This Month in Real Estate Investing, May 2025 (Dominance, Collapse, Fraud Firestorms, & Powerplays)

Transcript

[Crystal Stranger]
Hello and welcome. My name is Crystal Stranger and I am filling in for James Brown here on this month in real estate investing. So happy to be with you today.

We have a super exciting show. We’re going to be talking about the recession fears and how this is shaking investors and go into how you can profit from the coming recession, right? Because challenging times always means plenty of opportunity.

We also are going to dive into how LA is freezing evictions again and they’re halting rent collections because of the fire. So how do you protect from these issues as a landlord? One more major item that you got to hang around and check out is Congress has introduced a bill to stop foreign adversaries from buying U.S. land. So how is this going to affect the U.S. real estate markets? You will hear from me and our illustrious guests today as we discuss this topic and all the news, everything you may have missed this month in real estate. If you weren’t, you know, paying attention, right?

I’m not always paying attention. And this is great to dive in here and get to see all these items. So let’s start the show.

All right, before we jump into the show and do introductions, I want to share some exciting news. All U.S. real estate investor content is now also streaming on Real Estate on Air FM at EXPs realestateonair.fm. So if you want to check out a new streaming location, you can go there and view that. Now, let me introduce some of our amazing guests we have today.

First of all, we have Tapan Trivedi. Tapan has over 14 years of investing experience, focusing on short sales and rehabs. He’s also transformed this knowledge more recently into a company providing data analytics to help investors find the right locations to invest.

So Tapan, I’m super happy to have you here. Do you want to say a little bit about that for a moment and tell everyone about wheretoinvest.io?

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yes, thank you for having me, first of all. This is so much fun. Early Saturday morning, nothing else to do because we are entrepreneurs, right?

That’s what we do. And so, yeah, so wheretoinvest.io, there’s roughly one third of the U.S. population right now, 110 million in about 180 metro areas out of 380 where buying a home or buying a rental locally does not make any sense cashflow-wise or safety-wise. For example, where I live in Sacramento, California, if you have $100,000 to invest, you can buy one house with cashflow like 300 bucks a month.

But if you take the same and go to Ohio, you can literally have $3,000 a month in net cashflow coming in. So it’s not even a contest. Most people don’t invest, like 93% of all real estate investments are local within one hour driving distance of the primary homeowner’s residence.

And it’s because we just don’t know what’s going on out there. So our data allows you to confidently make a decision in like two minutes, within two minutes. Anything listed on Zillow, realtor.com, if it looks like a decent, you just drop the address in and apply our methodology and within two minutes, you’ll be able to tell whether it’s a good place to invest or not.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s super exciting. I’ve played a lot on different data platforms. I used to get a lot of my data off Esri.

I don’t know if you ever used that, but I used to go in and do like their map search and pull a lot of- Esri was one of the data providers that we looked at.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah. Yeah. So I used to love that.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
And that’s the thing, it’s just- Yeah. There’s so much data out there.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Everybody knows how to put it out there. Yeah. So it’s like, what do you need to make the decision quickly?

And then there’s one major competitor that we have and they raise their prices. And I kid you not, this is the thing that can happen in data platforms, 43 times.

[Crystal Stranger]
Wow.

[Tapan Trivedi]
43X. They used to be X and 43X. And they’re located close to where you are actually.

[Crystal Stranger]
Wow.

[Tapan Trivedi]
So yeah, they’re from Los Angeles.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s going to, that’s definitely going to change the demographic of who’s buying it. They must be shifting from kind of a B2C to B2B business model then if they’re making that shift. But yeah, it’s super interesting.

Definitely. I want to hear more about that as we’re going here, but before we do, I got to introduce Dave Seymour. I’m so excited to be hosting this and have you on the show.

You have no idea. I mean, flipping Boston, I think it was a little underrated actually of all the shows out there. And, but it really was, I think the most believable and realistic, like the nitty gritty of what it is, not the sugar coated, like we went out and we bought this house.

Look, we put a little lipstick on it and made $150,000. Like that’s not, that’s not super realistic. Like you guys got in there and like got your hands dirty and it was kind of amazing.

But then you also recently have made this amazing shift to Freedom Venture where, you know, from what I’ve seen about that, now you’re working with hedge funds and large investors and bringing that knowledge, that down to earth knowledge. And I just think that’s amazing. I want to hear about this.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, Tapan said something pretty interesting, when you first started talking and you said, you know, Saturday morning, nothing else to do, that’s what entrepreneurs do, right? So entrepreneurism is a terminal illness that will take your time, it’ll take your sleep, and it will reward you over and over and over again. And yeah, look, Freedom Venture Investments is, as it stands today, is pretty much a private equity firm, raising capital, deploying that capital into, you know, a couple of different areas, primarily Southwest Florida.

And, you know, that transition from, you know, the construction guy that you met on Flip in Boston, that transition from that world, that environment, you know, to where we are today, dealing with, you know, millions of dollars and, you know, tens of millions in many examples is, you know, it’s born out of entrepreneurism, it’s born out of challenge. You know, for me, I can flip a house with my eyes closed, as long as I get it for the right price on the buy side, it’s, you know, it doesn’t, doesn’t get my heart rate up anymore. So I’m always looking for a challenge, I’m looking for, you know, Delta opportunity.

And, you know, that’s how Freedom Venture came about. And in alliance with that, you know, the education arm of Legacy Alliance, has been a really exciting project as well, because I’ve got a pretty heavy background in the education space. And it feels really good to bring all of those years of experience and put it out there for investors to be able to get the right data, right, the right information, the right strategies, learn them, deploy them, and potentially partner.

So yeah, it’s an exciting time for us right now.

[Crystal Stranger]
It is. It’s that sounds super exciting. And, you know, one of the things that, that I thought was so interesting, when I added you on LinkedIn, in your education section, you wrote that your your education is the school of life.

And I think it’s so amazing now that you’ve taken that into this hedge fund world, because it’s like another example of that, like from like the tech world, it’s so common in SF to be, you know, the like, you know, hands on entrepreneur than going on to run, like CEO of multi million dollar companies. But I feel like you don’t see that as much in other industries. And there really is, you know, demand for common sense, that at one point, thank you.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there’s a valuable Yeah, there’s a lot of, and I, I think you guys will agree, right? You know, prior to us starting the stream today, you know, it was like, hey, you want to stream this to your social media, right?

Do you want to stream this to your audience? And if we look at the society in which we live today, common sense fundamentals, I’m going to get a little political decency, a lot of these things fall through the cracks, right? Because he or she who makes the most noise becomes the expert.

And just because you’ve got a huge marketing budget, and you make a lot of noise, it doesn’t necessarily mean that common sense is at play doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, the fundamental look in the in the capital raising world, I have one job, and that’s not to lose the money and to be a steward of my investors capital, whether they’re hedge fund type guys, high net worth family offices, or whether it’s Joe Blow, the business owner has just got maybe two or 300 grand that, you know, Joe wants to put to work.

So I cannot, and will not afford the opportunity of, look at all the money, my private jet, and my Rolls Royce and all of that BS. I’m not playing. I’m not playing.

It’s not.

[Crystal Stranger]
I can’t wait to hear your opinion on some of these news stories.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I regularly tell my daughter that if you ever be doing something like that, like, just do something because aliens have abducted my body and something’s going on.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, it’s it’s amazing, right? So at the end of the day, we we are salesmen and women, right? I sell something.

And how I approach that sale depends on my look, I don’t, I’m not in a world of tearing somebody else down to build me up. I just I don’t want to play that game. I’m too old to fight in that sandbox, right?

I don’t have to get in the ring and throw mud around. But when I when I’m sitting in a world where I see everything is the cell, the hook is based on greed is based on, you know, beating somebody else down. I don’t it doesn’t sit well with me.

You know, I’ve kind of put myself in a position where, you know, especially in this these high net worth worlds, it’s like, some of them don’t like to see me coming, because I’m a blue collar guy in a white collar world. And I your opinion doesn’t matter. Other people’s opinions of me and none of my business.

I’m almost 60 years old. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I don’t care.

I don’t care. I don’t care if you came from Harvard. I don’t care if you come from Yale.

I don’t care if you’re the you’re the best SaaS service provider that walks the face of the earth. Your leverage is not your leverage. Your leverage is can somebody put their hand up and say, I trusted you, I trusted your service, it executed, you did what you said you were going to do.

And we all did well. If that’s who you are, welcome. If you’re money, private jets, you know, Rolls Royces, sitting by the swimming pool with a couple of bikini honeys.

Stop it. Stop it, you donkey. Stop it.

That’s not the way to turn. So yeah, I didn’t have to go get my soapbox. I’ll be right back.

You got me going already.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. All right. Well, let’s, let’s actually, can we can we jump ahead and jump into?

Well, let’s jump into the news stories. We’ll cover them in order. Let’s do this.

Let’s enjoy all this because like we could just talk all day, I think. And, you know, this would be great. So hopping in on our first news story of this month is recession red alert.

America’s economy shrink sparks panic among property investors who the, you know, scary, scary times announcement, big headline, everyone’s losing their shirts. So the summary here is as fears of recession tighten their grip on the U.S. economy, property investors are bracing for impact. GDP contraction, rising tariffs, demographic shifts and shaky financial policy have sent market signals into chaos.

Construction costs are climbing, interest rates remain high, and investor confidence is cracking. Still smart investors are fighting back, pivoting towards defensive strategies, stockpiling cash reserves and focusing on stable rental income with threats to affordability and shifting demographics, reshaping demand. The housing market is in flux.

The storm may be fierce, but for those who stay nimble and alert, 2025 could unlock rare opportunities for long-term wealth. So, I mean, first of all, I don’t know about you guys. I mean, I’m sure both of you have a lot of experience with, you know, flipping and different things in the real estate market.

