J Scott: We’re Due for a Recession, But It Isn’t All Bad for Real Estate

Will mortgage rates remain above seven percent in 2025? Are we closer to a recession than most Americans realize? Why does it feel like this economic cycle of high rates and a struggling middle class will never end? The biggest question is: What do all these factors mean for real estate, and should you still be investing? We brought on the man who literally wrote the book on Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing to give his 2025 outlook. J Scott has flipped over 500 homes, manages and owns thousands of rental units, and has been involved in tens of millions of dollars in real estate transactions. He started investing in 2008; he’s seen the worst of recessions and the highest of pricing peaks. We brought him back on the show as our industry expert to provide his time-tested take on what could happen in 2025 and share his economic framework for forecasting what’s coming next. J says we’re long overdue for a recession—and the red flags are popping up more frequently. While signs of a global recession loom, J explains what this means for mortgage rates and home prices and why now might still be the time to invest. In This Episode We Cover: Why J believes we’re closer to a global recession than most people think New Trump presidential policies that could have huge impacts on inflation (and mortgage rates) Whether mortgage rates will stay in the seven percent range EVEN as the Fed lowers rates The broken economic “cycle” we find ourselves in and the only way to fix it Could home prices correct/crash if mortgage rates finally do fall? And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube J's Newsletter Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio Join the Future of Real Estate Investing with Fundrise Grab J’s Top Real Estate Investing Books Find Investor-Friendly Lenders Read the Latest Blog Posts from J Connect with J Connect with Dave Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1068 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Dave Meyer?

  Hey everyone, Dave Meyer here from BiggerPockets. Right now, at the start of a new year, it is the perfect time to take somewhat of a reset and make a plan on how to maximize your financial position over the next 12 months. And on this channel, we firmly believe that investing in real estate is the single best way to do that. But we also, at the same time, understand that a lot of you may not have ever invested before. Or maybe you have, but you sat out 2024 because it was a really confusing and uncertain year. So today, we're going to catch you up by asking a few of the biggest questions about the year ahead. We're going to cover mortgage rates and whether there's any hope of rate relief in the coming year.

• 0:46Dave Meyer?

  We'll talk about whether the entire world is basically missing recession red flags in the US. And we'll talk about some potential Trump policies like deportations and tariffs that could have an impact on the housing market. We'll also cover a bunch of other topics, but the general idea here is that although we don't know the answers to these questions, if you can track these trends and where they're heading, you're going to be in a better position to understand the market and jump in on great deals in 2025. And joining me to talk through these big questions is a familiar face from the BP family, Jay Scott. Jay has been involved in more than $60 million worth of real estate transactions during his career. He's hosted a podcast for BiggerPockets and he's written five books, including one with me.

• 1:31Dave Meyer?

  Let's bring on Jay. Jay, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thank you for joining us.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Thrilled to be here. It's been a while.

• 1:38Dave Meyer?

  Do you know how many times you've been on?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  I mean, between guests and guest hosting and all the different podcasts and the ones we hosted a couple of years ago, it's got to be dozens, hundreds, who knows?

• 1:50Dave Meyer?

  So hopefully, everyone in our audience knows you already, Jay. You've been around the BiggerPockets community forever, written a lot of books, hosted a lot of podcasts. But for anyone who doesn't know you, can you just give a brief intro?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am a former engineer and business guy, left the tech world in 2008. My wife and I started flipping houses in 2008. I found bigger pockets in 2008 and that's how I learned how to flip houses. We flipped just under 500 houses between 2008 and 2017 ish. Then I transitioned into multifamily and I've been investing in multifamily for the last six or seven or eight years now. We own about 1,100 units around the country, multifamily, another hundred of single family. And we buy in a lot of places and a lot of different asset classes and have fun with it.

• 2:38Dave Meyer?

