Wall Street Loses Its Landlord Appetite, Listings Slump, and Rents Rise

Dave:
Hey, what’s going on, everyone. Welcome to On The Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, and I am joined today by the full On The Market panel. We have Jamil, Kathy, Henry, and James joining us. How’s everyone doing?

Kathy:
Fantastic.

Henry:
Awesome.

Dave:
Well, great. Thank you all for being here. We’re going to repeat a show that we tried a couple of months ago that was really popular, and basically, we gave homework, again, to each of the co-hosts here, and asked them to bring us the story that is most interesting to them about today’s housing market. And given everything that is going on in the economy, there is probably many to choose from, I imagine. I think we have some really interesting stories that show different sides to the housing market and different angles that you should be thinking about for your own investing. With that, let’s just jump into this. James, let’s start with you. What story did you bring for us this week?

James:
This is a really interesting story that I found, and over the last year we’ve heard all about… Actually, last three to four years, we’ve heard about Wall Street buying up all the single family housing and what’s that been doing for inventory, and the amount of money they’ve been spending. This article is titled, “Real estate experts see a big selloff in coming as treasure yields close in on cap rates.” And what that means is, what they’re talking about, is the treasury yield has increased dramatically over the last 12 months. It is now up to a 3.7% return, whereas with the demand of single family housing, the cap rates have fallen also dramatically since 2014, and they’ve gone from 5.4% down to 4.4%. What they’re saying is the margins have been compressed, just like we’re all seeing, or we’ve seen the last 24 months. To get into a deal you had to buy on a slimmer margin.
What this article is talking about is this could be the major pullback and that real estate was not… or, Wall Street was not built for real estate. They want to work money, they want to get that stable return, but now they have easier investments that they can put it in. What it’s saying is Wall Street is going to lose its appetite because it takes a lot more work, takes a lot more staff, whereas they can just go put their money in the treasury yield and just make almost the same return. This could be the end of the hedge funds deploying massive amounts of money.
The other thing I thought was interesting was it talks about how as banks… A lot of these hedge funds are financed by banks and these banks could do margin calls, forcing inventory into the market, which with the amount of homes that these companies have bought could really increase it. There’s been a lot of talk about how, “These homes will never be seen again, they’ve been swallowed up by these hedge funds,” but that could be actually the change is the hedge funds have banks, they got to report to the banks, and at the end of the day, they have to do what they say. That’s where we could see some increased inventory.
It’s a very interesting concept of… Real estate returns have gone down so much that the banks are going to go somewhere else and we could be seeing some more inventory hit the market because they got to clean up their books.

Dave:
Yeah, just to clarify that for everyone, basically what this article and James are saying is that in the past, the yield on U.S. treasuries, which is considered by many, the safest investment in the world, was extremely low and unattractive. That forced investors, including hedge funds and private equity firms to invest in things like real estate, for many of them for the first time, and dumped money into the stock market, into the equities market that helped inflate prices there.
But as the Fed raises interest rates and bond yields start to rise, the spread between what is the safest investment in the world and real estate is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. That means that maybe these funds don’t want to take the risk of buying single family homes or investing in multi-family properties, and instead say, “You know what? I’m going to give it to the U.S. government. They’ve never defaulted on a loan. I would rather just get my 4%, even though that’s less than inflation, because there’s a lot less work,” like James said. What do the rest of you guys think about this story?

Jamil:
Well, right off the hop, I feel like we’re missing a piece of the conversation, or whoever wrote the article is not talking about what happens when rates actually do start to come down a little bit? Then also, are we just not taking into consideration any appreciation? Is it just a piece that doesn’t exist? Again, over time we know that things will stabilize. We understand that rates will eventually come down. There is not a big, hidden inventory of real estate that is going to magically appear. These builders haven’t been just shadow building houses that are just going to end up in the market someday that’s going to flood the market with inventory. That’s not happening.
My opinion is that I think that this is a great comparison, the treasury yield and cap rates being very similar to each other, but I think that they’re missing variables to this conversation. I think that in order to make their argument, they purposely left out those variables. That’s just my thoughts.

