The Housing Market Is Completely F*d - Stay Away From These States! | Reventure Consulting

Northwest Registered Agent: Get the essential tools needed to start your business at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/free-identity-ich Blossom Social: See our investment portfolio's at https://getblossom.onelink.me/SOfu/ICH NetSuite: Get Our FREE Business Guide at https://netsuite.com/ICED Shopify: Stop waiting for permission to build something. Your next revenue stream starts free at https://shopify.com/ich DOWNLOAD THE REVENTURE HOUSING DATA APP: https://reventure.app/affiliate/icedcoffee Follow @ReventureConsulting Here! 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:28 - Who Should Actually Buy a House? 00:11:17 - Is Housing Signaling a Recession? 00:15:30 - Sponsor: Northwest Registered Agent 00:16:46 - Why Home Prices Haven't Crashed 00:22:18 - How Screwed Are First-Time Buyers? 00:29:44 - Sponsor: Blossom 00:30:45 - Sponsor: NetSuite 00:31:50 - Is Being a Landlord Still Worth It? 00:38:31 - Will The $46 Trillion Inheritance Save Housing? 00:43:58 - Are We in a Housing Bubble? 00:51:16 - Is Wall Street Buying Up Your Neighborhood? 00:57:21 - Sponsor: Shopify 00:58:18 - How To Lowball a Seller And Win 01:07:53 - Should You Get an Adjustable Rate Mortgage? 01:12:25 - Why Graham Dumped His California Rentals 01:21:30 - Do Investors Really Make 20% Returns? 01:30:19 - Cash vs. Stocks: Who's Right? 01:37:54 - Sponsor: Reventure App 01:38:37 - The Birth Rate Problem Nobody Talks About 01:47:34 - Social Media Is a Slot Machine 01:54:46 - What If Nick Is Wrong? 01:59:23 - Next Episode Preview *𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗨𝗦* 𝗜𝗚: https://www.instagram.com/icedcoffeehour 𝗝𝗔𝗖𝗞: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗛𝗔𝗠: https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheIcedCoffeeHourClips 𝗫.𝗰𝗼𝗺: https://x.com/TheICHpodcast 𝗧𝗶𝗸𝗧𝗼𝗸: https://www.tiktok.com/@theicedcoffeehour 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: https://open.spotify.com/show/5c2uoXBQkOjIiCOf60jJj7 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-iced-coffee-hour/id1515070058 For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [email protected] Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan & Jack Selby will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan & Jack Selby are part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  The weakness I see in the different corners of the housing market makes me think the underlying economy maybe is not as healthy as the stock market would suggest.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  New home construction, that's down, while the cost of those homes and most everything else these days is up.

• 0:39Jack Selby?

  What does this tell you about the greater US economy?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Existing home sales are around 4 million. That's about what they were in 2008, 2009, during the worst financial crash in 80 years.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  The gap between what home buyers need to earn and what they actually make has never been wider.

• 0:57Jack Selby?

  What out of everything that you've seen in the past three months is the most surprising thing?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Someone bought a house for 500, it's now 400. You know, we were told that that's like not possible.

• 1:06Jack Selby?

  Who should buy a house and who should not?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  So for the vast majority of people in the US, be very careful if you're buying.

• 1:13Speaker 05

  Property is fine, except it's pretty darn expensive by historical standards.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I don't think we're going to see entire markets go down 65%. I think we'll see entire markets go down.

• 1:26Jack Selby?

  That, I mean, that would be insane.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31Jack Selby?

  Nick, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Great being here, Graham.

• 1:35Jack Selby?

  So I really enjoy your videos. I think you make some really insightful observations about the real estate market, the economy. I watch almost all of your content and I have to say, really enjoy it. I am curious though, for everyone watching, why should they listen to you?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Because we bring the data on the US housing market. If you're looking to buy a house or sell a house, you need to understand the data on where prices are heading. And we have a very bifurcated market right now, where some areas are actually crashing and going down 15, 20, 25%. We have other areas that are still going up. So if you're a home buyer or seller or investor, you need to understand that data before you make the biggest financial decision of your life. And myself and my channel, Reventure, it's pretty much the only source widely available for real data.

• 2:19Jack Selby?

  Why are you one of the only people providing this data? Is this data other people are ignoring? Is it shielded for some reason? Explain that.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the data is actually not shielded. It's widely available. Companies like Zillow and Realtor.com provide home price data down to the zip code, inventory and days on market down to the zip code. But I think a lot of people in real estate don't have an interest in showing the truth. I kind of call it the real estate mafia. It's a maybe a cabal of Realtors and people who own real estate who want to create this perception that values are going to go up forever. And they kind of want to FOMO people into buying a house, even if it's not totally the right decision. So I think there isn't really the interest in the mainstream real estate industry of providing this data to people. And five or six years ago, I learned where all this data was. So I found it, I made it available, and then combined it to produce forecasts on where prices are going.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  And that's essentially, you know, changing the game, in my opinion, for the housing market.

• 3:13Jack Selby?

  Do you have a background in this?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yes, so I have an economics degree from Siena College in the London School of Economics. And then I worked my first eight years in commercial real estate as an underwriter for a private equity fund that did mortgages on apartment buildings, offices around the US. So I got my start traveling all around the US, funding deals in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix and Houston and Florida and Atlanta. And I started learning the lay of the land of the US real estate market in 2010s. After I left that job, I started switching my focus to the residential housing market and found some data on the residential housing market that was widely available and started putting these models together.

• 3:54Jack Selby?

  So really high level for everyone watching. Who should buy a house and who should not?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Well, it really comes down to can you afford it? Right? And that's the main problem in today's market. Obviously, values boomed during the pandemic. And then mortgage rates went up after the pandemic. So right now, the typical mortgage payment to buy a house in the US, on average, including taxes and insurance, is about 2,800 a month. The median income in the US is about 85,000, meaning if you take the 2,800 and annualize it and divide it by 85,000 income, it's roughly close to 40% of someone's income they would need to spend on their mortgage if they're buying. That's way too high. The conventional wisdom is like, what, 25%? You really don't want to spend much more than 25%. So for the vast majority of people in the US who are at that median income or even above that median income,

• 4:44Speaker 01

  they just can't afford to buy in today's market. And so, you know, my advice to them would be very careful if you're buying. Now, if you are someone who does have more money, you can buy in today's market, but you got to be careful not to catch a falling knife. You know, I was just in Florida a couple of weeks ago and I was finding houses in Florida that were down literally 100 to 150,000 in price from what people bought at in 2023, 2024. Now, that's good if you're a buyer today. It's more affordability. But where does that stop? Right? So if you buy today, are we going to continue to see those values go down? So that's the thing you got to be careful of.

• 5:22Jack Selby?

  So for young people who feel really discouraged about not being able to buy a house or afford it, is there hope in the future?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I think it depends on where you live. In a place like Florida, there's definitely hope. That market is correcting. There's plenty of inventory for sale. The buyer demand is pretty low right now. It's a true buyer's market in Florida. It still feels expensive there, but it's getting better. A place like Vegas, where we are right now, that's also starting to get better. Values in Vegas are down about 3% year over year. Not huge by any means, but an improvement. There's a lot of supply on the market. I'm finding listings in Vegas down 50 to 100,000 from their previous sale price. Generally, if you're in the Sun Belt boom areas, that's where the, there's the best buyer's market right now. Because those Sun Belt boom areas that surged during the pandemic, they're all kind of going through a little bit of a slowdown. Right? Those people from California, those people from New York, they might still be coming,

• 6:14Speaker 01

  but it's often not as much as it was in 2021, while the builders built all these homes and while the investors bought all these homes and often investors are now selling. So I would say the Sun Belt is the best place to buy in terms of like more affordability. Actually though, the area of the US where prices are going up the most and it's still like a crazy seller's market is like Rust Belt towns. Like Syracuse, New York is number one in home value growth.

• 6:42Jack Selby?

  Why is that?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Syracuse, Hartford, Chicago, Buffalo. These markets are actually where like it's the hardest time to buy. And I think there's two reasons. One, they just don't build in the Midwest and Northeast. The builders after the last crash abandoned the Northeast and Midwest. Like there's almost no construction in those areas. So there just isn't that new supply coming on the market that there is in Vegas or Nashville or Tampa. But at the same time, I think there's a little bit of a reverse migration trend. Not saying that those areas are like booming, but I think some people who maybe moved to the Sun Belt might be moving back home. You know, people who moved in the 2010s during the pandemic to say Nashville, maybe they're moving back to Chicago. I'm starting to just see more and more of that

• 7:27Speaker 01

  and the data is starting to support that too.

• 7:29Jack Selby?

  What I find interesting is that you described your job now as basically just flying to a bunch of different locations in the United States and just walking on streets and looking at real estate. Like with your own two eyes, like actually in the field. And that's all you do. You just fly from Florida to Chicago, to Las Vegas, to New York, to like see with your own eyes. What out of the past, everything you've seen in the past three months is the most surprising thing?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  I have to say the scale of the declines in Florida. So I actually moved to Florida about two years ago to start to cover the initial stages of that downturn in person. I moved to St. Petersburg and I could see it starting. But when I just visited there in the last couple of weeks, I was shocked at how much the values are dropping on certain listings, like six-figure declines. Someone bought a house for 500, it's now 400. You know, we were told that that's like not possible. We were told that in this cycle, that wouldn't happen. And the scale of declines in Florida is getting really big. Another surprising thing is Austin, Texas. That's a market that was maybe the biggest pandemic boom town. I actually lived in Austin in 2020 and 2021. Not only do I fly around, I moved to all these cities as well.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And I saw that bubble in Austin. Austin now, values are down 30% market-wide since the peak. Rents are down 20%. So you do have some markets that actually have gotten a lot more affordable, way more than people think. But then I would also say the resilience of the Northeast. I was just in Philadelphia and that market's on fire.

• 9:03Jack Selby?

  See, that doesn't make any sense because everyone says that like Philadelphia is now not a great place to live. And everyone says that everyone is moving to Florida and Austin. So that like kind of goes counter.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  It is, it is. So I almost think there's a lag. You know, it's like real estate's so slow. Yeah, as I'm sure you know, Graham, like real estate's so slow. And the way that the market moves is slow. And the way that prices adjust is, at least on the downward side, is usually slow. And I think the narrative is slow to kind of get out there. And I think, I mean, if I have to put my little tinfoil conspiracy hat on, you know, I think that real estate mafia I described before, like, I think they try to keep the narrative of like people moving to Florida, people moving to Texas, people moving to Tennessee because they need to pump up the local realtors.

• 9:49Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but I'm seeing it firsthand. Like a lot of people in California are telling me like, hey, man, I'm thinking about moving. It's, it's Vegas, Texas or Florida. And it seems like it's one of the three. They're going to pick one. And so they are actually moving there.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Certainly. I mean, those are the three states plus Tennessee with no state income tax, right? And that's the big thing and the big draw. I think for sure that migration is still happening. It's not like it's now negative or not happening. It's that the scale is lower. And we, you know, we were talking before, maybe there's a difference too between the hot, like the luxury market, right? People coming from California with millions and millions of dollars versus people coming from California with like a W2 of 200 grand. I think the people coming from California to Vegas with a W2 of 200 grand, that's fallen off precipitously. And you're seeing that in the home sales in Vegas. Vegas home sales are lower than 08, 09 right now.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  But you still have these crazy luxury condo projects with five to 10 million dollar, 20 million dollar price tags that are selling. And of course, if California does a wealth tax, obviously a lot of the billionaires certainly are going to leave. And maybe the people with hundreds and millions are going to leave. And so I think at that higher end, yes, you're still going to see people move to those no income tax states. But I think for the normal, like the normal person moving, uh, that's dropped off considerably. And it's just, it's part of the migration cycle too. The housing market is like pretty predictable. In the mid 2000s, there was also a surge of this movement, right? And then there was a collapse. And it's funny, if you look at the Florida migration graph, it's crazy. Like you see this big spike in 05, 06, and then you see this big drop.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  And then you see it recover and then you see another big spike in 2022. And then you see a big drop. So it's just almost like a generational, like consistent thing. I'm not saying that these Sunbelt markets aren't eventually going to recover. They will. But just where we are in the cycle right now is lower migration, more supply, more affordability and price cuts happening in these areas.

• 11:43Jack Selby?

  So what does this tell you about the greater economy as a whole? Because I mean, you're an expert in real estate, but some of the viewers watching might be wondering, well, I'm not thinking about buying or selling real estate. I'm just kind of content with where I'm at right now. But we know that real estate and the greater US economy are incredibly attached. So like, what does this tell you about the greater US economy?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  It's a great question. So housing is about 15% of US GDP when you add up all the individual components. So it does have a massive impact. What concerns me about the economy right now is the weakness in demand on housing. So existing home sales are around four million annualized right now, according to the NAR. That's about what they were in 2008, 2009 during the worst financial crash in 80 years. So demand right now is comparable to that period. Now, prices haven't gone down as much as that period, but demand is. At the same time, builders are flashing these warnings that only happen during economic recessions. Builder's supply on the market is over nine months of supply.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  So months of supply is inventory divided by sales. Builder's supply is over nine months. Normal is five to six. So that only happens in economic recessions. So you're seeing things that only happen in economic recessions, collapse in sales, builder's supply through the roof that are happening now. But of course, we haven't seen a legitimate economic recession. The unemployment rate's still 4%, stock market is still booming. And so part of just of me wonders if housing and the weakness in demand and the weakness in the home building sector is kind of warning us maybe about like what the average American is feeling. And that, I don't know, maybe at some point we will have a labor market recession.

• 13:32Graham Stephan?

  Couldn't that just be though, that builders overbuilt? Because when you look at average listings on the market, including homes that were built like 20 years ago, it's only about 4.8 months on the market.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:44Graham Stephan?

