[James A. Brown] (1:08 – 3:17)
All right, welcome to this month in real estate investing, where we separate the news from the noise. I’m your host, James Brown, and I show people how they can make safe, secure returns through pre-vetted passive investments. Feel free to join our private investor club so you can get exclusive opportunity alerts that we don’t advertised to the general public typically, just go to acceleratemycapital.com forward slash invest. In this episode of this month in real estate investing, we’ll be breaking down a variety of real estate investing news items, including tech disruption, the role of AI and other innovations in transforming the industry, policy changes, breaking down the new laws and regulations impacting real estate investing, and predictions for 2025, what’s on the horizon and how to stay ahead of the curve. So don’t forget if you’re watching live on YouTube or Facebook, you can share your thoughts and questions during the show. We’ll see those and then we can comment back.

All this and more on this episode. Let’s start the show. All right.

Our guests today are Eric M. Burns, Joseph Bodek, Brad Dwin, Gordon Lamphere, Paul Anderson, K. Trever Thompson, and Kurt Byers. In that order, if you caught that, Eric, Joseph, Brad, Gordon, Paul, K. Trevor, and Kurt.

Why don’t you each briefly introduce yourselves by sharing your background and what types of investing you focus on?

[Eric Burns] (3:19 – 3:48)
Perfect. Hey, James, thanks for having me on. I loved it.

So great show. Thank you. Yeah, so I am a finance major turned firefighter, turned residential investor, and then I’ve actually niched down into commercial capital, capital raising.

My company, Flowers Capital, and we focus on a lot of value add right now, among other asset classes as well. So thanks again.

[James A. Brown] (3:49 – 3:59)
Awesome. Cool. Somebody’s mic was a little off.

If you want to mute until you’re, you’re up. Let’s see who else was next. Joe.

[Joe Bodek] (4:01 – 5:31)
Hello. Okay, my name is Joe Bodek. I’m a real estate investor and mentor coach.

I’m not the story that you normally hear about. I didn’t watch late night. Late night.

What do you call it? Guru? Shows where they tell you how you’re going to make a million dollars.

I was I was birthed into real estate. My dad actually was one of the biggest builders of residential real estate in the country back in the 50s, 60s and 70s. If you live in a split level, he’s the guy that made him famous so that you’ll that you can identify with that.

And was in traditional real estate for about 25 years, working with my father, who’s my first mentor, then went into after everything got sold off all the properties and so forth, went into creative real estate. I’ve been doing that for about 30 years. My specialty is lease options and wholesaling.

And I’m actually what I teach my students is how to become a transaction engineer, real estate transaction engineer, which basically means that you can do more than just one niche in real estate, which most unfortunately, most investors do. So we open up their open up their horizons and teach them how to do subject to and these options and things of that nature. And I’ve been coaching for about the last 20 years enjoying it and still going strong.

Awesome.

[James A. Brown] (5:31 – 5:35)
Creatives close to my heart, baby. Brad.

[Brad Dwin] (5:36 – 6:36)
Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me back again. Happy to be here.

I’m a Maryland based investor. I have a background in public relations and marketing and I work for several real estate companies in the past, including a very big one called the Rouse Company, which was sold in 2004. If you know anything about the Rouse Company, they were famous for Faneuil Hall and creating master plan communities.

Almost every master plan community in the United States is based on their model. For the last six, seven years, I’ve been focusing on my business here in Maryland. I’m about 80% wholesaling and the rest is rentals and flips.

I do a little bit of small lending. And, you know, I’m glad Joe talked about creative options because I don’t just do cash offers. I do subtos.

I do lease options. I actually have a lease back that I’m doing this this week. And it’s all about just finding the solutions that work for homeowners.

And I pretty much do all my deals in Maryland, although occasionally I’ll do like Pennsylvania, Delaware area. Very cool.

[James A. Brown] (6:37 – 6:37)
Gordon.

[Antonio Holman] (6:42 – 6:45)
Oh, wait, we have him?

[James A. Brown] (6:46 – 6:47)
Oh, okay, Paul.

[Paul Anderson] (6:48 – 7:28)
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for welcoming me back.

I am a lifelong real estate, recovering real estate junkie. So I started in this business working for my dad when I was eight years old, but spent about 20 years in residential real estate. From there went into commercial, did a lot in the hotel industry, acquisition disposition.

And for the last 15-20 years, primarily on the financing side. So a lot of commercial, a lot of vertical construction. And personally, right now I’m invested, I’ve got both long term and short term rentals, as well as we’ve got a couple of single family and multifamily syndications that we’re doing to try to remain as diverse as possible.

[James A. Brown] (7:29 – 7:32)
Oh, fantastic. Trevor.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (7:32 – 8:08)
Awesome.

Thanks for having me. So my name is Trevor from Austin, Texas. I was terrified of toilets, tenants and trash.

Always interested in real estate, but never started. Then about six years ago, I learned all about apartment syndicating. And in six years, I’ve been a passive investor on 20 syndications, and then switched over to the sponsor side.

And I’m now a sponsor on my 12th. So I’ve been super busy. And what I do is I find investors and get them to put their money into syndications passively with a goal to double their returns in five years.

[James A. Brown] (8:10 – 8:11)
Nice. Kurt.

[Kurt Byers] (8:12 – 8:44)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Kurt Byers, head of business development here at New Western. We’ve run the largest private real estate investment marketplace in the country for residential properties. We were also the largest homebuyer in the country last year, private homebuyer.

So we do a ton of volume, we have a ton of data around transactions, and we largely play in the value add, residential, rehab, renovate type properties. But we also do some, you know, multifamily up to about $100. So big on volume and big on, you know, networking and partnerships.

[James A. Brown] (8:45 – 10:41)
Awesome. Thanks for being here today, guys. Let’s dive into the news.

So I’m just going to read off the headlines as we go through. And a few quotes, and then we can just kind of chit chat about it. So the first news is commission confusion around the NAR ruling.

Follow up from the agent commission rules and how they’re reshaping things. From Redfin, Jason Aleem says, the changes provide greater transparency and competition around fees, goals that Redfin has always supported. Ali J.

Yale says, if it’s approved by the court, the real estate industry is on the precipice of change that could impact the home buying process, and what you pay for it. And then Deborah Kamen says the National Association of Realtors also agreed to change long standing practices related to real estate sales commissions. Anybody have anything they want to jump in with?

If not, I will jump in. Not sure where to even start. There’s, I guess let’s just give some background on what what we’re talking about.

So they’re talking about there’s multiple things in the suit from the Department of Justice against the National Association of Realtors. One of the biggest ones was that sellers cannot publicly display how much commission is being offered to buyer agents. So it’s shaking up the industry trying to figure out how to how to go forward with it.

Anybody else want to jump in?

[Kurt Byers] (10:45 – 11:33)
I mean, I think it can present an opportunity for investors because, you know, we can operate a little differently to where we don’t have to come in and need that buyer agent commission from the seller. So we can come in and say, you know, we’ll cover your closing costs, you don’t need to pay the buyer agent commission, let’s just get a deal done at the right price. And I think, you know, for buyer agents, in kind of that traditional space, it just means you’re going to have to provide the value up front and really make sure the seller and the buyer understand what you’re bringing to the table.

But, I mean, I definitely think there’s some opportunity there if you’re smart about it, you can kind of operate in a way to where your margin allows you to kind of forego that commission and be able to still make the deal work. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for everyone. Yeah, that’s a good point.

[Eric Burns] (11:34 – 12:27)
I believe it could go either way. From a high level, I think, increased competition is never a bad thing in terms of finding equilibrium and pricing. However, I do also worry about the level of education it will take.

For example, I’ll use this for an example. If I’m doing a residential deal, I am going to negotiate a higher price, I’m worth it, I’m going to do the work. So somebody comes in and lowballs me, it is really not that much different than hiring a contractor in that you kind of get what you pay for.

But the sellers and buyers don’t necessarily know what they need. It is kind of my hesitation, my fear about it. But as far as how it shakes out, I think it’s a wait and see from my point of view.

[James A. Brown] (12:30 – 13:45)
Yeah, I’ve found that really not much has changed. When I do listings, I’ll have buyer agents calling me asking, hey, what are you offering for your commission? Well, I’m not doing my sellers any favors by showing them my cards.

But they’ve got to be prepared to get that buy side commission from their buyers. But they also have to have that conversation with them about when we make our offer, we’re going to ask for what we’ve agreed to so that they get covered. And that’s going to affect the purchase price.

So it’s just, it kind of has worked out the same as it always has. In fact, on the commercial side, as opposed to residential, that’s how it’s always been. But those listing commissions aren’t, they aren’t in the listing, from my understanding.

So anybody on the commercial side, want to comment on that? Wake up, guys.

[Paul Anderson] (13:49 – 14:46)
From the lending side, I think to your point, James, and even to your point, Eric, it’s about showing value. So we’re, you know, we kind of get in the middle of this sometimes.

And I don’t know about everybody’s market. But here in Idaho, we have a pretty low barrier to entry both in the real estate and lending realm. And so we have a lot of agents who never had to negotiate anything.

It was always assumed I know you guys are experiencing that. But we’re seeing it’s adding a lot of confusion where I do see it is problematic. On the home buyer side is we’re a very low income state and we’re a very high housing cost state.

So for so many of those buyers, they don’t have the funds, we do a lot of DPA and a lot of grants and a lot of a lot of seconds to help just get the deal done. So that’s where I’m seeing a greater impact is on the consumer side, whether or not they can get buyer representation.

[James A. Brown] (14:49 – 16:31)
Yeah, good point. Anything else we can jump to the next one. All right.

