paying any taxes legally. Then we focus on one of the most lucrative property markets in the United States, and it includes an invitation to you today on get Rich education. If you like the get Rich education podcast, you're going to love art. Don't quit your day dream newsletter. No, I here I write every word of the letter myself. It wires your mind for wealth. It helps you make money in your sleep and updates you on vital real estate investing trends. It's free. Sign up at get Rich education.com/letter. It's real content that makes a real difference in your life, spiced with a dash of humor. Rather than living below your means, learn how to grow your means right now. You can also easily get the letter by texting gray to 66866. Text gray to 66866.

Speaker 2 (00:01:12) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:01:19) - This is get rich education.

Speaker 1 (00:01:28) - Welcome to GRE! From Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Westchester, Pennsylvania, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold. Hold in your listening to get Rich education. I trust that you're prosperous and well in a still somewhat new year here, along with my usual gray research of market trends, teams, and properties I've been serving on and writing for the Forbes Real Estate Council. Next week we have a thought provoking show on whether America is actually undergoing a silent depression that's creeping up on us, but I've got an important story to tell you today. It's really rather formative and foundational to the, I suppose, mind spring of abundantly minded real estate ideation. When I bought my first Seminole fourplex building for $295,000 about 20 years ago, you know, there was an identical fourplex right next to it. It was bought about the same time as mine, and it was bought by another guy about my age. His name's Patrick. We each had these blue fourplex next to each other, and I still remember his full name, although I'll just stick with his first name, Patrick here.

Speaker 1 (00:02:46) - He was a data and security engineer. Really sharp guy. And by the way, he only paid 275 K for his nearly identical fourplex next to mine. And since I paid 295, I felt like I overpaid. But he and I, we got to know each other a little bit. We kind of had a similar path. All right, as owner occupants, each living in one of our four units and renting out the other three and doing that right next to each other. We would compare notes as to how it was going with being an on site landlord. And, you know, Patrick and I, we both kind of figured out that we were living for free. And that's because the three $725 rent incomes, there were enough to pay our mortgages and our operating expenses on the buildings, but after that, there was really nothing left over. But we effectively had a free place to live in one of the fourplex units. Now, a few times, Patrick and I collaborated on some projects together to improve things around our contiguous fourplex buildings, and I specifically remember that one day we had bought materials at Home Depot, and then we met outside to build a fence together, and it was just this cheap host and rail style fence that we made with two by fours and painted blue is something that he and I built at the back of our buildings in order to keep vagrants from cutting through our yards.

Speaker 1 (00:04:19) - This was in Anchorage, Alaska, and Anchorage has a lot of these paved bike paths all throughout the city. And vagrants also use those to get around. And we had this bike path right behind our fourplex. Now, as you know, I am not that good at building stuff or fixing broken stuff. Okay, but this fence project that we were doing, it wasn't too complicated. And I had Patrick right there to help. Now, by this time, I had probably owned the fourplex for about two years, and I was really just starting to get this realization for what real estate investing could do for me, because I had only made a small down payment, yet the fourplex had appreciated quite a bit. This was around 2005, and I didn't even know that that effect was called leverage yet. But anyway, Patrick and I, as we're building this fence together or talking about our properties, he said one thing I can distinctly remember, and it's something that a lot of people say, and that is, I can't wait until I have this property paid off.

Speaker 1 (00:05:30) - Now, back at this time, there was no gray, yet I'm still rather fresh and new to real estate investing. This fourplex was the only property that I owned, but already this desire to have the property paid off, that is not a feeling I shared that did not resonate with me. Okay, I responded to him with something like, oh, do you think that's the best use of your money? All right, because I had a mortgage interest rate of five and 3/8 at the time, and his was probably pretty close to that too. Well, I told him that I want to keep the debt on my property because instead I could invest my spare dollars elsewhere and get a better return than five and 3/8. And that fact would be true even if my interest rate were eight or more. Really, his only reply to that is that he just simply doesn't like having debt. That's about the only answer that he had, even though it's usually irrational to. Pay off good debt like that. Now my financial freedom ideas, they were still in their nascent period back then.

Speaker 1 (00:06:34) - I sure wasn't going around and saying that financially free beats debt free or anything like that. That wasn't quite putting it that way yet. I sure didn't say, hey, don't you know that the scarcity mentality is abundant and the abundance mentality is scarce? Or that compound interest is weak in compound leverage is powerful? Or that a rich man digs for gold and a poor man is concerned with the cost of a shovel. But I already knew that if you focus on debt paydown like taking all your extra dollars to accelerate the principal pay down on, just say one fourplex building, you are just borrowing one deep hole in to the property. It's like a deep hole that might even cave in. Instead, wealth is built by expanding your portfolio size. More doors, more income, more leverage, serving more people with housing, and actually more safety because you can be in more markets that way. See, you gotta give your money multiple jobs. So the lesson is, Patrick and I were already on divergent mindset paths because by that time I had read books like Rich dad, Poor Dad, and it got me thinking differently.

Speaker 1 (00:07:54) - You know, it was the whole don't get your money to work for you get other people's money to work for you and that whole thing.

Speaker 3 (00:07:59) - I don't even think about it. I'm built a little differently, I guess, because I have had people come up to me and say, how do you do it, sir? How do you do it? I don't even think about it.

Speaker 1 (00:08:10) - Nuh uh. Geez. I, I do it because if you don't want to run with the herd, then you've got to think and act differently in order to diverge from the herd. Keep leveraging more income property. So Patrick and I built the fence that day, and I don't really know how much he paid down his building's principal balance, which is a lot like sending off your dollars to go die. But I can tell you what I did. Okay. About another year went by after building the fence. So now we're into year three of me owning the fourplex. What I did is I kept the building, but I got a home equity line of credit, second mortgage on the fourplex, and then I use those funds to make a down payment on a single family home so that I could live offsite and get some privacy from my fourplex tenants.

Speaker 1 (00:09:06) - So this is the start of me acting diversely from the herd. It was the opposite of paying down my property, borrowing against it instead. Yeah, I took more debt out on it, which is a tax free event, by the way, and you could go to 90% loan to value back then. Yes, that's back when dollars were being lent out more freely. I mean, that's what wealthy people do. What do wealthy people do when they need money? They just keep borrowing against the value of their assets. And it's a tax free event since the IRS does not tax debt. So if you want to be wealthy, that's what you do. What I also did by doing this was expand my portfolio size, increase my leverage ratio. And since I vacated one of the four fourplex units, now I had four rent incomes rather than three. I mean, that is, some don't live below your means grow. You mean stuff right there. And then two years after that, I kind of did the same thing again.