  So builders overbuilt. Couldn't that just be an isolated thing by itself?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  It could be. I mean, certainly the builders overbuilt in Florida and Texas and maybe even here, right? I just came from a home building site here, a town home development where they sold to someone for 485,000 in 2025. It's now listed for 435, $50,000 loss in a year. You are right, the builders did overbuild. And that doesn't necessarily prove, right, that there's an economic recession coming. However, historically, it always aligned that there was an economic recession. Historically, when the builders overbuilt, there was always a recession that followed. Historically, when demand to buy homes fell this low, there was always a recession that followed. My question is, is this just like maybe the outlier economic cycle where we're not going to see

• 14:32Speaker 01

  those things predict into a recession or will it eventually happen?

• 14:36Jack Selby?

  So then how should the average person watching right now use the information that you just said to improve their overall finances?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  It's a great question. I mean, I could just tell you what, what I'm doing, you know, I have a pretty conservative portfolio. I have mostly my exposure is cash and treasuries and kind of short-term index funds that track short-term treasuries. So 4% to 5% returns, maybe even higher with where the 10-year yield is going, right? Fed might hike rates. I like the idea for me of preserving my optionality, right? Where if I can earn 4% to 5% on my money and keep my powder dry, I'm looking at the opportunities that I can get into. I actually just purchased a real estate property earlier this year in Atlanta at a massive discount. It sold for around 490,000 in 2023. I bought it for 330,000. It sold for 440 in 2021 as a new build.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  So I got it at 110,000 discount to 2021 pricing. Those type of deals are happening in real estate right now. It's not happening everywhere. It's not happening on average, but those are the type of things that are starting to happen in those Sunbelt markets. So for me, especially as my housing focus, I want to preserve my powder. And I want to make offers on properties that I think I can get amazing deals on. That's what I would do.

• 15:51Graham Stephan?

  Why is it important to own a house to begin with? Why not just tell people, hey, listen, renting is cheaper. You're better off just renting right now.

• 15:58Jack Selby?

  Well, renting might make sense for a house, but if you're running a business, having your own address online is pretty important because people are going to look you up before they work with you.

• 16:06Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, you could be great at what you do, but if people can't find your business, they might never even give you a chance. Like a website and matching business email are basic things, but they make a huge difference.

• 16:16Jack Selby?

  Like we get pitches all of the time from Gmail addresses with no company website and we just pass because we can't tell who's behind them. And our partner Northwest Registered Agent gives you a domain, website, business email and a dedicated business phone line for free.

• 16:29Graham Stephan?

  You don't even have to be a paying customer, purchase anything or form an LLC. So you can get started without paying for those basics or giving out your personal number.

• 16:36Jack Selby?

  And the best part is that your domain and website belong to you, so you can move them elsewhere.

• 16:40Graham Stephan?

  Look, I'm going to be totally honest. Northwest just wants to help you get started and support you as you grow and keep you independent, even if you never even buy anything from them, which is kind of crazy. They just want to help.

• 16:50Jack Selby?

  So if you're putting in the work to build a business, make it easy for people to find you and feel comfortable reaching out. Get started for free at northwestregisteredagent.com/ICH.

• 16:59Graham Stephan?

  It's northwestregisteredagent.com/ICH. Or again, you could click the link down below in the description to get started. I highly recommend it. And like I said, you don't even have to buy anything from them, which is crazy. That link is down below. Enjoy. Why is it important to own a house to begin with? Why not just tell people, hey, listen, renting is cheaper. You're better off just renting right now.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I think most people still have an internal desire to own a home. I think there are things about owning a home that confer a value that renting simply doesn't. Stability, space, security, especially if someone say wants to raise a family or has a family, right? Like those things are valuable. And I think people like the idea of in the long run, just having a place that they can call their own. And I think something like 80 to 90% of Americans kind of agree with that statement. However, the math does not make sense right now. I mean, for the average person, 2,800 a month mortgage payment, including taxes and insurance. Typical rent is 1,900. So the typical mortgage is what? 40% more than the typical rent? If I'm a first time buyer, why would I buy?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  You know, I, I wouldn't blame anyone for not buying in this market, given how high the prices are and where the mortgage rates are. But I think most people still in their heart want to own a home. They just want to do it at terms that are like reasonable, right? Where I don't have to like more literally mortgage my future, where I don't have to take on a payment that's like making me feel uncomfortable, making me feel house poor. So I, I think people still want that and I, and I want that too, right? Which is why I bought that house. But I'm only going to buy if it's on the terms that I feel are reasonable. And if the property I feel like especially is a good value. If it's not, for me, it's what, what's the point?

• 18:49Graham Stephan?

  So one of the things that we've seen, mortgage rates have increased substantially since 2021. Why haven't prices come down accordingly?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Two reasons. One is that the resale inventory on a national basis is still not high enough to bring down prices. So right now there's around 1.1 million resale listings. It was around 1.2 prior to the pandemic. So we're only like nationally, we're only back to getting close to back to pre-pandemic supply. In 08, 09, resale inventory went to like 3 million. So when you get that level of resale inventory, you can get a 25% national price crash. We're not at that point yet. In some markets we are, like the ones I described, which is why values are dropping. But nationally, we just haven't seen enough supply. The reason is, second point, the owners with the 3% mortgage rates. Or the 4% mortgage rates.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  They do a very interesting subtle calculation in their head when they think about selling their house. And they, they look at the market and they're saying like, oh, okay, maybe it's 700,000 to sell my house based on the market. But they'll list it like 770, right? Maybe they saw their neighbor four years ago get that price. And they'll be kind of hesitant to cut because they look at their mortgage payment at the 3% and they're like, oh, my payment on this is like only 2,600, 2,700. If I were to buy the same house today with a 6.5% rate, my payment would be 4,400. So they say to themselves, why would I actually sell this house? And there's almost like a present value calculation.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Like if you have maybe 25 years left on your mortgage and you have a 3% rate, maybe you have 300,000 of interest left in that hypothetical example. If you were to buy at a 6.5% mortgage rate, you have 800,000 of interest. So there's just a huge present value to not selling your house because of that low mortgage rate. So I think that those two things in combination are kind of keeping the market from adjusting faster than they would otherwise.

• 20:52Jack Selby?

  That was the exact calculation that I ran when I was thinking about buying a new house. I bought my house for around $600,000 and I realized if I wanted to buy that exact same house at that exact same price and the only different variable was the interest rate, I would be paying like 80% more, 80% more because I got 2.8% and now it's like 6.2, 6.3%.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Higher than that now.

• 21:22Jack Selby?

  Then it would be more than 80%.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Seven now, crazy.

• 21:24Jack Selby?

  I could be paying twice the amount per month just because of the rates, has nothing to do with the home prices. So that makes a lot of people not able to afford, you know, basics.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Selling it, yeah.

• 21:36Jack Selby?

  Yeah, it also just doesn't make sense to sell.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Can't afford to sell. What's fascinating is you think about what the seller is feeling and what the buyer is feeling. So the seller, if they bought for 600,000 with a 2.8% mortgage, in the back of their mind, they might actually think their house is worth 800 to 900 grand because that's the present value of the mortgage rate discount.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  But think about the buyer. The buyer's saying, wait, rates are, went from three to six and a half. I can't afford a 4,400 payment. I can only afford 25. They're saying to the seller, you need to discount that house 150. So the buyer thinks that house is worth 450. You might think that house is worth 800.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  That gap explains the housing market right now. You have buyers on one hand with a completely legitimate financial constraint on affording. And then you have sellers with a completely legitimate financial incentive to hold. And, you know, we can get in a whole conversation of how messed up this is, how the Fed printing all that money and suppressing the interest rates for that long, kind of created this scenario. It created a short-term boom in real estate, but now we're in like a four-year home sale depression that might last longer due to the fact that so many people have these rates well below market.

• 22:44Graham Stephan?

  So where are home prices going down the most and going up the most?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Values are down the most in Austin. So they're down 27% over the last four years in Austin. They're down about 16% in Cape Coral, Florida, Cape Coral, Fort Myers. Places like Phoenix and Denver are about, down about 10. Vegas is down about five from peak. In terms of larger markets, values are going up in places like Chicago and New York. Those are two of the hottest markets right now, especially wealthy suburbs outside Chicago and New York are on fire, talking like 10% year-over-year appreciation.

• 23:19Graham Stephan?

  We were just in Chicago, it was beautiful.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22Jack Selby?

  First real time in the city of Chicago, I mean, I was impressed.

• 23:25Graham Stephan?

  Gorgeous. Oh my gosh, to me, it reminded me of New York.

• 23:28Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Graham Stephan?

  But like so clean and just nice.

• 23:32Jack Selby?

  The river running through.

• 23:33Graham Stephan?

  Oh my gosh, it was beautiful.

• 23:36Jack Selby?

  Yeah. That being said, it's extremely surprising still though, that the property values are going up there, especially in New York, especially the luxury real estate, when you have the mayor saying, you know, Ken Griffin, who lives in this mega mansion for two days out of the year, I'm going to raise my taxes on you and all of the property that you own. And yet that is like, that could be going on while simultaneously the property values are increasing.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  It's so funny because the, yeah, the Mom Dami example in New York City is a really fascinating case study right now and like what's actually driving things. So they did something called the pied-à-terre tax, which is now law, where I can't quite remember the specifics, but it's like, if you have a second or third home in Manhattan or New York City, it's worth over a certain amount of money, they're charging you an extra tax on that. And that extra tax can be tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on the price. And their whole idea is like, they want to get those people to sell or they want to get them to pay their fair share. Now, the predictions were that that was going to lead to a flood of supply, which is not happening. Manhattan inventory is at its lowest level in 10 years.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Manhattan did correct during the pandemic. Condo, condo prices in Manhattan went down about 20%. Actually, they were close to like oh, five levels in Manhattan after the pandemic. So relatively, we had, Manhattan is undervalued actually before Mom Dami came in, which is the main reason I think that market still is actually doing well is because it didn't really appreciate for 20 years.

• 25:08Speaker 00

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• 25:33Speaker 01

  Now there's almost like some economic forces bringing people back to the city. When you think about AI, like and what AI does to the economy, you know, think about all these people who like worked remote in tech and finance during the pandemic. There's still some of those jobs around, but now if you work remote in tech and finance, your job might get replaced by AI, right? So there's a kind of agglomer, what's called an agglomeration force now with AI. I think bringing some people back to these tech and brain hubs like New York and San Francisco. Actually, San Francisco's market might be the hottest in the US. San Francisco County is up 15% year-over-year, close to that. Inventory is down 40% in San Francisco. Obviously the AI boom, all the frontier labs are there.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I do have some questions of how legitimate recovery is because we're not seeing the job growth yet in San Francisco, but for sure, it's what I call the legacy brain hub markets. San Francisco, Chicago, New York, those are the hottest right now. And it speaks to how this old narrative of like the exodus is over from those areas. It's actually an agglomeration force pulling people back. And there's just also that migration cycle where for the next five years, that's probably going to happen. And then eventually the sunbelt, you know, will have its boom again, once it gets affordable enough.

• 26:45Jack Selby?

  So out of 10, how screwed is the average person looking to get into real estate right now? I think looking to buy their first primary home.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Okay. Because I think it depends on who you're talking about. If someone's looking to buy their first primary home and they're in a market like Nashville, which is at a 15-year record in supply and a 15-year low in demand, I actually think it's actually not bad. Like in a market like Nashville, I say, get out there and make offers right now because you can get a good deal. If you are in Chicago or New York, it is tough going. Like you're not, for at least several years, you're going to be frozen out of the market. It's going to be tough. You're going to have to overpay. So I think it really depends on where you are. If you are in these sunbelt markets, I think there actually is a reason for optimism because for the first time in like a decade, things are shifting in your favor. With that said, it's still really expensive, you know?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  And the wage growth is something like 3.2% year-over-year. And it's about 40% of someone's income to buy a house with a mortgage. So I think the average person, when they, when they hear me say that's probably saying, rolling their eyes a little bit. They're probably saying like, oh, okay, Nick, like, sure, there's more supply and some price cuts, but I'm still don't even feel like I'm in the ballgame. So I think a lot of people still feel that way.

• 27:57Jack Selby?

  You know, what's interesting is that you and Graham may have opposing viewpoints on this, but I'm curious to hear, what is your view of the importance of homeownership in terms of the fabric, like the social fabric of America? Like, do you think that it's actually important for the citizens of America to be invested in land, in the US economy, in real estate? Graham would probably argue no.

• 28:21Graham Stephan?

  I'm leaning more towards yes. Adam Carolla made a great point when he was talking about homeownership. There is something when you are invested in the country that you are more likely to work harder, take pride of ownership.

• 28:33Jack Selby?

  And maybe invested locally too. Like in the city that you're in, you're a part of a community, makes you want to help out more, be a better citizen.

• 28:40Graham Stephan?

  I tend to agree when he said that, because before he said that, I honestly thought it doesn't matter if you rent, you're saving money, if you have the discipline to save the difference and just invest instead of paying the extra interest to the bank, it's probably better financially. But when he said that, I was like, oh man, that makes sense, why so many. Young people these days feel totally hopeless because they're renting. They have nothing invested in their area doing well.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think it is important. Just one qualification, though, is totally timing, right? In the 2010s, it was cheaper to buy than rent. Like, in the 2010s, after the 08 crash, the mortgage payment was lower than the rent. Think about that. And then the prevailing market interest rate was lower than people's existing interest rate. So it was just, it was a moneymaker to buy houses, always, in the 2010s. It's not that way anymore. But to answer your question more directly, I think for the, like, social fabric, it is important. You don't want an area with, like, 20% homeowners. Like, I was just in Berlin, in Germany, a couple of months ago, filming over there. It's a 15% homeownership rate in Berlin.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  And they have a really, like, messed up market where, like, the renters there almost have, like, rights of owners. And if you're an investor or landlord, like, you, you, there isn't even a lease term. Like, you have a tenant in Berlin and, like, they can just stay as long as they want. They're not going to leave until they want to leave.

• 30:05Graham Stephan?

  So who's investing in Berlin? Probably nobody.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I don't know.

• 30:09Graham Stephan?