Commercial real estate turmoil, office vacancies, conversions and what’s next for struggling sectors. The US office vacancy rate reached 19.4% at the end of October, an increase of 160 basis points year over year, according to Commercial Edge, National Office Report. We talked about this on this show, because it’s, it’s taken a big hit.

Also from CBRE research, brief office conversions have increased from an average of 45 annually between 2016 and 2023 to 73 so far in 2024. With another 30 schedule for completion by year end. So yeah, we’ve talked about that a lot on the show, like, what kind of conversions.

So, you know, we’re talking about converting to possibly residential. Maybe. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of things that they’re looking at and doing.

There’s a lot of challenges with them, though. So like residential, if you’re needing to add a lot more bathrooms, you got to re-plumb the thing. And if you’re, you got concrete flooring, that’s a problem.

Changing to, you know, industrial, you got to have high ceilings, those kinds of things. Anyway.

[Eric Burns] (16:32 – 17:27)
I’m very interested to see what kind of conversions they do as well. It was my understanding that a lot of them are going to kind of that class A, A plus luxury living, because of locations in a lot of them, central downtowns. But also, I have also been hearing a lot of uptick.

That’s 75%. It’s almost like owner and seller sentiment is caught up with what a buyer can actually afford with these heavier lifts. So I think the 75% I think is more a indication of market equilibrium.

So I for one am very interested because I like when people come in with creative ideas, and I think it’ll be kind of an interesting watch.

[James A. Brown] (17:29 – 17:35)
Yeah. It’s definitely pushed people to get creative. Go for it.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (17:36 – 18:25)
Yeah, I know, I’ve got a few friends in our space that are definitely doing the office to multifamily conversion. And it’s been super challenging for them. Things you mentioned, like the concrete floors, the additions of the bathrooms, it all made sense when rents were going up, you know, 10 plus percent.

But now a lot of communities like Austin, where I live and other places, they’ve got a glut of supply. And it’s made it super challenging for them to be able to do the renovations to offer them at an affordable price. So I think it was something that was very interesting, and should work in concept, but has not worked in reality, just simply by the cost of conversion.

It’s been super challenging because those buildings were just not designed for that use.

[Brad Dwin] (18:27 – 19:20)
Yeah, I’ve seen an uptick, a big uptick in leads that were office condos, in buildings that are mixed use residential and office. And I looked at one last week, and I think the biggest challenge in Maryland, and I don’t know how it is in the states where you guys operate is zoning. For example, I looked at one this week that was two units side by side, but only one of them can actually be rezoned as residential for some reason, which makes no sense to me.

But this one was probably like, it looked like it was an old medical facility or something. So yeah, the cost for converting it is huge. But also, I think the zoning laws become an issue in some states, and Maryland’s really tough on zoning laws, especially in Baltimore City, where this particular unit was.

But I’m looking at it more and more because the potential is there. I mean, they’re in neighborhoods where it would really make sense to convert them to residential. It’s just getting to that point is where the challenge is.

[Antonio Holman] (19:24 – 20:01)
Here’s the one thing I want to add. I noticed there is, I don’t know how thorough this report is that I’ve found a few. They’re doing a lot of shopping mall conversions to residential.

Wouldn’t that fall into the same headache category? Because a lot of investors are saying, I don’t want the headache of converting commercial to residential. Wouldn’t that be just as bad?

I mean, a lot of commercial buildings are much more vertical. But what do you guys think about that? Because I mean, in theory, the shopping mall conversion sounds kind of amazing, in my opinion.

So I don’t know. What do you think?

[Paul Anderson] (20:02 – 20:53)
We’re actually experiencing that. Well, it’s been proposed here right now because one of our larger malls has lost most of its anchor tenants. And so now they’re talking about converting it into multifamily housing.

And to everybody’s point, it’s a massive lift to get it done. The municipalities don’t understand how they’re going to do it. How do we rezone it?

How do we bring it to fruition? How do we make it affordable? And then over here on the lending side, everybody’s trying to figure out this is a capital intensive project to do.

And so trying to figure out the funding side of it. I love the idea and I love the concept that we’re going to put it back to use and we’re going to repurpose it. But I think there’s still so many unknowns.

And I know locally, our local, our P&Z and stuff like that have no idea how this is going to work. So I think we’re all kind of learning on the fly with this if it’s able to happen.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (20:57 – 21:52)
And I think it’s definitely more challenging than office vertical because of the lack of windows, who wants to rent an apartment in the interior of what used to be a mall with no windows, no ease of access. I mean, it’s just very impractical. I do have some friends in Houston that are converting smaller, big box retail type, not necessarily full malls into flex space, office slash storage, where people need that mix.

You know, they’ve decided they don’t want to be in a big office, they don’t want to have a separate warehouse or storage. And so they’ve been fairly successful in some of that conversion, because you clearly you don’t need the window space for the flex space slash office side of it. But malls are super challenging, just because there’s there’s just no natural light.

And nobody wants an apartment with no natural light. No. Good point.

Yeah.

[Eric Burns] (21:53 – 22:49)
I think as far as if I was raising money for a conversion, I would find a new builder or build the rent a lot more appealing. Companies would operate within a proven system, a proven concept, and it would put my mind at ease to know that there is stability there. And even with risk adjusted returns, it’s still to me, a big because of what we’ve been kind of all agreeing on, you know, the amount of work and you’re spending a lot of money to renovate for a concept that is somewhat unproven.

It’s a great, great idea. And I love that people are moving forward with it. As far as taking as far as raising capital, I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable with it, in that it’s not, it’s not as predictable for me.

[Antonio Holman] (22:50 – 23:00)
So so the general consensus here is that you guys are like, no way. There’s no way. There’s no way I’m jumping into that.

Is that what you’re saying?

[K. Trevor Thompson] (23:01 – 23:44)
It’s very challenging. The one space though, that’s had some success is the hotel to apartment conversion. And it works because it has a restroom, it has windows, there is this high requirement for affordable housing.

So a hotel room might be four to 800 square feet, you can get a bunch of them, you can you can renovate them for minimal exposure. And so that one is probably the biggest repurpose that is working in multiple markets, just because of the pressure on affordable rent housing. And and the fact that hospitality, especially in older type brand hotels, they’re just suffering a lot.

[Antonio Holman] (23:44 – 23:45)
Yeah.

[James A. Brown] (23:45 – 23:58)
Yeah. Hey, guys, we we didn’t introduce Antonio Holman. He’s our producer.

Antonio, you want to hop in and just say what what you do?

[Antonio Holman] (24:00 – 24:35)
Hey, everybody. I’m Antonio Holman, founder of United States real estate investor, created this crazy platform, which is actually great, in my opinion, because I bring guys like this to the world, to the United States in particular, because, you know, our school systems in the gutter, and doesn’t teach you how to be successful and build wealth with your family, it teaches you how to be a worker. So that’s when I was like, I think I’m going to build this.

So that’s why these guys are here. And I’m glad everybody’s here watching. So thanks for being here.

[James A. Brown] (24:37 – 24:42)
Awesome. Yeah, you built a really cool, cool thing here. I’m stoked to be a part of it.

[Antonio Holman] (24:43 – 24:44)
Likewise.

[James A. Brown] (24:45 – 25:28)
Right on. Well, let’s go to the next category, major controversies, political, economic and legal events that are shaking things up.

So we’ll kind of pick those apart one at a time. And I’ll just kind of read these, these topics. So political, algorithmic rent pricing, and antitrust concerns.

I was in the news, foreign ownership restrictions, and election induced market uncertainty. Feel free to jump in if you got any comments on any of that. We could start with algorithmic rent pricing.

[Antonio Holman] (25:30 – 26:02)
I want to I want to jump in real quick, because the one thing that I think is interesting. The foreign ownership restrictions, a lot of people in this country, they are, they’re like, well, hey, and you can’t restrict people from doing this and then whatever. But I’ve heard a lot of investors say, you can’t go to any other country and buy property, unless you’re an actual citizen.

But when we put those restrictions here in this country, people get upset. What do you guys think about that? I mean, it makes sense to me.

Am I crazy?

[James A. Brown] (26:02 – 26:37)
I know we’ve talked, you know, about this before. And they’ve been very specific about like, foreign entities buying property, you know, near military bases or near, you know, water sources or power plants and things. So feels like that’s probably a good good thing to be cautious about, especially if it’s, you know, more contentious relationship with that specific country, right?

[Kurt Byers] (26:41 – 27:41)
Yeah, I mean, I think if you can have an investor, bring capital to the United States, and they’re able to work with a US based management company to provide rentals for people that maybe someone here didn’t have the capital to deploy to have the amount of houses that some foreign investors are bringing to the US. You know, obviously, we would love every American to own their own house. But in the reality of the current situation, if we need outside capital to be able to fund more properties for people to live affordably, I see that as an upside to it.

But yeah, if you’re going to talk more on the side of like national security near army bases and things like that, I think get a little dicey. But if they’re buying properties, typically above what an American would pay, and they just want to rent it out and have a property manager, property manager deal with it for them. I mean, there’s probably worse things out there.

But you know, that’s kind of how I see the upside of it.

[Paul Anderson] (27:42 – 28:15)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with Kurt on that. I mean, anything that’s a national security issue has to be addressed. But you know, the fact is, is we have a huge shortage and a massive affordability problem.

And so we can start bringing in more foreign investment capital to help with that, and put proper guardrails in place. But help that because I mean, I, I don’t know about you guys, but for my kids and my grandkids, I’m seeing housing being the greatest challenge that they’re going to face for their generation, and probably the next 20 to 30 years based on where we’re at currently.