  Jay, you and I are both sort of analytics people, like looking at the macroeconomic environment. And I'm sure this time of year, like me, you get a ton of questions. People want you to make predictions about what's going on. But making predictions is super hard and instead I really like to just think about sort of the big themes, the big questions that like I want to answer and think about into 2025. And so that's what I'm hoping to talk to you about today. Let's talk about some of the big questions as we head into 2025. The first one, of course, has to be mortgage rates and you can't avoid this question. Can you tell us a little bit about where you think we're heading with mortgage rates?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and let me start with, you're right, I don't want this to be a predictions episode. None of us have a crystal ball and things are kind of crazy these days. They have been for the last couple of years. And so I like to think of things in terms of frameworks and the likelihood of certain things happening if certain conditions are met. So we can talk about like, what are the potential things that could happen in the economy and politically and et cetera? And how they would impact the market.

• 3:43Dave Meyer?

  Perfect.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  So starting with mortgage rates, the last three times the Federal Reserve has met to drop their key interest rate, called the federal funds rate, they did so. So we've seen a point drop over the last few months from the Federal Reserve. And in theory, that should be a good indicator that rates are coming down, including mortgage rates. But the reality is we haven't seen mortgage rates come down. In fact, after that last cut that we saw in December, we saw mortgage rates spike.

• 4:11Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  When we talk about mortgage rates, what drives mortgage rates or what influences mortgage rates the most? It's this 10-year bond. So the rates that the 10-year bonds are paying have a big impact on what mortgage rates are. And so at the end of the day, if you put all that together, what you find is the rates for mortgages are often influenced by what investors believe. Inflation's going to do over the next 10 years. I know that was convoluted, but that's really what it boils down to. Yep. If investors think inflation's going up over the next 10 years, mortgage rates are generally going to go up. If they think inflation's coming down, mortgage rates are generally going to come down. And unfortunately, what we're seeing today compared to even just a

• 4:52Speaker 01

  few months ago or a year ago, is that there's a lot less optimism about inflation coming down. We saw inflation three years ago at like 8, 9, 10%. Fed raised interest rates to get that inflation down. We got that inflation down to around 3%, even 2.8%, whatever it is today. And that was a great start. And the question was, do we keep going down? Do we get to that 2% inflation rate, which is where the Fed wants us to be? Or are we going to see it pop back up? And for a long time, it seemed like we were going to get back down to that 2% number. Well, now it's starting to feel like things are popping back up. And so that fear over inflation is driving up the long-term bond rates. The

• 5:36Speaker 01

  long-term bond rates are driving up mortgage rates. And we're recording this at the end of December. And what we're seeing this week is for the first time in, since pretty much the beginning of the year, we're seeing mortgage rates over 7% again. What are we going to see next year? Well, again, it goes back to what do we think is going to happen in terms of investors' fear over inflation? Do we think that there's going to be continued fear about inflation? If so, mortgage rates are going to stay elevated. If we see inflation start to come down for some reason, mortgage rates will likely come down. So that's really where the discussion should go.

• 6:10Dave Meyer?