  Who owns the house?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I think it's only, like, these investors with, like, massive, massive scale, who maybe can afford the lawyers that they need to afford to be able to, like, handle that stuff. But, um, you know, maybe certain parts of the US are gonna, are starting to go in that direction a little bit, like California and...

• 30:25Graham Stephan?

  I was about to say, that seems a lot like Santa Monica.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 30:28Graham Stephan?

  You know, so what's to prevent the US from eventually becoming something like that with a really low homeownership rate because they get so strict about certain policies?

• 30:37Jack Selby?

  And if fewer people own homes, it makes you wonder, what are they investing in instead?

• 30:41Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, so Nick just told us that he puts most of his money right now in cash and treasuries. And since we ask a lot of our guests where they put their money, I think it's only fair that you get to see exactly where we put ours.

• 30:51Jack Selby?

  And you can actually do that now with our partner Blossom. It's basically social media, but for investors. You get to see what people actually own instead of just what they say they own.

• 30:59Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, so Jack and I both uploaded our own portfolio in there, and you could see exactly what we're invested in and whether or not we're up or down.

• 31:06Jack Selby?

  So we can finally settle the debate of who is the better investor?

• 31:10Graham Stephan?

  We already know the answer to that, Jack.

• 31:12Jack Selby?

  Anyways, Caleb Hammer is on there, too, and right now, he has more followers than us, which is completely unacceptable.

• 31:17Graham Stephan?

  We can't let this happen. So please go and support us by downloading the Blossom app for free, using the link down below in the description. Again, it really helps us out. We have to at least catch up to them and then beat them by, like, one. And that one could be you right now.

• 31:32Jack Selby?

  Follow us to see what we actually do with our money. Who is the better investor? And help us pass Caleb.

• 31:37Graham Stephan?

  Now, seeing whether an investment is up or down is one thing, but figuring out what's actually making money in your business could be a lot more complicated.

• 31:44Jack Selby?

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• 31:50Graham Stephan?

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• 31:59Jack Selby?

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• 32:07Graham Stephan?

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• 32:13Jack Selby?

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• 32:22Graham Stephan?

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• 32:29Jack Selby?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.com/iced. Get your free guide at netsuite.com/iced.

• 32:36Graham Stephan?

  Again, that's netsuite.com/iced. I was about to say, that seems a lot like Santa Monica.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 32:46Graham Stephan?

  You know, so what's to prevent the US from eventually becoming something like that with a really low homeownership rate because they get so strict about certain policies?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  I hope it doesn't. But maybe in a place like California, it will, right? Where, you know, they think, in California, they think they're doing a good thing, right? They think they're doing the moral thing of like, oh, we want to protect the tenants, so we're going to have all these rules that you can't evict them if they're not paying rent, or you have to spend $50,000 to evict them if they're not paying rent.

• 33:13Jack Selby?

  Yep.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  But in reality, all that does is, like, take away housing supply from people who can't afford to pay the rent and who would pay the rent. And so we're running a little A/B test, I think, in the US with local, local policies. And we'll see how, you know, LA does in the next 10 years. I, I don't think it's going to happen all across the US, but I have a feeling it's probably not going to end up too well for them. Probably is going to make just costs get more expensive.

• 33:40Jack Selby?

  That is interesting because in LA, I feel like the only money that's moving there to invest in real estate is actually the people with a ton of money. Because if you're like a upper-middle-class person, you would be insane to try to go up against the system of California to do cash for keys, try to evict a tenant. But if you do have the economies of scale and you have lawyers on retainer or whatever, salaried lawyers, and you're a billionaire, you could navigate the system and jump over the obstacles, navigate the red tape. But for the average person, you would get destroyed trying to invest in that area.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  100%. Well, you know, your question about, like, what would you say to someone trying to buy right now? Well, I think if someone's a first-time buyer in certain markets, there's opportunity. I think if someone's trying to become like a mom-and-pop landlord or scale their, you know, investment portfolio, it is not a good time to do that. If you're in a place like New York or California, you got all the local laws, right? You got all the money you're going to need to pay to lawyers. You have that lost rent that you're going to have to deal with. But even if you're not in those markets, like, the returns just don't make sense. Right now, what's called the cap rate, which is you take the net income from the property and divide it by the price. It's just the return you get per year. The cap rate is around 4.8% for a single-family house in the US, which is now less than the 10-year Treasury.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So think about all, like, the effort it takes to buy an investment property and, like, run it and manage it, and then maybe scale the portfolio. You can get a higher return by just buying a 10-year US loan.

• 35:10Graham Stephan?

  But a lot of people say, well, you know, I might make 4.8%, but that single family is probably going to appreciate another 2% to 5% a year. So even though it looks like I'm getting 4.8%, I'm actually getting maybe 7% to 10%.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  It depends on when you buy, right? So if you buy at a time where the real estate's fairly valued or undervalued, that is true. If you bought in the early 2000s or in the 2010s, that was certifiably true, and you probably made better than that return. And the problem is, if you buy in this market, you're buying into an overvalued market, where the prices relative to income and rent are just way higher than they were. And if the prices are higher than income and rent, I would just challenge that person and say, well, how are they going to grow 2% to 5% a year? Because ultimately, it's rent and income, which determine where prices head in the long run. So I think we're just in an overvalued market right now that I wouldn't bank on 2% to 5%. I would bank, like, if I'm buying in most markets, I'm pro-forma-ing. Like, if I'm building my DCF model, right?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  I'm performing negative appreciation for the first couple of years.

• 36:12Graham Stephan?

  How much of this is fueled by the top 1%? Because we were talking about a very bifurcated market where the luxury buyers are on fire. They're coming in with cash deals. They're buying anything in sight, whereas the lower end or, like, the average of the house is really suffering.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  It's, it's funny because, like, the top 1%, they don't change the reality of the market. But they certainly, they seem to change the narrative. You know, like, in Florida, in Miami, home sales are way down. Not dissimilar from Vegas, they're kind of similar markets in a certain way. Home sales are way down, prices have corrected a little bit. But the luxury buyer in Miami is still coming in. You got Palantir moving there, you got Jeff Bezos moving there, you got Zuckerberg moving there. And yeah, so like, if a condo's priced at $10 million, it might sell for $12 million two or three years later, and that grabs the headlines, right? That allows the local realtors to be like, hey, look at Miami! Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg just moved in and the luxury prices are going up. So I think it has more an effect on, like, the narrative.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  And again, what I talked about before, like, why people need data on the housing market is because these narratives are all, all over the place and quite confusing, honestly. Like, I even sometimes get confused. Like, I track different sources, you know, Redfin and Zillow and Realtor.com. And if, like, the same story, they could have different headlines. Like, Realtor.com one, one day might say, "Biggest decline in list prices since 2017", and this literally happened a month ago. Redfin said, "Biggest surge in sale prices in four years". And I'm like, how's that possible? Right? So it's just so important for a buyer to understand their market. You know, what's happening in your zip code? Where's supply in your zip code? What's demand in your zip code? What's the forecast in your zip code? Because that's ultimately what matters.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Like, if you're going to spend $500,000 buying a house, or $600,000, or over a million, or even $250,000, that's a huge investment. The issue I see in real estate is it's so behind the curve on analytics. Like, when you compare it to stocks, it's crazy. Like, every stock has, like, 10 analysts, right? And multiple different technical analysis tools and fundamental analysis tools. But then where is that for housing? Like, why does every home buyer not know what the forecast in their zip code is? Shouldn't that be something every home buyer knows? Even if it's not a perfect forecast, shouldn't they kind of have some idea from an objective source? And you guys ever, like, read or watch Moneyball? It was about, like, Billy Bean on the Oakland Athletics baseball team in the early 2000s.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  He was the first one to introduce sabermetrics and statistics into baseball. And you kind of had this battle between the old-school scouts who didn't want stats. They just wanted to go and watch the game and tell you who was good. And then the Oakland Athletics started bringing in statistics, and they started winning way above their payroll. They started winning even with, like, the lowest payroll in baseball. And now, like, every team uses statistics to analyze players. I feel like housing is still in the early 2000s when it comes to analysis. And I think in the next 10 to 20 years, it's going to be pretty normal for every single buyer and seller and realtor to just know, hey, here's the forecast for my zip code, here's the demand metrics. And, you know, ultimately, my mission with ReVenture is to make that happen, right? So no one's, like, in the dark when they're making a buying or selling decision.

• 39:27Graham Stephan?

  So I'm curious, though, in terms of future values, it's said and estimated that millennials are going to... To inherit $46 trillion through 2048. Isn't that going to be enough just to keep prices from falling?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Well, there's two sides to that coin, right? There's the money millennials are going to inherit. And then there's the houses that are going to hit the market. Right? So Freddie Mac estimates that there's going to be 9.2 million baby boomers aging out by 2035. And the baby boomers were the biggest demographic, population segment, right? Biggest generation. The number of 55 to 64 year olds in the US was always around eight to 9% of the population. 50, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s, until the 2000s, when the number of 55 to 64 started spiking in the mid 2000s and kept increasing through 2020. Why? Baby boomers. Those were the 20 years where baby boomers entered their early to mid retirement years. And I should say, retirement home buying years.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  But now what's happening is the number of 55 to 64 year olds is dropping. Because the baby boomers are getting older and they're shifting more to 75 plus. And we're about to see a spike in the 75 plus population in the US. That's historic, it's never happened. So what you're going to see from that is baby boomers passing down their homes to their kids. Right? Data from Charles Schwab says about 70% of inherited homes get sold. So yes, baby boomers are going to transfer the wealth to the millennial buyers. There will be more buyers on the margins millennials because of that. At the same time, there's going to be way more housing supply on the market.

• 41:07Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but don't you think that would cancel out? Because let's say they get the house, 70% sell. Now they got this money. What do they do with the money? Chances are they're going to go and buy a house with it if they don't already own a house.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, if someone already owns a house, I don't know if they're going to buy a house. If someone's been renting for a while and they've been waiting, yeah, they'll probably buy a house.

• 41:29Graham Stephan?

  But see, if they own a house and they inherit a whole bunch of money, I guarantee they're not staying where they're at. I mean, if it's anything substantial, they're going to probably upgrade that house.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:38Graham Stephan?

  And at worst, they're probably going to renovate their house, their existing home. So it might be good for places like Home Depot. Because if you get 200 grand and it's like, oh, well, we could fix up our current house, you're probably going to do that.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  We actually just added a new metric to ReVenture app, which I think addresses actually the point you're making. We're comparing the 25 to 44 year old renter population to the 75 plus owner population. Because 75 plus owners will age out. Who's going to buy the homes on the margin? The 25 to 44 year old renters. Right? The trouble for the US is that ratio is plummeting. The number of 75 plus owners is growing way faster than the number of 25 to 44 year old renters. And in places like Florida, it's going to go below one in the next couple of years. Meaning Florida, probably in the next five years, is going to have more 75 plus owners than 25 to 44 year old renters. So I think it's also regional.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Areas with older homeowner populations, I don't, I don't see who's going to come in to buy those homes. Right? Like if you're in Naples, Florida, are we going to see millennials flock to Naples, Florida to buy up the homes that the boomers are aging out of? I don't think so. If we're in Austin, Texas, if we're in Denver, Colorado, where there's like a younger population predominantly, maybe. Yeah, I think that could have, more likely that that supply is absorbed in younger markets.

• 42:55Graham Stephan?

  So where do interest rates need to be then to unlock the inventory in the market? And is there a chance that we're never going to see that?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  I'm starting to lean on the latter. To answer the first question, since we probably need a mortgage rate closer to five to make the cost benefit for some of these owners with the 3% to 4% rate work for them to sell. We're going the opposite direction right now. I think today, literally today, the mortgage rate just crossed 7% again. And it seems like there's a global bond market sell off. So in the short term, I'm hard to envision lower rates unless there's some type of recession. Right? I'm starting to lean to like, we're just never going to see that again. If you actually look at like 135 year graph of mortgage rates in the US, the average rate is 6.2% over 135 years. But it's not like

• 43:47Speaker 01

  crazy, right? Even in the 90s, mortgage rates were 8%. So I have mixed feelings about the mortgage rate thing because like, obviously it's having a huge impact. Right? But then if you just zoom out, it's actually not that abnormal mortgage rate. It's just abnormal compared to what it was in the 2010s and pandemic. Like that 3% thing had never happened before, which is why I think it's probably never going to happen again. And really, the problem is prices. So if you look at long-term mortgage rates versus long-term prices, it's very clear. Prices are the problem. Prices are too high. Homeowners are sitting on something like, let's say it's like 38 trillion in equity. I think total housing market is valued around 50 trillion in the US. There's like 15 million in mortgage debt, 35 trillion in equity homeowners are sitting on. What are they doing with that equity? Well, they're not really cashing out refis.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Refis are pretty low. They're not selling their house. You know, sales are low. I kind of like, feel like homeowners are just like sitting there like refreshing their z estimate. And are like, oh my gosh, my house is worth this. Or like remembering what their neighbor sold it for four years ago. So I don't see any way this ends without prices dropping.

• 44:50Graham Stephan?

  What about the argument, though, that AI is going to make things so efficient? Prices are going to drop across the board. We're going to see a lot more unemployment. And because of deflation, the Fed's going to have to drop rates just to incentivize people to really participate in the economy.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Could definitely happen. I would have thought that would have happened by now.

• 45:12Graham Stephan?

  It's still so early, though.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was almost like we skipped a cycle somehow. Like it felt like maybe in 2022, 2023 was going to happen, but then it didn't. And then we actually haven't had like, I don't know if you consider the pandemic a real recession. It was kind of like a manufactured recession with like, then all this money printed. We actually haven't had a real recession in the US since 2009. 17 years.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Kind of crazy. Like it's kind of a pretty long time. But like, obviously there's still some legs on the AI boom. Right? I mean, like, look at what's going on in San Francisco real estate. You look at what these AI companies are doing, you look at what Nvidia is doing. They're buying up other AI companies, building data centers left and right, or providing the chips for the data centers. So there are obviously still some legs. I, again, I would have thought like a deflationary like recession would have happened already. It is interesting, though, to address the AI. Because I'm looking at the local housing markets in the Bay Area, and I think this is so interesting. San Francisco County booming, prices up 15% year over year. Santa Clara County, prices going down. Alameda County, Oakland, values down year over year. Almost every tech market in the US values down.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Seattle values down, Austin values down, Denver values down, except for San Francisco County.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  So I'm saying to myself, this is a little weird. Right? Like, you have San Francisco County where like, it's like the seed of the AI boom, values are surging. But in every other tech market, values are dropping. It almost says to me that there's like,

• 46:43Speaker 01

  is AI taking away jobs from the other tech markets? And then putting the value of that surplus value in the frontier labs in San Francisco and the AI startups?