And, you know, real estate’s one of those things where you can make money good times, you can make money bad times, you can make money flat times. It’s not as volatile, in my opinion, as say the stock market or talked about cryptocurrencies earlier before we got started here. You want to talk about volatility, like that’s where you can really lose your shirt or, you know, get a thousand X.

But from my experience, real estate isn’t like that. There’s so many different ways that you can invest. The key is just to find the right one for the time period.

So what do you guys think of these challenges that are on the horizon that people are reacting to? You know, what would you think are good ways to benefit and profit from this? Because challenges always have opportunity, right?

[Dave Seymour]
Japan, go for it, man.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Right, let’s do this. Here’s the deal, okay? First of all, this is on May 9th, just four days back, JPMorgan dropped from the possibility of a recession from 60% to 40%. And I have this open right here, because I knew this was coming. But the deal is, if you’re investing for long-term growth, then a recession is just a blip, right?

I mean, and quite frankly, most of us would be happier if you’re talking about asset purchasers, right, as ourselves as asset purchasers. Like Dave said earlier, in real estate, you make money when you buy, and then you do everything in your power not to lose it until you implement the exit strategy. So during a recession, a lot of things are on sale.

So if you’re cash heavy, like a lot of people are saying, you know, you can just transform your asset from one to the next. And essentially, that’s what we’re doing, right? I mean, exchanging one form of assets to the next, to the next, to the next.

And you know, once you have like your five to 10 houses, you change it into your nice little hotel or some sort of apartment syndication or whatever. But during the recession, don’t wait for it either if you’re investing long-term. But at the same time, because you know, this recession fears have been around since 22.

Ever since we got out of COVID, there was still like, all throughout COVID, there was also a recession fears is going to happen, it’s not going to happen. But at that point, we had no idea what to do. But once we came out of COVID, that’s an absolute flashpoint that we can say, okay, and we had fears at that point, too.

But nothing happened. So what, three years people shouldn’t invest, right?

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah, I’ve always seen fear as opportunity. It’s like, where there’s risk and where other people are afraid, that’s the time to buy, right? You buy when people are fearful, sell when they’re greedy.

[Dave Seymour]
That’s a Buffett quote, when everybody else is greedy. Buffett quote, yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah, but it applies to real estate even more than to stocks.

[Dave Seymour]
It’s a lot more graphic. We look at, you know, you’re going to love this. Don’t go asking me for what the data points are, because that’s not my part of the business.

My part of the business is to do what we’re doing today. But, you know, a lot of those data points really tell us, you know, where to deploy capital. So, you know, I talk about, we’ll use multifamily, right?

Commercial real estate. During a recessionary period, we’re probably not focusing on retail, right? We’re not focusing on, you know, your average strip mall, for obvious reasons.

If we say it’s a recession environment, then that discretionary spending isn’t as prevalent as it was, you know, at the high times, for example. So where do you go, right? As an investor, if you’ve got any financial intelligence, you know that capital wants to move.

It doesn’t want to sit still. It wants to be in motion. So if capital is not in motion because it’s riddled with fear, it’s losing money, you know, in the inflationary environment.

If you’re, you know, sitting in a 3%, 4% and you think you’re doing okay, you’re probably, you know, devaluing the value of that dollar every day, sitting still just in the inflationary environment. So, you know, all of that, those pieces of education come into play. So the question always needs to be begged.

Well, if I’m that individual, if I’m that, you know, the high earner, whatever the case may be, I’m that accredited investor. You know, I’m sitting on a 401k plan that’s, you know, been ripping me off for 25, 30 years. You know, what do I do?

What do I do in a recession? What do I do to velocitize my capital? What do I do?

What do I do? And, you know, we talked about a little bit, there’s all kinds of shiny objects out there. I don’t want, nor am I interested in shiny objects.

I like fundamentals. I like what I call the Clydesdale of real estate invested, multifamily, slow and steady, repetitive, not overly risky, because the number one bill, or expense that statistically gets paid first in all environments is housing, right? We still got to, we need a roof over our heads.

What that housing looks like depends on where we are in the market cycles, buyers one, two, three, and four, you know, sellers one, two, three, and four. Where are we? What phase are we going through?

And being able to identify that. And I think a lot of, again, I’ll defer to you on data, Tapan, but, you know, I can only, I’m not going to use the word predict, because it’s not predictions, they’re based on proformas and experience, but I can determine and begin to feel a market based on my experience, right? The past will always predict what my future is going to look like.

So when it comes to recessionary periods, let’s go back to, you know, 2007, eight, nine, 10. I was in the business. I was a short sale loan modification individual and learned that investment strategy, learned it well, got traction with it.

You know, so today, recession, no recession. For me, I don’t care. I’m going to buy a piece of real estate.

I’m going to reposition that piece of real estate. I’m going to give tenants decent, clean, affordable housing. I might not make as much as I thought I would because of, you know, rental challenges, whether they’re stabilizing, whether they’re reducing a little.

But if I’m on the right side of the buy every time, I’m going to be okay. So look, a recession is a recession. What does that mean in a community?

It differs. It differs by community. You know, LA has a different recessionary experience than, you know, New Jersey.

[Crystal Stranger]
There’s some areas that have been in depression for 50 years, you know, I mean, it can be very regional. I mean, there’s some areas that don’t seem like they’re ever really touched for it, you know, because there’s always high desirability, no matter what else is going on. So there’s certainly a lot of regionality, but I do love that slow and steady approach.

It’s like, you’re the Benjamin Graham of real estate investing.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, yeah. Take it easy, man. Take it easy.

[Crystal Stranger]
So we have fundamental and technical investing here. I love it.

[Tapan Trivedi]
No, but we actually agree. So the method that I have to evaluate a location, it goes size, economy, crime, residence, real estate, equity and cashflow, team building, and then swings and trends. So the first five are all fundamentals.

You evaluate for the fundamentals first, and then you go ahead and see which way the wind is blowing. Because a lot of times, and this is where we agree on the fact that, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, the rents are increasing out there, and the property values are falling and this and that. Yeah, don’t.

So what? I mean, your property values are falling phenomenally, but crime is increasing. So do you want to invest there?

Right. Go with the fundamentals first. Make sure that it’s the right size.

It is that it has enough industries that if one industry goes down, it doesn’t take down the entire metro area with it.

[Dave Seymour]
Detroit.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I mean, go with the fundamentals first. No. Detroit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And for what it’s worth, to Detroit’s mayor’s credit, Detroit only has about 28% in auto industry now. So if an entire auto creation industry goes down, Detroit is still okay.

And because they made a concentrated effort in the last two decades to attract more investments there.

[Crystal Stranger]
But yeah, that is definitely one of the things that- They also demolished entire blocks of slums and things like that. He did a lot of things.

[Dave Seymour]
It’s interesting. That whole concept is re-gentrification. We’re going to take what doesn’t work and we’re going to change it and we’re going to…

We’re going to go on a tangent. I guess we’re just talking. We’ve experienced some of that here in the Boston market on the residential side.

We saw East Boston, Chelsea, Somerville. These are all burbs around Boston Central. And they used to be really tough hoods.

I mean, they were rough. The city of Chelsea went into receivership. I was actually working there as a special police officer many, many years ago.

So it was managed so badly that the state took over the city. And if you try to go to Chelsea today, you’re going to spend 750 to a million dollars for a two-bedroom condo. So what’s…

Again, to tie into recessionary, an experience for one person is very, very different for another depending on where they are economically. The yuppies in Boston are not going to feel the same recessionary environment that somebody working as a service provider, for example, in that same neighborhood. So we try and recession-proof how we invest.

We try. If you’re in retail, you try and get retail stores that are internet resistant. Barbers, nail salons, things like that.

We try and do the same thing in real estate to recession-proof ourselves as best we can. And for us, we focus on what’s called the I want to build and I want to rent to what we call workforce housing in the Florida market. That’s cops, that’s firefighters, that’s nurses.

That’s not the drink with the umbrella by the side of the gated community pool. That’s not where we invest with. So it’s a good conversation, but there’s a lot of clickbait.

[Crystal Stranger]
I mean, nurses and firefighters, they’re always going to have jobs, right? That’s not where the cuts are going to be. So that’s a good point of looking at your demographic and who you’re renting.

I think a thing about or an aspect of this that we haven’t really discussed or I don’t really hear anybody talking about is inflation and how it kind of is a double tax on real estate investors that you mentioned, like it came to mind because you mentioned like people having the safe and secure like three or 4%. Well, that three or 4%, you’re not actually making three or 4% because you’re paying tax on that. So you’re making maybe two or 3% on let’s say money in the bank.

And a lot of times real estate can be tax advantage depending how you invest it, what you do. But even at the time when it’s an asset and it’s going up in value and it’s a good store of value to own real estate, which I would say is a good reason actually to be buying real estate in the right areas, right? We’re all kind of saying the same thing here, like buying in the right areas that are safe, have reliable jobs for people, you’re going to have good solid tenants.

And I mean, it’s a great hedge for inflation. But eventually when you go and sell that property, if your property doubled in value because the currency dropped in half, you’re not really making money at the end of the day, you’re actually losing because you’re going to pay tax on that. So how do you guys approach that with your own investing going forward and how you think about that?

[Dave Seymour]
It’s tax deferment. Don’t ever sell real estate unless you have to. Let’s just be frank, right?

Let’s just be frank. We can mess around with it a little bit. You know, should I wait to buy real estate or should I buy real estate and wait?

That’s always been the question. The answer to that is pretty clear once you get some experience under your belt. I had an investor that came into one of my deals, incredibly intelligent guy working at a very well-known, highly visible insurance, title insurance company, probably a million plus base, plus commissions.

Let’s say 2.5 million, right? Not a bad way to earn a living, right? Selling insurance.

And he’d never done a deal before. And we were having this exact same conversation. And he’s like, you know, what’s the worst case scenario for my hundred thousand?