Speaker 1 (00:10:08) - I borrowed against my properties, and I used the funds as a 10% down payment on a second, more expensive fourplex building. So now I lived in a single family home and I had to fourplex buildings. And then a few years later, when equity accumulated in those two fourplex buildings, I sold them and did a 1031 exchange into two larger apartment buildings. Everything I've done so far is tax free, all expanding the portfolio, all serving more tenants, all reducing my risk despite increasing my debt, because the tenant pays the debt for me. And it was all with almost none of my own money. Instead, it's just using accumulated equity from one property and rolling it into more. Just keep rolling those same funds forward. Okay, so that is all what I'll call one line of leveraged equity. And by then I was beginning other lines because I started to buy property out of state and in multiple states. And it wasn't until 2012 that I discovered that buying across state lines is possible. It's proven. And that's where the real deals are.

Speaker 1 (00:11:22) - I mean, you might want to own some properties in your local market or you might not. But see, the thing is, is that there are 387 MSAs, Metropolitan statistical areas in the US as defined by the Census Bureau. So if you're only buying in your local market, chances are you're not getting the best deals. And another way to think about your portfolio's growth in your real estate equity management is to consider the fact that you don't have substantial equity in your home right now because you paid it down. You have equity in your home because it increased in value. So you can use equity from your home to buy perhaps ten other rental homes, as long as you can control cash flow. So it's about trading away antiquated notions of safety and security in exchange for freedom. But now most of Patrick and I's conversation about being neighboring fourplex landlords for a few years was, I would say, more anthropogenic meaning relating to human activity. Yes, that is dealing with tenants because although the discipline is called property management, it could just as well be called tenant management.

Speaker 1 (00:12:39) - And early on, this is where my naivete got exposed, like with a tenant that was laid on the rent and he said he'd pay it, but then he didn't pay rent and I had to a victim early on. I inherited that tenant from the previous owner, so I did not get to screen him. Now, three weeks ago here on our Christmas episode, when we did How the Rent Stole Christmas. That was fun. I shared a lot of my tenant relations tips with you on how to help ensure that your rent gets paid, but today you can do something that you couldn't do when I got started in real estate, you can report your tenants rent payments to the credit reporting agencies and affect their credit score. So if you are a do it yourself landlord today and you're doing your screening, you know, I would tell prospective tenants that before they even apply for your vacancy and put it in a positive light, make it known that one attribute of renting from you is that with their timely rent payments, it can help their credit score.

Speaker 1 (00:13:42) - So position it positively rather than any sort of threat, and it's going to help you get more timely rent payments if that's been a problem for you. Yes. Institute reporting to the credit bureaus, the credit scoring agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. That is another handle that you have as a landlord today. Yes. The only guarantee is that there will be some inevitable real estate problems for you. But like problems with anything else in life, your mind and my mind, we tend to inflate the significance of problems, whether it's a tenant that you just can't get to change their AC filters, or an unexpected water leak, or an overgrown tree that you have to pay an arborist to handle, or a persistently late paying tenant. Oftentimes, your fear about the problem is worse than the problem itself. In fact, it was the stoic philosopher Seneca that said, there are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Gosh, isn't that so? On point? Yeah, we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality.

Speaker 1 (00:15:01) - You can say that about most any problem that you've ever had in your life. Now, some things have changed and some things have stayed the same since I began my real estate journey with that blue Anchorage fourplex. It looks like there are some signs of hope for financial education in the near future here. Formal financial education. When it was recently announced that Pennsylvania, my native state, will become the 25th US state to have a formal, standalone financial education class in high school. Hey, that's a really good start. But one constant seems to be that the dispiriting saying don't live below your means. You know, that still seems to trump the aspirational grow your means. And it's not about whether a person is intelligent or unintelligent in adopting one or the other. It's really more about having the ability to think freely. Now, today, I have a friend that's the chief financial officer, the CFO of a publicly traded corporation. He and I got together a few times last year, and he can talk about earnings reports and EBITDA.

Speaker 1 (00:16:12) - And he knows that language of business. He's a super sharp guy. But he told me that he has his house, his family's primary residence paid off. And I asked him about that, and I told him that I keep the maximum debt on mine. And why now? Your primary residence. It's not like a fourplex where your tenant pays your debt for you, but you've got to pay your own debt on your own home. Yet the mortgage rate on a primary residence is lower than it is on a rental. So the question persists is that really the best place to park your dollar? Is that where it's doing multiple jobs? You've got to consider that it's illiquid and its ROI is zero. Now, I didn't quite put it that starkly with my CFO friend, but in any case, and remember, this is a chief financial officer. He's a guy that's good with money. You know, at least he did give me this. He said from a financial perspective, he knows that it makes zero sense to have a paid off home.

Speaker 1 (00:17:16) - It just makes him feel better. And, you know, I accepted that this is not the way that I view the world. And that's okay. Coming up next in in-house chat with one of our gray investment coaches as we talk about the real estate market overall, controlling your rising expenses as a real estate investor and about real estate in the southeast Alabama, as well as an invitation for you with some pretty generous incentives that I think you're going to be excited about. I'm Keith Reinhold, you're listening to get Rich education. Role under the specific expert with income property you need. Ridge lending Group Nmls 42056. In gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. 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%.

Speaker 1 (00:18:45) - Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. 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 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, six eight, six, six.

Speaker 4 (00:19:34) - This is our rich dad, Poor dad author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to get rich education with eat whine oh God put your daddy.

Speaker UU (00:19:45) - You you you you you you you you.

Speaker 1 (00:19:53) - Hey. Well, today I'd like to welcome you in our terrific investment coach, Andrea, for an in-house chat here. How's it going, Andrea?

Speaker 5 (00:20:01) - Hey, Keith.

Speaker 5 (00:20:02) - Doing good. Trying to recover from the holidays. How are you?

Speaker 1 (00:20:05) - Yeah, it's still a fairly new year here. The holidays were a few weeks ago with the advent of a new year. Andrea, a lot of people make a resolution to increase the residual income, often by expanding the real estate portfolio. So really just taking the temperature here. How's your feel about the pulse of today's income property market?

Speaker 5 (00:20:26) - It's been interesting the past year, right? We've had a lot of ups and downs. I would say what we've typically seen from the different markets across the US, particularly the southeast, which is what we're going to talk about a little bit more today. We have seen that there's still inventory out there right now. We've seen interest rates slightly go down, not significantly, but we have seen some decreases. And we're seeing pretty steady demand for income properties right now.

Speaker 1 (00:20:49) - Yeah. Mortgage interest rates down more than 1% from their peak in October last year. Yeah. Oftentimes real estate and the pulse of the market comes down to supply and demand.

Speaker 1 (00:21:00) - To your point the demand sure is not going away. We've got a population growth, and we have a lot of pent up demand from the huge millennial cohort. And then over there on the supply side, there is so much new building in the multifamily space, but there's really a dearth of supply and a dearth of new supply coming onto the market for 1 to 4 unit properties.

Speaker 5 (00:21:23) - Yes, there is. And we're seeing a lot of that growth, like I mentioned in the southeast, which are the markets that I personally invest in. And I, you know, have a lot of our listeners go to to purchase as well. So very excited about what we're seeing happen in 2024 and what that means for our investors.