• 46:55Graham Stephan?

  I think you're overthinking it. I think places like San Francisco are so unique because they really prohibit building. It's so difficult to add any new inventory onto the market. And the existing neighborhoods there, everyone wants to live in like these certain little pockets of San Francisco and Atherton. And there's so much money there.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:12Graham Stephan?

  That when all these people now, essentially they sell off their wealth globally. Because anytime they're raising money, it's global. And so you have worldwide money flowing into a small little subset of an area. And they could buy whatever they want and they don't care if it's like a few million plus or minus to get the house that they want.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:31Graham Stephan?

  That's what I think it is.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  You're definitely right. I would just say, though, why is that not happening in Santa Clara County? Right? Like, and obviously there's not as many AI startups there, right? It's more in San Francisco. I would have just thought there'd be spillover at this point. But instead of spillover into other tech markets, it seems to be like contraction.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Obviously, you're right, though. San Francisco is unique. It did drop during the pandemic. We have it as undervalued right now, even with the recent increase. Again, so kind of similar to New York. And inventory is way down, sales are way up. So it is legitimate, totally legitimate recovery happening there. But I am curious to see what's going to happen in these other tech markets. I have this operating theory building that

• 48:13Speaker 01

  the AI frontier labs are creating tools that are actually harming the other tech markets. Because it's leading to job losses and that's leading to prices declining. But it's a whole other conversation about the impacts of AI.

• 48:23Graham Stephan?

  The other thing I want to mention, though, in terms of interest rates, I actually just did a video about this where we look Looked at the historical returns every single time interest rates were raised and lowered when compared with inflation. Guess how many times the housing market went down when interest rates went up?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  None. Three.

• 48:44Graham Stephan?

  One. One time.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Ninety one.

• 48:47Graham Stephan?

  I believe it. Yeah, I don't know offhand. I'll put the chart on the screen here. But in most cases, real estate kept going up even though interest rates went up. And it was more common for real estate to go down when interest rates went down. And the thinking behind this is that interest rates generally go up when the economy could support it, when the jobs market is strong or there's inflation. All of those things, a strong economy benefits housing, inflation benefits housing. So higher interest rates are not the cause for real estate going down. Now, on the other hand, interest rates are lowered when they need to save the economy, when unemployment rises, when inflation declines. All of those things hurt the housing market.

• 49:28Graham Stephan?

  So if anything, the higher interest rates go, for the most, not always, but for the most part, the other conditions are good for housing, oddly enough.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  It's true. That's factually accurate. And it speaks to how weird this time is right now. The counter I would give is that all those other scenarios didn't feature a housing bubble. There's only been two times in US history where real estate's been in a bubble relative to inflation and prices. Right now, in 06.

• 49:55Graham Stephan?

  How do you classify now as a bubble? How do we know it's a bubble?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  The Case-Shiller Inflation Adjusted Home Price Index. This data is available back to 1890. It started from Robert Schiller, an economist from Yale, who's kind of like the godfather of housing economics. And he initially started coming up with this housing price indices in the late 1980s, like well ahead of the curve. And he started looking at prices indexed for inflation, because you kind of have to index it for inflation to see, is the growth driven by inflation? Or is it driven by something else? And it's crazy, from 1890 to 2000, inflation-adjusted home prices didn't grow at all. Meaning that over the long term, home prices tracked inflation and that was it. So like in the 1970s, when you had crazy inflation, home prices boomed.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  But relative to inflation, it was, it just kept pace with inflation. Something changed, though, in the early 2000s. For the first time ever, prices relative to inflation skyrocketed. Had never seen it before. And then there was the crash.

• 50:58Speaker 00

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• 51:23Speaker 01

  And then, starting in the late 2010s and pandemic, prices relative to inflation are now back up at that level. We have never seen that persist, ever. In US history, you also look at prices to income and prices to rent. It's the same situation. So that's why I think it's hard to say, like, I know, people always say this and how they like in the, 1981, mortgage rates were 18% and home prices went up. Well, that's because home prices weren't in a bubble back then. And that's because wages were going up 6%, 7%, 8% a year in the 70s. So there was like this massive, true inflationary mindset in the 70s, where people felt like their next raise was going to be 10%. So yeah, I'm going to buy a house, even if I can't afford it. People are getting 3% raises right now.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And so it is truly unique times. But when you look at that price to income, price to inflation, it says we're in a housing bubble. We've never seen this bubble persist before in US history. And the mortgage rates are this confounding factor that's like making it even harder for affordability. But I wouldn't say that just because prices have never really dropped when rates went up, that doesn't say they won't this time. Because we're in an actual bubble this time, when we really weren't in previous periods.

• 52:34Graham Stephan?

  How much is Wall Street buying up residential real estate affecting the housing affordability?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  It was a huge impact in the 2010s. In fact, the US government actually helped give Wall Street money to buy up homes in the early 2010s, especially in markets like Vegas. Companies like Invitation Homes and American Homes for Rent and Progress Residential, they bought up close to a million homes in the US over 10 years. So undoubtedly, the Wall Street investors made the situation worse for affordability. And they made it particularly worse in certain cities. Vegas would be one. There's Wall Street investors all over this housing market. Atlanta would be another. Particular neighborhoods, these investors own 50% of the homes. So locally, it was a huge impact.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Nationally, they only own like 2% to 3% of the housing stock. So wouldn't be right to say that Wall Street investors are the reason national prices are high. It would be right to say, though, that in certain markets, they're a principal reason. In certain neighborhoods, they're the main reason. Interestingly, they stopped buying four years ago. As soon as rates went up, Wall Street exited the market. The biggest Wall Street investors, like their purchases got cut 50, 60, 70%. So they kind of saw the writing on the wall. That stuff I talked about before with the returns and the cap rates, like the mortgage rate is now above like what they can make. So they're not really buying. And then they just got banned, which is kind of an interesting story.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  But I think they did have a really sizable impact in certain markets and making housing less affordable. There's also studies that say Wall Street landlords increased the rent more than mom and pop landlords as well.

• 54:13Graham Stephan?

  So what do you call Wall Street landlords? What is that defined as?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  So it's like several companies I think of, right? The ones I mentioned before. The US government just defined it in the Road to Housing Bill, which just passed. They defined it as owning more than 350 homes. So that's now the threshold where if you own more than 350 homes directly or indirectly, you are not allowed to buy more from the existing housing stock. That law goes into effect January 2027. It's for 15 years through 2042. So yeah, 350 houses. It was actually lower than I thought it would be. Like, I think of corporate investors, maybe it's like 1,000 homes or more. But 350 homes is now the cutoff. And these investors have to report to HUD each year. So if someone owns more than 350 houses, directly or indirectly,

• 55:02Speaker 01

  they're mandated, starting in 2027, to provide a list.

• 55:06Graham Stephan?

  Did you know that?

• 55:08Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, no, I knew about it. I called it performative. Because you tell me these numbers and I say, from all of my research, that they're buying build-to-rent communities. They're not necessarily going and picking Sally's home down the street and competing with a normal, you know, owner-user. Like, it never makes sense for a Wall Street investor to say, I'm going to compete with someone who's going to live there full-time. Because the numbers never pencil out.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  They did. So from 2012 to 2022, they did buy up the existing homes.

• 55:35Graham Stephan?

  They did, but those were portfolios from banks who were never going to sell them individually. The banks would say, hey, we got 300 homes that are underwater, and it's not worth our time to parse these out individually. You could buy them for 70 cents on the dollar. And so they bought those, but those were never meant to go on the market to begin with.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, they certainly did buy in bulk. 2013, 2014, after the last crash, they got amazing deals, right? Some of these houses in Vegas, they got like 70 grand per door. They did continue to buy and scale the portfolio through the late 2010s, early 2020s, especially in markets like Atlanta, especially in markets like Vegas and Phoenix. I saw it with my own eyes. But I think your intuition is correct, that it's performative in one sense. Like, that's, that law passing is not going to like dramatically change anything.

• 56:26Graham Stephan?

  Not like it's going to change a single thing. It is not going to matter at all.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  That's where I would disagree. What I think that does is stop them from getting in as the downturn.

• 56:35Graham Stephan?

  No, build-to-rent communities are excluded. So if anything, they could go and build their own community and rent out single-family houses, which I think is good for the market.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Which is great. It essentially shifted their focus, right? If they had any remaining focus on the existing housing stock, it's now shifting to build to rent. They're almost turning into builders, right? American Homes for Rent's now like a top 35 home builder in the US. So yeah, some of these Wall Street landlords are going to have to become home builders to stay relevant, which is, which is good to your point. But I'll just tell you what I'm seeing in Florida again, like when I was there last week. There are houses crashing in price. Those investors are now kind of locked out from buying up those homes that are crashing in price. So I think that's the one benefit, let's say, right? Is that if certain markets do go through an extended crash in this cycle,

• 57:25Speaker 01

  and some are already, they're not going to just be, all these homes aren't just going to be scooped up again.

• 57:30Graham Stephan?

  Couldn't you say, though, that's negative for the entire market? Because what's going to happen? People don't like to hear this, but in a way, a lot of these Wall Street investors saved the housing market from falling further. Because you have, let's just say, your grandma and grandpa, their home is now worth 50% less. And if investors weren't there to stop the bleeding and to buy up this inventory, prices would keep falling. And it's not like other people were going and buying. I mean, everyone had the opportunity in 2011 to be able to buy a house, if they had the means to buy a house. But they didn't. And prices kept falling and falling and falling. So if anything, you could argue it would hurt the broader market if they didn't come in and buy. And if they're not buying in Florida, what does that mean? Maybe prices keep falling and falling and falling.

• 58:14Graham Stephan?

  And you could argue, well, that's great for the average person, because now they're able to go in and buy cheaper. But what does it say to everyone else who owns a home in the area? And they're banking on those values at least staying somewhat stable to figure out what they're going to be doing with their life and how they're going to be spending, and if they feel comfortable moving, and if they want to relocate. If you're underwater in a house and you don't have any money, you're not selling, you're staying put.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:37Graham Stephan?

  So you could argue maybe that's worse for the market.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And that's the problem. Without enough buyers, prices can keep falling. If you run a business, reaching buyers matters too, especially with Black Friday coming up.

• 58:46Graham Stephan?

  Exactly. And if you're only selling in person, now is a good time to get your store online so that people could shop wherever they are.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And that's why we love our partner Shopify. Before Graham and I started working together, I set up probably five or six different Shopify stores. And if even I can figure it out and get some sales here and there, then you can too. I also kept going back to Shopify because it is literally the easiest way to create an online store and start actually selling product.

• 59:10Graham Stephan?

  And now their pre-built themes and AI site builder could help you create a professional storefront without having to hire someone to build your website.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Plus, getting set up before Black Friday means you're ready for the extra online traffic when more people are shopping and actually ready to buy.

• 59:23Graham Stephan?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com slash ICH to start your free trial.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  That is Shopify.com slash ICH.

• 59:32Graham Stephan?

  Go to Shopify.com slash ICH today to hear your first. If you're underwater in a house and you don't have any money, you're not selling, you're staying put.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:42Graham Stephan?

  So you could argue maybe that's worse for the market.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Totally depends. Yeah, it totally depends on your perspective and like who you represent, right? So like me and my channel and the data, I very staunchly like have the interests of home buyers in mind, right? You know, I'm 36, right? Like I just bought a house. You know, I want to settle down and have a family, right? So I'm thinking from that mindset. I'm not thinking from the mindset of like what's best for the existing owners in terms of their value. However, you do bring up a good point. You don't want like full-scale calamity, right? Like in Vegas in 08 to 2012, it was horrible. I mean, this area is still scarred somewhat. Like you talked to people who were in Vegas back then. It scarred a generation of people being through that crash. Prices in Vegas dropped 63% from 07 to 2012.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  A $350,000 house in 07 was worth like $140,000, which is hard to fathom, right? That is bad, right? And the market did, was going to fall further if it weren't for some of those investors buying. I don't think this is the same, like period in that sense. Like consumers have stronger balance sheets. We don't have as much mortgage debt in the economy. I don't think we're going to see entire markets go down 65%. I think we'll see entire markets go down 30%, like Austin is. Austin's a great test case. Austin's down 27% in four years. What's happened? Unemployment rate's 3.6%. There actually hasn't been like this like

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  full-scale, let's just call it like economic calamity. It just handled the correction. And I think with where the consumer balance sheets are, I actually think a lot of owners could handle the correction. And banks also have less exposure this time around. So I think the housing market has more cushion to absorb these declines. Like I said, homeowner equity is 35 trillion. Just give some of that back to buyers, right? Like it's pretty simple and the market will improve.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  So that's why I don't think we need Wall Street. I think it was like a one-off. I don't think we need or want them in the housing market again to buy. To build is a different discussion.

• 1:01:46Graham Stephan?

  Wall Street still makes up such a small percentage. I have it here in my notes that investors this year in 2026 still make up 19% of home residential purchases. And the median investor capital gain on resale is currently $196,000.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Now, when do they buy? I guess is the question.

• 1:02:07Graham Stephan?