And I said to him, I said, look, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission says you can lose every dime. And I’m telling you right now, you can lose every penny that you put into a real estate transaction as a syndicated investor. I said, you know, if Dave and you are just shooting a breeze a little bit, you know, I tell you, you know, just get your money back.

I don’t know. I don’t know the truth to that answer. But what I do know is, is that, you know, if it’s sitting still, it might not do anything.

And he said to me, he’s like, well, if all I can do is get my money back, he said, I might as well leave it in the bank. And I was flabbergasted that that was the response. And there was conviction when he said it.

Again, highly intelligent, you know, degrees up the yin yang, you know, I don’t know whether he was from Yale, he wasn’t from jail, but you know, it was like, there was conviction in that education. There was conviction in that education. And I just said to him, I said, you know, in the bank, you’re earning two and a half, 3%.

You know, you can put it in a, you know, a CD, a certificate of deposit, otherwise known as a certificate of death to guys like us, right? You can put it in there. I said, but if you earn three, but inflation seven, what are you doing?

What are you doing? And it was like a moment of clarity.

[Tapan Trivedi]
The value of the money, yeah, right there.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, it’s that moment of clarity, but again, there’s so much info out there, which is bad.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah, go ahead. Risk tolerance is a whole different ball game, right? I mean, just because you have a lot of education doesn’t mean like somebody with your background, like a firefighter cop, you will have a lot more risk tolerance because you know, gut in your gut that this is not as bad as people think it is, right?

And a lot of people with all like degrees, they do have the analysis paralysis. So, you know, at one point you need to cut through all the noise and take action. That’s the thing you just said that once you have your first three or four properties, then you kind of understand in your nerves, what you’re doing, because still then, you’re just kind of swimming, barely keeping your head up.

But once you have that, then you can understand some, you see some forest for the trees. So that’s just my two cents. No, I would agree.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it’s one of those things where you have to be in the game to win it. I didn’t really invest, I introduced myself at the beginning very well, but you know, I bought my first house in 2002. So I’ve been in this game for a really long time, right?

And, you know, there were so many people over the years of like, you know, why don’t, why don’t you buy something like, you know, you’re moving somewhere new, it’s still affordable there. You know, why don’t you buy? Oh, I want to rent for a couple years, see if I really like it.

But by then, like most of the time, if you’re moving somewhere cool, you’re going to be priced out of the market. Right? So you got to like make those decisions and, you know, get in the game at some point, a lot of people are so risk averse, that they end up losing their money, just from not making decisions or not doing anything right.

[Dave Seymour]
And also a huge lack of education. Let’s just be frank, right?

[Crystal Stranger]
It is. It is.

[Dave Seymour]
Watch any watch any news media outlet, ignore whatever they’re saying on the news media outlet and stop paying attention to the commercials in between. Okay, start looking at the ads that we receive, bombarded into us, bombarded into us day after day after day. The one that I’m getting a chuckle on right now is Carl, the number one broker, right?

And his nemesis is Schwab. Right. And I’m Jimmy Joe numbnuts.

I’m sitting at home, and I’m listening to this commercial. And I’m like, okay, if I go to Schwab, they’re going to do better than any other broker out there. And then you start to look at the services that are given by every, every house out there.

There’s nothing, there’s no secret sauce. There’s no, you know, when you do better, we do better. Follow the green line, you idiot, and your life will be perfect.

I mean, for me, coming from that blue collar background, when I started to get educated in finance and real estate, etc, etc, there was like this whole new world that opened up to me. And I began to, I began to identify and see the predatory environments. So yeah, from a- I don’t know.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah. I mean, Carl sounds like he could be pulling some kind of Ponzi scheme right there. I like Schwab.

One really great benefit of Schwab is they let you take money out of any ATM worldwide with no transaction fees at prime rate.

[Dave Seymour]
So- How much are you saving?

[Crystal Stranger]
I save about $75 a month. $75 a month.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I’ll give you $75. Give me, give me your money. I’ll do better than Schwab.

A hundred percent.

[Crystal Stranger]
Better than Schwab, yeah.

[Tapan Trivedi]
All day long.

[Crystal Stranger]
All day long.

[Tapan Trivedi]
All day long. We can almost guarantee it.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Well, I mean- Allow me to, allow me to, there’s one more thing.

[Crystal Stranger]
More like an ATM card and things, you know, you got to have a bank account. Well, actually you don’t maybe anymore.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Dave, I’ve used this as an objection annihilation for a long time for people that bring up mutual funds. Do you know who John Boggle is?

[Dave Seymour]
I do. I know Jack Boggle. I’ve trained under Jack Boggle.

I love what he did with the 401k.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Right. So, so John basically created Vanguard. I don’t know if it’s, if it’s still the second or is the first, but a mutual fund in, in I guess the entire universe, our known universe.

But he wrote a phenomenal article that says that the entire mutual fund industry exists to rip off the customer. That had you not had the mutual fund industry, they would make, and I kid you not, 120% more over the lifetime of the investment. And that is somebody that is starting at 28 years invest, starting investing about 500 bucks a month at 28 years old.

And, and, and he just lays it down. And I always say like, you know, don’t listen to me, this guy.

[Crystal Stranger]
I have that article printed out and I just- I’m not talking about mutual funds versus real estate. I mean, you know, you gotta have money somewhere to be, you know, having cash, you know, storing money, moving it around from investment to investment. I mean, you know, we all have to be, be functional.

I don’t want to join the ranks of the unbanked, even though that’s quite a high percentage, I think in the U S right now. And I don’t think that’s, you know, going to help this advantage, but I, you know, let’s not, let’s not bash any other type of investing. Like all investing is good in its own ways at the right time.

[Dave Seymour]
No it’s not. No, that’s not a true statement. That is not a true statement. You just said all investing is good.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I have lost money. I have, I have heart, heartaches and heartburns against that statement.

I’ve actually like come up with things like…

[Crystal Stranger]
I mean, it got like at the right, at the right time and done the right way, you know, you gotta like have the time to invest. You gotta put your due diligence in, you have to do it well, but there’s always, there’s always ways to profit in all these many different kinds of investment. You know, we’ve just found one that we’re really good at and provide us a good way of life.

It doesn’t mean what someone else does necessarily.

[Dave Seymour]
So you said, you said something, you know, it’s not a, it’s not a backtrack. It’s a clarification, right? You said, I feel like I’m an attorney now.

Your Honor, you stipulate that the young lady in the stand said, you said, you know, your due diligence, your understanding, your perception of what it is that you’re doing. It is a fact that the number one retirement vehicle in the United States of America is the number one misunderstood retirement vehicle in the United States of America. I don’t care who I talk to.

If I ask them what they’re invested in, why they’re invested in it, what their return profile looks like, what they made last year, the year before, are they trending up? Are they trending down? They have no idea.

Really? They all signed up. They all signed up for the company 401k because everybody else signed up for the company 401k.

And to, to, to Pan’s point, if you research there’s a documentary that was, I don’t know, maybe late nineties, two thousands, maybe a little later than that. It was actually a PBS special and it was called…

[Tapan Trivedi]
The Retirement Gamble.

[Dave Seymour]
The Retirement Gamble. You can’t afford to retire. And they really delved down into that.

And that was the first time I got to experience Bogle. And then I started reverse engineering my own life into what I had done prior to releasing into the world of, of, of entrepreneurship. And I wanted to go back and punch a few individuals right in the chops for the BS that they had sold me.

But then I had that, again, a moment of clarity where I went, well, who’s it really on? Who’s responsible? And I remember one of my mentors early on said to me, David, if you don’t pay attention to your money, I promise you kid, somebody else will.

And that resonated with me. I understood that. I understood that compounding costs smash compounding returns, smash them, smash.

What does your broker take? What does the fund manager say? Oh, he takes, you know, 50 bits.

Okay. So I have a point. Okay.

What does that do over the time of an investment when we’re looking at compounding costs over compounding returns? So all of that conversation fueled me personally to be doing what I’m doing today. So, you know, I get, you know, you get a little shackles get up just a little bit, just a little bit.

And it’s not, it’s not, you know, it’s not at you. It’s at a system that has a bigger marketing budget than I do. Everybody who has money in a mutual fund, pays an advertising fee in their mutual fund to the fund managers, every single one of them.

And one would say, well, why am I paying an advertising fee so that they can drop X amount of millions of dollars at a Superbowl on a commercial to sell more 401ks to sell more mutual funds. And they’re doing it with your money in the first place. Huckalees, Huckalees, Huckalees, there’s a plan, right?

There’s a plan. So that gets a little angsty for me over time.

[Crystal Stranger]
I don’t know from, from my side though, from, you know, I’m a enrolled agent and I’ve been doing tax for many, many years. And the aspect that normally gets, gets me up in feathers about that is when people leave their jobs and they turn the 401k over and give them the distribution from it. And they don’t realize they have a 20% penalty tax on top of that suddenly being considered income.

Yeah.

[Dave Seymour]
They don’t advertise that on the way in.

[Crystal Stranger]
You know, 40% on that when it, when it comes in, they often don’t have a cost basis.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Now, you know, I’m going to go back to the, the, the, the, the documentary that you were talking about, uh, retirement gamble, the journalist, they, they, they showed that the default where they put your money in, people have no idea where it is. And he said that, you know, if you are in this particular location with this particular, and it was CalPERS for them, it was like, you will be in fidelity. And the journalist went and looked for his own.

And he was like, it is exactly what this guy said. And it was like, I am down 42%. And I had no idea.

Right. And this is the guy who is actually making a documentary.

[Crystal Stranger]
So all right, well, let’s, let’s move on and talk about the next news. We can get in, we can get into more excitement of talking about, you know, all these scams and people taking advantage of money. But the next one is, uh, is actually the only slightly real estate related.

It’s the Alexander brothers who are luxury real estate brokers face new charges in New York. So I don’t know if you guys know about these guys. I guess they were on TV at one point, uh, Oren and Tal Alexander with their brother, Elon are facing additional sex trafficking charges in New York.