Speaker 1 (00:21:38) - Yeah. Now, back at the beginning of the year, two prominent moving companies, U-Haul and United Van Lines, they released their migration report for the year ended last year. And the southeast quadrant of the nation by far, that had the most net migration growth states in their list easily.

Speaker 5 (00:21:58) - It did. And I think that's going to continue. We're going to talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (00:22:02) - Well, we pull back in. Just think nationally before we go into the southeast. You know, oftentimes investors of course are thinking about controlling their expenses. That's been a big issue that bubbled up last year is probably going to continue to be one this year. So we're talking about investors controlling their expense side from mortgage rates to property insurance rates that have really spiked. So do you notice any trends with controlling investors expense side? Since you and I are active investors ourselves?

Speaker 5 (00:22:34) - A couple of things that I've noticed in the southeast and my personal investments, as well as some of the markets that we have turnkey relationships with. Keith, we are seeing insurance continue to go up just a little bit, but we're not seeing those reckless, you know, doubling that we saw over the last 2 to 3 years. So it's going up not seeing doubling. So I'm hopeful that that continues. And it's not we're not seeing that fast rapid increase.

Speaker 5 (00:22:55) - The other thing that we're seeing a lot of is a lot of our turnkey companies that we work with, we're starting to see kind of property management costs stabilize or go down in certain areas. So we're seeing that expense decrease. The other thing is we're not seeing as rapid of increases and material costs and labor costs right now still going up. Things are not, you know, going down by any means, but we're not seeing those costs go up as much either. So this is allowing the investors to have a little bit more money in their pocket than they did over the last 2 to 3 years during the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (00:23:25) - Yeah, it's not that big of a consideration for an investor on the expense side. But yes, I do see more evidence of lower property management costs. So can you talk to us more about that trend? Is it more of the infiltration of technology into the space that's bringing the cost down for property management?

Speaker 5 (00:23:44) - Such a great question. And I do think that is part of it for sure.

Speaker 5 (00:23:47) - We're seeing a couple of things here. We're seeing some of these smaller kind of mom and pop property management companies. They are stepping out. They can't really afford to keep up with the technology and all the changes that are happening in the property management space, and what's causing that happen is these property management companies that can do a little bit larger scale. They're able to get these nicer systems and this better technology and things for their investors to be able to use as well as their tenants. And we are seeing that bring the cost down of property management a little bit.

Speaker 1 (00:24:16) - You're seeing more infiltration of institutional investment money into the single family rental space and rentals up to $4 per unit. And those companies, those institutional investors have deep pockets, and they have the ability to go ahead and implement a lot of these technology systems. So that's making it so that others, including these smaller mom and pop property management companies, they need to keep up with their technology that's lowering property management costs across these mom and pop property managers are going to be put out of business.

Speaker 1 (00:24:48) - So there are so many pros and cons about institutional investment money coming into the space. And that's just one of the potential pros for everyday investors.

Speaker 5 (00:24:57) - You're exactly right. I have nothing to add to that because you were spot on with that comment.

Speaker 1 (00:25:01) - Anything else, just in general that you see across the real estate market that you really think a real estate investor needs to know today?

Speaker 5 (00:25:08) - One thing that I really think is important for people to keep in the back of their minds is I talked to a lot of our listeners who are very, very interested in dipping their toes in the water, or they've been kind of sitting to the side the last few months, kind of seeing what will happen with the market. Right now is the time for you to invest. If you wait a few months, I suspect in several of these markets you may see interest rates come down, but you're going to see prices go up and you're going to see even more of a lack of inventory. So just kind of keep that in mind as you're thinking about where to invest, how to invest and when to invest.

Speaker 1 (00:25:38) - Here in gray. We've often talked about the fact that higher mortgage interest rates actually correlate with higher prices, not lower ones. And I think some people were sitting on the sidelines saying, is that really going to be the case? Yeah, we saw mortgage interest rates triple and prices still went up. A lot of people think rates are poised to fall this year. It's probably going to put more upward pressure on prices. Andrea, when we talk about one controlling their expense side, I think something that a lot of people overlook, and this is so simple, is buying in a state or buying in a market that simply has low property prices, because that's the best indicator of giving you a high ratio of rent income to purchase price. Low priced states.

Speaker 5 (00:26:23) - That's right. Yeah. And so I mentioned this in the last couple of minutes. But the southeast and the Midwest are those two areas where you really do have those lower cost properties that even if you're an entry level investor, you can get in there pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (00:26:36) - And now we've had a lot of investor interest in Florida with all their in-migration. We still like that market, but prices have really run up there. So we've increasingly had investor interest from our followers and people that you help coach about another southeastern state.

Speaker 5 (00:26:52) - That's right. So that market is Alabama. So we have had a provider that has been offering turnkey, fully renovated properties and sometimes new construction in the Alabama market. And it has been an absolute wonderful market for our listeners that have actually invested in that area.

Speaker 1 (00:27:09) - Alabama, compared to a place like Florida, has substantially lower property prices. We're talking about you as an investor here controlling the expense side. Alabama has the second lowest property taxes in the entire nation, second only to Hawaii. So that's something that's really baked into your recipe here with income property in Alabama.

Speaker 5 (00:27:32) - That's right. I mean, there's been increases in property taxes across the US over the last few years as values come up. But of course, in Alabama you haven't seen those fast rises.

Speaker 5 (00:27:42) - And because the rates are so low, it's going to adjust kind of accordingly with the market. So you're not going to see anything creep up really quickly there as well.

Speaker 1 (00:27:49) - In general. And a lot of jurisdictions you see property taxes increase commensurately with the value of your property. And we've been in Alabama with a really renowned provider there that provides property almost statewide across Alabama, and you're going to co-host with them on a great live event for Alabama Income Properties, because right now they're really offering a good set of incentives and they have available properties. So tell us more about that.

Speaker 5 (00:28:24) - Like you mentioned, they have properties across the state. So you have kind of an option of which geography within Alabama that you would want to invest in. They have different kind of price points as well. And then like you mentioned, they have some very exciting incentives. And I don't think that I have seen an incentive this good as far as property management goes in a really long time. So what they are offering our listeners is called the 333.

Speaker 5 (00:28:50) - And essentially what this is, is if an investor wants to purchase up to three properties, you can purchase one, 2 or 3. You're not committed to a certain number. You're going to get a 3% property management fee for three years on these three properties. Once you go over three, it does revert back to the normal price of 9% for the property management that you can get 3%, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:29:11) - So the incentive offered on this great live event that you're going to co-host tomorrow night is that three, three, three incentive. Let me just review it so that we have it right for a limited time. There's going to be a 3% property management fee for three years on up to three properties.

Speaker 5 (00:29:29) - That's exactly right. Yep.

Speaker 1 (00:29:31) - That is really attractive when it comes to controlling the investors expense side.