[Antonio Holman] (28:19 – 28:49)
You know, a lot of people have been talking about Chinese real estate ownership, and they seem to be the biggest adversary to this country. So I mean, wouldn’t that be a severe issue to national security? Yeah, I think that’s the big one.

And it’s, it’s crazy to me that they’re even allowing that. I mean, I understand, you know, melting pot, yada, yada, yada. But I mean, that’s like the biggest adversary right now.

[Paul Anderson] (28:51 – 29:18)
Now, I think you can, you can work with them, obviously, they’re already here. And they have a lot of land, a lot of strategic basis for our national defense military. But if you know, they want to come in and invest in land, and there’s some sort of preterm land use for it, you may have to agree with that, you know, especially in either housing, manufacturing, certain segments of housing classes.

[James A. Brown] (29:20 – 29:48)
Paul, your audio sounded terrible to me there for a bit. I don’t know. On your end.

Let’s see. Any other comments on that? Let’s see.

We were algorithmic rent, rent pricing, we didn’t really touch on that. That was an interesting thing. See, it was real page was the company that got flagged for that.

[Antonio Holman] (29:50 – 30:09)
They were basically I don’t know how to really explain it. From from my layman’s layman’s way to put it is apparently property prices are going up because of their algorithms. And that’s who they’re trying to put the blame on.

That’s why the housing markets out of control.

[James A. Brown] (30:09 – 30:10)
Yeah.

[Antonio Holman] (30:10 – 30:11)
Is that really the case?

[James A. Brown] (30:11 – 30:15)
It was actually pricing apartments. So rentals. Okay, rental. Okay.

[Antonio Holman] (30:16 – 30:16)
Okay.

[James A. Brown] (30:16 – 30:19)
Thinking they were driving it up. So they were Yeah.

[Antonio Holman] (30:21 – 30:23)
Yeah, what they’re letting the robots take over.

[James A. Brown] (30:25 – 30:53)
They’re saying that they’re deprived. It says depriving the renters of benefits of competition. But unless every landlord is using that software, you know, you’re not you’re not losing that competition.

The market’s going to pay what they’re going to pay, right. So I think that I don’t know how that that ended up working out. But it is a concern.

I mean, price fixing is not good. Go ahead.

[Paul Anderson] (30:54 – 31:05)
So as long as they don’t use flex pricing like Uber does during peak hours. I mean, it’s just I just think it’s providing real time data to the market so that people can make informed decisions.

[James A. Brown] (31:05 – 31:06)
Yeah.

[Eric Burns] (31:09 – 31:57)
I have been lovingly called an aggressive capitalist. So I am certainly not in favor of price caps or anything like that.

However, with with them taking their algorithm, we’re also pricing and underwriting different classes of apartments, different asset classes to, you know, we’re not going to price our class A apartments the same way as our class B apartments. So if they’re if they’re raising their prices at the high end, it’s driving demand for those class Bs and there is a trickle down. So I feel like they should be free to charge what they want.

And our job as a commercial real estate professionals is to respond accordingly, and still find those deals that can safely pencil out.

[Paul Anderson] (31:59 – 32:13)
Oh, Eric, wouldn’t you agree that the market’s going to tell you when you’re out of range and you’re, and you’ve overpriced for the market and as well as underpriced, so the market will quickly quickly educate you as to where you fall?

[Eric Burns] (32:16 – 32:49)
100% that the algorithm and practice, you know, in that context, I think could potentially end up hurting them as much as helping them. You know, so they’re, you know, they’re free to do what they want. I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.

I would rather have great underwriters look at great humans look at great comps, you know, that sort of thing. Match amenities. There’s some nuances that I’m not sure an algorithm would really apply right to make me comfortable with it.

[James A. Brown] (32:54 – 33:53)
Let’s talk about election induced market uncertainty, which last week we did a whole panel just on that. I know for for me, working in residential, I’m seeing, or I saw the pause, everybody is just like, not doing anything. A lot of fear and uncertainty.

I don’t know how much is based on anything real, right? Like, it’s just, let’s see. And I think people were thinking, depending on the outcome of the election, you know, certain things would happen.

Seems like now, everybody’s just kind of not jumping back in. Because of the timing of the market, like it’s the fall winter season. So it’s still super quiet.

But I think people are like, Okay, well, now, now we know what we’ve got to work with.

[Antonio Holman] (33:53 – 34:10)
So I know it’s this election stuff is always fascinating, because it’s nothing but speculation. And everybody’s all in an uproar. Happens every every election season.

And it’s fascinating. As much as I don’t like politics. This is fascinating right now.

It just is.

[Paul Anderson] (34:11 – 34:23)
James, when you say you’re seeing, if I heard you correctly, some fear and some uncertainty. Are you seeing that from the consumer side? From the builder?

What segment are you hearing that from?

[James A. Brown] (34:23 – 34:35)
Just more of the buyers and sellers. They’re like, Well, I think we’ll maybe we’ll wait too. But usually it’s just the buyers going, what’s gonna happen?

[Brad Dwin] (34:36 – 35:44)
Yeah, I find that anytime you wait, especially as an investor, you make a mistake. Yeah. Now I will say this, the last rental I refinanced was not great.

I’m counting on appreciation more than anything else, because the appraisal came in really high. But as a cash flow, it’s I got killed on it. Because when I refinanced to the DSCR loan, I didn’t really do that well.

And ironically, I closed on election day on the refinance. And everybody said, wait it out. But you know, rates really haven’t come down enough to make it worth my while.

So I just did it when I did it. And, you know, I’ll suck it up for the next, you know, three years, because it’s a 3-2-1. Unless they significantly drop, and I’ll get out of it altogether and refinance.

But luckily, there’s a lot of appreciation in that property. But I just, you know, I needed to act and I can’t count on all this uncertainty. And I can’t wait for a couple months, I already had a tenant in place, I needed to get out of the hard money loan.

And it is what it is. And I think a lot of us are facing that. I think, you know, I wish I bought more rentals five years ago.

But again, that’s, you know, looking back and hindsight’s 2020. But you know, you just have to make the decision and do it. And waiting around is never a good option.

And that’s been my experience.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (35:46 – 36:27)
I know for myself on raising capital from investors, you know, the election created so much fear, artificial fear, right? They were, they were all terrified. And then they said, okay, we’re gonna wait and see what the election does.

And then I was like, okay, the election’s gone. I think from a real estate investor point of view, I’m kind of happy. And they’re all now well, let’s wait till they get in office.

Let’s wait to see what they do. And it’s really created this sense of waiting, which is wrong, right? You never want your money sitting there losing not working, but but they’re, they’re frozen in fear, because that’s what the news has told them.

Yeah. Right or wrong.

[James A. Brown] (36:28 – 36:31)
That’s what this shows about separating the news from the noise.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (36:32 – 36:32)
Yeah.

[Paul Anderson] (36:33 – 37:33)
Well, and I think Trevor, I do some syndication and I deal with a lot of investors. And so I was talking to one of our larger developers in the valley here today.

It’s amazing how one night in November, every four years changes so many things. So what we saw on our market, and we are very conservative political days here. But we saw our psyche changed overnight, a lot of the investors that we were working with who were on pause.

Literally the next day, we’re like, hey, we’re ready to come back. But to your point on the syndication side, I’ve got some people who they were waiting for the election. Now they’re waiting for the transition.

And I just had to have the conversation. Are you really interested in doing this or not? Because I think there’s those people we talk about it, they educate themselves, they they’re involved with everything, up to the point that it comes to actually taking action.

And I think that speaks to Brad’s point a moment ago is, hey, at some point in time, you’ve got to do something having your capital parked right now is really, really expensive.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (37:34 – 38:08)
Yeah. And then also to on the bonus depreciation, at least for some kids syndication, especially in multifamily, you know, it’s a huge incentive for a lot of people to be able to get. And everybody keeps saying, Well, I think it might change, I’m going to wait.

And I’m like, but if it doesn’t change, you lost out because it’s gonna go down. And then they’ve talked about if it changes, they might make it retroactive. But waiting to see and losing out on getting that for this tax season is just, it’s insane.

They’d rather pay the tax, which is blows my mind sometimes.

[James A. Brown] (38:13 – 38:31)
Let’s talk about the economic part of this. Commercial real estate instability amid economic uncertainty is one of the headlines here we can talk about. You guys in commercial, you want to add anything on that?

Or have we touched on that enough?

[Eric Burns] (38:33 – 39:35)
I think it’s really good timing for someone who wants to exit the stock market after kind of a uptick, buy high and sell low. I know a lot of operators are buying at deeper discounts, and they are finally getting deals to go through getting them under contract, actually. And it’s encouraging.

And I think it’s just kind of maybe one of those things that, you know, we as real estate professionals, and, you know, myself and my other entrepreneurs out there need to figure out ways to operate in any climate, whether it’s political, or I just saw I just saw the text there. The DM, yes, super deep discounts. Yeah, to be able to navigate different financial, government, you know, political situations, I think there’s always going to be an opportunity to be found.

If you kind of know where to look.

[Antonio Holman] (39:41 – 39:49)
Another CRE sale. I was gonna say there’s a massive CRE sale. So if you got it, grab them.

[Paul Anderson] (39:49 – 40:26)
No, it’s not saying when there’s blood in the streets, there’s money to be made. And that’s where… And how many of us?

07, 08 even 2000 with .com that we’re in real estate, we’re able to seize a little bit of that or a lot of that. And it was a game changer. And I think we’ll see the same thing again.

The only the only difficulty I see with that is a lot of the institutions that are holding the money on that aren’t really willing to negotiate on some of the terms. So a lot of people are kind of hemmed in. So the interesting to see how those transactions proceed if they’re able to go forward.