Kathy:
It’s a really interesting concept though moving forward that will… As cap rates get lower and lower, especially in commercial real estate, is it just a easier bet to go into treasury something? Right now the yield is 3.4%. There’s some cap rates that are below that.

Jamil:
True.

Kathy:
Again, there are other reasons to be in real estate, like the loan pay down, and like Jamil was saying, there’s other reasons besides just that cap rate that people like to be in real estate.

James:
Yeah. There’s the depreciation, that tax benefit. What this is really targeting is the single family housing space, not the large apartment. What it’s saying is that real estate’s always been an alternative investment. Because the amount of hedge fund money that has been put in it is actually starting to level out to where it’s actually tied to Wall Street in the stock market more, but this could be the big exit, which is great for investors. We can get back to buying things normally, and this is actually going to create a huge buying opportunity for people that want to stay in the game.

Henry:
Yeah. I think it’s great news for that first time home buyer or that person that was struggling to find something that they truly wanted to buy over the past six months to a year. In those popular markets where people are looking is where you’re going to potentially see some of these homes come back on the market. That’s a positive thing for the first time home buyer. I don’t think it’s a huge deal from an investor’s standpoint. There’s still opportunities out there whether this happens or not from the investor’s point of view and there’s still not enough inventory around the country in many cities. So even with that, it’s probably still a drop in the bucket compared to what we would need to solve the inventory issues.

Dave:
And just to remember, we had John Burns on the show recently who was talking about how much institutional investors really even impact the larger housing market. On a national level, it’s not very big, but of course, if you live in one of those markets like Charlotte or Atlanta, where they’ve been buying up crazy, this will have a much bigger impact. All right, James. Great story. I’ll give you an A. Great.

Kathy:
The pressure’s on.

Dave:
Oh boy. No, I need to inspire you for next time. This is a B plus. I can’t be giving out As on my first grade.

James:
Wow.

Dave:
All right. Well, let’s keep on the idea of rates here. Kathy, it sounds like you have some Federal Reserve rate wonkiness to bring to us. Is that right?

Kathy:
Yeah. I mean, I always want to focus on the Federal Reserve because at the end of the day they are the ones manipulating everything. If we’re not paying attention to what they’re doing and ahead of it, that’s where you can get caught off guard. That’s why I did that On The Market YouTube video with me on the beach, comparing what the Fed is doing in creating money or taking it out of the system to the tides.
This article, it’s from Bloomberg, and the title of it is, “The Fed is about to go full throttle on QT, but fear not”. What’s QT? It’s Quantitative Tightening. It’s a Fed action. Quantitative easing is when they’re stimulating the market and tightening is the opposite. That’s what we knew was happening all year. The interesting thing about this article, it’s a really technical article. I still think it’s super important for people to try their best to understand what the heck the Fed is doing. So read it, even if it’s boring and confusing. I’ll just read some of the subtitles in it.
A glut of cash. Institutions have more cash than they know what to do with, so they’re parking their money at the Fed. That’s all you really need to know right now is money is still sloshing around. Like my, On The Market, YouTube video, it’s still this tsunami of money circulating. The way that affects real estate investors, if you use that analogy, it’s like those beachfront homes, they’re going to be more at risk than the ones that are a little bit on higher ground. And yet, some of those beachfront properties are built for going through different cycles and other ones aren’t. Literally, where I live every year we were out surfing and there was wood in the water because certain properties patios… decks went out into the ocean when the high tide got there.
Certain properties are going to be affected. Certain areas are going to be affected when this much money is flooded into the market. There’s going to be damage. There’s going to absolutely be damage as the Fed pulls that money back out. That is what is happening. It’s been happening all year. The Fed flooded the market. When I say flooded, I was just looking up these stats… In March, of 2020, there was $15.4 trillion circulating in the Fred M2, look that up. Today, just two and a half years later, it’s $21 trillion still. So still today we’re $6 trillion, more money sloshing around even today with all this tightening going, all this pulling money back out with raising rates. We’re not there. There’s still too much money circulating. That’s why we keep seeing job growth. That’s why we keep seeing inflation. This is the story that isn’t told.
You’re not going to find this in this article and that’s confusing to me. It’s like, “Wait, the Fed created the flood.” Now they’re pulling it back. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t know what happened,” but they did it. To compare this again, to our last show, when we talked about how does this compare to 2008? This shocked me. I just looked this up today. In 2007, right in December. Right before 2008, when things really fell apart, there was seven… Are you ready, guys? This is crazy. $7.4 trillion in circulation at that time.
At the peak of the market last time, there was $7.4 trillion in circulation. Today, there’s three times that… $21 trillion sloshing around, not knowing where to go. The Fed is doing this reverse repo where they’re having the banks put it back in as they’re tapering. It’s just all a manipulated game. It’s all going to affect markets differently. That’s why from my real estate strategy, I stay out of the headline cities. We’re in the little areas that nobody talks about, the hedge funds aren’t going in there. We just stay in the little real estate that’s on higher ground, I guess you could say-