Speaker 5 (00:29:36) - It certainly is. That's not the only incentive they have, though. So they're also offering across their entire inventory, 5.99% interest rate on the purchases of any of these properties. And that's really low.

Speaker 1 (00:29:48) - That is really compelling. Yes. So that's substantially lower even than what you can get for an income property rate today. Income property rates are typically, oh, something like three quarters of 1% higher than what you typically see on that 30 year fixed rate mortgage. And that's what we're talking about here. This builder and provider buying down your mortgage rate for you to 5.99% interest. Do you know about the terms on that. Is that 30 year fixed advertising or.

Speaker 5 (00:30:14) - Yes, that is 30 year fixed amortizing. So you're not looking at anything variable. You're looking at kind of your mortgage payment every single month, which is really nice.

Speaker 1 (00:30:22) - Yeah. That's like rolling back the clock to to three years with getting a mortgage rate like that. That's going to help a number of people. Andrea, I'd like to get your thoughts. Do you have very many people that you work with? Here are followers when you're coaching that want to self-manage remotely or do they want that remote property manager?

Speaker 5 (00:30:41) - I don't think in the past year I've spoken with one investor that plan to actually purchase and manage themselves remotely.

Speaker 5 (00:30:47) - Everyone wants to use the property management function, which this particular provider does have property management in house.

Speaker 1 (00:30:55) - So they will want to use that 3% property management fee. Not being a do it yourself or, you know, they're probably taking after me. I don't want the job of property management. That's just a business. I don't really want to have that much to do with. I love to outsource that duty to somebody else. A big reason that a lot of people self-manage their property is because they just don't have that much of a gap between their income and their expenses. So when you buy in an investor advantaged market like Alabama, where you have a high ratio of rent income to purchase price, you can therefore have one of those expenses. Be your property manager, especially when it's only 3% in this case. So those are some really good incentives. The three, three, three and a 5.99% interest rate. Is there anything else you can tell us, especially with on tomorrow night's live event with what markets within Alabama we're going to be talking about?

Speaker 5 (00:31:44) - Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:31:45) - So we're going to focus on a couple different markets. We're going to look at Huntsville as well as Birmingham. We may also talk about some markets that are in the southeast that they have some properties in outside of Alabama. So just stay tuned. I'm not promising that. But we may talk about that a little bit depending on how things go. The other thing that I think is really important to keep in mind is we're going to have a live buying opportunity. So we're actually going to show you some of the properties that are available right now. You're going to be able to see all the financials on them. And you can reserve them as soon as you want right after we get off. While we're on it, however you want to do it, we can buy it tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (00:32:18) - That is a really actionable event. Tell us more about the event, how one can register and be on there with you so that they can have their questions answered by you and the provider in real time. That's really the benefit of you attending tomorrow.

Speaker 5 (00:32:33) - You can go out to GR webinars. Com you'll be able to register there. It'll be at the very top of the page. Make sure that you know you fill in all of your information. You'll get an automatic email that'll remind you to get on to the webinar tomorrow, and you can jump on. You're going to have the opportunity to ask live questions. So we're going to be there to answer them. And then we'll go through the properties. And if you're ready to reserve, I can hop on a call with you right after we get off of the webinar and kind of talk through what inventory that we have available and help you through that process.

Speaker 1 (00:33:03) - Well, Andrew, before I ask you if you have any last thoughts, just summing it up here. I really encourage you, the listener, to join the live virtual event because you can see real properties like Andrea mentioned in an Investor Advantage market and get any questions answered that you have answered in real time, whether it's about the cash flow or property insurance costs or your property manager.

Speaker 1 (00:33:27) - It's Grace live event for Alabama Income Properties tomorrow, the 16th at 8 p.m. eastern. So go ahead and sign up right away at Grace webinars.com. Any last thoughts? Andrea?

Speaker 5 (00:33:39) - No, I'm just excited to see more faces, see old faces and talk to you all about the market and the properties that are available.

Speaker 1 (00:33:46) - This is really going to help a lot of people. Thank so much for coming back onto the show.

Speaker 5 (00:33:49) - Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:33:56) - Yeah. Here's an opportunity for you to learn about a market and connect with Andrea. Of course, when we talk about the Alabama real estate market, that entails many market varieties and geographies. In fact, Alabama has 12 of the nation's 387 MSAs. I very much encourage you to attend the live event from the comfort of your home. It's for you if you want to learn about a market and really the fundamentals that drive investor advantage markets, you can meet Andrea and perhaps add some property to your portfolio. It can give you long term equity growth and short term cash flow.

Speaker 1 (00:34:34) - And I have actually been inside walked Alabama properties with this provider. And it is exactly what they do. This isn't some side venture. And they've been in business a long time too. They serve out of area investors and they do the management for you too. This is Grace live event for Alabama income, property and overall in America, entry level homes are few. You're going to have a chance to own scarce assets that seemingly everyone is going to want over time. It's coming up fast. It's tomorrow night, the 16th at 8 p.m. eastern. Sign up now! It is free at Grace webinars.com. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your day dream.

Speaker 6 (00:35:23) - 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.

Speaker 7 (00:35:51) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

Direct download: GREepisode484_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:00am EDT

Mon, 8 January 2024

483: Five

Yes, simply "five". The number "5" has remarkable symbolism on both real estate investing the GRE way, and elsewhere in your life pathway.

See how real estate actually performed when compared to other asset classes in the past year: stocks, gold, bitcoin, and bonds.

Everyone knows that some commercial real estate is sagging, like office. Industrial is steady. Retail is actually booming.

Recession predictions were so bad. In the past year, we had low unemployment, rising GDP, solid corporate profits, and inflation fell.

I explain what an inverted yield curve means and why it matters to you.

Not only does “Real Estate Pay 5 Ways”, but the number “five” often has significance in both symbolism and numerology.

Using a $40K down payment on a $200K property, I add up how “Real Estate Pays 5 Ways” and sum a lofty 46% total rate of return with today’s real-life numbers.

We have available inventory of income property. If you’re ready to buy, contact our Investment Coaches. It’s free at www.GREmarketplace.com/Coach

GRE Marketplace properties are less expensive because: there’s no agent to compensate, selective investor-advantaged markets, and not dealing with owner-occupant emotions.

Timestamps:

Asset Class Performance (00:01:25)

Comparison of various asset class performances in the past year, including stocks, global stock markets, bitcoin, treasury notes, gold, and residential real estate.

Inverted Yield Curve Explanation (00:07:47)

Explanation of an inverted yield curve, its significance as a predictor of economic downturn, and a simplified example to illustrate the concept.

Five Ways Real Estate Pays (00:12:18)

Discussion of the five ways real estate provides returns to investors: appreciation, cash flow, return on amortization, tax benefits, and inflation profiting, with a focus on the symbolic significance of the number five.

Real Estate Returns Calculation (00:18:49)

Illustration of a simplified method to calculate the total return on investment from a real estate property, covering appreciation, cash flow, return on amortization, tax benefits, and inflation profiting.