  But how many investors do you think or know are underwater on their purchase? Or how many people?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  So I think in the worst market right now, it's probably around like 10 to 15% of people are underwater on their mortgage. In Austin, it might be like 30, 35% of people are underwater on their purchase potentially with given how far values have fallen. So it's still a minority of the market. And that's why I actually think it's like something that the market can handle, right?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  And you're right. Mom and pop investors still do buy some houses, right? A lot of them maybe look at it like a long-term investment. But overall, investor purchases are down 50% from peak in 2022. In Vegas, they're down 70%. So literally like in Vegas, the investor purchases were 3,300, I believe. Now they're like 1,200 per quarter, according to Redfin. So it has been an investor exodus. And I think it's going to be a while before investors come back to the market. It's just the math just doesn't make sense.

• 1:03:10Graham Stephan?

  Where are they moving their money instead? I'm noticing the stock market personally. It seems like everyone's going into stocks, right? Which also worries me that when everyone is doing something, sometimes I think, well, maybe that's not the best choice if everyone else is doing it. So that gets me worried that like if they're not investing in real estate, now I tend to think, oh, well, maybe that means there's actually an opportunity in real estate. I don't know.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Certainly right. Yeah, like it's not cool. Real estate is not cool anymore, right? Like when I started my YouTube channel in 2020 and started putting together the data, real estate was so cool. Like everyone, like everyone wanted to become like an Airbnb investor. Everyone wanted to like buy homes in different states and scale it. No, it's not cool anymore. And yeah, you're right. It is starting to teeter on like, it's so not cool that you wonder if like that's a signal of something. And that's why I tell people who are in markets where there's actually a lot of supply. I'm like, now's not the time to buy. But now's the time to make offers, right? Like figure out what you'd be willing to offer for that house. Objectively, put it on paper.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Do the mortgage payment out. Maybe look at it as an investment property just for fun. And figure out what you would be willing to offer. And even if it's 150,000 below, make the offer.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  That's the stage we're in right now. It's not time to buy, but it's time to start sniffing around. If you're in Atlanta, if you're in Vegas, if you're in Dallas, if you're in Austin and Denver and Seattle, it's time to start sniffing around in these markets. Because you would actually be surprised if you do that enough.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  What can happen?

• 1:04:48Graham Stephan?

  I am shocked, by the way. I really regret not making an offer on Floyd Mayweather's house. He had it listed here in Vegas at like $14 million.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:04:58Graham Stephan?

  Dropped it to 12, dropped it to 10, dropped it to eight. And it sat there. And part of me is thinking, man, it's just, it was a big house. It was like 12,000 square feet.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  So you're saying it went from 14 to eight?

• 1:05:13Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Do you remember what it sold for?

• 1:05:15Graham Stephan?

  6.6. And I look at that and I honestly think in hindsight, I'm like, I would have paid 6650. I give them a little more money than what they got. For 12,000 square feet, this was like a custom build right on the golf course on basically a cul-de-sac street. Oh my gosh. That was the place to buy.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Out of curiosity, like was that recent or was that like?

• 1:05:41Graham Stephan?

  Recent. That was a recent sale. And my understanding with that is that they had quite a few issues with the house and title. There might have been issues of like, we don't know quite who has the authority to sign off on the house. So there might be an issue with title or there might be liens that have to be satisfied before we're able to issue a clean title. I don't think it was an easy transaction. And my understanding is that whoever bought it waited quite some time. So they had the patience. That was a great property.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why, out of curiosity, why didn't you make an offer?

• 1:06:16Graham Stephan?

  At the time, I didn't think it would sell for that. I thought that like it's Floyd Mayweather. And this is before it kind of came out that like, hey, maybe he doesn't have a lot of money. I thought it's Floyd. It's like he doesn't give a shit. It's like if it doesn't sell, but sometimes like to your point, you never know.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  You never know. And we actually developed like a little system at Reventure to help home buyers with this. And again, it goes back to the property I just purchased in Atlanta. It's like, here are the markers of a seller that's willing to negotiate. Because one thing you gotta do, you gotta differentiate between the sellers that are just like taking a flyer, trying to get like this like price that, and they're not that interested in selling, right? Versus sellers are actually interested in transacting. For me, I only look at houses that have been on the market more than six months. Because in this still very overvalued market, I know I'm not going to get a good deal if the house has been on the market for less than six months. I want to see also multiple price cuts.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Those two signals are signals to me that the seller is like at least somewhat wanting to sell the house, right? And then if I see that, I do my own math on what I think it's worth. We have like a listing tool analyzer that helps people figure that out. And yeah, then make an offer. Sometimes that'll be 100,000 less, 150,000 less. There's kind of almost like a system to it that I'm starting to develop. It's like you don't want to just come and make the offer immediately. Because you're going to piss them off potentially, right? It's more like you want to see the house, you want to show your proof of funds, you want to establish credibility upfront. You don't want to just be this guy who's like, I see the house. And then like two hours later, low ball, right? You want to establish credibility, you want to tell a legitimate story.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  And you want to figure out what it's worth. And you want to go to the agent, listing agent, and I would actually call and almost recommend people do this direct. And just say, hey, I love the house. I'm interested in making an offer. It's going to be substantially below list price. Would you like me to still make the offer? This way, it's like,

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  you're preparing them. And they might say no. And at that point, you just know it's a waste of time. But you didn't have to like go through making the offer. If they say yes, you know, they're intrigued, then make the offer. And again, when I bought that place in Atlanta, I, you know, this is really fascinating. It was like 490, they cut the price to 415. So they were already taking a loss. I offered 315.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  They rejected it and countered it at 400. And I was like, no. And I just let it sit. And then they came back around at 360. I countered at 330 and I got the property. And that's not to say you can easily do that. But that's to say that in this market where prices are starting to drop and there's a lot of supply and there's some more distressed sellers, if you can isolate the people and the sellers who fit the profile of being willing to transact, you could potentially get what I call post-crash pricing.

• 1:09:10Graham Stephan?

  Now, does it make sense to get an adjustable rate mortgage?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I mean, if rates are going to continue to go up.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 1:09:20Jack Selby?

  Right, but like in general, is that a, is that a potential thing that someone should explore? Cat's out the bag. I got an adjustable rate mortgage. Yeah, but you logged in for seven years. For seven, however, now, kind of regret it because the tone of the conversation is that rates will not go back down.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Jack Selby?

  Like, the tone of the conversation is that they will stay the same or continue to go up. And now I'm like, well, I got 5.7%. I don't know what I could have gotten if I just did a fixed rate 30 year, maybe like 6.1, 6.2. But who knows? I think seven years, impossible to predict.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Jack Selby?

  That's.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  So is it seven years before then it turns into an adjustable rate?

• 1:09:58Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  So it's, it's fixed for seven.

• 1:10:00Jack Selby?

  Fixed for seven and that, yeah. And then it, it adjusts, but it will still be below the 30 year fixed, you know, in seven.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Jack Selby?

  Or six now, I suppose. Uh, so it'll trail that a little bit.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  So you're gaining, like you're, so, so basically, yeah, you gain upfront and that you're going to be below market and you just expose yourself to tail risk. I guess in some ways, it's not a bad idea. The average homeowner is in their home for seven years. Right? So like, if you're the average homeowner who's going to end up selling, right? In seven years, you could potentially like pocket that differential.

• 1:10:33Jack Selby?

  But then again, if you're buying to sell in seven years, maybe you shouldn't be buying in the first place, at least in today's.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a good point, too. I'd be totally, again, depends on the market, like in Nashville, it is shocking. Every house on the market, it seems like was sold in 2022 to 2024. Like, it's just like wild, like how many houses are on the market that just sold four years ago? And some of it just has to do with like the type of market it is, like Nashville, super transient. People come in, they come out, right? They come in for a job, job moves them, right? Somewhere like Chicago is not that way, right? Usually people in Chicago are like, you know, upstate New York or Connecticut, New Jersey, they buy, they're, they're often there for a while.

• 1:11:14Jack Selby?

  So if you're planning on holding to a home for X amount of years, if you were to buy, what is that number?

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I, I don't mean to cop out on this, but again, it totally depends on the market. Because in California, the cost to buy versus rent is literally insane. Like the same house in California that you're renting for four grand would cost 9,000 a month to buy. So I would put the, like, I would put that threshold much higher in California. Because like, if I'm in California, I'm saving money renting. I really am saving money renting. I'm saving money still renting in Vegas. I was just looking at a house today, cost to buy 2,800. It was just on the market for rent a year ago, 1,850. Why would I buy a house for 2,800 a month when I can, it was literally just on the market for 1,850 in rent? So I'm doing that upfront math equation and I'm figuring out, okay, how much in my, uh, in this market, how much more am I spending by buying?

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  And I think just in the majority of circumstances, that means that you need to stay in the house for a long time. To your original point, to your original point, you need to stay in the house for a long time. Because you're going to need the value of that house to go up to make that worth it. And that might take in this market, 15 years.

• 1:12:22Jack Selby?

  15 years for places like California, maybe in other places like Florida, you would say a smaller amount of time.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:12:27Jack Selby?

  What about you, Graham? I would say it's probably gotta be

• 1:12:33Jack Selby?

  15 years, maybe 12 years, just to make sure that you're not going to lose money on that sale compared to renting. And it really depends on the interest rate. Like when interest rates were at 3%, I would say seven years. Then when they were like five and a half, 6%, I told people like 10 years. Now I think it's got to be even higher because you're paying so much upfront. Like just to be having more of your mortgage payment go towards principal than interest, I think now is like 18 to 20 years. So you're front loading all the interest on your mortgage, really gaining nothing. And so you're banking on appreciation. Are we going to see appreciation over the next decade? I think it really depends on the area. And so that's for someone looking to buy a primary residence. What about an investor of real estate?

• 1:13:19Jack Selby?

  What strategies have you seen actually work in today's real estate environment? Running as fast as possible. That's the only strategy that works that I have seen be really effective is you just, you see a house and then you turn around and you walk out the door as fast as possible. So just avoid it. Avoid it. That works 100% of the time. And put it in an index fund, international index funds and muni bonds.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, at this point, I would like to ask Graham about his experience selling his portfolio in California. Because I feel like it's a very relevant topic for, for that question, right? Like, what prompted you to liquidate and get out?

• 1:13:57Jack Selby?

  Prices had risen to a level where I was looking at my alternatives and I was looking, how much were these properties making? What is it worth? What would my net be after I sold, after commissions, closing costs, taxes? And I determined after selling, I could make just as much money in a tax-free muni bond, more in fact, than owning the property. And I saw the writing on the wall with a lot of my properties were under rent control. And I don't think it's going to get better. And so I see all the risks and the headwind with rent control, the hassles, the time, every single thing I had to think about, and I hate it. I had multiple times where I'd get a letter from my insurance, your insurance is canceled.

• 1:14:40Jack Selby?

  I'm calling them up and they just go, oh, it's an error, but right now they canceled your policy. We have to reissue it. I said, when is that going to happen? Uh, about 48, 72 hours. And so I have to hope in the next 72 hours, my home doesn't burn down or there's an earthquake. And the amount of stress, and this has happened, by the way, almost once a year. And when you put this through multiple properties in LA and there's an insurance lap for a few days on something, I'm dealing with this multiple times a year and I have to be on top of it. And then I get the property tax bill. And I got really lucky that I have extremely low tax bases on these properties where my property tax bills on like a $1.3 million rental might've only been like eight grand a year.

• 1:15:26Jack Selby?

  But I still see that and I'm like, there's eight grand gone. And you could say, well, yeah, it's baked into the rent and this and that, but I'm looking at, it's just a waste. And then I get a $500 water bill from LADWP. And I say, what are my tenants, why are they wasting the water? Well, it's because they don't pay the water bill. I pay the water bill. And when you, when you pay the water bill, I'm cognizant of how much water I'm using. Let's not flush the toilet 50 times. We don't need to take.

• 1:15:52Jack Selby?

  Doesn't affect the water bill. Let's, okay. Or take too many baths. Maybe one cent per flood. Somebody, somebody is, I don't know what they were doing, but the fact is there, it's 12 hour showers. It's watering the lawn, it's hot outside, they just take a hose and just leave, I don't.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Ice bucket challenge in the backyard every day.

• 1:16:11Jack Selby?

  It's just, it's something going on where I'm paying now, I'm paying now a high water bill and a high electric bill too, because electricity rates are going up. We've been having a heat wave here and I'm so glad I don't have to pay the electric bill for what's going on there. They'll run the AC 60 degrees. And listen, I had great tenants, like really, really, really good tenants. I was, I was lucky with all the tenants and I like them, but I don't like the bills. And so I looked at that and I said, it's time to sell. I don't want the stress, I don't want the hassle, I want to be done with it. And so we priced aggressively and I also made sure, I spent so much money, I spent between,

• 1:16:49Jack Selby?

  I think three properties, I must've spent 140 grand between these properties, fixing them up and staging. I mean, we, I went to the nth degree to make these places look awesome. So that when we come on the market, we get multiple offers sold over asking. People do not realize how expensive it is to actually own a home, all of the things outside of principal, interest, tax and insurance. Last year I was doing all of my bookkeeping for the house that I live in right now, which I rent out four of the rooms at, which you would think would at least cover the cost of living there. It's four room rentals. Problem is, I collected about 30 some thousand dollars over that year in rent and it cost me $60,000.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Get out of here.

• 1:17:31Jack Selby?

  My PITI was like $2,500 a month. So where did all of the additional 30 some thousand dollars go to, you know, wifi, which is 180 bucks a month? It goes to electricity, it goes to water because we have a pool and filling up the pool. You have to do that every few days in Vegas. I mean, the pool, we had a water bill that was like $600. I think I had an $800 water bill last year. Oh, by the way, for Vegas, that's a lot because LA, it's normal.

• 1:18:02Graham Stephan?

  To get like a $500 water bill. Vegas, my water bill, by the way, with a reef aquarium and a pool is like 80 bucks a month.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:18:10Graham Stephan?

  That is

• 1:18:11Jack Selby?