  Thank you for that explanation. It's super helpful. And hopefully, everyone understands this. Again, Fed doesn't control mortgage rates. It's really about what bond investors are expecting over, let's just generalize to a 10-year period. And it seems that since August-ish, maybe September, investors are more fearful of inflation. And I'm curious, Jay, like, what do you think the catalyst for that was?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So there's several catalysts. And number one, you're absolutely correct. Typically, when the Fed lowers interest rates, it's now cheaper for us to borrow money. There's less incentive to save money because We're not getting as much interest on the money we're saving. And so what do people do when it's cheap to borrow and we don't want to save? We go out and spend money. And when we spend money, that basically puts the economy into overdrive and we start to see more inflation. And so the Fed cutting interest rates certainly was an impact on the perception that we could be facing more inflation. Additionally, we got the November numbers over the last few weeks. And what we saw was while inflation didn't really go up a ton in November, we did see somewhat of a higher jump than we would have expected.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  We certainly saw numbers that were a little bit higher than we wanted to see. And it was an indication that even if inflation isn't necessarily going up, it's no longer going down. And then the other piece that is probably going to be a decent part of this conversation in many areas. And I don't like to get into politics, but you have to think about politics when you think about the economy. Because political decisions and political legislation are often going to drive economic outputs. With the new administration coming in, we have a number of potential policy drivers that could be inflationary. So number one, Trump has talked about tariffs. Tariffs are inflationary. Tariffs are a tax that are paid by US companies when they import goods.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And for the most part, those taxes are passed on to consumers in terms of higher prices. Now, we can have the discussion about whether long term, would that be good for the economy? Would that be good for prices? Would that be good for manufacturers in the US? And that's a completely separate discussion. I'm not saying tariffs necessarily are bad. In fact, in some situations, they're actually really good. But the reality is tariffs are inflationary. And broad tariffs across all categories, all countries that are exporting to us is highly inflationary. And so the big question is, I know Trump has been talking about tariffs. Is it just talk? Is it a negotiating stance or is he actually planning to do it? Well, as of today, we don't know. And so the fear is he's really going to put in place a lot of tariffs.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And that's inflationary. And so that's driving some of the concerns around inflation. Second, Trump has talked about deportations. When you deport people, some Sometimes those people that you're deporting are people that are contributing to the economy. And there are certain areas of the economy where we see immigrants, even illegal immigrants, highly impacting the workforce. Yeah. Um, number one is agriculture. So we see immigrants and again, illegal immigrants doing a lot of the work in the fields, picking our fruit, picking our vegetables, basically driving the agriculture industry, hospitality industry. So if you've ever gone to a restaurant, there's probably an immigrant in the kitchen washing dishes. Um, again, maybe any illegal immigrant hotels, people cleaning rooms.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I know it sounds stereotypical, but the data actually meets the stereotype in this case. And so for a lot of these industries, if we have mass deportations, well, these industries are going to see reduced labor force. When you see a reduced labor force, what do you have to do to hire people? You have to pay more money. You have to increase wages. When you increase wages, you increase the money supply. And when you increase the money supply, we see inflation. And so deportation, if it impacts low wage workers, if we see a lot of low wage workers leaving the country, that's going to be inflationary. So that's number two. The third big, um, potential policy issue that could be inflationary that, that Trump has talked about is he wants to have more control over the Fed. He wants to have more say in Federal Reserve rate decisions.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And as we talked about earlier, when you lower interest rates, that drives inflation. Also drives the economy. It makes the economy look really good, but it creates inflation. And Trump has made it very clear, not just now, but in his first term, that if he were in charge of interest rates, he would want them lower. And so if he takes any control over the Fed, if he has any outsized influence over the Fed, and he convinces them to lower rates in a situation where we maybe shouldn't be lowering rates, that could drive inflation as well. And so again, I don't know if he's really planning to do these things, or if they're just negotiating stances and he's not really going to. But there are enough people that are concerned that he's actually going to do these things, that there's a fear of inflation right now.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And that's one of the big things that's driving both the 10-year bonds and mortgage rates to go up.

• 11:00Dave Meyer?

  Perfectly said, Jay. And I think it sort of just underscores the idea that we talked about at the beginning and sort of the premise of this show is that we don't know which of these things are going to happen. These are just questions. They're open questions that we all need to be thinking about. And right now, to me at least, seems like a particularly uncertain time because we know Trump was elected. He's going to be inaugurated January 20th, but we don't know exactly what the policies are going to look like. And that uncertainty, I think, in itself can drive up bond yields, right? People just don't know what to do. So they want to reduce risk and they basically demand a higher interest rate to buy bonds than they would if they had a clear path forward. And as Jay said, this happens with every president, right? They campaign on one thing, what the actual

• 11:44Dave Meyer?