Investment Opportunities (00:16:23)

Promotion of investment opportunities with Ridge Lending Group and Freedom Family Investments, emphasizing the potential returns and benefits of investing with them.

Upcoming Episodes and Conclusion (00:17:44)

Teaser for upcoming episodes featuring investment coaches and discussions on property tax, and a conclusion expressing the significance of real estate returns and investment.

Replacing Toilet Flappers and Spackle (00:23:56)

Discussion on conservative estimates, tax benefits, and property management costs in real estate investment.

Visual Explanation of Five Ways (00:25:09)

Explanation of the five ways real estate pays returns and the simplicity of real estate math.

Introduction to Get Rich Education (00:26:17)

Overview of Get Rich Education's history, team, and independent voice in the market.

Real Estate Market Inventory (00:28:40)

Discussion on the slowing real estate market, available inventory at GRE marketplace, and the importance of free coaching.

Ethical Use of Other People's Money (00:29:51)

Explanation of the formula for starting or growing a portfolio of buy-and-hold properties, emphasizing the use of a small down payment.

Benefits of Off-Market Properties (00:31:13)

Explanation of competitive off-market property prices and the advantages of buying direct, investor advantage markets, and property management solutions.

Safeguards in Property Purchase (00:33:57)

Importance of property inspection, lender appraisal, and independent third-party property inspection in property purchase.

Free Coaching and Financial Readiness (00:35:03)

Emphasis on the free coaching at GRE marketplace, the absence of upselling to paid courses, and the importance of financial readiness before investing.

Disclaimer and Host Information (00:36:05)

Disclaimer regarding the content of the show and information about the host operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC.

Resources mentioned:

Show Notes:

GetRichEducation.com/483

For access to properties or free help with a

GRE Investment Coach, start here:

Get mortgage loans for investment property:

RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE

or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com

Invest with Freedom Family Investments.

You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866

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482: Will You Pay This Gigantic Proposed Tax?

Complete episode transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. I compare real estate to how other asset classes have performed. Give you a simple example to help you understand an inverted yield curve. Describe the significance of the five in your life. Then help find a match with the right income property for you today and Get Rich Education. If you like the Get Rich Education podcast, you're going to love art. Don't quit your day dream newsletter. No, I here I write every word of the letter myself. It wires your mind for wealth. It helps you make money in your sleep and updates you on vital real estate investing trends. It's free! Sign up and get rich education.com/letter. It's real content that makes a real difference in your life, spiced with a dash of humor rather than living below your means, learn how to grow your means right now. You can also easily get the letter by texting gray to 66866. Text gray to 66866.

Speaker 2 (00:01:09) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:01:16) - This is get rich education.

Speaker 1 (00:01:25) - Welcome to GRE. From Johannesburg, South Africa, to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold and you're listening to Get Rich Education. This is where your educational major is real estate investing. And your minors are in real estate economics and wealth mindset. That's what we do here. It all culminates with your doctorate in financial freedom. Before we talk about real estate, we recently had a year that just ended. And to know their real estate is the right place for you long term at times, especially after a year ends, we need to compare that to other asset classes. So what actually happened last year? Elsewhere in the investing world? Stocks, the S&P 500 was up 25%, even though for most of it invest in stocks, you're only paid one way, not five ways, but still 25%. That's a pretty healthy return on tech companies accounted for most of the gains, yes, what they call the Magnificent Seven that is putting the team on its back.

Speaker 1 (00:02:33) - Yeah, these are the seven tech mega caps Microsoft, Apple, alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, meta and Amazon. They surged more than 75% last year, while the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 have gained just 12%. Yes, the Magnificent Seven now accounts for nearly 30% of the index's entire value. That's per the Wall Street Journal. And speaking of the S&P 500, it just added a prominent new member a few weeks ago, and that is Uber zooming outside, the United States, global stock markets had their best year since 2019. Bitcoin was up 157%. Yes, you heard that right. 157 as the crypto winter thawed out last year, the yield on the ten year Treasury note was up just eight basis points. That's virtually unchanged. Very little movement. And see, that's also why mortgage rates ended the year at the same level they started at, which is near 6.5%. That is because mortgage rates track that ten year note. Gold was up 11%. And here in residential real estate it was up 4%.

Speaker 1 (00:03:51) - That's on the median price of existing homes. But it's only through November, not the full calendar year. Yes, real estate is such a laggard with reporting statistics. So almost everywhere y'all look prices are up up, up. Yes. It's not just for those essentials on your last grocery store run where they're up okay. The value of your assets fortunately is up too. And really, one of the few places that pain was felt was in the commercial real estate market. I think you know that. But let me tell you how that pain is positioned to get even worse shortly here. All right. U.S. office vacancy rates hovered around 20% last year. Now, that's a rate that was actually worse than during the 2008 financial crisis. More companies told workers, hey, get back to your desk, okay? Calling workers back to the office at Salesforce, Amazon, Blackrock. But still, card swipe data in America showed that only about half as many people are making the trip into the office compared to pre-pandemic numbers.

Speaker 1 (00:05:03) - And you've got some companies like meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, they're getting creative and actually subleasing their office space to other tenants. But not all commercial real estate is struggling. The retail vacancy rate fell to just 4.8% last year. Retail is not dead, and that retail vacancy rate, that is actually the lowest in 18 years since the real estate firm CBRE started tracking it. And big box stores and malls, shockingly, are. So back. There's also a big real estate demand for warehouses, data centers and industrial space, thanks to the recent surge of AI and that pandemic induced e-commerce boom. But we probably haven't seen the worst of it yet because, okay, within the next four years, about two thirds of commercial real estate loans will likely be refinanced, with interest rates much higher than they were the first time around. The last thing that we have to recap for you that we learned from last year is all of those god awful, dreadfully wrong predictions. A recession. So many predictions were so wrong.

Speaker 1 (00:06:27) - Instead, we had historically low unemployment and solid corporate profits. Inflation fell. Now there is one prominent financial media platform, one of the nation's biggest. I won't mention their name, though you've surely heard of them. This agency gave zero room for any other outcome because they predicted a 100% chance of a recession last year. 100%. All right. They really look wrong. Although let's be mindful, technically, due to a statistical lag, we often don't know if we are in a recession until after the fact. But if you think that we were late last year, understand though, not absolutely everyone was a Debbie Downer, say back in late 2022, let's give some credit where it's due. Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, he was one of the few experts who kept the faith for a soft landing. He pointed out the recessions typically come out of the blue, and that there was a good chance the fed would get inflation under control without taking the economy. Now, one condition that a lot of people pointed to saying that a recession should be here by now, is that dreaded condition that you probably heard of? Maybe.