Uh, it was kind of interesting. I, uh, so it’s a small, very, very small world. I lived in LA and, you know, partied with the umbrella private jet type for quite a many years.

And, uh, Oren, I actually knew is like a friend of a friend. So I I’m like, you know, surprised, but you know, he also like, you know, I mean, that kind of crowd, like people can, you know, be the super hot kind of douchey kind, and then they can go down very dark rabbit holes when they get a little older. So it doesn’t surprise me that much either to, uh, to be, uh, to be honest.

But, uh, it’s, it’s crazy. The new indictment was actually for human trafficking or sex trafficking. And I was reading, I was reading into some of this though, and, you know, it’s kind of funny, like what, um, what goes is that, and this is maybe a cautionary tale for anyone in that jet set lifestyle, that the sex trafficking charges are from FBI wire tapping, where they were looking at their phones as they were talking about, um, flying a bunch of women down to Tulum for like a party they were having there. And, you know, it’s kind of crazy, like things that can seem a little innocent on their surface. If you’re, you know, saying kind of douchey things and messages, whether or not there’s any truth behind it can definitely be read into it, uh, that, you know, in kind of sketchy ways.

[Tapan Trivedi]
So, um, yeah, I’m, I, uh, you know, there probably is some truth behind it with 60 different sections of selling luxury real estate, like we, we, we try to make sure that we, we, we put up PPMs with big bold letters and we are, we are in such a different space than these guys, all of us. And it’s like, when it comes to that, there’s gotta be a lot of, you know, evaluation points. Oh, maybe I should stop here.

Maybe I should stop here. Maybe I should stop here, but, you know, break through all of them and keep going. I don’t know.

Maybe you should, you deserve this.

[Crystal Stranger]
This is not flashing the money around. They’re invincible at a certain point. Yeah.

[Dave Seymour]
I saw this kind of crap in the, uh, in the TV world. Um, you know, the reality TV world, it’s kind of, kind of mirrors some of that, you know, million dollar listing and real housewives of wherever, right. Basketball housewives.

You’ve got all of this, this garbage that is consistently being fed through the, uh, for the, you know, the, the TV. And, um, you know, you would see people with humility, start this journey, um, get a little fame, little traction and turn into idiots. I mean, I watched, I watched one young lady come in.

She was with us at a couple of events in Las Vegas. And, um, she was super humble. Her mom was at this event and her mom and I were shooting the breeze.

I think she was from the Midwest, this young lady, super humble, you know, the TV stuff goes on a trajectory. And I think it was eight months later, I see a show up again at an event and she’s got a freaking poodle or a B.J. on free say or something under her arm. She’s got a Gucci.

How do you do on the other arm? She’s got a couple of, you know, entourage people taking notes. And it’s like, what is going on?

Where is, where is the faith? Where is, where is, where is goodness in all of this silliness? So I said to me one time, if you’re a, if you’re an a-hole and you’re broke, you’re just a bigger a-hole when you got money.

It’s, you know, it’s, um, it will uncover the truth.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Money is a magnifier.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, it’s a magnifier brother. For sure. For sure.

So I don’t have any patience or tolerance for those people.

[Tapan Trivedi]
So I hope they get whatever’s coming to I feel compelled to just one thing. Um, literally after I got 1.2 times my expenses done, I quit everything to pursue a dream. And I did stand up comedy as my full-time thing for three years.

That’s awesome. I absolutely loved it. Um, but, but the point I’m trying to make is, uh, I traveled with Robin Williams for 14 shows.

I’m not with him, the whole thing. Talking about partying, there’s nobody that can genuinely tell you about the horrors of as he can. And, uh, he basically the first time that I traveled with him for six shows, I came back a whole different person because at that time I’m like, Oh, I’m going to do this, have fun.

This, that it’s not a big deal. And then when you listen to him, it was like, Oh yeah, these things can happen. So I’m like, I am not, I have done the next eight shows that I did with him where I sort of learned the craft, show me what it is.

And it was a lot more focused on tape the shows and, and, and, and, and get feedback and this and that and all those things. So I grew a lot with my craft at that point. But the point is, that’s why I said that, you know, there’s, there’s always when you’re, when you’re going into that, that, that rabbit hole life presents you with, should I be doing this?

And you just blow through all of those. This is why this, this happens.

[Dave Seymour]
So I, yeah, I got, I got sober at the age of 23. I’m now 58 to do the math. It’s been like 35 years for me without a drink, a drug, a mood, a mind altering substance.

So when I ended up, when I ended up in, you know, that world, the Vegas world, I can’t tell you, it would, it would happen quite frequently. You know, I’d be getting some sunshine at five in the morning and somebody from the environment in which I was in.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Talking about mind altering substances. Let me get some coffee.

[Dave Seymour]
They’d be like, I can’t, I can’t drink anymore, Dave. Can you, can you help me out? You know, I woke up in the wrong place.

[Crystal Stranger]
The funny thing about it though, is like money is often like an enabler for that kind of attitude. It’s like, you know, my mom used to say like people who are poor are just weird, but people who are rich, they’re eccentric. Right.

So people like put up with it, they enable it, they allow them to do it. And, you know, it becomes that like rollercoaster people have to stay on. With that in mind, I think we should talk about the next one of these, which is the next news clip is real estate developer admits 13 million years long investment fraud.

So this is another similar type of story, but on the other end of that spectrum, where a 75 year old Hudson Valley developer, Barry Breiman orchestrated $13 million investment fraud, luring over 30 victims into fictional Latin American real estate projects. So it’s interesting. I did a bit of research on this and Barry Breiman actually was a legitimate promoter of these Latin American real estate investments for many, many years.

And then in 2018, his real investments started to go downhill. And to save them, he started selling full on fake partnership interests in properties. One was like a business park in Costa Rica.

Another one was, I think, a big multifamily investment in Puerto Rico and completely fabricated with fake brochures, fake everything when I researched into this. So I thought, wow, that’s really the other end of the spectrum, right? When someone’s so used to having that money and power, they can’t let it go.

They can’t honestly fess up to it. What do you guys think goes on when people just lose it like that? Because this isn’t the standard Ponzi scheme where people kind of set out to do fraud.

This was someone who was legit and shifted gears.

[Dave Seymour]
Bernie Madoff is the name we all know. Bernie just took what you described and put it on steroids. Because if you research Bernie and what he did and how he did it, he started legit.

He started legit. Now something happened. I’m not going to say any more than that.

I don’t know. Something happened where the results business became more important than the fundamentals that we’ve talked about, especially in that world. So when pride and ego become the dominant forces in anyone’s life, it’s a formula for what you’ve described here.

Ego, E-G-O, stands for Ease God Out, right? As soon as somebody thinks that their greatness is superior to anything else, you’re in trouble, dude. You’re in trouble.

So something like that hurts my heart because it shites all over our industries, right? It cracks all over our industries. Real estate is a scam.

We’ll hear it over and over and over again. And it’s because of individuals like that, not knowing their true value.

[Tapan Trivedi]
At one point, you got to be willing to shut it down. So Dave, 2013, 2014, in Sacramento, California, I ran a hard money lending fund. And I basically pooled the money and had private investors.

And we were able to give them 10, 11, 12% returns. It’s because until that time, flipping and especially doing second loans safely for construction was a genuine business. But basically the profits started evaporating simply because the margins just weren’t there.

And we started seeing deals, people, the flippers started bringing us deals. I’m like, this is not going to pencil. This is not going to happen.

So basically we had to give our money back to our investors saying, this is the extent that we can take you and safely give you what we promised we would. But now the market does not, and I don’t have the ability to do that. I’ve had to do that before too.

That’s what I always say. If nothing else, I have zero problem going back and watching TV. Not that I’m a big fan, but I would rather watch TV than do that.

That makes sense.

[Crystal Stranger]
I have to say though, on this one, I feel like it was a real lack of creativity in a sense to do these fake paper profits because I used to live in Costa Rica. I still have property there and you can get real fake companies very easily. You could have bought actual land and just not had really anything come out of it and not been in trouble because a lot of things do go bad.

He just must’ve been really bad at covering his tracks as a piece of it too. But it is a shame. It does give us all a bad name and it’s hard.

It’s hard when you face those moments and do that. We got to get to the break. So let’s talk about one more of these news pieces here that is interesting.

I hope this spreads to more states. Missouri eliminates capital gains tax. Investors tax-free windfall on property sales.

I have to say that headline I’m not so crazy about because it’s not really tax-free. You still have federal taxes. It’s in the US.

So that headline there leaves a little bit to be determined in my opinion, but it is still helpful and beneficial that Missouri’s decision to eliminate capital gains tax ignited a financial firestorm for property investors in Kansas City and St. Louis with Senate Bill 46 poised to take effect in 2025. Now all individual capital gains, including profits on property, stocks, and even cryptocurrency will be exempt from state income tax. So what do you guys think about this?

I mean, I’ve seen it go in the other direction in other states where New Mexico has been talking about getting rid of their exemption for tax on selling residential property. So it could go either way in different states, but that’s a pretty bold move in Missouri. Do you think that’s going to encourage people to invest there more?

[Dave Seymour]
I’m reading the one sheet as we’re talking here and I focus on, however, critics warn of serious consequences, lost public funding, increased market volatility, and potential wealth wrecking missteps for unprepared investors navigating this uncharted and rapidly evolving landscape. Again, I’m going to go back. Fundamentals 101, buy right, whether I’ve got no tax or high tax, run the numbers, understand the valuation of the deal that you’re looking at, get educated on the market.

Number one rule of investing is know your market, know the taxation, know the mill rates, what’s the residential mill rate, what’s a commercial mill rate, know what it is, put it in as a line item, understand that some numbers are going to change. What’s your fudge factor in any one of these deals? So for me, it doesn’t make me want to run to Missouri and invest.