  I've had gas bills in like the hundreds of dollars. On top of all of that, every single year, you have a capital expenditure that you didn't expect to have. So last year it was air conditioning. I spent like $13,000 on air conditioning. The year before that, I had my pool replastered. That was $8,000. I also had to do another AC unit. I also had, I installed solar, which was $40,000. I had the pool pump go out. That was a couple thousand dollars. I had problems with irrigation. That was a couple thousand. My main line broke. That was 5,000. It's like, I've owned the house for five years. The house was actually taken care of pretty well, but just in homeownership, especially if you have a pool,

• 1:18:51Jack Selby?

  and especially if you're in Vegas, things happen, especially if it's an older home. People think they're saving money by buying a house that hasn't, you're not paying the exorbitant prices of new builds, when in actuality, if it's a 30-year-old home, everything is expiring.

• 1:19:06Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I got another one too. I had a tenant move in. They were paying about 3,500 a month. Moved in, second week, the AC goes bust. And it was $10,000 to fix the air conditioner.

• 1:19:17Jack Selby?

  Air conditioning is the biggest scam ever because it is planned obsolescence. The best AC units are the 30-year-old AC units. Those ones never go bad. And I was told this by my AC technician, and they change the fluid that they use, like the coolant that the air conditioners use every few years, and then say, oh, well, you have to buy the new unit because it uses the new fluid. And if you have the old unit and the fluid goes bad, like you just have to change the entire unit. Like it's crazy. And if you change the, the AC unit, then you have to change the actual coil.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:19:50Jack Selby?

  It's absurd.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  So I do have a question on the water in Vegas that I want to get to in a second. I see that in my comment section all the time.

• 1:19:55Graham Stephan?

  Oh.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Lake Mead's running dry.

• 1:19:58Graham Stephan?

  It's not running out of water. It's all the California almond farms that are using the water. It's not Vegas. Vegas uses so little water compared with the farms of California and everywhere else.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Graham Stephan?

  Myth.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  And doesn't Vegas like recycle?

• 1:20:10Graham Stephan?

  Yes, they do. The entire Las Vegas Strip drills so far down that they use like well water. So it's all reclaimed water. So they're really not pulling from anything.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  So is this whole thing about like Lake Mead running dry, Colorado River running dry and like the impact on like Vegas?

• 1:20:25Graham Stephan?

  I've seen

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Is this all like kind of a fear?

• 1:20:28Graham Stephan?

  I would say yes, but there is a water issue that will happen down the line. It's not because Las Vegas residents have a pool or they're taking 12-minute showers. Like it's, it's not that. It's California almond farms that are, that are pulling the majority of the water.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Is it actually the almond farms?

• 1:20:44Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Oh my gosh. The amount of water it takes to create a single almond is insane. Like when you look at how many gallons per almond.

• 1:20:53Jack Selby?

  So why do we not have like taxes on these almond farms?

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Maybe we should.

• 1:20:59Jack Selby?

  And why do people even eat almonds?

• 1:21:02Graham Stephan?

  They are the worst.

• 1:21:03Jack Selby?

  Delicious. They're the worst tasting nut, especially if they're unsalted. It, it, it boggles my mind. People are still eating almonds in 2026.

• 1:21:11Graham Stephan?

  So it's one point, so it's 1.1 gallons of water per almond.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 1:21:18Graham Stephan?

  Per almond.

• 1:21:19Jack Selby?

  So every time you, you take a handful of almonds and put it in your mouth and get like a three out of 10 on the flavor scale, you're also destroying 60 gallons, 40 gallons of water.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  I think we could ban almonds tomorrow. I'd be okay with it. I just wish to open.

• 1:21:32Jack Selby?

  But we know who wouldn't survive. The almond farmers.

• 1:21:36Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Now Las Vegas though, is taking measures to conserve water in ways that they can. Like pools right now are limited to 600 square feet. You could only have a certain amount of water features on your property. So you couldn't do like a huge like waterfall in front of your home. They're really going for astroturf instead of grass. The golf courses are now using a different type of grass that requires less water. Some golf courses are even letting the grass

• 1:22:02Jack Selby?

  How do you know all of this?

• 1:22:03Graham Stephan?

  Cause I do so much research.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Golf courses plus almonds.

• 1:22:07Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  That's the real problem.

• 1:22:08Graham Stephan?

  But it's not really the golf courses, but they're also using a new type of grass that they'll let die off so that they could then refertilize it a few months later and then have it grow back again to conserve water for a few months. Because when I'm looking at golf course frontage properties here in Vegas, the last thing you want is for your golf course, your view, your backyard to go brown.

• 1:22:31Jack Selby?

  It's completely, all the golf courses I at least go to, the public courses are completely dead during the summer. Completely.

• 1:22:38Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, because you're going not to the knot.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Like no one's there or the grass is dead.

• 1:22:41Jack Selby?

  The grass is brown.

• 1:22:42Graham Stephan?

  Well, the grass is always greener on the other side.

• 1:22:45Jack Selby?

  At the private course.

• 1:22:46Graham Stephan?

  At the private courses.

• 1:22:47Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Well, I just want, one thing I was like picking up on when you guys were talking about your experiences owning real estate is there's a couple of themes that kept popping up there. One was inflation, right? There's the costs of owning, right? Whether it be property taxes, insurance, water, wifi, all that stuff. So it's just generalized inflation, right? Increasing your costs. The other thing was hassle.

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• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Right? And it's just like draining you mentally, let's say, right? Like, especially if you're someone who's like a creative person, you need for your job, right? And you're like having to worry about all this stuff. So it's inflation and hassle. And I think actually the big fundamental issue is that rent I know this is gonna sound crazy. Rent hasn't gone up enough to make up for the inflation on costs and hassle for investors to stay in the market. Like hypothetically, if for both of you, the rent was double on your respective properties, you know, would it have changed? Like, you know, your perspectives on, is this hassle worth it or no?

• 1:24:42Jack Selby?

  I think it would have, it would for me. I mean, granted, I'm still living there, but let's just say I got double the amount of rent. Then I would just hire a property management group. Granted, I've also never worked with them and I know sometimes they kind of pass the hassle on to you still, even after you pay them. But I would pay the money for a property management group.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that just goes back to my thinking about the market, right? Like I was talking earlier about the home price to rent ratios and how the prices have gone up way more than the rent. And it sounds like the costs of ownership have gone up more than the rent too. And I think that's squeezing landlords and I think that's squeezing investors and it's taken, you know, 10 years ago, something that was like very attainable to get into real estate investment 10 years ago and like feel like I can make money, right? Now it's not. I have a friend, he actually, he lives in Florida. He owns about eight properties in Cleveland and he owns a couple of properties in Florida. And he's, he was actually sending me your stuff, Graham. He's like, look at, he was like, look at this. Like what Graham's saying is exactly what I'm feeling.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  You know, he feels the same way. He's like, oh yeah, like I got into Cleveland. I heard that the returns were good, but then I have to evict tenants and left, left and right. And then he's dealing with issues on his property in Tampa. And he's now like focusing actually on small businesses. He actually started an app where, you know, you can analyze small business acquisition. He thinks that that's like where more of the opportunity is. So maybe that's like another thing, you know, people are starting to look into too, is like, hey, if I'm not buying houses as investments, maybe I'll buy small businesses.

• 1:26:06Jack Selby?

  One thing that I thought was actually really interesting, we didn't really tap into it, but you said that you were underwriting for private equity buying up commercial real estate.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Jack Selby?

  What was the general return that private equity would get on commercial? Because a lot of the, the layman, like the average person, probably myself included, think that private equity can go in and then get 20% returns year over year. Like the rich get richer, K-shaped economy. And the average person screwed because they can't tap into this like investing style that only Wall Street can do. Was that true? Like what, what did you experience underwriting private equity, commercial real estate deals?

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we did like hotels, office buildings, apartment buildings around the US was kind of our main asset class. And I worked there from about 2011 to 2019. So it was coming out of the last crash. You could make screaming returns coming out of the last crash. And we actually did mortgage debt. Sometimes we did equity, but we actually did mortgage debt. The mortgage debt was often like sometimes nine, 10% rates on first lien mortgages, on apartment properties in places like Atlanta and Houston. And because the prices had dropped so much, there was so much meat on the bone for like return that yeah, you, on a, on a mortgage, we can make 13% IRR. On equity, we can make 25%. But that was in the 2010s. I don't know if that's possible now. I don't, I don't think it's possible now because if you raise money now,

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  if you work for a private equity fund and you raise money, that cost of capital is going to be five, five, six percent of its debt. It's going to be nine, 10% of its equity. And then the cap rates for these properties are four and a half. So a lot of it just has to do with where you are in the cycle. Again, coming out of the, the crash in the 2010s, there was so much opportunity in the early, mid 2010s.

• 1:27:50Graham Stephan?

  I mean, that's what I bought. And the properties that I bought back then, I'll never forget, San Bernardino, they had sold like 2003, 2004 for like 380,000. And I picked them up, one for 59,000, the other for 72, and then another for, I think it was 125.

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  Sorry, what was the original price again?

• 1:28:12Graham Stephan?

  $380,000.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  It dropped from 380 to 70?

• 1:28:15Graham Stephan?

  It never dropped. It sold.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Sorry, it sold?

• 1:28:17Graham Stephan?

  Sold.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  For 380?

• 1:28:18Graham Stephan?

  Sold for 380, 2004, then got relisted in 2011 for, I think it was like $62,000 and I got it at like 59.5.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  So is that 70%?

• 1:28:32Graham Stephan?

  Something like that. But when I was looking at these, I was calculating the amount of rent I'd be able to receive versus the purchase price. And I had this whole system figured out where I wanted to make about a 15 to 16% cash on cash return after all of my expenses. Buying these properties.

• 1:28:47Jack Selby?

  That's insane.

• 1:28:48Graham Stephan?

  But that's what it worked, but that was normal.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Do you remember, so for the 70,000 is like a house?

• 1:28:53Graham Stephan?

  House.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  For the $70,000 house, what would be the monthly rent? Do you remember back then?

• 1:28:56Graham Stephan?

  I rented initially at $1,150 a month. And I put a little money into it, but it was really just like paint floors. And the floors we got under a dollar a square foot at Home Depot. And I remember the workers, I got a really great contractor and he

• 1:29:15Graham Stephan?

  was like desperate for, like he was just grateful to be able to have any amount of work whatsoever because no one was doing anything. And so he Was like just, and he knocked it out in a week because he was like, just, I want to churn out,

• 1:29:27Graham Stephan?

  churn out projects.

• 1:29:28Jack Selby?

  Such a different, such a different environment.

• 1:29:30Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Jack Selby?

  Right. But what I'm thinking about is just the math. So 1100 a month is what, like 13,000 a year roughly?

• 1:29:36Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Jack Selby?

  On a 70,000 purchase.

• 1:29:38Graham Stephan?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:39Jack Selby?

  So 13,000 times 70, uh, divided by 70,000, that's what, like a 16, 17% unlevered.

• 1:29:45Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Jack Selby?

  Cash on cash return, cap rate. What was the 10 year treasury back then, like?

• 1:29:50Graham Stephan?

  Oh, I had no.

• 1:29:50Jack Selby?

  Three?

• 1:29:51Graham Stephan?

  I have no idea.

• 1:29:51Jack Selby?

  3%, 3 and a half. So the 10 year treasury was three and a half and you were buying something that yielded 17%.

• 1:29:56Graham Stephan?

  But that's why I felt so confident buying these because I was looking at like, how much per square foot for this house? And it was 1,800 square feet for 70 grand. And I was like, you can't even build for anywhere close to that. So my logic was that it has to be worth at least what it costs to build. Or the housing market is screwed forever and they will never build another home ever again, which I knew was not the case. So I felt like this makes so much sense. Like this is a no brainer.

• 1:30:26Jack Selby?

  But even so, after all the calculations that you did, had you just thrown that money into an index fund, instead of buying real estate, wasn't it kind of the same?

• 1:30:35Graham Stephan?

  Yes. Yeah, I would have.

• 1:30:36Jack Selby?

  Which is crazy. Like in the perfect, like the most perfect of worlds. Putting your money into real estate when you could get a 16% levered return, cash on cash return in real estate.

• 1:30:48Graham Stephan?

  So.

• 1:30:48Jack Selby?

  It didn't even matter because you could have just thrown it into an index.

• 1:30:51Graham Stephan?

  Here's the thing. So here's where the math stops mathing. I bought these properties kind of cash. And because I bought them cash, I would have made more money putting that cash into the stock market at the exact same time. Especially because I eventually left California and at some point I wouldn't have to, pay this California income tax on realized profits decades later. But had I put small down payments on these properties instead, and instead of getting, you know, this one property for 70 grand, I put 70,000 on a down payment to buy a $500,000 property and I made that same return. Then I would make so much more money in real estate. I just didn't have the credit at the time. So that was my, uh,

• 1:31:30Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Graham Stephan?

  My issue.

• 1:31:31Jack Selby?

  The first thought was like, if you bought them in cash and then put like small, like 50, $60,000 mortgages on after.

• 1:31:39Graham Stephan?

  I didn't have any credit. I bought these, I bought these properties. I had nothing. And so after I had bought them, then I got my first, secured credit card, started building credit. And I could have years later done it, but I just.

• 1:31:50Jack Selby?

  How old were you when you bought those?

• 1:31:51Graham Stephan?

  21.

• 1:31:52Jack Selby?

  That's crazy.

• 1:31:53Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Jack Selby?

  But doesn't that speak to the opportunity that did exist back then? Right? Like if someone who's 21 with no credit, could actually like buy real estate. And that is just like, like.

• 1:32:04Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but you could say that at any point. You could, you could say, you know, 10 years ago, well, you could have bought Bitcoin. You could be working at McDonald's. You know, 10 bucks an hour and being like.

• 1:32:13Jack Selby?

  And that's exactly what you say to me instead of me selling covered calls on Robinhood. Jack, if you instead just bought the actual stock, you'd be up more.

• 1:32:20Graham Stephan?

  Which is true. You saw Robinhood popped. It popped, Jack. You would have been so better off.

• 1:32:25Jack Selby?

  I actually didn't have any covered calls against Robinhood when it popped. Thank you very much. That was luck.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  You, you guys had the CEO of Robinhood on recently.