Speaker 1 (00:07:47) - Maybe not. But that is known as an inverted yield curve, which is deemed as a harbinger of bad things to come, usually recession. Okay, now that phenomenon inverted yield curve. That sounds intimidating. I think when you hear that. Okay. And what that means in inverted yield curve is that the interest rate on long term bonds is lower than the interest rate on short term bonds. And that that right there is what's often a bad sign for the economy. Now, if what I just said right there kind of makes you scratch your head and say to yourself, what was all that gobbledygook again? And why does it matter? Why don't I give you a simple example of an inverted yield curve? Then you can actually remember. What I'll do is make this personal to you. A bond is just a fancy name for a loan. Let's say that you need a loan for $10,000, and you've got this great friend, a lifelong and trusted friend, and he will let you borrow the money from him.

Speaker 1 (00:08:56) - Now, if you take out the loan and tell him that you'll pay him back as quickly as next week, which is our short term bond. In this example where your friend might not charge you any interest on the loan at all, then just say that he wanted you to pay him a small 1% interest rate. Okay, see, your rate is low because there's not that much risk for him since you'll pay him back next week. That's not too long for him to wait. But say that you want to take the same $10,000 loan from that friend, but you're going to pay him back for ten years. An entire decade? Well, for him to want to make you that loan, he's going to need to get compensated more with a higher interest rate for the heightened risk in that long payback period. Okay, what if you move or if you aren't even alive in ten years? All right. That entails more risk for him, the lender. So therefore your loan comes with a 10% interest rate that you've got to pay your friend.

Speaker 1 (00:09:57) - This is analogous to the long term bond. All right right there I've just explained the normal yield curve condition right there. That's normal. The longer someone lends money out for to you, the more that they must get compensated. And that should make sense to you that that is a normal world. One week was 1% interest, one decade was 10% interest that you'd have to pay. That's normal. However, in inverted yield, curve simply flips that normal world upside down. It inverts it. It's the opposite of the arrangement that I just described with your friend. So this is where the shorter duration that one makes a loan for the higher interest rate they're compensated with. See, that's a weird world. That's an inverted yield curve. Because if your friend thinks that the world is going to crash soon with a recession or a depression, or Earth gets hit with an asteroid soon, well, then he'd want high compensation, even on a short term, week long loan, because freakish things are happening. And that's an inverted yield curve.

Speaker 1 (00:11:10) - And that's why having one like we have recently signals something dire, like a recession coming to many. Now, at the top of the show, I talked about the returns of various asset. Over the past year. Of course, that is only in terms of capital appreciation. That's all that most investors think about simply, did it go up or did it go down? It's an important question, but around here we know that real estate is a special asset class because when it's bought, right, it can pay you five ways at the same time. When it comes to the numbers, that number five, that is symbolic of why we do what we do here at gray. So let me talk about really, the existential and symbolic virtues that resonate with you across your life and the meaning behind that special number five. And it's about more than our real estate pays. Five ways, which is any listener knows is appreciation, cash flow, return on amortization, tax benefits, and then fifthly, inflation profiting.

Speaker 1 (00:12:18) - And I'm holding up five fingers right now, as I say this, according to numerology, the number five symbolizes freedom, curiosity and change, a desire to have adventures and explore new possibilities. But it signifies more than just high energy and excitement. In numerology, the five negative traits can include talking too much and overconfidence. Okay, that's what numerology says. Five ways real estate pays is a freedom formula. So that's actually numerology appropriate, I suppose. Now we don't do astrology or tarot cards here. Nothing hokey, concrete evidence though I will venture to guess that at least in some other facet of your life, five resonates with you. You've got five senses. Each one of your limbs has five fingers or five toes. In Christianity, there are the five wounds of Jesus Christ. If you're Muslim, there are the five pillars of Islam. Muslims pray to Allah five times a day. In Judaism, the Torah contains five books. Aristotle said that the universe is made up of five classical elements water, air, earth, fire, and ether.

Speaker 1 (00:13:41) - A lot of more popular folklore celebrates the five like Indiana Jones sort, the Sankara stones. They were five magical rocks. In music. Modern musical notation uses a musical staff made of five horizontal lines. Sports. The Olympic Games have five interlocked rings. When you shake hands to close your next real estate deal, you're each using those five fingers. In law, five is what renders a verdict. Five is the number of justices on the Supreme Court of the United States necessary to render a majority decision. There's a show on Fox called the Five and near the top of our Don't Quit Your day dream letter. We've got the five. Five is defensible in your investment fortress, just like the Pentagon is a five sided building in D.C. known for defense. Real estate pays five ways. And hey, even that phrase is five words. And it's a concept that was first introduced to the world right here on the Gerry podcast in 2015. So we're done with the touchy feely stuff, but look around five. It has a lot of meaning in your life.

Speaker 1 (00:15:02) - And in fact, the next time someone asks you why you're invested in real estate, hold up five fingers and confidently tell them that real estate pays five ways. What better way to affirm this than to come back with a concrete example shortly on how this helps you navigate toward financial freedom in your life, in ever changing real estate markets, we're going to use today's real life numbers in summing up the five. I hope you enjoyed me whipping around the asset classes in explaining what an inverted yield curve really means to you. More next, I'm Keith Reinhold. You're listening to get Rich education. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256. In gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com.

Speaker 1 (00:16:23) - 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 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 in your W-2 jobs income. 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 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, six eight, six, six.

Speaker 3 (00:17:26) - This is Rich dad advisor Ken McElroy. Listen to get Rich education with Keith White.

Speaker 3 (00:17:32) - Hold and don't quit your day dream.

Speaker 1 (00:17:44) - Welcome back to get Rich education. I'm your host, Keith Wayne. Hold. You've been with me here every single week since 2014. A lot of you have anyway. You're listening to episode 483, and I'm deeply appreciative for you, the listener, coming up here on the show and in house chat with one of our investment coaches, Doug Casey, on the Silent Depression. And like I told you last week, soon, a return of Tom. We write when we discuss whether the US can just completely do away with and delete the property tax. Wouldn't that be amazing? Around here? We like to say that when we provide good housing to people, we can help abolish the term slumlord. But your real estate investing venture isn't solely altruistic. There are generous profits, too. And, you know, it's incredible to me how more real estate investors don't even understand the answer to basic questions like how do I get paid in? How much do I get paid, and where the sources of where that money comes from.

Speaker 1 (00:18:49) - And really, these are all huge reasons for why you and I are even investing in real estate at all. So I love doing this. Let's add up the five ways and come up with a total ROI. And it's always a little awe inspiring to do this, even with conservative numbers, to see how high your return gets. And let's use the year 2024 sort of numbers. And it's kind of funny in a sense. I dislike real estate elements where down the outside tenants might get difficult to manage on the inside, and you're certainly going to have some problems, including some weird problems along the way in your investor journey. So although in a sense I dislike real estate, rather I like what real estate does, for me, it's largely about those giant returns. So let me demystify real estate returns with a quick breakdown. And I think you know that the five ways are not for fix and flip property. This is just with buy and hold investing on a property that's ready to go, ready to be moved into turnkey.