  policies look like when, you know, they have to go through Congress in most cases, or there's going to be a period of negotiation. And until we know exactly how some of these policies get implemented, and if they get implemented at all, there's going to be this level of uncertainty. So that's why I totally agree with you that these, this is maybe the biggest question in terms of mortgage rates and the housing market is which of these policies do get implemented and what are the details of these policies? That's definitely something I recommend everyone keep a very close eye on as we go into 2025. Okay, Jay, I want to ask you about what you think will happen to affordability in the housing market. But first, I have to tell everyone about Momentum 2025. This is Bigger

• 12:28Dave Meyer?

  Pockets Virtual Investing Summit. It's going to be super cool. It starts February 11th and you can join us for an eight-week virtual series. It runs every Tuesday from 2 to 3:30 Eastern, where we're going to dive into all things real estate investing to set you up for success here in 2025. I'll, of course, be there, but there's going to be tons of different investors. We're going to have Henry Washington, Ashley Kerr, James Daynard. We're all there to share insights on what is happening in the market and how to make the most of it in this year. And this is a really cool summit because it's not just about listening to investors. You actually get to meet other investors in small mastermind groups, to have a chance to share ideas, get feedback on your own And have a little bit of external accountability.

• 13:14Dave Meyer?

  On top of that, of course, you're going to get access to seasoned pros who have built impressive portfolios. And you'll get bonuses on top of all of this. By joining, you'll get more than $1,200 worth of goodies, including books, planners, discounts for future events. It's really an incredible package. So sign up today. You can register now for Momentum 2025 at biggerpockets.com/summit25. That is biggerpockets.com/summit25. And make sure to sign up soon because if you do it before January 11th, you get our early bird pricing, which will give you a 30% discount. So if you're going to sign up, make sure to do it quickly and get those savings. All right, we'll be right back.

• 13:58Dave Meyer?

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• 14:40Dave Meyer?

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• 15:23Dave Meyer?

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• 16:08Dave Meyer?

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• 16:37Henry Washington?

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• 17:22Henry Washington?

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• 17:41Dave Meyer?

  Thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump back into this conversation with Jay Scott. All right. So Jay, let's move on to a second question I have. It's less about macro economy, less about mortgage rates, more about the actual housing market. We have seen this huge pendulum swing over the last couple of years in housing affordability. During COVID, some of the best affordability we've seen in decades. Now we're still close to 40-year lows in affordability, and this has caused a huge slowdown in transaction volume. I think just anecdotally, it seems like it's preventing a lot of people, investors, from entering the market, getting into real estate investing. Do you think there's a chance affordability improves in the coming year?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Again, I think it goes back to the question of, well, what's going to happen in the economy? If the economy keeps going on the path that it's been on for the last couple of years, which is a reasonable amount of inflation, strong jobs performance to a large degree, high GDP, wages doing decently well. Don't get me wrong, there's a big wealth gap in this country where a lot of people are suffering, but we also see a lot of people that have been doing very well for the last few years. If that continues, I think what we're going to see is a continuation of the exact same thing that we've seen in the housing market over the last couple of years, which is very low transaction volume, very few people who want to sell into

• 19:01Speaker 01

  the market. So for the most part, we've got, I think last I looked, 72% of mortgages were under 4%, something like 91% of mortgages were under 5%. People don't want to sell and get rid of their 3%, 4%, 5% mortgage if they're just going to have to buy an overpriced house and get a 7% or 8% mortgage. So there's not a lot of appetite for sellers to sell. And then on the buyer's side, there's not a lot of demand out there when interest rates are at 7%, 7.5%, 8% because buyers know that if they're buying it as a rental property, they're not going to cash flow. If they're buying it as a personal residence, they're going to be paying probably more than they'd be paying if they were just renting. And so we're not going to see a lot