[James A. Brown] (40:28 – 40:34)
Are you saying because the those institutions, they’re just on pause, they’re just going to wait it out?

[Paul Anderson] (40:35 – 41:26)
Or no, but I mean, and I love where Eric’s coming from, you know, almost like a distressed asset type sale. But some of these are so heavily leveraged, you know, and so it’s really going to depend on the institution and on our side of it as a small, more private capital lender in commercial, you know, we have we have a lot of banks, local, regional banks that are coming to us that are trying to offload a lot of their commercial portfolio, because they’re just, they’re not balanced, and they need to get back to equilibrium as well as the large commercial banks. So be curious to see, you know, if you start talking about super deep discounts, what are you going to be able to do when you when the note if I mean, are you going to come and do a cash call and shore that thing up to get it off your books? Because I don’t know that the institutions are going to be willing to negotiate that much.

[James A. Brown] (41:30 – 42:06)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve done some capital raising for some syndications. And because of what’s going on, we’ve seen those capital calls, those that short term, you know, seven year debt, all of a sudden, jumping three, 4% higher than it was. These syndicators are in trouble.

So when we’re doing our due diligence, we’re asking them, well, how long have you been in business? Have you gone through a cycle where this kind of stuff came up? When were you prepared?

Were you not like, what did you do? How did you handle that?

[K. Trevor Thompson] (42:07 – 43:07)
So I know for ourselves for the first time ever, we’re seeing tons of pre foreclosures being brought to us from a bank, they don’t want them back. They just they want they want to know how much of their money they can get. And can somebody recapitalize it and keep it afloat?

And we’ve never never, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re a small syndicator, right? But 250 million that we’re not the big guys. And for the fact that in our local market, we’re starting to get banks calling.

I think that chain that makes a big change in their philosophy, right? They were gonna, we’re gonna hang on and somebody will buy it. And there’s somebodies are gone.

There’s somebodies aren’t buying them. And and they’re looking for them now. And you know, we’re, we’re negotiating on one now that’s, you know, in serious trouble.

Hopefully, they’ll accept something like 65 to 80 cents on the dollar somewhere in there. And then you can recapitalize because you can’t buy it at bank that even, it’s that upside down.

[James A. Brown] (43:08 – 43:50)
All right. See, another title here, increased institutional investment in single family rentals. Wall Street firms invested heavily in build to rent, the build to rent market targeting individuals unable to afford home ownership due to high prices, and mortgage rates.

So yeah, we were actually looking recently at raising for a build to rent project. And with an operator that’s got the blueprint, they’ve just been doing it over and over and over and repeat.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (43:51 – 44:33)
So it’s a the affordability of the purchasing has just made that a brand new awesome business model. You know, it’s quite peculiar, but you can’t buy a house. But you can do a you can rent a house.

And, and it’s quite, quite interesting. And it’s, it’s made a big boom. And there’s tons of it in Texas, right, growing.

It’s just all over huge build-to-rent communities, just because, you know, housing has gone up here 40, 60% on some markets, and you just can’t afford to buy but you don’t want to be an apartment. So it’s a very, it’s I think it’s going to grow for the next few years as well.

[Kurt Byers] (44:36 – 46:15)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a good amount that comes from the just the fact that people can’t afford but I mean, on our side of it, we’re obviously big on more of the renovate to rent type, just because there are those 15 million vacant homes, there’s a ton of homes that are just uninhabitable out there. And they’re already plotted, they’re already approved, they just need an investor to come in and do that.

And the majority of all the investors doing that are your mom and pop single, you know, family type homes, and you have your local investor that’s doing it compared to the Wall Street landlord who probably bought less than 10 to 15% of the overall inventory. And that’s because, you know, people think they’re just massive, massive buyers, but really, the biggest ones making an impact in that more renovate to rent space is the single kind of family, local landlord, but the build to rent is definitely a new class that a lot of people I think have mixed feelings on. But I mean, you’re creating entire areas in a community that people can actually live in, whereas you did a, you know, build to live or build to buy, you’re actually, you know, probably pricing out the majority of people that would want to live there, because you’re likely making a house that’s too big price per square foot to do and make affordable.

So you either need to renovate and rent it or you need to build a rent. And I think you have to kind of combine new build and revive revitalization to kind of help the affordability, but it’s really not going to get any better anytime soon until all that kind of comes together.

[Antonio Holman] (46:16 – 46:20)
So so Kurt, the American dream is dead, right?

[Kurt Byers] (46:21 – 46:26)
It’s not dead. It just needs to be worked on.

It needs to be kind of rejuvenated.

[Joe Bodek] (46:26 – 47:48)
I think I would add in here also, guys, having been through this before, high interest rates, expensive housing. I’ve been doing this for a long time. So I’ve been through a bunch of your lease options, you’re subject to are going to be, you know, starting to go through the roof.

It gives the seller who has a problem getting the place sold. And they generally have bought another house, they got two mortgages going or, you know, lost their job, can’t afford to pay the mortgage anywhere, all kinds of stuff brings it on. But with these high interest rates, and so forth, you’ll find it’s a great way.

For me, it’s a great way to go. It affords the seller the ability to get a tenant buyer in there. And more importantly, it allows the person that can’t go to a bank, due to these rates, and so forth, to buy the house to get in it, give them X amount of years, whatever is agreed upon to get the rest of the money or this credit back or whatever the case may be.

So I think you’ll see a pretty big movement, upward movement in your lead in your rent owns and that type of thing during this period.

[James A. Brown] (47:49 – 48:03)
Yeah, agreed. Hope you’re right. Since that’s what we’re in.

We do rent own investing, as well as co living, which what Kurt was talking about, taking a large home, splitting it up and renting it out room by the room.

[Brad Dwin] (48:04 – 49:58)
Yeah, subtos were a big part of my business in 2024. And not me, but I wholesale a lot of subto deals to one of my partners who does nothing but subto. And they’re really great for him.

To me, me personally, I think they’re a little risky to hold. But that’s just me. So I’m happy wholesaling and cashing out.

Now looking back, there’s a few I wish I had stayed in with them because they turned out to be home run deals. But again, what Joe was saying, it’s allowing folks that can’t normally deal with the banks to find a way to afford a home and it’s solving a problem for a seller with a lot of with low equity. That’s usually where I find the most.

And as an investor, I mean, picking up a mortgage that’s like two or 3% from like four or five years ago is a goldmine on the front end. But the other thing I wanted to bring up and this is specific to my area. I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, and they are trying to introduce a law to allow single family zones, single family zones to have multifamily because there is none of that in Montgomery County right now.

And it’s a big issue here. It’s of course, you know, there’s a lot of pros and cons. The cons are obviously it’s the whole NIMBY thing.

Not in my backyard. We don’t want multifamily units and single family zones. But it would really, it would do a lot I think for a county that’s extremely unaffordable right now.

I think it would open the door for allowing for more affordable housing in a better way than just building and building and building because we’ve had a big urban blight issue, an urban sprawl issue. I mean, urban, not urban blight, urban sprawl issue in Montgomery County for the last 10 to 15 years. It just keeps spreading out.

I think allowing some of these single family zoned areas to go to multifamily would be extremely helpful both as an investor and as a consumer.

[James A. Brown] (49:58 – 50:32)
Yeah, we lucked out with Colorado. Our governor passed a statewide law removing the restriction for how many unrelated people live in a home. So like the doors are wide open because we’ve got a huge affordability problem here in Denver.

It’s always been tough. Maybe not as bad as like a San Francisco or New York, but still it’s tough. So that’s going in the right direction for solving this problem.

[Kurt Byers] (50:33 – 50:40)
Yeah, has that mostly been like ADUs or has that been people redeveloping into multifamily in Denver?

[James A. Brown] (50:41 – 51:19)
Just single family homes. So like we’ll try to get maybe six bedrooms or more out of one house. The challenges are parking is kind of the big one.

So we’re trying to find homes that have enough parking, maybe it’s on a corner lot. And then you have at least two off street parking or you maybe can add some extras. And we also look for homes that aren’t in an HOA.

A lot are but HOAs can override that statewide ruling. So we have to pick and choose, you know.

[Paul Anderson] (51:21 – 51:29)
Are any of you experiencing an influx of the larger institutional buyers or even builders coming into your marketplace?

[James A. Brown] (51:34 – 51:36)
Are you talking a residential?

[Paul Anderson] (51:36 – 52:07)
Yeah, like for us, for example, like American Homes for Rent. You know, they’ve gone through and in our valley, we’re not big, our total MSA is under a million people. But they have acquired about 400 acres of land.

So they’ve bought several sections of land that they and that’s all they do. They just build rental properties and they built and very strategically they bought them in areas that are surrounded by mid-level price point homes. So I just didn’t know if you guys are seeing anything like that in your areas.

[James A. Brown] (52:09 – 53:01)
I haven’t seen any here. We did have Home Partners of America, which is a rent-to-own company coming in and buying a bunch. And now they’re the ones that they haven’t completed, you know, where people ended up buying that rent-to-own home.

They’re selling them off. But they also pulled the plug, you know, countrywide. So BlackRock was their funding entity.

And I don’t know who made the decision, how they’re married together, but they just announced about a month ago that they’re pulling out of the market, which I was happy to hear because I’ve heard a lot of bad things about them. But also since we have our own rent-to-own company and a network of people around the country, helping people through rent-to-own, that just creates more opportunity for us.

[Brad Dwin] (53:03 – 53:48)
I don’t know if I’d call them institutional buyers, but we had a problem a few years ago. You know, Under Armour is a massive headquarters in Baltimore. And they got into the real estate game about seven, eight years ago, maybe even longer than they started buying up all the properties in South Baltimore.