Henry:
Arkansas, not looking so bad now folks.

Dave:
It’s interesting because last week… We’re recording this in the middle of September, the Fed came out and… Excuse me, inflation data came out and showed that it ticked back up a little bit, at least for core inflation. It seems Kathy, that all this money sloshing around, that’s an indication that what the Fed is doing in terms of raising rates so far, hasn’t really had an impact on monetary supply yet… or ever.

Kathy:
So far, there does seem to be too much money circulating, but the mortgage rates that’s what’s affecting the housing market, obviously. Again, for those in shock or upset about it, just remember last year at this time, the headline news was, “Oh my gosh, home prices are out of control. They’re going up too fast and there’s nothing to buy and there’s 90 people at an open house.” That wasn’t good. Where we are today is a better place than that. Some markets will see price declines because prices just went up. I mean, in some markets, we know this 30, 40% not sustainable. Those markets are going to feel a pullback. Then again, Arkansas, maybe not. We’ll see. It’s all about taking cover in times when things are changing so rapidly and being in those stable markets where all this sloshing around, isn’t really happening, where it’s just the fundamentals.

James:
Well, one thing that I’ve been hearing, we’re a brokerage shop and we work with a lot of different investors. Like Kathy said, some people might not like this. The Fed definitely printed just way too much money, but we all reaped a lot of benefit over the last 18 months as investors. Our rents are up, our profits were up and as they correct this, they went way overboard. They’re going to probably have to go way overboard the other way to fix this. Right now people are locking up because they’re so afraid of where that tidal wave could come back the other way. At the end of the day, you can always just adapt. As they’re correcting… I mean, when they infuse that much money, we pivoted how we are buying to keep… to stay in the game.
As the Fed corrects, it’s just really important that you’re reading these articles that Kathy put together because you can read it and then just adapt your plan on the way out the door and just really pay attention to what they’re doing. But with that inflation’s ticking back up, I do think the Fed’s going to keep hammering on this. I mean, unemployment’s still at an all time low. We might see the same way they reacted to COVID, we might see it to inflation in the unemployment and people just need to prepare, find higher ground, like you said.

Kathy:
Yeah. James, when I say, be careful of the sloshy markets, obviously your market and Jamil’s, in Phoenix, these are markets that really saw a lot of population growth, a lot of people moving there, and a lot of bidding up. That’s still in play. The difference is now those people are getting better deals. In some of these hot markets, if people are still just dying to go to Phoenix, because it’s still cheaper than California or the same with Seattle, they’re still… It’s a better deal for them-

Dave:
I actually just wrote an article for BiggerPockets about this last week, how those markets are looking the most to bubblicious, to use Jamil’s terms, but they’re also, they became really hot for a good reason. It’s because there’s a lot of economic and population growth in those cities. They do offer really good long-term prospects for investing, but not in my opinion, at current market rates. If you can buy below market rates, it still could be a good long-term investment, as long as you’re not buying and catching a falling knife, as they say.
Jamil, that’s actually a great transition because your homework assignment came in and you wanted to talk about housing markets that are at risk. Is that right?