• 19:43Speaker 01

  of transaction volume if the economy stays on the path that it's been on. That said, if we see the economy change in one of any number of ways, if we see mortgage rates start to go down, that's going to encourage sellers to sell and buyers to buy. And I think we'll start to see some transaction volume. And I think any transaction volume at this point is going to be deflationary in the market. I think it's going to push prices down a little bit. I'm not saying we're going to have a crash or anything, but we don't have a lot of what's called price discovery right now. We don't know what things are really worth. And I suspect that if we had more transaction volume, what we would find is that real prices are probably a little bit lower than where they are today. So number one, we could see mortgage rates come down. I think that would impact prices a little bit.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  The other big thing is we may very well be due for a recession. It's been about 16 years since we've had a recession that was driven by anything other than COVID. Debt levels have increased significantly, both government debt levels, personal debt levels, corporate debt levels, and at some point it's unsustainable. And at some point, we're going to see a recession. And when you have a recession, people lose their jobs, people's wages go down, and that's going to impact their ability to pay their mortgages. We saw this in 2008, when when people can't pay their mortgages, they either have to sell their house or they get foreclosed on, and that's going to impact housing values.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And so I think there's a really reasonable chance that we're going to see some level of recession over the next 12 months, and I think that could have an impact on housing prices downwards as well. Another thing, and we didn't talk about this earlier with the Trump policy initiatives, but one of the other big initiatives that he's been talking about is austerity, basically cutting the federal budget. Right now, the government spends a ridiculous amount of money, $6 trillion, which is about $2 trillion more per year than they actually bring in in tax revenue. And according to Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek, they want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. That might be great long term from a US debt perspective,

• 21:53Speaker 01

  but short term, that is going to crush the economy.

• 21:56Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, comes with consequences.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Millions of people are going to get laid off. Millions of people aren't going to be getting payments from the government that they otherwise would be getting. It's going to slow the economy down and we could see a recession. And so that's another policy initiative that could drive a lot of what we're going to see in 2025. So I would turn this question back to the listeners. Do you think that Trump and Elon and Vivek are going to be successful at significantly cutting the budget? Again, if so, might be great long term, but it's going to have a lot of short term negative consequences. Or do you think that this is one of those policy initiatives that they really want to do, but they're just, they're not going to be able to do it? In which case we could see status quo for the next year, prices staying high, affordability staying low, transaction volume staying low.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  All in all, my belief, and I've been saying this for a couple of years now, is I think we've got another several years of prices kind of staying flat while inflation catches up, and that would be my best guess.

• 22:54Dave Meyer?

  Well, here we go, making predictions. But I tend to agree. I think the affordability problem doesn't have an easy solution. And I don't see like it being one thing. I don't think prices are going to crash and it's going to improve. I don't see mortgage rates dropping to 4% is going to improve. It's probably going to be a combination of wage growth, slowly declining mortgage rates, flattening appreciation that gets us there eventually. So I tend to agree with that. And the other thing I wanted to mention, because we are again talking about questions for 2025. You mentioned something about paying your mortgages. That number, mortgage delinquency rates, to me is sort of like the key thing to keep an eye on if you think prices are going to go down or would probably at least maybe the lead indicator

• 23:38Dave Meyer?

  for prices starting to go down. Because in the housing market, basically the only way price is going down is when people are somewhat forced to sell. No one wants to sell their house for less than they made. It's not like the stock market where people are regularly doing that. This is their primary residence for most Americans. It's their primary, you know, store of capital. And so. They're only going to do that if they're forced to. Right now, mortgage delinquencies are basically at 40-year lows. They're extremely low. As Jay said, that could change, but to me, unless that changes, I don't think we're going to see prices in any significant way start to decline. They definitely could come down a couple of percentage points. But for me, that's like one of the big questions, one of the things that to keep an eye. And again, heading into next year is,

• 24:20Dave Meyer?