Speaker 1 (00:20:03) - Here's a simplified method the concrete numbers. Right. Let's say that you make a 20% down payment. In this case that is a 40 K initial investment on a 200 K income property in just a year. Here's what can happen. The first way appreciation. You've got that initial property value of 200 K and appreciation rate of just 5%. Where your new property's value is now 210 K, you just experienced an equity gain of ten K divided by your 40 K initial investment. That is a 25% return to you just from the first of five ways you're paid. That is due to the magic of leverage, because you got the gain on both your down payment and the money that you got to borrow from the bank. The second way is with cash flow. Let's say your rental income is $1,600 a month, but things are running a little thinner on this property, and your expenses are $1,500 a month with the mortgage and all the operating expenses, that gives you leftover cash flow of only 100 bucks a month. That's 1200 bucks a year that's still divided by that same 40 K initial investment you made.

Speaker 1 (00:21:13) - All right. That is another 3% return to you. The third way you're paid is that ROA return on amortization. Also known as principal pay down. All right. Will you have a 160 K loan on this property? We'll use an 8% interest rate. So all you got to do is search for a loan amortization table, bring it up, and you'll see that you have a monthly principal reduction of about $110 a month. That is $1,320 a year that your tenant paid down, not you. So right here, your $1,320 equity gain is still divided by your same 40 K skin in the game down payment. That is yet another 3% gain. Then the fourth of five ways are your tax benefits. All right. Your property value is 200 K. That's how much your property is worth on the day that you bought it. And your building value might be about 70% of that. And the other is in the value of the land. So therefore you're building value. Or that improved portion of the property is worth about 140 K will annual depreciation is about 3.6% of that.

Speaker 1 (00:22:30) - That gives you a $5,000 tax depreciation benefit. If you're at the 25% tax rate, that's 1250 bucks a year divided by your same 40 K initial investment, that is another 3% return to you just piling on. And then the fifth and final way is your inflation profiting you profit from inflation as your debt gets debased by inflation. This is the least understood of the five ways you've got that 160 K loan amount at a 3% inflation rate. That gives you an annual debt debasement of $4,800, again divided by your same 40 K initial investment. This is another 12% return to you. All right. There we go. Now let's add up all of those ROI from the five ways real estate pays. You had 25% from appreciation plus 3% from cash flow, plus 3% from your ROA, plus 3% from your tax benefit, plus 12% from your inflation profiting that equals a 46% total ROI that you have from this property. I mean that right there. That is exactly why you're a real estate investor. That is exactly why I'm a real estate investor.

Speaker 1 (00:23:56) - What do you think it was for to replace toilet flappers and spackle? Drywall? Hey, this stuff's important, but I don't personally do it myself. That's the kind of stuff I dislike because I'm not good at it. Now, at a number of steps when I went through that, you'll notice that I was conservative or rounded down. I used an 8% mortgage rate and 3% inflation. Although there are numerous tax benefits, the only one I considered is tax depreciation. Your seller can often help pay your closing costs if you make a full price offer. So to keep it simple, I did not roll closing costs into that. See, all these numbers are realistic. While paying a property manager is accounted for. And as a reminder, that was only in year one. Your subsequent years returns. They are going to gradually diminish as equity accumulates in your property. And of course, that's an example. You are real life numbers. You're really going to be better than that or worse than that. And yes, we could get more precise numbers if we like, discuss numbers from 20 spreadsheets and really made your head hurt.

Speaker 1 (00:25:09) - But we're not going to do that. And you do enough years of this, and you're going to have hordes of people lurking in the viewers of your Instagram story about your latest month long vacation in the Maldives islands. Okay, now, if you need to see what I just explained visually and your newer to our platform and you haven't seen that yet, I also explain the five ways in a free mini video course so that you can really get a good look at all those numbers and where they come from. And you can get that at get Rich education. Com slash course. The cool thing about real estate math like I just did there is it simplicity. All we did there was addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It real estate. I've never had to do trigonometry, calculus or use exponents. Okay, it's not about complicated maths. All it is is knowing what numbers to use. And in fact, that's probably why I'd expected. My skills are pretty rusty in calculus and trigonometry right now. I don't need to use that stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:26:17) - You can do all this with a pen and a napkin at. Lunch. And that is a big part of the beauty of this. So here at gray, we brought the world in awareness to this for about nine years now, and shortly after show inception, we helped lead you to the actual property addresses that are conducive to this because you kept asking me, where can I actually find properties, where this works? And then more recently, we added free coaching to help get you started or to help you get your next income property. And by the way, if you've ever wondered, there are eight of us that are here on the team at gray, and we often recruit new team members. We do that through our newsletter subscribers like you, because you already understand abundantly minded concepts like financially free beats debt free. We are not owned by any parent company. So when you tell a friend about the show or you interact with our sponsors, you're really supporting an independent voice here. And that's not to disparage the big corporate in any way.

Speaker 1 (00:27:26) - That's just simply not who we are. It was recently reported that Warner Brothers and Paramount are in early merger discussions. Well, gray won't be facing scrutiny from antitrust regulators anytime soon. And our sponsors, like you hear on our ads here during the show, they are ones that I use myself. We don't produce AI generated material here either. This is organic, original content, and a number of people on our team here have been with us for a while. Our investment coach Andrea since 2020, nourish since 2021, and our podcast Sound Engineer and has helped produce this show that you're listening to right now, every single week since episode three, in 2014, almost since inception, nine plus years now, Gray Marketplace is where you'll find the income properties for almost two years now. To make it even easier for you, you can even find and select from our two investment coaches on that page in order to help you out. And since our coaching is truly free, please respect their time. They're not there just to chat.

Speaker 1 (00:28:40) - It is for action takers now. Seven weeks ago, we did an episode here on how the real estate market is slowing it down. And of course, when we're talking about slowing down, the slow real estate market is in terms of the number of sales or the sales volume, not as many homes are transacting as usual. For one thing, there's always a lag around the holidays, but there's also an overall lack of American housing inventory, as you probably know well, I am happy to tell you that we do have inventory at GRE marketplace and a good selection. Everything from an older, renovated Ohio single family income property for a sales price of, say, 110 K to Alabama and new build single families for 300 K to Florida. New build duplexes for 500 to 600 K to four plex's for upwards of $1 million. If you want to benefit from everything that we discuss here on the channel, the actionable way for you to do that is with our free coaching. Yes, I'm talking about you. Make yourself that long term.

Speaker 1 (00:29:51) - Five ways profiteer. By not focusing on getting your money to work for you. That is a fixed mindset paradigm shift to ethically getting other people's money to work for you. Like we discuss here. That is, you simply put a small down payment on an income producing property. I mean, that's most of the formula right there. That's it. We're talking about how you can start or grow your own portfolio of buy and hold property, not fixing flips. It's often entry level property which is what makes a good long term rental property that's either already renovated or it is brand new. Oftentimes it's single family homes. Up to four plex is sometimes some apartment buildings. They're now a great marketplace. You can either shop off market property yourself, or have the free help of one of our great investment coaches. And your coach learns your goals, guides you, and makes it easy for you. They help you shop. The great marketplace properties, tell you where the real deals are nationally, and sometimes they tell you how to get improbably low mortgage rates when new home builders make those available, and your coach if you don't have one already, they give you the insights, the news on the latest good deals.