Jamil:
Absolutely. We had the opportunity to speak to Rick Sharga before, from ATTOM data, and he just released an article that I found fascinating because he was talking about the most vulnerable housing markets in our current situation. For me, and for anybody listening to this, I think this is super important to pay attention to because look, as real estate investors, we have to continue. We have to create opportunity. We have to look for where the opportunity is. We have to be like Kathy and we have to follow our instincts based off of not trendy things, not what looks attractive and what the headlines are talking about, but where the fundamentals are, where are we finding opportunity? Where are we finding real return? I think Rick gives us some significant insight into this.
What they’re talking about is the most vulnerable housing markets right now in the United States, 13 out of the 50 most vulnerable markets were in inland California. These are the variables that he’s looking at to determine that. He’s looking at affordability, he’s looking at percentage of unemployment, and he is also looking at the percentage of your total income that’s being used on housing. When you look at a market like Stockton, California, right now, the unemployment is 7% and it’s dramatically higher than the national average, but they’re also way higher. They’re also using over 33% of their total income to pay for housing over there.
You also couple that with not the greatest employment opportunities, you have a vulnerable market. I think that when you see that information, it gives you insight as to where you should be placing your funds if you are getting into real estate right now, especially for long-term buy and hold.
What I also found interesting where the other two markets that he found extremely vulnerable and that was in Illinois and New Jersey New York. There was significant vulnerabilities again, just based off of affordability, unemployment percentage and the percentage of income that is used on housing. Illinois actually being number two, many of the counties over there having significant affordability issues as well as unemployment. I think it’s very important to pay attention to that data when you’re looking at where you’re going to be purchasing.
I have to hand it to Henry because Henry has been beating the drum of Arkansas for quite some time and we should have all been bobbing our heads to the rhythm. Absolutely. The least vulnerable markets right now that Rick Sharga believes are great investment opportunities are in the south, in the Midwest, specifically Arkansas. When you’re looking at these opportunities, you got to ask, why? Well, again, affordability is very good over there. You can still get an incredible home, an incredible single family opportunity for well below the median price point of the primary markets that we’ve been talking about, like Southern California… coastal Southern California, and Phoenix, for instance, as well as the Midwest. There’s some significant opportunity for you as a buy and hold investor to find great deals, great long-term buys in the south and in the Midwest markets.
For me, as an investor who is looking to place capital, who is looking for opportunities for cash flow and possible appreciation over the next four to… 5 to 10 years, I am absolutely going to be taking Henry out on a date and to see if I can get him to sell me some great deals in Arkansas.

Henry:
When Rick says it, everybody wants to listen now, but when Henry says it everybody’s got their earmuffs on. All right.

James:
What a great opportunity though, with these bubble markets. These are really expensive, high appreciating markets that have good stability and a lot of good economy behind it. The good thing about it is they also over correct. This is going to be a huge buying opportunity just like March of COVID. The thing about those markets is that the demographics of those buyers a lot of times, there’s a lot of tech, a lot of wealth. They confuse themselves and they’re looking for that ultimate timing. They always want to time the market, which is impossible. You can read and try to prepare and trend right with it, but you can’t time it. What it does is it locks everyone up.
I mean, we bought three homes last week for pricing that I have not seen since 2016 and the opportunities are there. That’s why I actually started researching the bubble markets because those are the… Go where no one else wants to go. That’s where you’re going to create the most amount of wealth.

Dave:
All right. Anything else before we move on to Henry’s story for the week?

Jamil:
Wait, what did I get? You graded James. You didn’t tell me what my grade was.

Kathy:
I didn’t get a grade either. Yeah [inaudible 00:21:23]-

Dave:
Jamil, I’m going to give you a B minus for no reason at all. I honestly just made that up.

Jamil:
Fair.

Dave:
I don’t know. I just want to inspire you to do even better next time, even though that was a very good story. Kathy, I don’t know. I’m going to give you a C plus, because I’m just being a tough grader. I don’t know. These are based on absolutely nothing.