• 1:32:31Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Jack Selby?

  Yeah, we did. He's great.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:33Graham Stephan?

  I like him a lot.

• 1:32:34Jack Selby?

  Speaking of, not the CEO of Robinhood, but speaking of like investment opportunities and let's say missed opportunities. You say that you are very big on having a cash position. You have the muni bonds or cash equivalents. I agree with the idea that you can be right about a thesis, but wrong overall because you were wrong on timing.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:32:54Jack Selby?

  Do you think that you would be better off? Instead of building up this cash position and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, yes, the market could correct. Real estate could plummet and you can find plenty of opportunities then. But that could be five years from now and the stock market could be up 80% in five years. Is there any validity in your own personal case of like, hey, maybe instead of hunting this deal in Georgia, I could have just thrown the money into some index funds and held on forever.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Potentially. And maybe I'm just like old school kind of, right? I'm a real estate guy. That's what I've always worked in, right? So my mind looks towards real estate and where I can find opportunity there. You know, in the, in the future, I would like to have a portfolio, small portfolio of properties, right? And grow that a little bit. But can't really like really understand or trust the stock market. I'm, I'm probably kind of like, like, like an old person when it comes to that. And I, I look at like things like the Schiller Cape, like the Cape ratio for the stock market. I don't know if you guys are familiar. It takes the 10 year, inflation adjusted earnings divided by the inflation adjusted market cap. Stock market looks pretty overvalued too, when you look at some of those, those metrics. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's two things. I don't really understand the stock market too well.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  And then I also just look at some metrics in the stock market like price to earnings ratios. And I'm just like, there's a lot of future growth assumptions in there.

• 1:34:11Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but, but forward PE on the MAC 7 now is actually pretty low compared to what it was in the future. Yeah. When you look at the market, it's really interesting because you could find a chart that reinforces whatever you want to believe. Like you could find a chart that says we're the most overvalued ever in history.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27Graham Stephan?

  Find another chart that says, actually, we're fairly well priced when you isolate the data past 2001. Because arguably you could say that we can't compare ourselves to the 1980s when the internet and globalization has changed substantially. So that's really post 2000. And when you look at it post 2000, it's really not all that bad. So, you know, there's, there's an argument for anything.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, I don't know as much about stocks, right? So it's not my area of expertise, but I'm just always cautious about those like, this time is different scenarios. And what that reminds me of a little bit is like, when I lived in Austin in 2020, Oracle moved their headquarters to Austin. Tesla moved their headquarters to Austin in the spring of 2021. I start telling people, hey, guys, the price to income ratio in Austin's housing market makes no sense. You know what people start telling me? Well, yeah, but Tesla just moved their headquarters here. Oracle just moved their headquarters here. Austin is the next Silicon Valley. Turns out it wasn't, right? And so I'm just always skeptical when I hear narratives about like how it's different and for these things that have changed.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  I actually just bought a book, very, very fascinating. It's called 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin. I don't know if you guys are familiar with him. It's about the lead up to the 1929 bust and the Great Depression. And he quotes like bankers at the time and the things they were saying. It was like mirrors some of the things people are saying now, like, oh, like electrification is going to change things forever. Right? People have washing machines and dishwashers. Productivity is going to go through the roof. So we can't look at old valuation models. Additionally, the US became an international stock market back then. People are like, oh, we have equities coming in from Britain. That's going to push prices up forever. I think it's funny how sometimes, you know, Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  And I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I, I just, I'm always skeptical of narratives, like even in Nashville, right? Interestingly, Oracle has now moved their headquarters to Nashville from Austin. And they're supposedly going to build the campus by 2030. Every Realtor in Nashville, it's just like Oracle's going to move here. And I'm like, yeah, but like, demand is at the lowest level in 15 years and supply is at the highest level in 15 years. And they're like, well, Oracle's going to move here. So there, there needs to be a balance, right? Like between accepting that maybe, you know, certain things could have shifted. But then still also like training your eyes on the fundamentals, right?

• 1:36:52Jack Selby?

  That's true, but also had you thrown your money into the stock market in 1931, like you'd still be so much better off 15, 20, however many years in the future it may be to, that, that rhymes every single time.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:37:09Jack Selby?

  The earlier your money is in the market, on average, the better off you are. And so I'm always thinking like, you can think of all of these one-off scenarios. Like Graham said, you could find any point online that would validate your theory or invalidate your theory. The only thing that has stayed true, regardless of theory, is that the earlier you put your money into the market, on average, the better you are.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  If someone wants to adopt that principle, I, I wouldn't debate it with them, you know, and maybe they would do a little better in the long run. You know, I think it depends on what you value personally. For me, I'm like, I like having flexibility. I like having liquidity. You know, I'm a multiple business owner, got a successful YouTube channel, successful app. I want to buy some investment properties, right? So for me, it's like, I would rather keep my powder dry, right? Someone else who maybe has a like stable W2 job, doesn't want to like, rock the boat too much in what they do, which is perfectly fine. That might be like, that might be good advice, right? So I think it also depends on just like where someone's at.

• 1:38:07Graham Stephan?

  How much does declining birth rate concern you? The birth rates are down about 35% since 1991.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  It's a huge deal. And it's a multifaceted huge deal for the housing market and the economy. I believe actually one of the reasons why we have such low buyer demand today is starting to become demographic. And by 2034, we're projecting a reventure. There'll be more deaths and births in the US. That's never happened before. That completely changes things, right? When you think about housing demand and supply. You know, what's the number one fundamental thing that would force someone to buy a house, right? We're not talking like, what should I do with my money? You know, this or that. It's like, oh, you have a kid on the way. Oh, you have a second kid on the way, right? That increases the desire for the stability, right?

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  The security in the space that owning a home provides. So when you see declining birth rates and things like declining school enrollment, these are massive red flags. So I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida for a year, late 2024 to late 2025. That market's correcting. One stat that blew my mind when I lived there, was that the Pinellas County school enrollment, which is St. Petersburg and Clearwater, was down something like seven to 8,000 in the last 10 years. And I'm like, looking at that, I'm like, how is that more people not talking about that? If school enrollment's dropping 7,000, what does that mean for the local housing market? That means there's no, there's fewer and fewer families looking to buy.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  And so I think this declining birth rate is a huge problem for demand. And the flip side of it's the increasing death rate. So slowly but truly, the deaths as a percentage of population are going to go up and they're about to go way up the next 15 years because the 75 and 85 population is going to surge.

• 1:39:51Graham Stephan?

  So on Clearwater, my understanding there is because of Scientology. Really coming in and they don't send their kids to just like an average school. Scientologists have really taken over Clearwater. So that that one I think is a Clearwater very specific.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Potentially, but Pinellas County is a county with nearly a million people.

• 1:40:09Graham Stephan?

  Hey, by the way, I just want to pop in here and say that we ended up using a lot of B-roll from Nick's ReVenture app. It's incredible, the amount of data, the forecasts, the price projections, it's insane. You're able to type in any location, any zip code, any state. It gives you so much data. It's more data than I've ever seen on like Zillow or Redfin. And I would venture to say, by the way, that maybe it's more comprehensive than even talking to a real estate agent. Like it's nuts, the level of detail that's in this.

• 1:40:37Jack Selby?

  So we teamed up with Nick and he hooked you guys up. You save 160 bucks on the annual plan. That is 40% off. If you're thinking about buying, selling, or you just want to see what your area is doing, go check it out. It is crazy, guys. The link is down below in the description. Thank you so much. And now back to the episode.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  Potentially, but Pinellas County is a county with nearly a million people.

• 1:40:56Graham Stephan?

  I will say though, and this might just be anecdotally, I see a lot of people now having kids again. Like out of nowhere, it seems like so many people that I know are now having a kid. And I'm wondering if we're just swinging in the opposite direction where now it's like cool again to like get married younger and maybe take on a more traditional husband, wife sort of dynamic, have a kid early. It just, maybe I'm just like getting feeds in my algorithm now, but it seems like it's swinging back the other way.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  You could be right. I kind of hope so, right? Here's where I'm skeptical. And one thing we're actually working on right now on ReVenture is we're going to produce 30-year population forecasts for every zip code in the US, looking at these aging trends. And one thing we're noticing, births are a factor of two things. One is the fertility rate of women, right, in certain age groups, which would kind of speak to what you're talking about. Like, is it becoming more trendy to have a kid or not, right? But the other is the number of people in the age cohort. If you have fewer women between the ages of 25 to 35, 10 years from now, there's just going to be fewer births.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  And what was shocking in the 2020 census was that for the first time, I don't say ever, but in a long time, the under 18 population in the US declined. So what's happening in America is we're entering an aging curve now where there's going to be fewer and fewer people who are teenagers and who are in their twenties, eventually in their thirties. More and more people who are in their seventies and eighties. That shift in age cohort will just naturally lead to lower births. You might be right, though. Maybe a trend picks up in the future and fertility increases. But that age cohort slowdown has already happened the last 20 years. So for the next 20 years, we're just going to see fewer people in their twenties

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  and in their teens than there were the previous 20 years, especially as a percentage of the population and housing stock.

• 1:42:56Graham Stephan?

  See, part of me thinks the reason for that is simply because a lot of people that I know, a lot of women in their thirties were conditioned when I was younger that you have to go and you have to get a great career and you have to focus on yourself and you have to do you and you have to live your life. Don't settle, don't have kids, it's going to slow you down. And now in their thirties, they're coming around to it. And maybe because life expectancies are increasing a little bit that they say, you know what? I could afford to basically wait until 35 to have my first kid or 38. It's not the end of the world.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:43:32Graham Stephan?

  And maybe it's just, it's more delayed, but maybe AI will all live into our nineties and hundreds.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Well, it's true. What you're saying is actually true in the data that we're looking at on the fertility rates. In some counties, the 35 to 50-year-old female fertility rate is higher than the 20 to 34. Like in San Francisco, that's the case. So that's definitely happening. However, if a woman waits until 35 or 36 to have her first child, there's a natural cap on how many children she's going to have. Right? Which wasn't a cap that occurred in the past. So that's why this declining birth rate and slowing population growth is inevitable, even if there is like an improvement. But of course, this is also regional, which is like my favorite, my favorite thing to talk about. So we look at a metric called the birth to death ratio.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  It's kind of simple. Divide births by deaths. That's your organic population growth multiple. Florida is now below one, meaning more people are dying in Florida than being born. That's not good. I mean, right? Like for economy, society, housing, that's just not good. Florida's birth to death ratio 20 years ago was 1.5, had 50% more births and deaths. Now it's losing for the first time ever. But you go to Utah, it's over two to one. You go to Provo, Utah, it's over four to one. You go to Austin, Texas, it's over two to one. Some people think, like, just for an example, Austin, Texas versus Tampa, Florida. If a home buyer, real estate investor, might be like looking at those two cities and thinking they're equivalent in long-term housing appreciation. They're not. In Austin, there's two times more births and deaths.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  In Tampa, there's fewer births and deaths. Think about where that's going to put the population 20 years from now. Austin has locked in guaranteed growth regardless of what happens with migration. Tampa has guaranteed population decline. Of course, we don't know for sure what's going to happen with migration, but when you just know those two things to start, you have like, if you're a real estate investor or you want to buy where there's going to be more demand and appreciation, you're just like a massive head start. If you also start looking at these demographic data, because as the birth rate continues to slow, and maybe it does stabilize, right? Maybe even goes up a bit. These demographic trends are going to continue to be really big. And this, the country I think about is Japan.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  And I'm not saying we're Japan or going to be like Japan, but what happened in Japan is wild.

• 1:45:49Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but they were really strict on immigration.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:45:53Graham Stephan?

  And that's, that's a cultural thing too, but yeah. I mean, it's bad, it's bad to have a declining population.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  It won't, it won't be as bad as Japan, but do you know how much nominal home prices dropped in Japan from 1990 to 2010?

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  50% over 20 years. Today in Japan, the nominal price is still 20% below 1990. 36 years later, I don't, I'm not, that's not going to happen in the US, but I'm saying that that's a warning, particularly for certain pockets of the US of what could be coming when the math on births and deaths just no longer makes sense.

• 1:46:27Graham Stephan?

  What do you think if the government issues a stimulus for every child you have? Is that a good or a bad thing?

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  That's one of those things that sounds good, right? Just like allowing someone to stay in the apartment sounds good when they can't pay their rent. I do wonder if there's like some type of negative consequence that could come from that. But like my first reaction is, look, this is a severe crisis, you know, like, and could we find some other thing we're incentivizing and cut that? And put it towards like incentivizing more births, maybe. Of course, of course, it's like, there, like, there will be some secondary and third consequence you're not even anticipating, right?

• 1:47:01Graham Stephan?

  That's so funny. I'm imagining a kid at the dinner table. Mommy, daddy, why do I have so many brothers and sisters? And she's like, well, because the government is paying us $6,000 a year.

• 1:47:11Jack Selby?

  If you could get, let's say, 3,000 bucks for having a kid, this dude would have his own cheaper by the dug. How, like, he would have so many kids. Can you adopt?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Don't they do that in like the foster system? Like, don't they pay parents to like take more foster kids?

• 1:47:28Graham Stephan?

  I don't know about that. My understanding to adopt a child is so rigorous. It's not like you really have to want a child. Like, it's not.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  There must be some like way to do it. So it's just like, there's something about a cash payment for having a kid that seems, right?

• 1:47:40Graham Stephan?

  At the hospital, like whipping out the hundreds.

• 1:47:43Jack Selby?

  Like what the idea of, like, the government should be is that you like incentivize and disincentivize certain behaviors. And that's something that could actually end up being quite catastrophic for the United States.

• 1:47:54Graham Stephan?

  Because imagine, imagine they do it. They start paying people like $6,000 a year. And then they run out of money. Like, hey, sorry, guys, we're, we're cutting this program. And everyone's like, bro, I just had seven children. What am I supposed to do?

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Maybe like some type of tax incentive or something like that where it's like.

• 1:48:11Jack Selby?