Speaker 1 (00:31:13) - For about a year now, a lot of new home builders have got to keep building and they have to keep moving properties to stay in business. So that's why amidst. Higher mortgage rates. You can get an interest rate for income property in the fives now because the builder buys it down for you and or even get a year's worth of free property management. Yeah, builders are often able to buy down your mortgage rate for you, because what they do is that they buy big chunks of money from lenders in bulk, where instead, if a lender does it directly with you, they have more documentation that they have to do with each individual investor for their smaller loan sizes. That's how builders are buying down your rate. They buy money in bulk from lenders. Now you'll see that grey marketplace properties are often less expensive than you'll find elsewhere. For properties that are turnkey and ready to be tenant occupied. Like this. Now, how are these off market property prices so competitive? Really? Where's the advantage come from here? Well, first of all, there is no real estate agent that the seller has to compensate with a traditional 5 or 6% commission.

Speaker 1 (00:32:30) - Instead you get to buy direct. Secondly, investor advantage markets just intrinsically have lower prices than the national median. They tend to be in the Midwest, southeast and Inland Northeast, and they come with a property management solution. And thirdly, the providers in our network, they're not mom and pop flippers that provide investors like you with just 1 or 2 homes a year. Instead, these are builders and renovation companies in business to do this at scale. So they get to buy their materials in bulk, keeping the price down for you. And really a fourth reason that you tend to find good deals at Gray Market Place is that you aren't buying properties from owner occupants where their emotions get involved, and they sometimes expect irrationally high prices for some offbeat reason because the living room is where they open their Christmas stockings every year for a decade or something like that. Now, just like buying your own home to live in, these income properties come with a lot of the same safeguards when you buy. We suggest that once your coach helps you make an offer and you're under contract for a property, that you have an independent third party property inspection done, and then the seller typically fixes any inspection findings for you at their expense, the seller's expense, before you close the deal.

Speaker 1 (00:33:57) - And we're talking about anything from a window that doesn't close properly to a faucet that drips. You want to have those conditions cured and taken care of before you buy. Now, as a buyer, it's not legally required that you do an inspection, but I recommend it even if it slows down your purchase process a little. Inspection is like cheap insurance for you. Don't rush that part as a condition of your mortgage lender giving you the loan, there will be an independent lender appraisal of the property's value before you buy. That part is mandatory. And this appraisal? It's another safeguard to keep you from overpaying. If you don't have an investment coach yet, it is truly free. They're there to help you out. Read a few sentences about each coach and pick the coach that you think resonates with you. Or just pick the one that you think has the best smile over there on that page. Uh, they are really well qualified. They have their MBAs, but more importantly, the coaches are relatable because they're active real estate investors themselves, just like I am.

Speaker 1 (00:35:03) - Coaching is truly something that's free. We don't try to upsell you to some paid course or some fee based coaching program later. There's nothing like that. So just create one login one time and connect with them at Gray marketplace.com. And it's really helpful if you're financially ready. First check with your mortgage loan company and get pre-approved unless you're paying all cash. Really? Today, with inflation about as little as you'd want to spend on a rental property, they won't give you an inordinate amount of problems. Is your 20% down payment on a 100 to 150 K property? Well, you should find this most helpful. You can get started with investor advantaged off market deals and investment coaches at Gray marketplace.com I'm Keith Reinhold. I'll chat with you next week. Don't quit your day dream.

Speaker 4 (00:36:05) - 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.

Speaker 4 (00:36:20) - The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.

Speaker 1 (00:36:33) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

Direct download: GREepisode483_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:00am EDT

Mon, 1 January 2024

After discussing the direction of rents, learn about an ominous new tax that’s proposed.

SCOTUS and Congress are considering a tax on unrealized gains.

For example, if your gold or furniture appreciates from $5K to $8K, would you have to pay a tax on the $3K gain, even if you keep owning the gold or furniture?

Tom Wheelwright from WealthAbility joins us to discuss this.

Though this is considered a “wealth tax”, the middle class would have to pay it.

The tax case being heard is called “Moore vs. United States”. We expect it to be decided this year.

Tom & I discuss how few people understand marginal income tax rates’ progressivity.

The last dollar that you earn is taxed at your highest rate. The first dollar that you earn is taxed at your lowest rate.

Timestamps:

Factors Driving Rent Growth (00:02:45)

Inflation, lack of inventory, expired rent freezes, shifting workforce, demand for single-family homes, high employment, barriers to homeownership.

Promising Development in Multifamily Construction (00:05:33)

Multifamily construction reaching a 15-year high, new supply likely to slow down apartment rent growth, inclusionary housing requirements for new construction.

Current Rent Trends (00:08:04)

Single-family rents up 5%, apartment rent growth at 3%, highest rent price growth in the northeastern quadrant of the US.

Supreme Court Case: Moore v. United States (00:11:47)

Overview of the case, implications of taxing unrealized gains, arguments for and against the taxation of unrealized income, potential impact on everyday investors and citizens.

Challenges of a Wealth Tax (00:18:07)

Discussion on the problematic nature of a wealth tax, potential impact on individuals and assets, comparison to estate tax, and potential implications of a wealth tax on various assets.

The tax on unrealized gains (00:22:43)

Discussion on the potential impact of a proposed wealth tax on unrealized gains and the complexities of taxing assets while they are still held.

The regressive nature of wealth taxation (00:24:38)

Exploration of the regressive nature of wealth taxation and the challenges in implementing and managing taxes on wealth.

Tax laws and equal protection (00:27:19)

Insights into how tax laws apply equally to everyone and how billionaires benefit from better advisors to minimize tax payments.

Tax rate misconceptions (00:30:15)

Clarification of misconceptions about tax rates, including the progressive nature of tax tables and the impact of earning more income.

Tax strategies and investment decisions (00:32:17)

Exploration of tax benefits related to investment strategies, including the impact of deductions and the suitability of IRAs for different investment types.

Updates on tax laws and book release (00:34:57)

Announcement of the third edition of the book "Tax-Free Wealth" and the incorporation of major tax law changes into the updated edition.

Wealthy's tax contributions and future episode preview (00:36:03)

Discussion on the tax contributions of the wealthy and a preview of a future episode topic on the feasibility of abolishing property tax.

Conclusion and show updates (00:37:13)

Closing remarks on upcoming content, including the landmark episode 500, and a call to subscribe to the show for valuable insights.

Resources mentioned:

Show Notes:

GetRichEducation.com/482

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GRE Investment Coach, start here:

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RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE

or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com

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