I look again, I’m a line item guy.

[Crystal Stranger]
What is your fudge factor normally? I want to know what margin do you need? What makes it attractive to you?

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, look, when I underwrite, even on a single family property, I’ll underwrite anywhere between seven to 10% of a fudge factor on my numbers. I just throw that in there. Sometimes that fudge factor is not used and we’re good and we made a little more.

Sometimes it’s exhausted in the first week. It just is what it is. In the commercial world, go ahead.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I can give you some secondhand knowledge. I have a student who has burned, I want to say at least 40 duplexes, fourplexes in the St. Louis area. And last year they had significant hailstorms.

Like the city went crazy. So what happened is that the insurance prices went up significantly. Had he not burned his properties, he would be hurting a lot more right now, as are a lot of people.

So people are, there’s a fire sale going on St. Louis at least right now in a lot of properties. So the thing is they’re trying to attract people. Otherwise I think they have certain neighborhoods, certain blocks especially that would kind of go, they will have to be down.

So they have the entire state. I don’t think they’re just looking at St. Louis.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s interesting that people are selling them.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Basically that means that if cashflow is shrinking.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah. Because I mean, for me, like- At one point it’s like, why do I have this? I was going to say we had the same thing happen with a couple of our properties.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Cashflow is shrinking. So this would make it more- I think in St. Louis. I have a delay.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep jumping in and you’re still talking because I don’t think you can hear me there.

[Dave Seymour]
I’m still listening to your intro from an hour ago.

[Crystal Stranger]
No, what I was going to say though is like the insurance thing is a big deal.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Apparently Dave was on some flipping show or something, I understand.

[Dave Seymour]
I don’t know, whatever. I thought this was stand up. Let’s just go to- Take out the brick back, man. I like my wood wall better than your brick BS, bro.

Let me tell you, wood’s where it’s at. This is not brick, this is clean, man. I know.

This is on a four by eight sheet that just dangles and hangs off the wall. We all got game.

[Tapan Trivedi]
We are flipping a property to know how to make a focal wall look awesome.

[Dave Seymour]
That’s right. That’s right.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. All right. So on that, let’s actually do go to break and we can all come back in just a second.

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[Crystal Stranger]
All right. Thank you, Accelerated Capital for sponsoring this show. We are all here to accelerate our investments, right?

Yeah. So before we hop onto the next news show, I’ll touch quickly on that last issue we raised about insurance prices because I think this is a huge issue on U.S. property right now. I know that we’ve sold two of our properties in the last couple of years because the insurance rates skyrocketed.

They just skyrocketed on another property of ours. I don’t think we’re going to sell it, but the two we sold were actually really easy to sell because one of them was in Colorado, the other was in a mountain town in New Mexico, and it was quite easy because they’re desirable areas. But I’m wondering like how long that’s going to go on for until buyers start looking at that more closely and really taking that into consideration on affordability, especially as interest rates rise.

So I’d like to hear from you guys a little bit about that because I think it’s super interesting and timely.

[Dave Seymour]
Look, for us, it’s a case of educating sellers. If you’ve got an uneducated seller, it doesn’t matter what any cost of anything is if the seller believes X, Y, Z is the valuation, right? So when you can show a seller what the true expense is to buy that asset from them, commercial or residential, you’re maybe not going to get all the deals that you want.

You might have to underwrite 200 to get one instead of 100 to get one. And if that’s the case, do the work. Don’t be lazy.

Don’t be the lazy investor. It’ll be okay. No, it won’t be okay.

Insurance costs are not a small line item, no more than taxes are or expenses of any kind of nature.

[Crystal Stranger]
How do you fudge for that though? How are you planning for that as these costs are going to increase? Because these costs are increasing not just from events like we talked about, that’s one big issue, but they’re also increasing because replacement costs are increasing, right?

Which should be driving up house prices, but I don’t think have as much as the replacement costs have gone up a lot of places.

[Dave Seymour]
When you put it like that, Crystal, I think I’m going to quit.

[Crystal Stranger]
I don’t mean to quit. I don’t mean to scare you.

[Dave Seymour]
I’d say I do it like that for a reason, right? Because the way that you presented that is the way that the majority of the information is presented. And it creates an immediate fear factor, right?

What are you going to do? How are you going to fudge for the unknown in the future? Whether it’s coming from you on this call or it’s coming from any other source of information that’s out there, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist.

What I am saying is do your due diligence and work. How many insurance quotes have you got? How many insurance agents are out there fighting for you?

Can you facilitate multiple insurers on one asset? Ask me if that’s possible. Yes.

Welcome to Florida, right? So there will always be a way to get a deal done safely. Whether it gets done safely or not, I have no idea because I know that there are people who have purchased deals that we’ve passed on because we pass for insurance reasons.

We pass for this reason, that reason. Somebody else can take that extra risk profile. I don’t have to and I’m not taking my investors on that journey with me, right?

Does that mean I get it right every time?

[Crystal Stranger]
You make it sound so scary, but then you’re not buying these deals also because of that. So come on, don’t pick on me about it, Dave.

[Dave Seymour]
No, it’s not that I’m not buying those deals, right? There is a blanket statement that is made consistently, right? Real estate’s a scam.

Insurance is too high. Taxes don’t make any sense. Nobody can do this.

There’s none of this. There’s none of that. I did a call earlier on this week and it was with a high power broker out of Manhattan and his business partner was in New Canaan, Connecticut.

And we went at it a little bit. We had a little rumble in the jungle and it was good. It was good.

He came armed with some statistics that would undermine our thesis. And I was excited that he did that because what I was able to do was simply say, and the same thing in this conversation is, this isn’t for everybody. Real estate investing is not for everybody.

If the negativity in them, and I’m not coming at you, Crystal, you’re on my side, right? I’ll give you a big hug right now. I feel bad. I’m giving you a virtual hug. Thank you. Yes.

My goal is not to make anybody- You’re a messenger here. We can sell good, right? The challenge is this, is that messaging in the marketplace, if that’s the only thing that’s absorbed and listened to, and again, it goes full circle into the Schwab and the fidelity and all of that noise that’s made, it’s hard to then get this message out there, right?

Watch, listen. There are always deals to be done safely. They might not be in the primary markets.

They might be in the secondary and tertiary markets where we find pockets of need outside of the big picture. We can go macro all day long. Let’s go macro, macro, macro.

How about going a little micro? What if you went to a local insurance broker? What if you went to a local bank?

What if you went to a credit union? What if you started going in those places? He’s going, hallelujah.

What if you go to those places rather where everybody else goes? If you start to think that way, or more importantly, get educated that way, now you got a chance to make a living in this business. That’s all I’m saying.

[Crystal Stranger]
I think also some of these can be signs that things are going to increase a lot soon, because usually in the past, when I’ve seen that replacement values get above the value of housing costs, it usually is a sign that the housing market’s going to take a big jump, and it has to, to keep up with inflation.

[Tapan Trivedi]
It’s another- When you talk about going micro, now you’re talking my language because our data literally gives you exact insight into actual known neighborhoods. We don’t go zip codes, and we also give you geographic data. If there’s one house right next to each other, but they are on two separate levels, this house, the one that’s at a higher level, will have a lesser insurance cost than the one downstream- At a lower level.

For obvious reason, things flow down. If something happens to this house, yeah. Insurance, I guess the actuaries, they actually know all these things, right?

They have satellite pictures and all these things, and they know all these things.

[Crystal Stranger]
Your data provides data on that, where you’re not sideswiped in a deal when you’re doing due diligence. Maybe you can find out information on that to give you advantage before you even make the offer. That’s pretty cool.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Hence, the company is called Where to Invest.

[Crystal Stranger]
Where to Invest.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Ready on the nose.

[Dave Seymour]
I have no idea what you do.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s what you do. That’s super cool. No, I like that.

That’s a very useful piece of tool there. I think that’s super interesting. Let’s move on to the next one, which is equally fearful and depressing.

Don’t get on my case about this. I’m just reading the news, okay? It’s how to protect your home from a rapidly growing real estate scam.

From 2019 to 2023, over 58,000 Americans were scammed out of $1.3 billion in a fast-growing real estate deed fraud scheme that targets vacant or unmonitored homes. Criminals use forged documents to illegally transfer ownership, often going unnoticed until tax bills stop arriving. I was reading about this.

It talks here about Florida, but Dave, a lot of the other places where this is being done that were showing up for me with Boston also is a big area for this deed scam. It’s so funny because I’m actually selling some land that I broke off from another property a couple of years ago, sold the house, and I’m selling the land to a developer now. I was getting emails from the title agent to do remote closing, and I’m like, man, this could be frigging anybody.

It could be a total scam that they’re buying. It’s not because I actually reached out to the developer. I vetted them.

I know it’s real, but just thinking about it with all these tools that we have, which are amazing and super convenient. I love remote closings. I’m in South Africa at the moment.

I’m all over the world with our investing and where we travel and go, but I couldn’t live without it really at the moment. But at the same time, that certainly is less intense than when you used to have to go into the escrow company, spend two hours sitting there signing the 2,000 different forms physically while they read them all to you. It’s a completely different experience now, and it does open up to this type of scamming.

What do you guys think about this? How do we keep from having real estate investors have a bad name because this type of news could really hurt short sellers and investors who are going for off-market deals because you might come across like you’re a scam artist or someone’s neighbor said, oh, are you sure they’re real? They might be a scam artist.

I see there’s all these deed scams.

[Tapan Trivedi]
This is not a real estate investment thing. This is a realty thing. Any homeowner can face this.

It doesn’t say it’s a real estate investment. It can happen to us, yes.

[Crystal Stranger]
I think this totally affects real estate investors though. Absolutely. Because scammers comb through public records.

Real estate investors comb through public records. We could be restricted to what kind of records and information we have access to for our investments from this. We could have different restrictions added for title companies and closings that make it more difficult to transact.