  does that mortgage delinquency rate start to rise at any point in 2025?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  And this again is going to be a theme of this entire discussion, that things can change. And a lot of things are going to be dependent on what happens in the economy and what happens politically and what happens in the industry. And I really would encourage anybody out there that's listening, get good at following the economic data. Get good at understanding what parts of the economy impact other parts of the economy and how decisions by Congress and decisions by the president, decisions by the Federal Reserve, decisions by big companies, how they impact the economy and how everything kind of plays in and works together. Because a lot of this is going to be an evolving situation over the next couple of years, just like it has been the last couple of years. I don't mean to make it sound like anything has changed just because we have a new administration coming in.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  This is the way it's been since COVID. We have an evolving situation every day and we just need to make the best decisions we can at the time.

• 25:16Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, do you long for the days when the housing market used to be a bit more predictable?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny because back in 2017, I wrote a book called Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing, and BiggerPockets book, go check it out.

• 25:30Dave Meyer?

  Great book.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Basically, the book was all about economic cycles and how for the last 150 years in this country, we see these ups and downs in the economy and things get good. We see periods of prosperity. Economy is doing well, jobs are doing well, wages are going up, inflation is increasing. And then we get to the point where we have too much inflation and too much debt. Prosperity goes away and we enter into a recession and people suffer and there's a big wealth gap and wages go down and things are bad. And then we get back into the good part of the cycle and the bad part of the cycle. And that cycle continues. What we've seen for the most part Over the last four, five, six years, basically since COVID, I guess, four or five years, is that we don't have cycles anymore.

• 26:15Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  And what we see is all of these economic conditions, both the good and the bad, kind of conflated together all at the same time. And you can see that now, you can see that in many ways, the, the economy from a metric standpoint is better than ever. GDP is, is over 3%, unemployment's under 4%, wage growth is pretty strong. We've seen inflation, which means the economy is going well. But at the same time, we've got a lot of people who can't pay their bills. We, we're seeing inflation that wages just haven't caught up. So all the price increases from the last couple of years are still weighing on people. We're starting to see unemployment bump up. And so we have kind of these good and the bad, all kind of merging together into one economy.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  We no longer have these good and bad cycles. And so I think that's part of the confusion that a lot of people are seeing is that we don't know what to expect next. It used to be if we're going through a good period, we know at some point in the next couple of years, we're going to have a bad period. And then within a year or two after that, we'll have a good period again. At this point, I think nobody knows, are things good, are they bad and where are they headed? And unless and until we get back into that cyclical economy, I think it's going to be very hard to predict the future moving forward.

• 27:29Dave Meyer?

  Huh. That's a really interesting thought. So correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you're saying back in the time, the business cycle, the economy works in, in cycles. Makes total sense. Jay's book is great at outlining this. And during that time, it was sort of like when things were good, it was sort of good for everyone. And then there was a period when things were sort of bad for everyone. And that's not happening now. Instead, we have an economy that's good for people just sort of continuously and an economy that's not so good for people sort of continuously. And those things are happening simultaneously. Is that right?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think a lot of it goes, and again, we can trace it back to, to starting after the great recession, the government has released a lot of stimulus. There's been a lot of debt built up in this country, trillions upon trillions, tens of trillions of dollars since 2008. Nearly fifteen trillion dollars just in the last six years. And so when you pump that much money into the economy, basically what you're doing is it's the equivalent of taking a dying person and putting them on life support. I mean, medicine's pretty good. We can keep somebody alive for a really long time, even if they're not healthy.

• 28:35Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  And that's essentially what the stimulus that the government has created has done in the economy. It's kept it alive and kept it moving forward, even though at the very heart of it, our economy right now is not healthy.

• 28:48Dave Meyer?