  Like increase the tax incentive?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't know, like your lower tax rates or something. So it's like,

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  like imagine someone's unemployed, right? And then like, it's like, I'm going to earn money by having more kids.

• 1:48:24Graham Stephan?

  But they, but they already do that, though.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have.

• 1:48:26Graham Stephan?

  They already have that. Yeah.

• 1:48:28Jack Selby?

  You know what I think is kind of interesting is, this is a Jordan Peterson idea that always kind of stuck with me. He said that you should have a kid even if you're not ready, because it will force you to get ready. It'll force you to mature. And I don't know of anybody who had a kid and just because they had a kid, they became homeless. Like, I don't know if that's like a real statistic. I know potentially it could put you into some more financial hardship, but like, that's not necessarily a bad.

• 1:49:00Graham Stephan?

  It depends on the age, because having a kid, I think it's below the age of like 21, 22. You're significantly further behind your peers because your time and your resources go towards raising a child than making more money, advancing in your career, networking, like all of these things. So it does actually hinder you below a certain.

• 1:49:18Jack Selby?

  But some people say that having a kid was the thing that they needed to like kick them in the butt and then work harder and make more money.

• 1:49:23Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but as a whole, I mean, if you just look at, yes, for certain people, yeah, for certain people, I bet, yeah, they have a kid at 16. They wind up running a Fortune 500 company.

• 1:49:33Jack Selby?

  People who have kids at 16.

• 1:49:34Graham Stephan?

  I'm just saying, but like, I'm sure some of them, like when you look at like the top CEOs, some of them became like dads really early on. It's, it's surprising. Like you would think that, oh, they had a kid at like 20. And now they're running this huge company.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the point you might be trying to get at is like, it's a cop out a little bit. Like sometimes the financial excuse might be a cop out. Like I. I have a whole theory. If you want to hear my theory, guys.

• 1:49:58Jack Selby?

  Well, let's hear it.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  I think like Instagram and like TikTok, I, I think there's some conspiracy going on to like keep everyone just like super consumer oriented. And like, it's stuck to their phone. And it's not even controversial to say, but if you think about the second and third order effects of that, right? Like someone's like their Instagram algorithm and they're looking at like what's, what's on there. And then like, like, here's this handbag and like, you don't need that handbag, right? If you're a girl, right? But like, maybe you, you now want that handbag, but then you're like, oh, I don't have enough money. And then the next thing Instagram feeds you is like, oh, you can become a self-made millionaire if you buy this course.

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• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  You're like, ah, I'm gonna do that so I can afford the handbag. Like, like, they're not consciously thinking these things, but like, I think that's what Instagram is like doing to people. And if you play that out, it kind of makes society kind of like very individualistic. Everyone's on their own hunt for glory and making more money to keep up with the Joneses, where they didn't even have to keep up with the Joneses.

• 1:51:22Jack Selby?

  That's 100% accurate. I remember also there's this Jerry Seinfeld clip that I thought was also really interesting. He is like, whatever happened to people? All of the sudden, everyone's obsessed with money. Like nowadays, it's like, you're a doctor and you make a lot of money, so that's really cool. Whereas back in the day, it was like, you're a plumber and you like what you do? Nice, cool. You're a doctor and you like what you do? Nice, cool. But now it's about how much money do you make? And like, this is just something that seemed to happen like this. And I think you're right. It's attached to the consumerism culture where we've now mixed up needs and wants. And people think, wait, you're telling me I have to sell this truck? Because I can't afford it? Well, this is, this is my work truck. It's like, well, yeah, you can have a crappy work truck too. Right. I mean, like downgrade to maybe a cheaper car.

• 1:52:07Jack Selby?

  That's something also you can observe from watching Caleb Hammer. It's like, people think they need things that are actually just wants.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  And here's the other thing too, like, you know, obviously you guys have multiple YouTube channels. I have a YouTube channel, I have an Instagram. Sure, we all look at the analytics, right? In terms of like retention and all that kind of stuff. And like, every creator is trying to figure out like how to make content that's more engaging. And like the stuff I've now learned about Instagram, like in the last like six months, even on my own Instagram business channel, is like crazy. Of the first three seconds of a 60-second reel, that determines everything about how many views it gets and how many people see it. And when I started like looking at it and doing the data, I realized it's not even about like, what I'm saying? It's just about like the arrangement of the visuals. And all the visuals need to be like bright, high contrast.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  And then two or three seconds in, you need some type of statement that's like somewhat urgent. And you still need bright visuals. And then you can't reveal really what the video is about for my videos until like 20 seconds in. Like often I'm like talking about like this city, you know, this Northwest former tech hub is now going through a housing market correction. And I build it up and build it up. And then 20 seconds in, there's the payoff. You can't give that payoff three or four seconds in. And my whole point with this is that I think Instagram is incentivizing creators to make content that keeps people hooked in a way that I, what is that doing to people?

• 1:53:28Graham Stephan?

  It's a slot machine.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  It's a slot machine.

• 1:53:30Graham Stephan?

  Like, it's supposed to be like every second to third randomly is something that you're gonna watch and engage with. And there's like a few bad ones. It's like, oh, it hits me again. It's awful. It's really, I've, I've really stopped opening up TikTok at all on my phone. And Instagram reels, I only scroll to send Jack a few reels. It's true.

• 1:53:52Jack Selby?

  Yeah, to send me a few reels, as he says. Here's a challenge, guys. If you are upset with your screen time, which realistically 90% plus of you guys are, myself included, what really helps is changing my phone color to black and white. I love it. It makes reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok so much less attractive. On that, I've heard from a lot of people, attention is the new currency. I 100% agree with that. And so it being a currency, there's a person that's buying and selling. And if you're constantly selling your attention, you're like losing your attention, giving it up to other people. Like, where does that leave you? Like, what's downstream from you losing your own attention?

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  I think of it in the way of being like, are you a producer or consumer on social media? And if you're a consumer on social media, you're, yeah, you're selling something. Like, like you're giving up something, right?

• 1:54:40Jack Selby?

  You're selling your time.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  You're selling your time, your attention, whatever, whatever the algorithm is doing to people's brains. I was, I just have a second phone. So like, I have Instagram and the, all those on my second phone for work. And I don't, I can't have it on my main phone. Because if I do, I'm just gonna be like scrolling on it at like 2:00 AM. Like, what am I even doing?

• 1:54:58Graham Stephan?

  Do you want to hear something crazy? I saw this on Twitter last night and it hit me. If you scroll for two hours a day, or you're on your phone just like mindlessly doing something for two hours a day, every year, that's the equivalent of you losing a month of your life. A month from just two hours a day.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you got like 13, 12, 13 waking hours.

• 1:55:21Graham Stephan?

  Yep, 12. And when you look at the amount of time that people naturally just sit on the phone scrolling, it's about two hours.

• 1:55:29Jack Selby?

  Imagine if instead of scrolling for two hours, you played piano. Or like took up a skill. You know, like you could be phenomenal at something if you just traded your time scrolling. Confidence, you go to improv, you do literally anything. You could be a savant.

• 1:55:46Graham Stephan?

  Here's the problem with that, because I agree with you, but sometimes you're just on the toilet. And you want five minutes to kill.

• 1:55:53Jack Selby?

  We get, no, don't even act like you take five minutes on there.

• 1:55:57Graham Stephan?

  I'm in and out, Jack. I'm 30 seconds, I'm efficient.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  There's no high water bill.

• 1:56:01Jack Selby?

  That's where your scroll time goes.

• 1:56:03Graham Stephan?

  I'm just saying, but because sometimes it's like, you're not scrolling because you're sitting there on a couch doing nothing. It's, hey, you know, I'm waiting for the microwave to beep two minutes. And I just want to like kill two minutes. That's it. Now I'm scrolling.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  And there is a little bit of a reality that like, if you're not plugged in at all to social media, you do might, you might miss something, right? Like, there is some positives to be garnered. I had this idea for like an app, I'm sure it exists already. But it's like, there should be an app that, it's like a harness on your Instagram.

• 1:56:36Jack Selby?

  It exists.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  It exists, okay. That like, you can use it for maximum utility. And if like you're scrolling for too long, it could be like, hey, instead of doing this, why don't you message someone for like business purposes and try to set a meeting or something?

• 1:56:46Graham Stephan?

  Macy has this on her phone. It's really interesting. If she's on for more than like five or 10 minutes at a time, it blocks her out of Instagram or TikTok and she has to do Duolingo. And she has to do like this whole thing of Duolingo for like two to five minutes before it allows her back on it. And then now her Duolingo score is like crazy. But that's the way around it.

• 1:57:08Jack Selby?

  So I have it right here. Between ages 16 and 24, three plus hours daily on social media, with many reporting four or more hours. 25 to 34, 2.5 to three hours daily. 35 to 44, two to 2.5. 45 to 54, 1.5 to 2. 55 plus, under one and a half hours daily.

• 1:57:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. It depends on what it is though, because I do spend a lot of time on Twitter or X. A lot of it's research or YouTube, and I'm just listening to it.

• 1:57:35Jack Selby?

  A lot of it's research, but I think a lot of people kid themselves.

• 1:57:38Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:38Jack Selby?

  And they think that they're getting research in, when in actuality, it's like fear porn or it's something else.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Well, it's the hook, right? It's the hook. It might be research for two minutes, right? And then all of a sudden, like, it's a, I just think of it as a marketplace. It's like, imagine you were walking on Canal Street in New York City, right? And like where they're selling all the watch, fake watches and handbags and stuff. And then it's just like, it's just like, that's social media. There's just vendors trying to pull you in. And it's in this mask of like, oh, you will learn something. You will keep up with a friend. It is for five minutes and then it becomes your soul to left and right.

• 1:58:13Jack Selby?

  Then how important is the thing that they're pulling you out of? You know, like it's easy to trade that because you don't really value it. Because to a lot of people, it's just kind of time.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:21Jack Selby?

  But then there could be something to that.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Well, you think about the headspace that people are in when they, myself like included, when they open up their phone compulsively, right? Like, the headspace is not often aligned with, I want to learn something. The headspace is aligned with like, I'm looking for some short-term stimulation. I just need to get myself through the next period of time. So I would, I think that almost proves that it's not about keeping up with friends or doing research for the most part. Because if you just think about the brain state, and we actually analyze this data, like for Reventure app, we look at like how long people spend on our app when they come from different sources. When people come from X, they spend like 20 seconds on the app.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  When they come from watching a long-form YouTube video, they spend five minutes, right? And I think that's just like a good little analogy about like, what are people expecting when they're on X? X is great, not criticizing it, but it's like quick, short.

• 1:59:18Graham Stephan?

  Do you ever get depressed or sad just seeing so much negative data?

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Again, depends on your perspective. I kind of have the, I have the mindset of like an aspiring first-time homebuyer, where I look at a crash in sales in Las Vegas and values beginning to roll over is good, right? So I would argue the negative data, if you're a first-time homebuyer, is good. It's bad if you're an existing owner, right? So I think it depends on your perspective. For me, the reality of a housing market that stays unaffordable, where the mortgage payment to income ratio stays at 40%, that's a much sadder reality, right? Than home prices crashing 20, 25%.

• 1:59:58Graham Stephan?

  What if you are wrong? And what if home prices just keep going up from here slowly? And you look back and you say, oh man, I didn't realize 2026 was the cheapest we ended up seeing.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Ultimately, you know, my opinion is fallible, right? Like, I don't, I'm not always right. So this is why I'm trying to like turn it over to data, right? So we have a forecast on Reventure for every zip code on Reventure app in the US, one year forward. And that's based on the fundamentals in the market. Inventory, days on market, price cuts, appreciation momentum. So I kind of feel like I'm not gonna miss it. Because I'm gonna see the data in the market before it happens, right? Like, for instance, yeah, prices are gonna go up 6% in Chicago over the next year. That's what our data is saying right now. So, you know, I would want a homebuyer in Chicago to know that if you wait a year, yeah, it's gonna be 6% more expensive next year. So, you know, I think it's about the data in your market. I am pulling for, not gonna lie, I am pulling for a national home price crash. But right now, we're not projecting that.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  We're only projecting like 1.5% decline nationally in the next year. But that's again, why data is so important. The housing market's emotional, what's gonna happen? Everyone has their own opinion. What's the actual numbers say? Inventory, days on market, home sales? That filters through the prices.

• 2:01:14Jack Selby?

  Yeah, do you have any questions for us?

• 2:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I would love to know about, you know, the operation you guys have with the podcast and the respective YouTube channels. Like, you know, how much time does that take, like running this podcast? Like, and what are your goals for it? Like, in the future? And do you have like other ideas for more YouTube channels? Or is it like what you guys have now is kind of, is what it is?

• 2:01:37Graham Stephan?

  Hey, everybody. So we actually messed up. I'm watching this back in the edit and we went really off topic. Like, it has nothing to do with real estate at all for the next 45 minutes. So we're gonna cap off the episode here. But if you wanna see topics on YouTube, the algorithm, some of our business strategy, we'll keep it up for the channel members. So you guys can watch it, just feel free to join. Otherwise, probably best we ended off here. Thank you so much for watching and until next time.

• 2:02:03Jack Selby?

  I watched Bitcoin fall 50% in a 10-hour period. And I was on the couch curled up in a ball and like saying to my now-wife, I think our net worth might go to zero today. Bitcoin is a resilient asset that is really serving as global insurance. And so anytime that there's chaos in the world, there's gonna be people who run to Bitcoin. In one sentence, what is your strongest argument for Bitcoin? They will never ever stop printing money. There's two assets you need for the future we're headed towards, Bitcoin and AI.

• 2:02:28Graham Stephan?

  Is it too late to buy Bitcoin?

• 2:02:30Jack Selby?

  Bitcoin is going to continue to go up for the rest of our lives because the politicians are gonna print money for the rest of our lives.

• 2:02:35Graham Stephan?

  So do you think then meme coins are bad for the overall market of Bitcoin?

• 2:02:42Jack Selby?

  If you were to take one guess at who Satoshi is, who would you say?

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