This could have a big impact on real estate investors. Myself, I think this is one of the most important- Intent.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Comes down to intent and what action you take. Every real estate investor has at one point or another considered vacant home mailings. We’re like, I’m going to mail to them to see if I can get somebody to buy it and say, I want to sell your home.

When they don’t, we just kind of like, okay, this is where my mailing ended. We put the numbers down to a spreadsheet and say, this was the strength of my mailing and whether I’m going to pursue this particular option or not. This guy, the guys that are doing that probably did that and said, I’m just going to take the by doing forgery.

It comes down to intent. It’s somebody that obviously knew that there’s these people that have probably stopped caring about their homes for whatever reason. They decided to go ahead and just, and then it comes down to they still have to move it to somebody else.

Right.

[Crystal Stranger]
I don’t know. I mean, so this is pretty widespread fraud. I don’t think this is just in real estate investors who had numbers left on their list.

We’re talking 58,000 Americans scammed out of 1.3 billion. I mean, that’s some massive, massive numbers. I mean, this is probably a much more substantial setup and mill than that of what’s going on with the perpetrators behind this.

I mean, I imagine it’s more organized to be that extensive. That doesn’t sound like some little, you know, small fraud going on to me.

[Dave Seymour]
What do you think? How do they execute? How do you transfer a deed without the right documentation?

[Crystal Stranger]
They’re forging quick claims to themselves and then they’re listing it using real estate agents on the MLS and everything else to sell it for them.

[Dave Seymour]
I don’t know how they’re pulling that crap off in Boston. You know, we’re a legal state. We’re not a title company state.

So you have to bring in legal representation to do the closings. That being said, you know, not all attorneys are created equal as well. So, you know, you got to be careful who you’re dealing with.

[Crystal Stranger]
I found the stats for Massachusetts was 1,576 victims losing a total of 46 million and change.

[Dave Seymour]
Wow. And I didn’t get any of that. Where the hell was I?

[Crystal Stranger]
No, you’re missing out, you know.

[Dave Seymour]
Look, there’s stupidity costs, right? There’s a price for everything. There’s a price for everything.

[Crystal Stranger]
Also, the thing is, it’s not even stupidity. I mean, I think this is like people’s second homes or probably elderly people who have second homes they’re not going to or family aren’t using, things like that. And there’s probably a lot more of it that hasn’t even been reported.

I mean, people are finding it because they don’t get their property tax bill. I mean, you know, I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes I forget about a property or a property tax bill coming in because like, you know, I’m sure other people do, or they don’t think about it or some time goes by, right?

[Dave Seymour]
So the entrepreneur in me starts thinking about an opportunity, right? So if it’s that prevalent and I don’t dispute that it is, how do I now get the message out? How do I market in Boston, for example, we’ll keep it local.

How do I market to defeat this fraud, right?

[Crystal Stranger]
So I think there are some services doing that. Some counties have actually allowed people to set alerts with the county’s clerk’s office on your property where you can find out if there’s been anything recorded against it and they’ll notify, which is a good thing to do anyway, because, you know, there’s all kinds of other, I mean, think of all the fraud.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Second set of eyes on there.

[Crystal Stranger]
Jeez. I mean, there’s a whole untapped other area of fraud. I don’t want to give people ideas, but you know, it’s like, there’s things I’ve thought about that, like you could definitely, you know, it’s a good thing if you have that.

[Tapan Trivedi]
If I had a bunch of vacant second homes, I would leverage it with my own. I’ll just put a note on it myself.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t let them sit there either.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s the issue. They look for properties that don’t have any liens on them, right? Because if they have liens, they can’t do it.

So it’s paid off.

[Tapan Trivedi]
They need to have leverage.

[Crystal Stranger]
I feel bad for the people who get like rented or buy one of these kinds of properties. What a nightmare then they’re in. Also on the chain of title and everything.

Hopefully they got title insurance, but renters especially, man, they don’t have a lot of rights when it comes to- If you’ve got five minutes, I’ll give you the short version of a horror story that relates to what you’re talking about.

[Dave Seymour]
Okay.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. All right. Go for it.

[Dave Seymour]
I owned a four unit property in a suburb of, it was up in Maine. Okay. C minus C neighborhood.

I sell it, cash offer, 350,000, whatever it was, cash offer with a realtor. And then one of my tenants calls and says, some guy just knocked on the door and wanted to collect rent. Did you sell the property?

And I’m like, we haven’t sold the property yet. We got 50 grand in escrow. We haven’t sold the property.

Long story short, the guy who made the offer was a chiropractor who was affiliated with some radical group that believed that the laws of the land were not applicable to them. And basically what they did was the realtor on their side gave them a key to the property. They came in, changed the locks, they changed the utilities.

They started trying to collect rent from my existing tenants and moved into the property. And we got 50,000 cash of their money on a $350,000 deal, whatever it was, a cash deal. Long story short, it took me 18 months in the sheriff’s department to vacate that property, to get the problem solved because they didn’t believe in deeds.

They didn’t believe in the lien structure. They didn’t believe in the laws of America. And I got that one first hand.

[Crystal Stranger]
I got that first hand. That might have topped mine.

[Dave Seymour]
The only good news was is we kept the 50 grand. He didn’t get that back. He tried to counter sue and everything, and it was just a crap show.

But we kept that 50 grand. And then the period of time, that 18 months, the market went up. As one of those free citizens people?

450. So we did all right in the end.

[Crystal Stranger]
Sounds like that worked well for you. My worst eviction story was the tenants stole the swimming pool. So that was- They stole a pool?

[Dave Seymour]
Was it an in-ground pool?

[Crystal Stranger]
It was an underground pool, but it was a 24-foot one with a huge deck around it, and it was gone.

[Dave Seymour]
I had a guy pour a 25-pound bag of quick-crete cement down the toilet.

[Crystal Stranger]
Oh, ouch. Oh, that would be expensive.

[Dave Seymour]
That would be really- Try getting that out of the main stink pipe.

[Crystal Stranger]
I had a guy leave a- I hope he didn’t have a slab, man.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I had a guy leave a dog in a closet, and we got it after three days after the eviction was done. So we knew that he was there. So the dog was there for three days just in a closet, poor thing.

Mad as hell. So we go and we hear that. I’m like, oh my God, poor thing.

So we open the door and run out with some food out there just to calm the dog down. That’s such a sad story.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s so terrible.

[Tapan Trivedi]
It was such a nice pooch. It was a nice pooch. He was not mad.

He was just like, okay, yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s one thing about real estate investing is I’m such an optimist, and I want to- continually believe in people because you have to, but real estate investing also can really show you how awful human nature can be at times.

[Dave Seymour]
Oh, for sure.

[Crystal Stranger]
Oh, and on that note, our next story is Los Angeles halts evictions once again after the fires where they have rent collections frozen because of economic hardship caused by the January 2025 wildfires. They have a sweeping eviction moratorium once again through July 31st, 2025. The fires were terrifying in LA.

I’m from California, and I lived in LA for many years, and seeing that was just horrifying because it’s a lot of houses I used to go to and hang out in and everything were just gone. All these places of my childhood and growing up just completely obliterated. But at the same time, these eviction moratoriums are pretty horrible because it’s treating landlords like they don’t have a mortgage to pay also.

How do you protect yourself from that? I’m sorry, Dave. You don’t want me to be the fear-mongering on this side of it, but there’s some real things that are- Don’t invest in LA.

[Dave Seymour]
Don’t put your money into Los Angeles. I don’t know.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah, it’s so funny.

[Dave Seymour]
California for that matter. California, yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
So when we were in the car today, I was talking about that with my husband. The one place that I know there’s good deals, but I wouldn’t invest. I know you invest there, Dave, so don’t jump on me again.

It’s Florida, but it’s not because of the lack of deals. It’s because of Florida, man. I don’t want to deal with Florida, man.

My husband is like, oh no, for me, it would be California. I don’t want to deal with all the regulations and the regulatory stuff. I started my investing in California, but I sold my last house in California probably 10 years ago at this point.

It’s just a crazy world.

[Tapan Trivedi]
California is an absolute equity state. We haven’t had cash flow for decades since, I guess, after the major 2008 decision ended. After that, we haven’t had cash flow.

We just don’t see it. That’s why we go other places because when you look locally, it’s almost impossible for a newbie investor to break out. We have Silicon Valley.

They make tons in terms of income and they have phenomenal disposable income or investing income, whatever you want to call it, but it’s impossible for them to invest anywhere in California because it’s such a high price. It’s like, where else are you going to go? I’m like, well, there’s a big country.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s a huge country.

[Tapan Trivedi]
The Midwest is wide open right now.

[Crystal Stranger]
The majority of investors in California have these high paying jobs, so they have cushion and they’re not losing their shirt, but I just hope that doesn’t spread to other places when there’s disasters and other things like that because it’s really taken from Peter to pay Paul.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I can tell you for a fact, Washington and Oregon are right there and Arizona is about to topple too in terms of local cash flow being absent. I don’t think Dave was here at that point when I made the stat, but there are 380 metro areas total in the USA and 180 of them currently are such that investing locally does not make any sense. That’s about 110 million, roughly one third of USA.

Remote investing is the only way they can go. When I say California, it’s California, Washington, Oregon, all of them.

[Crystal Stranger]
I was just in Southern Oregon getting my mom’s house ready to rent, cleaning it out and everything. I’m keeping that house and renting it because I actually think the values are pretty low that I’m looking at the market and I would buy rather than sell. That’s always been my rule.

Another old stock investing rule that you’ll recognize, Dave, is if it’s not time to buy, it’s time to sell. If I look at a market and I would still buy there, I’m not going to sell the property that I have there.

[Dave Seymour]
The natural disasters, that’s what you’re talking about. That’s what you’re talking about with LA. That’s what we talked about with COVID.