  It's interesting because I obviously never want to root for a recession. I don't want people to lose their jobs or for these negative things to happen. But the way you're describing it almost sounds like it's necessary for like some sort of reset to happen.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's what recessions are. And so if you, again, if you correlate debt, and again, I'm talking government debt, business debt, personal debt, credit card debt, if you correlate debt to the the cycle that we just talked about, what you'll see is during those periods of prosperity, debt is building up. And then we get to this this kind of this inflection point, this top point, where we start to go into a recession. And that's when too much debt has been built up. And now all that debt starts to go away. It goes away because people get foreclosed on and they lose their mortgage debt, or they go into bankruptcy and lose their business debt, or they lose their credit card debt when they go into bankruptcy, or their car gets repossessed and they lose their car debt. Basically, all this debt starts just

• 29:45Speaker 01

  evaporating and going away. And that's what a recession is. And then we get back down to the bottom where we have very little debt in the system. And then the whole cycle starts again. And so what we're seeing now is debt has been building up and building up and building up since 2008. Again, business debt, personal debt, government debt, and at some point, it needs to go away. And unfortunately, when that happens, the only way that debt goes away is for businesses to go out of business and people to default and lose their houses and lose their cars and all of these bad things. But right now, we have so much debt built up that when that happens, it's probably not going to be a minor event because there's a lot of debt that needs to evaporate for us to get that reset that you were talking about.

• 30:30Dave Meyer?

  I do want to dig in deeper on this question of whether there's a recession on the horizon and what could trigger it. But first, a heads up that this week's bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise flagship fund. Invest in private market real estate with the Fundrise flagship fund. Check out fundrise.com/pockets to learn more. All right, we'll be right back.

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• 36:13Dave Meyer?

  We're back. Here's the rest of my conversation with Jay Scott. If you look at the economy, things are going well. We've talked a lot about potentially stimulative policies with the new administration. So is there anything on the immediate horizon you think could lead to a recession?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of it is just going to be based on global economic environment over the next couple of years. And I'm going to be honest, I'm not a fan of a lot of the policy initiatives the new administration is proposing. But at the same time, I think they're in a really tough situation, regardless of the domestic initiatives that we put in place, simply because there's a lot of global stuff going on. And so we know about the obvious stuff. We know that we have got the war in the Middle East. We've got the war in Ukraine with Russia, and that's causing some instability. There's oil wars still going on kind of behind the scenes. At the same time, we're starting to see Europe running into a lot of economic

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Issues. They're starting to see runaway inflation again. They're starting to see their debt build up. They're starting to see governmental issues. There was been no confidence votes in a couple

• 37:20Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  European countries recently. And so those things impact the US. Look at China. I skipped China, but that's probably the biggest one that we should be talking about. The Chinese economy is slowing down considerably. Their GDP is expected to be about 5% this year, which if it were the US GDP, 5% is fantastic.

• 37:38Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  But China's used to having 8, 9, 10% economic growth every year. And so 5% basically means they're going into a recession. And so why do all these things impact us? Because we live in a global economy right now. We have lots of businesses in this country that rely on other countries buying our goods. And we have a lot of consumers in this country that rely on buying other countries' goods. And so when other countries start to suffer, when we start to see an economic decline around the world, ultimately, that is going to impact the US. And it may not be something that any administration could control or fix. It may be that if the world slides into a global recession, the US is just going to get pulled along with it.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And we may be facing circumstances that are essentially outside of our control. At the same time, I am a little concerned that if the incoming administration does everything they promised, they could exacerbate that situation. And if we create trade wars with tariffs, that could push the rest of the world along into this recessionary period even faster than I believe is going to naturally happen anyway.

• 38:43Dave Meyer?

  I do think that's sort of one of the questions going into next year is like, what happens with geopolitical stability or instability for that matter? And how is the US going to be impacted? And how long can the US outshine other economies? Because that's what's going on. Like, the rest of the world is already underperforming economically, but the US continues to sort of defy that trend. But can that happen forever?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  The other thing that I'll mention, and this is probably more relatable for a lot of people, is that with the Federal Reserve saying rates are likely to be higher for longer, those rates, those Treasury bond rates specifically, impact how much

• 39:20Speaker 01

  The US is paying for all this debt that we have.