And the guys like me just couldn’t compete with what they were doing. And it’s, you know, it definitely, it’s very frustrating when you can’t compete with a billion dollar corporation for properties. But that’s, I mean, that’s a similar issue.

And they, I mean, I think the plan was to get as many employees living there, you know, as possible. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think they basically flipped them just as a corporation and as a unit of Under Armour that was dealing with real estate.

So there’s always that challenge when a big company starts doing that.

[Kurt Byers] (53:49 – 54:33)
Yeah, I think on our end, we’ve seen a lot of institutional players that are maybe getting more into the build to rent. They’ve been dispositioning their kind of distressed portfolio assets. So they’re kind of preparing for more of these communities and a lot of their assets that they don’t want to go in and have to renovate themselves.

You know, they are kind of selling those off. And I mean, we’ve been lucky enough to be able to be a buyer for a lot of those. But I think you’re going to see more of them kind of transitioning their inventory to kind of meet expectation of the new build to rent style, whereas a lot of the homes they, you know, kind of scooped up are going to be maybe dispositioned or repurposed a little bit.

But I have seen a good amount of that activity lately.

[James A. Brown] (54:37 – 55:58)
Let’s keep moving along. There’s a lot more to cover here. This is interesting.

These politically aligned real estate platforms like Odyssey, I haven’t jumped in there, but apparently they give insight into neighbors political affiliations, which sparked debate about privacy and societal polarization, it says, and the ethics of that. Which is, that’s touchy stuff like as real estate agents, you know, we’ve got to not do things like redlining, all those kinds of things where we’re steering people away or to an area. Any comments on that?

Has anybody actually looked at that website or seen one like that? Alright, let’s see. Another note here, sex trafficking charges against luxury real estate brokers.

There’s prominent luxury real estate brokers facing charges of sex trafficking. Anybody see that in the news?

[Antonio Holman] (55:58 – 56:50)
Yeah, I reported on that, actually, a few months back, and it’s still going. And now they’re about to start going to court for it. So it’s really bad, because they have taken advantage of multiple people.

And I think this is the first person who’s actually coming forward to say something, you know, because you get all this power and control in your city, and then you start utilizing it to hurt other people. And they’re prominent names in their city. So it’s not it’s not looking good, because apparently they have some evidence on the whole thing.

And so it’s three brothers in total. Yeah, it’s been going on, man, almost a whole 2024. So yeah, lock them up.

Yeah, pretty much.

[Paul Anderson] (56:51 – 56:55)
Yeah. Watch all the sharks come for their properties and developments, too.

[Antonio Holman] (56:57 – 56:59)
That’s that’s totally what’s gonna happen.

[James A. Brown] (57:01 – 57:25)
Yeah. Another little comment here was, our topic was millennial hesitancy in homeownership. Despite favorable market conditions, many millennials remain cautious, being real estate as unpredictable, prompting discussions on the long term implications for the housing market and economy.

[Antonio Holman] (57:28 – 57:41)
And if you guys have millennial children wanting to buy, I got a daughter, she’s not ready to buy yet. But I think she may have a little challenge. I’m not sure.

I don’t know.

[Eric Burns] (57:43 – 58:24)
I think kind of to circle back regarding available units and affordable housing, and the residential market and the American dream. The American dream I think exists, I think it’s just evolving. I think younger people, millennials included, value a nomadic lifestyle.

A lot of their careers will take them from city to city for a number of years and things like that. So I think also there may be waiting a little longer to settle down too. And buying a house is, yeah, you kind of plant your roots at that point, at least for a little while.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (58:27 – 58:59)
I think COVID as much as the economy changed their mindset, you know, their whole mindset changed. They no longer needed to be fixed. They work from home, they had flexibility, they didn’t want to get tied down.

And I think that changed what everybody wants to do, especially millennials, old guys like me, we like to set down roots and stay there. But they’re quite happy just being nomads. And so many people saying, well, I can live anywhere.

I’ve always wanted to live here or there. But they don’t want to buy because it makes no sense.

[Paul Anderson] (59:03 – 59:31)
You know, I agree with Trevor’s point. But another interesting thing that I’ve found over the years too, in talking to a lot of them, because I have one for a child, seeing what we as parents and what some of the other ones, their grandparents went through during the last housing crisis, has for some of them kind of left a bad impression of home ownership. Because, you know, they went through either some sort of a short sale foreclosure or distress property with their parents and it was created a lot of trauma for them.

[Kurt Byers] (59:34 – 1:00:27)
Well, and I think some of it is probably some forced hesitancy because they can’t afford to buy the home that they think they should have been able to afford or that their parents could. You know, so it’s one of those where I think you either understand the situation and you can afford the home and you’re prepared to do it, or you can’t afford it. So you’re very hesitant.

So you buy into nomadic lifestyle, you understand that it’s probably the only time in your life, you’re going to be able to do it. So you don’t put down roots and start the family, because they probably can’t afford to start their family yet how they want. And it’s not the dream home, the brick build, it’s, you know, maybe an apartment or a condo.

So I think some of this, you know, situational based, and they’ve just kind of understood it is what it is, and that they’re kind of just stuck there. But it might be a little bit of forced hesitancy, in my opinion.

[Antonio Holman] (1:00:30 – 1:00:58)
There’s a there’s a big thing people have been talking for years about the silver tsunami that’s supposed to happen. When all the baby boomers start selling their properties, but they’re not selling, they’re not selling. They have super sweet interest rates, they’re not selling.

So a lot of their children are angry that they’re not selling and passing the wealth down to them and making it easier. So, or they’re paid in full already. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Brad Dwin] (1:01:01 – 1:02:06)
You know, I saw we were still like on legal, I guess I was looking at the following along, this was something that wasn’t on the list. But I was just curious, because it’s a big issue in Maryland. And that’s the issue of squatters.

That has been a major, major problem here in Maryland, especially in Baltimore, with getting a property under contract and finding out that someone’s been squatting in. And I even had someone come to me trying to sell his property because he couldn’t get the squatters out. And you know, I said, Did you try cash for keys?

He said, Yeah, I offered him $20,000. And he said, No. I said, Well, I got news for you.

If you offer $20,000, there’s nothing I can do. So it’s kind of an issue. And in Baltimore, we have this group of guys that call themselves the Wolfpack, and you can hire them.

And they will go to the property and make life extremely difficult for the folks there. But it really only works in Baltimore, because we were going to try it in Montgomery County. And our lawyers said, Yeah, don’t try it in this county, you’ll just get sued.

But in Baltimore, that’s that’s one way to combat the problem. I don’t know if anybody else who’s in the residential realm is experiencing issues with squatters.

[James A. Brown] (1:02:07 – 1:02:16)
But I have that thought. So a couple of Russian guys in black trench coats over. You already have that there.

That’s amazing.

[Kurt Byers] (1:02:17 – 1:03:04)
Yeah, the depending on the state, I mean, we’re in, you know, 35 plus markets, but depending on the state, it can be a very big deterrent to whether or not we’ll buy a house. You know, if someone says, Oh, it’s currently vacant, and then you go to close, and it’s definitely vacant. And there’s, you know, poop everywhere and needles.

And there’s, you know, people that certainly don’t want to leave, there’s some states that make it incredibly difficult. But then some, you know, you have pretty much easier path to getting them out. But yeah, it can be a struggle, especially with distressed homes or vacant homes that have been vacant for five years.

And all of a sudden, it’s now gone through probate, and the kids stop fighting, so they’re going to sell it. And they haven’t been to the house in four years. Yeah, it’s unfortunately pretty common.

[Paul Anderson] (1:03:05 – 1:03:39)
Seeing on the commercial side, especially on like the life cow and some of the private money, they have certain markets that they just won’t play in. And so it’s all I mean, it’s almost like an exclusionary list. And even certain asset classes, like in some of the rougher states, and I mean, it’s I can speak to Minneapolis, certain cities in California, like retail and office space, some of our lenders won’t even participate.

They’re like, we just don’t lend in those markets for those asset classes.

[James A. Brown] (1:03:43 – 1:06:08)
Yep. Yeah, no, Colorado’s getting much more tenant friendly. And, you know, there’s, there’s some good reasons for some of these rules, but it’s made it really difficult.

And for landlords, in some cases, haven’t, not really sure about the squatter situation. I haven’t heard of any nightmares here. But that’s a big issue.

Anytime I have a listing, that’s vacant. I’m like, please, please, please stay stay vacant. So well, hey, let’s keep things rolling.

Next category is tech disruption. Has anybody heard of AI? Siddhartha Taparia, CMO of JLL says, AI has significantly accelerated tasks, as we know, streamlining processes like drafting memorandums of understanding from weeks to mere hours.

That could be very handy. Stacey Gifford from IBM says, AI’s current and potential impacts present challenges and opportunities for driving energy efficiency in workplaces. I hadn’t thought about that.

Ali Haas from Forbes says, in real estate, AI is revolutionizing processes that were once static and labor intensive. One thing I found out recently, a prop stream, it’s a platform if anybody hasn’t, isn’t aware of it. You can do all sorts of searches for on and off market properties.

And they are now using AI to analyze the photos like if it’s a on the MLS or anywhere where they can pull photos. It’s actually analyzing those photos to see if it might be a distressed property, it might be a an opportunity to, you know, make a low cash offer. You know, like, I’m sure Kurt, you’re, that’s your world.

And a couple of you other guys finding those off market value add type properties. That is that’s a game changer type technology right there. So what, how are you guys using AI in your businesses now?

[Brad Dwin] (1:06:10 – 1:07:40)
I’m a huge AI guy. It’s a big part of my business. All my social media content, of course, I edit a lot of it.