That’s what we’ve talked about with the hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, everything of that nature. Worst case scenario, Gavin Newsom is going to step up. He’s going to throw some money at it.

Just like the Biden administration threw money at the COVID crisis. The government will pull out its wallet and they’ll mess up the economy again and we’ll deal with the fallout, etc. Even in my own market, to buy and hold in Boston doesn’t make sense for me.

To buy and hold in Connecticut, New York, those states, it makes it hard. I don’t know. I’m reading these notes here.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I’ll give you one example of how I made phenomenal bank because of a natural disaster. I invested in Galveston, Texas after Rita. At that point, when Rita hit, there were lots of properties.

I don’t know the number, but lots of properties that they could not tell how the property was destroyed. They had dual insurances policies. Flood and wind.

In a lot of cases, both paid. There were two insurance checks coming their way. One paid off the mortgage, other one went to bank and they still have the asset.

Basically, we bought properties out there 10 cents on the dollar. If you had a property that you can buy that was two-story, the bottom was all waterlogged and destroyed, but the top, FEMA is excellent in those times because even with half the property operational, we were cash flowing. We had to do some capital expenditure to go, but at 10%, you put capital expenditure.

It doesn’t matter. It’s going to pencil. It was brilliant.

It was awesome, but we didn’t realize when we did mailings that there were people out there where both insurance policies were going to… We started getting phone calls like, yeah, we’ll sell. It was a good time.

[Crystal Stranger]
It sounds like the right kind of opportunity.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I’m not taking lightly. There’s people that ask away in that and stuff, but opportunity, yeah.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. Let’s keep moving here. We had mentioned Oregon.

Our next news case is a second man pleads guilty in an 18 million Oregon real estate fraud case. This one is from Coin News, K-O-I-N. In this one, Robert Christensen of Sherwood, Oregon, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in an 18 million real estate fraud scheme, joining co-owner Anthony Matic of Damascus, who previously pleaded guilty.

This one, I did some research on, and this seemed like a pretty straightforward Ponzi scheme. These guys were doing a BRRR, the buy, rehab, rent, refinance type of gig. They were offering 8% to 15% interest on 30 to 90-day loans.

What? Yeah. Anybody who invests in that and believes that is kind of that sucker that born every minute, right?

It’s seriously sketchy right there.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah. At one point, I don’t know.

[Crystal Stranger]
Well, you said you were given high interest at one point, so it’s not always impossible, but that’s a little crazy, like 8% over 30 days, right? If you’re doing that over and over again, you’re not going to rehab, rent, and refinance a property that fast, right? Or am I wrong?

Maybe there’s people out there who can do it. I think you’d have to be kind of a miracle worker.

[Dave Seymour]
I don’t know how you can get that much deal flow at that much of a discount that you can pay that much return. Again, it’s education, right? There’s a lot of noise out there.

Look, one of my favorite shows is American Greed. You ever watch that one with Casey Steech? Steech is a keech, Stacey Keech.

Bob was on his boat. You know what I mean? What if you just work hard at doing it the right way instead of being a scumbag?

What do you think? Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be nice if there were more people doing that?

What if the Russian and Chinese hackers use their skills to develop good SaaS that made life better for everybody in business instead of stealing deeds and creating fake documentation for stuff? I don’t know. I’m tired.

I’m tired of these a-holes coming in and messing up our game. You know what I mean? Back behind the bike shed.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Because we have the same label, because we have the same label like real estate investors, realtors, we are in real estate, whatever you call it. We are lumped together with all of them saying everybody’s the same. It’s like, no, please.

I mean, it’s not. We take real heat for everything, and we are so afraid most of the time. It’s like, oh, my God, I’m not going to do this.

Oh, my God. It’s the same thing. We stay awake at night, standing at the ceiling, thinking what could happen, not making sure- All right.

[Crystal Stranger]
Well, let’s not think more- Yeah. Let’s not think more about the sky is falling. Let’s move on to the next one, which is the worst places to live in Florida for families and retirees in 2025.

Another super uplifting story.

[Dave Seymour]
Who comes up with all of this stuff? Who is it?

[Crystal Stranger]
I want to talk to him. This one is from Narada Real Estate Investments.

[Dave Seymour]
Oh, sorry, Antonio. I love you. These are awesome.

[Crystal Stranger]
Right. Narada’s my … I know him.

I know him. I mean, he’s amazing. He’s like real estate here.

So, I mean, come on. I mean, in my view, like I said before, Florida is not my favorite place. So, it’s like what city in Florida wouldn’t be on this list is my way of looking at it, but you guys are more in the Florida game and- What is it?

[Dave Seymour]
Is it still- Tapani, you’ve got your finger on this pulse more than me. I mean, number one retirement destinations are still, for US, to the best of my knowledge- Still the villages. Florida and Arizona, right?

Still the villages. Yeah, the villages. Oh, by the way, I know a statistic about the villages that I don’t think I could share on this podcast.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Oh, you’re talking about the ST… Yeah.

[Dave Seymour]
That’s crazy, brother. That is absolutely crazy. It’s got the highest STD rate anywhere in the country is in the villages, the number one retirement community. All these old people- And all of them are 65 plus.

[Speaker 7]
Yeah.

[Dave Seymour]
65 plus.

[Crystal Stranger]
Wow. Isn’t that nuts?

[Dave Seymour]
I tried to get in there. They wouldn’t let me in.

[Crystal Stranger]
I’m like, you know, I’m a swinger. You’re looking to get your next STD there.

[Tapan Trivedi]
It’s like not Florida man. It’s like Florida people.

[Crystal Stranger]
Florida people, yes. Florida, Florida.

[Dave Seymour]
The only STD I have is life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, we digress.

I think Florida is still good.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah.

[Dave Seymour]
Florida is still good. That’s where we go. What I liked about Florida was, with the commentary, it’s getting loose.

Watch out. What I like about the Florida market- For the audience, let me say what that was.

[Crystal Stranger]
Our producer Antonio added in the comments, retirement communities equals swinger communities. That’s right.

[Accelerated Capital Ad Read]
That’s right.

[Dave Seymour]
They have a different education at that age. You know what I mean? They don’t have all the education to keep yet.

I got a 15 year old and he’s just like nuts. And I’m like, dude, you’ve got to relax, man. Love will come the right way.

You don’t know. Stop it. Anyway, what I love about Florida is the amount of service positions that a retiree generates.

You know, if you look at the healthcare community and drive in Florida, obviously it’s there for the older community. The landscapers, the dental, all of those retail restaurant workers, if you’ve got this movement of retirees, it brings a wave of necessity behind it. So again, that’s why we’re in the build for rent space.

Down there, as well as repositioning multi. So I still like Florida.

[Crystal Stranger]
It’s a good market.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Not every job created is equal. Not every population increase is equal. Like if there’s an engineering job created in a particular neighborhood, it brings at least eight to 12 other associated jobs to support that job.

Really? Really? So similarly, if a retiree creates a lot more accessory jobs than a family moving out there.

Gotcha. You see the nitty-gritty is in what kind of jobs are moving there and the population is increased, but what segment of population is it?

[Crystal Stranger]
Right. Families don’t have any money to spend. Kids are expensive. Yeah. Especially in this realm. All right. Let’s take the break and then we’ll come right back and try to wrap up this show with our amazing guest.

So, Antonio, come on in.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. Welcome back, everyone. So I think we should hop down to the news item, speaking of Florida, right, about the Miami River District and a 1.3 billion Saudi megaproject that promises 3,000 apartments and a Skybridge hotel soon. So this is a story from a United States real estate investor that a 1.3 billion Saudi-backed megaproject is reshaping Miami’s River District with plans for 3,000 new apartments, a dazzling Skybridge hotel, promising major economic growth, and cutting-edge architecture. So while developers envision a new luxury hotspot, critics are sounding alarms over the environmental toll and infrastructure strain. Must be all those Californians who moved to Florida there, right?

With sustainability and seamless integration into the existing community still in question, the success of this high-stakes development will depend on strategic planning, eco-conscious design, and public acceptance. Investors are watching closely, drawn by high returns but wary of risk. This could redefine BrickHell’s future or overwhelm it with unintended consequences.

So Dave, I have to agree with you. Florida is an awesome place to invest because where the Saudis are putting money, man, big things are going to follow, right? I actually just got back from Qatar a few weeks ago.

And it’s crazy when you look at the investments in the Middle Eastern countries, what gets built there, the style of the building. I mean, it’s pretty unreal to go into some of these buildings. They really blow away anything in the U.S., in my opinion. So I think it’ll be interesting to see that happening in Miami, in the River District, right? We’re not talking about the beach here, right?

[Tapan Trivedi]
They’re just now realizing the importance of the sewage system.

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, you got to make sure your septic works really well. I’ve, at arm’s length, had a couple of conversations with some of those groups. And they don’t need cash flow, right?

They’re building equity. So these massive projects that get taken down with the guy who can allocate $3, $5, $10 billion for an investment strategy, they’ll go into a negative return profile for five years before they turn a corner. They’ll set another five at three to five percent.

And then the next five, that’s where they start really making their money on that investment. So there are scraps around there that are good for us, right? For sure.

You see a valuation of 12-unit assets increase within a quarter mile, half mile, one mile radius of something like that going up.

[Crystal Stranger]
12 units are too small. Nobody’s going to be wanting to live in that. I mean, really what you should be doing is buying up properties that are attached to one another to be able to sell to other developers who are going to come in.

Because once you have one mega development like that, people are going to be looking for big parcels in the nearby area to add more properties because that high-end luxury real estate attracts more of it in the surrounding area. But nobody’s going to want 12 units.

[Dave Seymour]
Agreed. Other than the people who need to live in the 12-unit to service the people who are in the great big new development, right? So where are they going to live? They still got to live too.

It’s a good problem to have in Miami. It really is. It’s a good problem to have as to what we’re going to do with the real estate around it if we’re not participating in it, right?