Jamil:
Damn, man.

Kathy:
That was my GPA, so I’m good with it.

Dave:
All right, Henry. See if you can win this game of completely arbitrary grades that I’m giving people.

Henry:
All right. My article, I just wanted to bring it back to rents. I think we’re hearing a lot about housing market conditions in terms of what it’s like to buy. Should you buy? We’re talking a lot about interest rates and that such. There’s a lot of investors, there are a lot of people who already bought. We’re in this world of landlording and rents. I pulled this article from CNN Business and it says, “U.S. rents are at a record high for the 17th month in a row.” I thought it was interesting from the perspective of, I wanted to hear your guys’ opinion on where you think rents are going to go.
Essentially, the gist of that article is saying that rents hit a new record high, so average rent, $1879 a month. That’s 12% up from a year previously. When it dives into some of the ancillary numbers you’re looking at when landlords are doing a new lease, they are increasing rents on average of about $300 a month. When landlords are doing a renewal with a current tenant rents are going up an average of $160 a month. That’s pretty significant. The article does go on to say that, “Rent prices are expected to cool,” but when it says cool, it’s really just talking about the percentage growth year over year might cool off, but not necessarily that your rents are going to come down.
For me, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. It’s hard for me to understand when, and if, rents do come down. I mean, traditionally rents don’t come down. We know that rents go up following housing prices rising. Rents trail behind it. In what situations do rents tend to come down? And I’m looking at this situation… Speaking from a landlord’s perspective, some of the things that are causing rents to go up are supplies… Supplies are harder to get, and cost more because of inflation. If you cost is a landlord, if somebody moves out and I have to renovate a place, even just small stuff, paint floors, making it fresh again… That’s more expensive now than it was a year ago. If I have to pay for that, we as investors are looking for, “What’s my return on my investment? How do I recoup the money that I’m spending?” That results in rent increases.
You’ve also got, labor’s more expensive. It costs me more in materials and in labor to update a place. It also is costing people more sometimes with property management. Property managers are raising their rates because they have to keep staff and it’s hard. I mean, there’s job openings everywhere. It’s hard to keep good people working. They’re having to pay more, which means they’re passing those costs on the landlords. Where do we see that break?
It’s good news, and from the perspective of, if you own properties, you should be able to get a solid return on your investment, but not great news for people who need to rent. Then as interest rates continue to rise, we are expected to see potentially another interest rate hike tomorrow… As interest rates continue to rise, home sales cool, which means less people are buying. They still have to live somewhere, so they have to rent. That also indicates that rent prices are going to increase.
I’m interested to hear what you guys think about rents in your areas, or if you own property, what you’re seeing as far as rent increasing and what do you expect?

Jamil:
Well, I’ve got a question because right now the writing on the wall says stability, in terms of where we’re going to hang out where we are in pricing for rent. I don’t believe it’s going to decrease anytime soon, but how do we account for the fact that there are layoffs coming, that people are in certain industries being let go from their positions? Talent is going to be on sale very soon.
Secondly, I think that this supply chain problems that we’ve been seeing will end up finding resolution. The kink in the hose can’t stay forever. We’re all staring at the hose. We all know where the kink is and the kink will relax itself. That will find a way out. Then in these markets where we have the vulnerability that we were talking about, where pricing could absolutely decline and people like James are going to come in and buy houses at prices that they paid in 2016, that investor is going to be inclined to decrease rent, to get that property filled up as quickly as possible so that their return is being generated faster than normal. Will there be ultimately a result where rent may dip because of these factors starting to normalize?

Dave:
I think realistically in some markets it could come down a little bit, but it’s really obviously everything going to be market specific, but just like with everything, the only way that prices come down is if there’s an increase in supplier reduction in demand and there’s not going to be… I think, the increases in supplier are going to slow down a lot. We’re already seeing pretty significant decreases in construction although, multi-family construction is much more resilient than single-family home construction. Demand, right now, is still strong because to your point, Jamil, there haven’t really been mass layoffs yet, which is good, but there… that is possible over the coming couple years.
I’m not seeing right now anyway where we’re going to see a huge glut of supply. I don’t really see that happening over the next couple of months on a national level. Demand could fall if there’s a really bad recession and then there’s a contraction in households. Basically, people move in with their friends or family and there’s a contraction in the total number of households that would reduce demand… It still seems, right now, that we’re not really that close to that. Of course, that could change. To me, I don’t really see broad rent drops on a national level, at least in the next six months or so.