I got into it a little over a year ago and an investor I know out of Mississippi, who’s now in Alabama completely got out of real estate investing. He’s focused his whole career on AI consulting now he does very well. And he’s kind of a big player and he turned me on to it.

I use it. I mean, I spend at least two hours a day using chat GPT and other AI for social media content for creating kind of negotiation type tactics when dealing with folks negotiating price. And it’s just it’s a time saver.

And if you learn how to use it the correct way, it can really do a lot of good. Now there’s a lot of negatives in that it’s a lot of it sounds computer generated, especially with content and stuff like that. But it is a total game changer.

I’m trying to learn how to use it for lead generation. That’s kind of the next thing to crack. And just a side quick side note, last summer, I got the idea to maybe write a book about using chat GPT by using chat GPT to write the book.

So I did that and publish it on Amazon. And it actually I got I hired a publicist to get me to number one just to give me some credibility on Amazon. And I actually went in and edit the book, it was probably 75% written with AI, but that’s the power of the platforms out there.

And there’s lots of them. It’s not just chat GPT. There’s 1000s and 1000s of AI platforms that are being tested and introduced every day.

[Antonio Holman] (1:07:41 – 1:08:17)
Yes, yeah. And Google was totally against it. And they were they were what he could de-ranking websites that they realized were using a lot of AI content.

But now, you know, Google waffles back and forth. They say, well, it doesn’t matter now, you know, since they jumped into the game conveniently. It doesn’t matter if it’s AI anymore.

Because as long as it’s helpful content, that’s all that matters. How convenient, right? But I mean, that’s really how it should be.

Because if the content is good, it’s good. That’s it.

[Joe Bodek] (1:08:18 – 1:10:27)
There’s a program out there that I’m being computer illiterate, and having never used AI before, okay, because it made me dizzy. There is a program that I got into, it’s in a beta state right now. But you were talking about using it for marketing just a moment ago.

And what this one does, it’s called inspired. Okay, so you ever want to check it out. But what this one does is it allows you to go into Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, any of the those and a couple of others.

And you can go in there and it has a little thing that says clip. And so if you’re looking at different ads, in these spaces, and it does not have to be a real estate can be any kind of an ad. And you like it, you’d like the way it’s written and so forth, what you do is you clip it, it goes into your, I’m still learning to use it, but it goes into a certain place and stored.

And then what you do is you tell the AI thingy, what you want it, you know, to write about, and you get just a tad, you put two, three sentences in, and that you wanted to write it in the style of whatever it was that you captured that you liked. And it’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty amazing, because it does it breaks it in that genre, whatever it was that you picked that you wanted it to do.

So as you said, there’s a there’s a ton of platforms out there. And I’m ignorant of most of all of them. I just happened to be turned on to this by a friend of mine.

And that’s why I went and did it. But it’s pretty amazing where you can actually, you can get ads on anything doesn’t matter what it is, and it will transform it into a real estate ad in that style. So yeah, it’s called inspired in case you ever want to check it out.

It’s in beta right now they’re fixing all that, you know, all the stuff that goes wrong with it when it first created it, but it’s pretty amazing. I sort of tested it in my kind of way, and it seems to work pretty well.

[Brad Dwin] (1:10:28 – 1:10:33)
Yeah, it’s it’s so realistic that actually, I’m on a beach in Hawaii right now. And you guys are talking.

[Paul Anderson] (1:10:37 – 1:10:39)
But you’re playing hockey this morning.

[James A. Brown] (1:10:40 – 1:10:41)
In Hawaii.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (1:10:43 – 1:11:18)
I’m glad I’m not the only guy that gets dizzy by it. But I’m starting to learn the power of it. And one of the things we’ve spent about three months developing is actually an AI who gonna call you now.

And it is amazing. You can upload piles of information, and they digest it and can actually answer questions in real time based on the uploads that you give them. And then you have to keep listening to them and refining it, but I’m just blown away.

It’s very interesting. It really feels like you’re talking to a person.

[James A. Brown] (1:11:20 – 1:11:42)
Yeah, yeah, we’re using it in our CRM. It’s, it’s pretty amazing. You have to spend the time upfront, you know, training it and getting it to, to a spot where it’s natural.

And it’s, it’s, you basically have to upload potential questions and how you would answer it. But man, it’s such a time saver.

[Antonio Holman] (1:11:43 – 1:11:52)
Uh, FYI James! They’re trying to regulate that. I just wanted to jump in. So just of course, warning you.

Of course. Yeah.

[James A. Brown] (1:11:53 – 1:13:03)
Yeah. What’s cool is like, people on the receiving end are getting used to it. Like at first, you know, everybody’s like, what’s going on?

This sums off here. Now they’re like, Okay, a lot of companies are jumping in and using it. They’re like, Alright, well, I think they’re becoming more accepting.

And of course, it’s getting better and better. And then there’s like, the AI twins, the video stuff is amazing. Like, I’m going to start using Hey, Jen.

H E y g n, I believe, where you you train it. So you just talk for multiple minutes, and it starts to understand how you your inflections are and, and your facial expressions. And then it’s off to the races.

And yeah, people will be able to tell, I think, you know, it’s getting better and better. So that there’s nothing quite the same as in person, but it’s getting so good. It’s pretty amazing.

Right? How else are you guys using it or seeing it being used?

[Paul Anderson] (1:13:07 – 1:13:56)
I know, I were using it a tremendous amount for marketing automation and content creation. Yeah. And we’ve been so that was a big push for us.

Heading into 2024. And we have experimented with a lot of different platforms, because it seems like every time you find a platform, five more prop pop up right behind it, because there’s just the nature of it. But we’ve used a lot on the marketing side, we haven’t done a lot of data research on it.

But also two of the CRMs we have actually have an AI content writer built into them. So we’ve used it quite a bit. And for that sort of stuff for for static type things, it’s been very, very good at mass getting the word out to masses and a lot of time efficiency.

[James A. Brown] (1:13:57 – 1:14:04)
Are you using high level? I’m not. Okay, yeah, that’s got a built in.

Yeah.

[Antonio Holman] (1:14:04 – 1:14:36)
Okay, I’ll give you a quick tip. So far from the little bit that I know, I know a little enough, sort of. If you check out Make.com, you can create custom AI automations that will run 24 hours a day.

It is amazing. It is amazing. There’s a there’s a big learning curve.

But it’s, it’s amazing. So check it out Make.com whenever you get it. Whenever you have a nice bunch of hours.

Check it out.

[Brad Dwin] (1:14:36 – 1:15:23)
I’ll do you one better. The gentleman I was referring to earlier, who’s really the expert AI, his name is Brent Moreno. M o r e n o.

I’ll put it in the chat. And he is amazing. And he’s got he’s got a group on school, SKOOL, which is a, you know, learning platform that everybody’s use probably.

His is a paid group, though, it’s the only one I pay for, because he really knows his stuff. And I’m part of one of his other groups that I got in grandfathered in a long time ago, but he knows everything. And he does an entire video, actually a series of videos on using make to create these unbelievable automations.

And it’s actually it there is a learning curve, but it’s a lot easier than you think once you get dive into it. So unbelievable tool, and definitely if you can definitely connect with Brent, if you can. Cool, good tips.

[James A. Brown] (1:15:26 – 1:17:27)
I know I use it for property descriptions for listings, because there are some people may be good at them and like doing them. But you’re basically having to take a bulleted list of the features of a home and try to create this, you know, nice, paint a picture, a story about it. And for me, I even though I’ve been a writer and a copy editor for years, in my past life, it’s still painful.

And AI has really helped, you know, and I’ve got a set of prompts that helps kind of whittle it down, and I still have to go in and edit it. But it sure takes a lot of the pain out of it. So I love it.

Let’s listen, but yes, there’s some more move on. Next topics, market movers and shakers, spotlighting the trends, regions and strategies that define 2024. I’ll read some quotes here.

Barbara Corcoran says if mortgage rates drop to around 5%, it could cause a significant increase in home buying activity, making the housing market go ballistic. I would agree. Key Bank Capital Markets analyst says the projected total return for US real estate investment trust REITs in 2025 will range from 5 to 15%.

And MarketWatch reports as the US commercial real estate market is finding its footing as it heads into 2025, supported by significant findings or finance financings, like the $3.5 billion refinancing of Rockefeller Center. Yeah, well, if those interest rates go down, they’ll have a significant effect for sure.

[Paul Anderson] (1:17:29 – 1:17:47)
Well, and I think to somebody’s earlier comment for so many of our baby, our baby boomers that are in properties that have those super low interest rates that we find estimated a few years ago, it may make them look to list those properties and put them up for sale thinking about it acquire something with lower borrowing costs.

[James A. Brown] (1:17:48 – 1:18:32)
Yeah. I know I’m looking for off well, properties that have assumable loans, you know, subject to like, you know, Joe is talking about, that’s, that’s one option. But if, if we can get an assumable loan, both for this for the buyer, buying a property, but then somebody’s downsizing or upsizing or whatever, going out and actually, we have to do a lot more work, but go find those those potential off or on market properties that have assumable loans, so that they’re not selling and jumping into that higher rate.

So it’s forcing us to get really creative and do more work, obviously.

[Eric Burns] (1:18:35 – 1:19:25)
I am personally somewhat bullish going into 2025. And that I have already seen an uptick in deals I’ve been able to underwrite. And good ones, too.

So it’s super exciting. And I know a lot of big markets. You know, I just looked at one in Phoenix with still really great, dynamic, big MSA.

And I think that after a market correction, there’s always in any market, there is always availability to excel. You know, if you’ve played your cards, right. There’s a lot of factors that go into it.