[Tapan Trivedi]
If there’s any developable land that will be affected upwards by this development, do you think they have already not acquired it? If they’re taking this huge, I would call it a gamble. They probably don’t.

They’re probably at a whole different level. But it’s like, if they’re taking this level of an investment risk, they are probably poised to take advantage of any and every upside that they can have on that.

[Crystal Stranger]
I don’t know. So, I mean, from my experience with these types of developers in the past, like these kinds of things, they tend to be the ego project, right? They’re like the kind of building that you own for bragging rights, right?

Like what Dave is saying, it’s not about cashflow. It’s about making something amazing. My worry on something like the 12 units nearby is if you’re not assembling the parcels that are adjacent, then the government could come in and do eminent domain and hand your property over to the competing developer from Dubai, Qatar, wherever else, who also wants the extreme lifestyle property next door.

So, I mean, I’d be real cautious on picking up scraps unless you’re doing it with some serious bucks behind you and working for one of these Danube type of companies or something like that to assemble parcels for them, because you could put a lot of money into rehabbing a 12 unit that ends up not really giving you the rental value and then get paid out pennies with eminent domain, right?

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah. No, I get it. No, I get it.

Look, for us, I’m going to go back to part of what we were talking about before. It’s always chasing and protecting the Delta for the investors. I’ve tried Miami.

We’ve been down in Miami. We’ve put in office in Miami. You can keep Miami.

I don’t want Miami. But when I say scraps, when somebody comes in and makes a big move like that, you know, it creates a downwind opportunity from other businesses.

[Crystal Stranger]
Well, I’d say the downwind opportunity is the wealthy neighborhoods nearby there, because those areas are going to go up in value big time. I don’t know that local market very well, but whatever is like a reasonably wealthy neighborhood that has like the 3,500 square foot houses in it, like those areas are going to go way up once that’s built, because that will be, you know, your Beverly Hills type of houses.

[Dave Seymour]
I was going to say that. Yeah. It’s your Beverly Hills right there.

Yeah. No, I agree with you.

[Crystal Stranger]
All right. I’ll give you a nice thumb rule. Let’s move on because we only have a few minutes left.

And I really want to talk about this last one because this is one of the main news items of this week that I know all our listeners have been hanging in here to hear about and is like a really big issue right now. So it’s there’s a new law. This is from Fox News.

There’s a new law that would stop foreign adversaries from buying up our country while Americans can’t afford homes. Lovely framing there. So Congressman Pat Harrigan has introduced the Real Estate Reciprocity Act to combat foreign adversaries buying U.S. land while banning Americans from doing the same in their countries. The proposed law would impose a steep 50 percent tax on foreign nationals and entities with government ties from nations that restrict U.S. property ownership. Countries like China, Saudi Arabia, we were just talking about, and Switzerland currently bar or limit foreign land ownership. The bill also mandates IRS disclosure and an annual State Department report on foreign reciprocity.

As housing costs soar and Americans struggle to buy homes, the legislation aims to prioritize domestic buyers and protect national interests. So right there, they’re saying we’re trying to tank the housing market, right? In a much more pretty wrapping paper.

But that’s kind of like saying this is our intent. We’re going to drop prices. Let’s wreck value in the housing market.

Right. So what do you guys think about this? How do you think this is going to pan out?

I mean, you know, it’s just, it’s just the start.

[Dave Seymour]
I’m a naturalized citizen of the U.S., right? I’m an immigrant from England. I got my sponsorship.

I carry an American passport, blah, blah, blah. So like the red, white and blue in me get stirred up, right? You get on the Trump train.

Can’t let the Chinese buy the land, the communists, right? You can’t let the Saudis buy up the land.

[Crystal Stranger]
They already owe a ton of it, right?

[Dave Seymour]
I know, right? The Catholic church used to own something like 90% of Manhattan, I think at one point, right? Yeah.

I don’t know that you’re going to, you’re going to get the, get the wherewithal to restrict as much as that commentary sounded like it wanted to restrict. I’m going to be honest with you. I like international investors coming into my deals.

I don’t know whether they’re now barred. You know, we have some nationalities that can invest with us and some that can’t, but you know, that’s such a big picture. You know, it doesn’t affect my daily routines, but you know, my radar is up to now I can tell you.

Go ahead.

[Tapan Trivedi]
I have some data on this. So the EB-5 investments, right? First of all, like about 68% or so goals of a foreign investment, they all go into luxury markets.

So when they say they cannot afford homes, I don’t know if that’s even a thing. No, it’s not. There’s nobody like coming in from, and buying up like your 2-1 in the third suburb of Tampa.

That’s not happening.

[Crystal Stranger]
No, that’s all the hedge funds that are buying the 2-1s and renting them for exorbitant prices because they control a market. I mean, that’s, that’s not the foreign investors, that’s hedge funds. That’s US investors that are doing that stuff.

[Dave Seymour]
You know, like when I- They’re doing it with foreign money, Crystal. They’re doing it with foreign money.

[Crystal Stranger]
Maybe they are, but this isn’t going to stop that. That’s for sure. You know, but you know, I mean, when I, when I lived in Hawaii, there were all these luxury condo buildings and they were owned like 90% by Chinese investors and you drive by and they’d be all empty.

You know, they wouldn’t have any furniture in them. They’re just investments. And you like see them all sitting empty, no lights on in them, no furnishing, nothing.

They’re just sitting there as like foreign investment. I mean, that’s, that’s the properties, right? But those aren’t, those aren’t your mom and pop kind of properties that are driving up day-to-day prices.

Who’s going to live in that, right?

[Tapan Trivedi]
They come in, but they also leave. A lot of them leave. I have an example.

My ex-father-in-law, he bought an avocado farm in Maui, in Kihei, right? And it somehow came with this algae energy converting factory on it. It was owned by a Japanese company.

And they basically like, we’re done. At one point, a lot of them are also like, we don’t understand this. Just the way people locally do that, right?

Americans do that. They’re like, I’m done. They also do that.

They’re not that different, right? So it’s like, we would buy from them at a price. It doesn’t matter.

Like, I think this is absolute, like a lot of it is like posturing, political posturing.

[Crystal Stranger]
It is. It’s feel good measures so that people feel like the government’s doing something for them. I mean, first of all, like I’ve done lobbying, like I’ve worked in Congress.

I read tax laws because that’s like my day-to-day job is to interpret tax laws for business investors worldwide. But, you know, so like it takes a long time before something like this actually becomes a reality. So I don’t think we have to worry about it now.

It’s just kind of entertaining and it will be interesting to see what rules come in down the road as things change and progress and new laws actually get written. And a lot of times this is just fishing expeditions to see which ideas hit the public and they get excited about that, you know, government officials can make it sound like they’re doing something good to get reelected, right?

[Dave Seymour]
Well, don’t you remember when… Go ahead.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Sorry. Like if you truly wanted to help people that cannot afford homes, tell me how many mobile home parks, new mobile home park, would you approve in those neighborhoods? And see every NIMBY a-hole kind of go up and say, no, no, not in my backyard, right?

Make a law that there’ll be at least 20% of the delta of affordable housing for the metro area will be developed every year, will be allowed every year to be permitted every year. And then see what happens.

[Crystal Stranger]
That’s exactly what it is. People say they want affordable housing, but not in my backyard, right? It’s at NIMBY.

You want affordable housing, but not here. No, definitely not in my town. Like I don’t want those people living here.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Put those guys away from me where it doesn’t affect my property values.

[Crystal Stranger]
There’s some wisdom to that. One of my all-time favorite books is Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. And in that book, there’s a section that if you want action, you appeal to people’s self-interest, not their sense of goodwill, right?

Everybody talks a good game. They want affordable housing.

[Dave Seymour]
What is in it for me?

[Crystal Stranger]
Well, on that note, I know we’re out of time. And Dave, you got to hop off here at the hour. So let me thank our sponsors, United States Real Estate Investor Advertising, of course, Accelerated Capital at acceleratemycapital.com, Universe Media Publishing at universemediapublishing.com.

And thank you guys so much for joining. Dave, I know you got to hop off. So Dave, it’s been amazing to have you here as a guest.

Do you want to tell us a little bit at the end here of how our viewers can get in touch with you, find out more what you’re doing with the Foundry Legacy Alliance?

[Dave Seymour]
Yeah, you can find us at legacyalliance.com or legacyallianceclub.com. You can find us there for the education components that we have. And our investment platform is at freedomventure.com.

Or Google me, you’ll find me. I’m not in the America’s Most Wanted anymore. So it’s good.

Thank you. Nice to meet you, brother. Thank you as well, Antonio.

God bless.

[Crystal Stranger]
Yeah. All right. And Japan.

Wow. Yeah. Also, it’s been amazing having you here.

And tell us a little bit more about where to invest and how our viewers can find you and, I mean, this amazing product you have. Yeah.

[Tapan Trivedi]
Yeah. So just go to wheretoinvest.io and take a look at what we have. If you are in one of those places where you are looking to invest someplace else, not where you live, we will absolutely make sure that you get the best deal.

And our subscription started $50. That’s all.

[Crystal Stranger]
So amazing. Yeah. Sounds like such a deal.

Just for that one analytics product we were talking about that can save you money by knowing what the investment rates are going to be before you invest in an area. That’s amazing. I definitely would subscribe just to be getting that.

So that’s incredible right there. So anyway, thank you audience. Thank you audience so much for listening to us and being here with us for this couple hours.

This has been a really fun show and I’m honored to be here and be the guest podcast host while James Brown couldn’t be here today. And be sure to follow and subscribe to This Month in Real Estate Investing at thismonthinrealestateinvesting.com or on your favorite podcast app. I know that we’re on Apple Podcast, we’re on Spotify.

So lots of places for you to follow, keep up with this great information every month. And like James always says, remember when one door closes, another door opens to financial freedom.