Kathy:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I was going to say the same thing when you started talking, it’s all about supply and demand. There is new supply coming on and Phoenix is one of those areas that’s under careful watch. There’s 19,000 units coming online in Phoenix, in single family. There is new supply coming and I would keep an eye on that. That’s one of the great data points from John Burns Real Estate Consulting. I’ve been following him for 20 years. He comes out with that data of where the new supply is coming online and where permits and starts are above job creation. That’s a metric we’ve got to pay attention to. It’s not just supply right now, but what’s coming. Yeah. Just be aware, 19,000 units. Jamil, I think you mentioned last time that that could get absorbed, right? I don’t remember your stats, but there’s a shortage, so-

Jamil:
I think it was one house for every 320 people or some crazy stat like that. There’s still a tremendous lack… tremendous shortage of inventory. It’s going to be very interesting to see what’s coming around the corner.

James:
There is one unknown factor though that we have not seen before, which is the short term rental supply. There’s a substantial amount of inventory that was bought on that. I do know as the recession starts, things are cooling down. Those are not renting up as much. Those people might have to get those to market to pay because at the end of the day, they got to get those things filled and that could be an extra… It could be an extra form of supply coming our way that we’re not really expecting that aren’t currently in our market right now because they got taken by a different side. I do think we’re going to see more supply on that side.

Jamil:
James, any idea how many houses were absorbed in the last five years and taken from actual residences and turned into short term rentals? Dave, what do you got?

Dave:
Just know the total Airbnb supply is about 1.3 million units, which is about 1% of the total market.

James:
I think it matters to where?

Dave:
It’s very localized. Just like everything, it’s localized. Look at a vacation rental area, it’s going to be a significant amount.

James:
Then there’s been some cities that have been turned into vacation rental areas that maybe shouldn’t have been in the first place. I think those are the markets that the STRs could affect the most. Tahoe is always going to be a vacation rental market because it’s all way around. It’s those artificially inflated or created STR markets.

Dave:
I totally think that the hot short-term rental markets over the last couple years are going get hammered over the next couple years. We saw second home demand just go crazy for a while during the pandemic. That, combined with the boom in short-term rental investing, created huge demand in those places and it’s falling off. To your point James, if demand for vacation rentals from the guests perspective starts to come down, revenue’s going to fall. That could create honestly, maybe forced selling. I don’t see forced selling happening in a lot of markets, but that is one that potentially could.

James:
That’s where I think the foreclosures are coming. It’s going to be a wave of investment property.

Dave:
Yeah. I’m with you. All right. Well, I’ll give you my story and then you can all give me an F or whatever grade you want to give because I’ve just been a [inaudible 00:32:05] about it.

Jamil:
What about Henry? What did he get?

Dave:
Henry, you’re going to get a B, I don’t really know why, but it was pretty good. All right. My story is about new listings. I don’t know if you guys have been following this, but it’s something I’m really watching. Our friend Logan Mohtashami and HousingWire’s been highlighting a lot. New listings, just if you don’t know, is basically the amount of new homes that reach the market, which is a really interesting thing that we’ve been watching. We’ve been talking about ‘the lock-in effect’ over the last couple of months and whether people were going to sell their houses into a declining market where interest rates are much higher. It seems like the answer is a very hard, “No,” right now. We’re seeing that new listings have declined 18% year over year. They always start to decline after the summer, but it’s going down more dramatically and sooner than it normally would.
This, to me, has pretty big implications for what happens in the housing market, because we’re seeing rising interest rates deplete affordability, which takes demand out of the market. If people just aren’t going to sell their homes, that takes supply out of the market at the same time. It offsets at least some of the declines in demand. To me, is fascinating to see this all play out, because I don’t know if we’ve ever been in a situation like this where we might be entering a recession and the Fed is raising rates. People just don’t want to sell their house and it could lead to really low inventory.
Again, it’s all localized, but we’re seeing in some markets inventory, which is going up pretty rapidly, stabilized and start to level off in a couple of markets because fewer and fewer people are selling their homes. To me, it’s probably a backstop. I do think we’re going to see prices decline in a lot of markets, but this is a backstop on top of good lending practices that prevent it from being like a crash scenario that I know some people forecast that we’re about to see.