But I think for some operators that had been patiently waiting out the market correction, I think you’re going to see some people doing well in 2025.

[James A. Brown] (1:19:30 – 1:19:33)
Yeah, who else is bullish?

[Paul Anderson] (1:19:33 – 1:20:17)
Let’s go. I think 2025 is going to create a tremendous amount of opportunity. I mean, we’re seeing a lot of optimism and a lot of things happen.

There’s still a lot of unknown, but I think, I think hopefully the market’s heading in the right direction. And we’ll see if the Fed rate cut that they just announced 20 minutes ago, let’s see what that does to the market by the end of the year. I don’t know, it’ll bring a lot.

But, you know, I know from our marketplace, as we talked about earlier, so many people were on pause leading up to the election. And now that we’ve gotten beyond that, and we’ve set, you know, we figured out the next two years till the midterms, there are people that are ready to take action. So I think I’m bullish that they’re going to take that action over here to see some positive results from it.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (1:20:20 – 1:20:53)
Yeah, I’m definitely super bullish. We may need one to two more rate cuts to make it very exciting, you know, because a lot of big deals like multifamily deals, you know, to pay off existing loans, it costs too much money to buy them out. And so you really got to wait for some of those bridge loans that are going to come due.

And then if you can go ahead and buy them at a very reasonable interest rate and lock it in for the next five years, it’s going to be a game changer in, you know, multifamily and other types of deals.

[Kurt Byers] (1:20:59 – 1:21:57)
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a lot of people that come 2025, even just another couple basis points, even another few cuts, I think they’re just kind of tired of waiting, they kept, they were kept being told, the crash is coming, just wait it out, wait it out. And then all of a sudden, it’s, you know, a very slow moving interest rate cut, the home prices are projected to go up. So I mean, I think eventually people are just going to be like, right, well, this is the new normal, just as you know, back how many ever years ago, it was always like this.

So I don’t I don’t think it’s going to be one that whether or not there’s a huge interest rate drop, I still think activity is going to be higher. And I think more homeowners are going to be at the point where they’re willing to sell and find a new property. Instead of just holding it, I mean, there might be some that try and keep a rental or whatever.

But I think people are just kind of realizing that the crash probably isn’t coming. And that 2025 is probably a pretty good opportunity to take advantage.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (1:22:00 – 1:22:41)
Yes. In the homeowner space, though, it’s still a challenge, right? If you’re, you’re at two or 3%, and you’re going to go to five or six instead of seven to eight, it’s still it’s still a big jump, especially with an expensive house.

So I think it will do more on commercial than residential. But again, I don’t play much in the residential space other than, you know, I have a bunch of friends that do but it needs to have a significant change for it to make it worth your while to sell and rebuy. I think that’s the only thing that will change huge for residential to be able to sell and rebuy all in the same transaction without a significant increase unless you upgrade your house.

[James A. Brown] (1:22:45 – 1:23:14)
Yeah, we’ve we’ve basically just resolved that to just knowing that people have to be super motivated in this kind of environment. So divorce, diapers, death, those kinds of situations where people just have to sell and move. Those the only ones that have been making any moves because everybody else has just been handcuffed with a low interest rates.

[Joe Bodek] (1:23:16 – 1:25:37)
Yeah, I think that I would, you know, go a little further on that one, James. In my, my genre, we’re always working with people. Look, there’s two kinds of people out there people that want to sell, who you’re mostly talking about right now, and people that need to sell who you just mentioned.

And no matter what the market does, well, the worse it gets better it is for me. The worse the conditions are, the better it is for me. But the one thing that doesn’t change all that much, no matter what the market’s doing, or people that are in trouble, like you just mentioned, and those are the people that need to sell, and they’re willing to do whatever you want them to do to get out from under the mess that they’re in.

So through all these ups and downs, and I’ve been through in 30 years doing this. The one thing that I can safely say is that in type of stuff that I do these options and subject to and that type of thing, the market is always pretty good, no matter whether it’s good times or bad times, because people do have a knack of getting themselves into trouble. And basically, you know, we’re not realtors.

We’re, you know, we’re problem solvers in the end of the business that I do. So I’m 25, I think it’ll be as good as 24, 23, 22, 20, and all the rest of them. Because as I say, unfortunately, people do have a knack for messing up their lives.

And that’s where we come in. So with I think you’re all completely right about the people that want to sell, okay, the conditions have to be right for that. But for the people that need to sell who are always out there.

And the beauty of it is, is that you do get what I like about it a lot is that you know, you get somebody that can’t move his house, he gets to move his house and move on. And then you get people that you know, need to get into a property, but as I think we mentioned before, can’t get financing to do so. So they have the time to put that together.

So that’s my uptake on on on the next year. I think it’ll be it’ll probably be the same as all rest of them actually, for the type of work that we do.

[James A. Brown] (1:25:40 – 1:25:54)
Anybody else have some predictions for 2025? Before we go to our next section? We can come back to that too.

So yeah, let’s take a break for our next sponsor.

[James A. Brown] (1:26:56 – 1:30:02)
Okay, let’s get back to it. Investor Insights. Mike Simonson from Altos Research, if anybody’s in real estate knows about those guys.

A lot of data coming out of that group. And Jessica Lautz, the Chief Economist for National Association of Realtors, both have some quotes here with optimism for 2025. So that’s good.

Let’s jump into policy changes. Let’s see, there’s section here on enhanced regulations on short term rentals. Did one of you guys or some of you mentioned that you were in short term?

Somebody mentioned that. There’s definitely a lot of rules, regulations, making that harder, which is another reason like we’re shifting into co-living. Because like I mentioned before, the Colorado’s can open the door to that.

So the tides shifting away from the short term rentals, which are getting clamped down. Let’s see, affordable housing initiatives. Growing need for affordable housing, back to the co-living, right?

Like, what we’re doing basically with co-living, if anybody is unfamiliar, it’s basically renting by the room. And on the investing side, we love it because it provides us an opportunity to generate more cash flow than we could with a single family rental, where there’s just one family staying in a property. But it’s also solving a problem of affordability.

So as an example, like a studio or one bedroom apartment in Denver is going to be about $1,500 or more. With co-living, they might be able to get a room for seven to $900. So it’s really helping provide housing that somebody normally wouldn’t be able to afford.

So it’s filling a gap for mainly, there’s a lot of people that, you know, maybe make 55 grand or less a year, service industry, you know, waitstaff. If somebody works at Best Buy, you know, the service industry workforce type workers, a lot of them don’t have cars. They’re just kind of barely getting by.

So it’s for, you know, providing this, this solution. And we as investors can provide that and also make money from it. There’s challenges to it.

More management. But anyway, anybody else working in affordable housing?

[Kurt Byers] (1:30:03 – 1:31:32)
Yeah, I mean, we’ve definitely seen an uptick in our investors using the co-living as a an additional exit strategy. It kind of helps them pencil out some homes that wouldn’t work as a single family rental or a fix and flip. It kind of provides another option to where the cash flow is actually there.

So they can take that property and then instead of renovating it in one way, they’ll actually add, we’ll take a three bedroom home and turn it into a four or five, six bedroom home and be able to increase the rents by room and then that now pencils out and they can either get the hard money loan or bridge loan or cash, obviously. So yeah, we definitely see an uptick in that. And then, you know, just on our end, as I kind of said earlier, just on the affordable housing piece, we’ve seen in our markets that our investors that are fixing flipping homes, actually bringing homes that were vacant or uninhabitable back to the market at a 21% lower rate than the market average.

So I think there’s a lot of investors who are still able to make a very large margin but bring homes back to their market or their community at a rate that is surprisingly lower and more affordable. So I think it’ll it’ll catch trend as far as being able to bring back affordable housing to the environment that most homes, you know, wouldn’t have either room left for a big new build or other opportunities. So I think those two things for affordable housing will be really big coming up.

[James A. Brown] (1:31:33 – 1:31:44)
Yeah, you got to provide some solutions. Let’s see. Somebody has something to say.

[Antonio Holman] (1:31:45 – 1:31:59)
Oh, I was gonna crack a joke. That’s not funny.

But there’s a solution here in Vegas. They just keep… They just keep building houses and building and building and building and building.

That’s their solution here.

[James A. Brown] (1:32:00 – 1:32:30)
Yeah. Denver’s been a city of cranes everywhere for a long time. Definitely have a lot of apartment buildings. Let’s see stricter environmental standards for developments.

Environmental concerns led to the implementation of more stringent building codes and development regulations. New policies require sustainable construction practices.

[Antonio Holman] (1:32:31 – 1:32:38)
Now, Trump administration’s coming in. So does that mean all of those are about to be rolled back?

[James A. Brown] (1:32:40 – 1:32:41)
Good guess.

[Joe Bodek] (1:32:42 – 1:32:43)
I would think so.

[James A. Brown] (1:32:43 – 1:33:07)
So yeah. Yeah. Also changes in property tax laws.

Come in several jurisdictions, revised property tax regulations, including reassessment cycles and tax rates to address budget deficits and funding for public services. Are you guys being affected by that?

[Kurt Byers] (1:33:14 – 1:34:07)
I mean, not not directly where I currently own my home, but I have seen there’s been a trend of, you know, they missed their budget. And so how are they going to make it up? They’re going to just raise the property tax.

How are they going to spend it? Probably not how they said they would. But, you know, but but I’ve seen there being impact as far as they’re cutting some quite a few schools, you know, as far as elementary schools or high schools, because there’s not enough enrollment.

And so they’re trying to budget cut there. And it’s just a, you know, you can’t raise it all by taxing property owners, you’re going to lose people to other areas. But that makes in some areas makes it hard, you know, for a deal to pencil out if you keep seeing an increase in property tax rates, and you have to account for that for your renter or your own.