• 39:22Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Right now, we've got $37 trillion worth of debt and we're paying on average about 3.2%. I think it is per year. So you can multiply 37 trillion by 3.2%. And that's how much we're paying on our debt. Two things are likely to happen. That 37 trillion is likely to go higher. So we're going to have more debt over the coming years than less. And two, that 3.2% interest that we're paying, as long as interest rates stay above 3.2% for our US bonds, that interest rate that the US has to pay on their debt is going to go higher. So when you multiply a higher number by a higher percentage, the cost of just keeping this debt is going to keep going up and up and up.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  And so I think that's, that's going to drive a lot of issues, maybe not in the next year, but certainly in the next several years in a negative way.

• 40:13Dave Meyer?

  Well said. And yeah, again, just another reason why pointing back to policy and whether, you know, they are going to do these austerity measures and try and bring in the debt. If there's going to be more stimulative policies, really big questions that we need to answer next year. The last question I'll ask for you, Jay, is given everything, all this uncertainty in the market, do you still think it's a good idea to invest in real estate?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I always think it's a good idea to invest in real estate. So unless you believe that the US economy is going to absolutely collapse and we're going to lose our world reserve currency status, we're going to lose our strongest country in the world politically and militarily status. As long as you think that the US is going to stay the number one country in the world from an economic and a military and political standpoint, our assets will eventually keep going up. That trend line is going to keep going up. And so owning assets is going to be a good thing. And real estate, I mean, it's cliche, but they're not making more of it. And real estate will continue to go up. Do I know that it's going to go up in the next year or even five years?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  I don't. But there's been no 10-year period in this country in the last 130, 40, 50 years. Where we haven't seen real estate go up. And so as long as you're investing conservatively, as long as you're sure that you're not going to run into cash flow issues that are going to force you to give back a property because you've overpaid for it, or your mortgage is too high. If you can hold on to a property long enough, in five or 10 years, you're going to be very glad you bought that property. I've been investing in real estate for nearly 20 years, and there was no time in the last 20 years where I bought a property that I wasn't ultimately happy that I did.

• 41:59Dave Meyer?

  I agree with all of that. And also, just when I look at other asset classes right now, they're just not as appealing. Like, the stock market, to me, is very expensive right now. I invest a little bit in crypto, but just for fun. And I just think real estate offers a little bit more stability right now during a very uncertain time. And like you said, the risk of inflation is high, so doing nothing comes with risk right now. And so, at least to me, obviously, I'm biased. I work at BiggerPockets. I've been an investor for 15 years. But the fundamentals, to me, haven't changed, even though there is sort of this short-term uncertainty.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  And here's the other thing. You mentioned inflation. And again, we don't know exactly where inflation's going, but there's a lot of concern that it's going to stay above the Fed target for a while. I've heard people concerned that it's going to spike again. Real estate has historically been the single best inflation hedge on the planet in terms of assets. Again, if you look at the trend lines for inflation and real estate values, for the most part, they've gone hand in hand for the last 120 years. Right now, real estate is much higher than inflation over the last couple of years. But at no point in the last 120 years has real estate grown at a lower rate over any multiple years than inflation. And so if you're concerned about inflation, even if you're just, if all you want to do is make sure that the money that you have isn't getting eaten away by inflation, real

• 43:19Speaker 01

  estate is probably the safest investment on the planet.

• 43:23Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, thanks so much, Jay. As always, it's great to hear from you and learn from your insights. And everyone, if you want to learn more from Jay, he's got a bunch of books for BiggerPockets, written a lot for the blog, just a wealth of information. We'll put links to all of his books and everything else you can get from him in the show notes below. Thanks again, Jay.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Thanks, Steve.

• 43:42Dave Meyer?

  And thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next time for another episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.

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