So they’re going to keep going up, but someone needs to just kind of rein in the budget would be my guess as potentially a good fix for that.

[Brad Dwin] (1:34:08 – 1:34:51)
I’ve questioned for years about where the money goes in the Baltimore property tax game, because they are the highest tax jurisdiction in the state. And they have absolutely nothing to show for it. I mean, the schools are terrible.

I don’t see any improvement in public services. And it’s it’s a crazy high tax rate. It’s higher than Montgomery County, which is one of the most affluent counties in the country.

And it’s it. But in Montgomery County, you’re getting good schools. I mean, I live here, my daughter went to an amazing high school that I paid zero for.

And she’s a freshman in college and in Baltimore, it just it’s not the property taxes are not keeping up with what needs to be done in the city. And I just don’t get it. It’s confusing to me.

And, you know, it’s been an issue for decades.

[Eric Burns] (1:34:54 – 1:35:34)
I don’t know if anyone else is thinking it but property taxes are a racket, the way they reassess them, at least where I live in, you know, around Cincinnati area. Um, you know, like you said, they make up their budget, essentially, with ridiculous reassessments that they have no, and then and I’ve actually appealed them, and they don’t listen to arguments or anything. So they’re really baseless assessments to make up their budget.

And it’s it doesn’t seem fair that they can’t keep a budget. So they’re going to affect my budget. So yeah, that’s a Yeah, property taxes have always been a hot button issue for me.

[Kurt Byers] (1:35:36 – 1:35:47)
It’s probably going to the environmental impact study to tell you you can’t build new homes there. So sorry.

[James A. Brown] (1:35:50 – 1:37:47)
See, let’s go to the next section, the human element, how agents, investors and buyers adapted to this year’s chaos. A lot to adapt to Kevin O’Leary says, cost of shelter continues to rise and there’s no end in sight. It’s a new America.

Grant Cardone says this real estate market is worse than oh 708 because of interest rates. And Barbara Corcoran says mortgage rates dropped to around 5% housing market could go ballistic. Oh, we already heard that one.

Much more quotes than there. Let’s jump to the next thing. Unless somebody has any comments on that.

Oh, back to more predictions for 2025. What’s on the horizon? Let’s read some of these quotes.

Lawrence Young, chief economist for NAR says we anticipate a 9% increase in home sales for 2025 signaling a significant recovery. Skylar Olson from Zillow says expect to see more sales and only modest home value growth. Cameron Kusher from the economic research group at the REA group says we expect price growth to moderate in 2025 with a projected 4% national increase.

That’s not bad. Key Bank capitalists capital markets. Analysts, analysts projected total returns for REITs in 2025 to range from 5 to 15.

We heard that one before too. Yeah. Anybody else have any more predictions before we jump to our fun news item?

[Kurt Byers] (1:37:51 – 1:38:14)
Maybe not so much a full prediction, but more just a call to action potentially for people waiting to invest is if there is going to be an increase in price and an increase in sales, you might as well be one of those people. So if you’re going to invest and the prices are going to rise, you know, you might as well get in now. So Yes.

Yep.

[James A. Brown] (1:38:16 – 1:39:34)
That’s what I’ve been telling, telling buyers they’re, you know, skeptical and scared because of like what we talked about before election and stuff like, well, everybody else is thinking the same thing. So once everybody jumps into the market, all of a sudden, the prices rise. So get in now.

And that’s pretty typical for like buy if you can buy like in the fall winter. Most of the other buyers have gone away and are waiting because most people buy in the spring. So get in, get in early.

Alright guys, let’s go to our fun news item. Unique or common New Year’s Eve tradition. Opening doors at midnight on New Year’s Eve is a tradition observed in various cultures, symbolizing the release of the old year and welcoming in the new.

Some households the head of the family opens the back door at the first stroke of midnight to let the old year out, then opens the front door to let the new year in. This practice is believed to usher out any lingering negativity from the past year and invite fresh opportunities and good fortune into the home. I’ve never heard of that.

Have you guys or do you do that?

[Antonio Holman] (1:39:37 – 1:39:41)
I was wondering if I was the only one that never heard of it.

[James A. Brown] (1:39:47 – 1:39:51)
Just saying, okay, what kind of traditions do you guys have for New Years?

[Brad Dwin] (1:39:52 – 1:40:12)
Well, I don’t have any traditions, but I’m hoping that I’ve had COVID for two of the last three New Year’s. So I’m hoping that’s a tradition. In fact, last year, my girlfriend said, Thank God we didn’t buy tickets to anything like we did the year before because we would have been totally screwed.

But but yeah, I don’t I don’t I don’t really have any New Year’s traditions per se.

[James A. Brown] (1:40:12 – 1:40:19)
Yeah. Anybody else or anything you’re committing to doing?

[Paul Anderson] (1:40:20 – 1:40:24)
As we get older, it’s just being able to stay up till midnight.

[K. Trevor Thompson] (1:40:26 – 1:40:33)
I haven’t been up to midnight for the last five years. So that one’s sailed already. Yep.

[Eric Burns] (1:40:34 – 1:40:35)
Way past my witching hour.

[Brad Dwin] (1:40:35 – 1:41:11)
Yeah, well, it’s funny that you said that. I’ll tell a real quick story about 10 years ago, back when I was married, we spent New Year’s at our friend’s house. And we went to we were going to watch a movie, but the neighbors from across the street were supposed to come over at midnight and celebrate with us.

And we watched the movie and all four of us were dead asleep on the sofa at like 11 o’clock, 1130. And I guess the couple from across the street had been knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell. Nobody answered.

So they just sat there and partied right on the footstep. We never even knew they told us the next morning and they came over. And we were only like in our 40s back then.

I mean, we weren’t even that old.

[James A. Brown] (1:41:11 – 1:42:21)
I mean, is awesome. All right. Cool.

Well, that covers the news portion of the show. I’d like to thank our sponsors, United States Real Estate Investor Advertising, Universe Media Publishing, and also special thanks to Pamela, Pam Junge, I don’t even know how you say your last name. She’s with eXp Realty, the brokerage.

I’m in. She actually let us use the Podmother studio in Vegas. So Antonio had a place to run the ship here.

Oh, there we got it on the screen. Again, yeah, thanks for her saving our butts. We didn’t have WiFi.

So again, thanks to all you guys as guests, Eric Burns, Joe Bodek, Brad Dwin, Paul Anderson, Trevor Thompson, and Kurt Byers. You guys are awesome. Go ahead and let people know how they can connect with you.

If you you want to go for that. So we start with Eric.

[Eric Burns] (1:42:22 – 1:42:35)
Yeah, hey, thanks again, guys. Super fun as usual. I have “12 Mistakes to Avoid.”

It’s an ebook. Just reach me at flowerscapital.com and you’ll see the button. Fantastic.

[James A. Brown] (1:42:35 – 1:42:38)
Cool. Thanks for being on. Joe.

[Joe Bodek] (1:42:40 – 1:43:00)
Basically, if you’re interested in learning the business, creative real estate business, okay, subject to these options, those types of things. You can always visit my site at realestatementoringusa.com, that’s realestatementoringusa.com and get plenty of information on the programs we have.

[Brad Dwin] (1:43:02 – 1:43:41)
Great, Brad. Sorry, I had to unmute. I have a very unique name.

So I’m easy to find on social media. I’m the only Brad Dwin on Earth as far as I know. So you can find me on social media.

A lot of you have already. And I use those platforms a lot. Obviously, I’m always looking for deals, especially in Maryland.

And I just happen to have a copy of the chat GPT book that I wrote right here. And it looks like it’s backwards. But that is my little beginners chat GPT book that I wrote last year.

So I have that as well. And I just appreciate you guys having me on for the second time in a week. And it’s been a thrill.

And I hope to do more of these.

[James A. Brown] (1:43:42 – 1:43:47)
Awesome. Thank you. See, Paul.

[Paul Anderson] (1:43:49 – 1:44:15)
First off, I want to thank James and Antonio again, like Brad second time in a week, it’s been amazing. And Antonio, man, you just you adapt and overcome. So, I appreciate you getting to the pod mother cast that is our pod father.

That is awesome. So to reach out to me guys, simple. If you go to verticalfundingcapital.com, you can inquire we can schedule an appointment. I always love to do free consultation, or just simply email me at [email protected].

[K. Trevor Thompson] (1:44:18 – 1:44:28)
Awesome, Trevor. Yeah, so the best way is on LinkedIn, you just have to remember the K; K. Trevor Thompson, just connect with me love to get to know you.

[James A. Brown] (1:44:29 – 1:44:30)
Fantastic, Kurt.

[Kurt Byers] (1:44:31 – 1:44:49)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Same as Trevor, just on LinkedIn, feel free to connect always happy to talk through ideas or questions.

And then if you want to be an investor with New Western, go to newwestern.com and sign up and we’ll get you on the marketplace.

[James A. Brown] (1:44:50 – 1:46:04)
Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Again, I’m your host James Brown.

I show people how to make safe secure returns through our passive investments. And if you do want to go sign up for our private investor club, and go to acceleratemycapital.com/invest Also huge thanks to Antonio Holman, our founder. He is a rock star.

Follow and subscribe to This Month in Real Estate Investing on YouTube, or just go straight to our website thismonthinrealestateinvesting.com or go to your favorite podcast app. We’re on all the major podcasts. If you run across any interesting news, events or have suggestions for awesome guests like we’ve got today, feel free to share by emailing Antonio at [email protected]

And remember, when one door closes, another door opens to financial freedom. Thanks guys.