Jamil:
I love that story, Dave, and I’ve been monitoring it in Phoenix as well, specifically. Just for our own fix and flip business model because we are… We’re always looking at whether or not it makes sense for us to deploy more capital into more and more projects. I believe that this provides us at least some reprieve with respect to what we could see in the next six months for the inventory that we’re currently working on, that when we come and bring that inventory to the market, will we be able to sell at least a decent enough speed for it to continue to make sense? As hard as it is to say this, this is a silver lining, as you mentioned a backstop from creating a crash scenario. This is somewhat good news for me.

Henry:
I think too. I mean, yes, new listings are down. In my local market we’ve started to flatten out a little bit. It’s not necessarily down, but I think too, people are people, and they don’t always just sell because it’s the best financial decision. I think what we’re seeing is interest rates just don’t feel normalized yet. It’s still changing all the time. It’s supposed to go up again. Until it sits constant for a little bit people aren’t going to just feel like, “Okay, well this is just what the new normal is.” And then they start moving forward. Because there’s so much change, I think people are just sitting tight and saying, “Well, I don’t want to sell yet because I got to go buy something. That rate keeps going up and if I don’t have to sell, then I’ll just sit tight.” They’re being more conscious because they’re seeing the news and seeing the fluctuation.
I think, if interest rates level out for any sustainable period of time, that it’ll just be what they are and people will get accustomed to it. Then you’ll start to see a little more moving in the housing too-

Dave:
Just for reference for Jamil. I’m looking at the data right now. In July, there was 9,300 new listings in Phoenix. That dropped to 7,300 by August. In one month, that’s an enormous fall off. That is the level it was at basically in April, 2020… The toilet paper month where no one was leaving their house. That’s what we’re back at to right now. It’s just crazy if it falls again that… I don’t know if it will fall again, but that was pretty wild to see. I’m just curious if we’ll keep going.

James:
Yeah. I think part of that though is too, the absorption rates down so much is people aren’t seeing the sales go through so they don’t want to list their house. We’re in this transition period where they don’t have to sell yet or they don’t have the need or maybe they didn’t get laid off. They’re trying to still figure it out. Then a lot of people just, they already have FOMO. They go, “I missed it.” I think that’s why we’ve seen a sudden drop in listings because the inventory, whereas new listings are down, at least in our market, inventory is up 58% in the last month. It would jump to 58% and that’s just because there’s less transactions going on and it’s slowly back filling in. I also think it’s because people are just confused. They’re like, “Well, if I list today, I just lost X amount of dollars,” and that’s how they’re thinking. So yes, they may lock in, but there is one factor on that I keep watching is I read some report that 71% of people that bought their homes in the last 18 months are unhappy with their purchase.

Jamil:
Yeah. Regretted it.

Dave:
Really?

Jamil:
Yep.

Dave:
Whoa.

Kathy:
They didn’t get to do inspections.

James:
No, no inspections. They didn’t get to review the neighborhood. We saw it on our side. We sold 240 listings last year and it was nuts and people did not get to think about it. One thing that is always something I’m watching is that American consumers, they have gotten used to just going, “I don’t like this anymore. I’m just going to walk away.” That is a mindset. That’s where I do think the lock-in effect could not be, because if they just don’t like it, they don’t like it. I mean, if you are living in a house that you’re unhappy in, that causes lots of problems… That causes problems that you can’t even put data points on. It just makes the household unhappy.
Those are things that you got to watch because now they can’t sell because the values are devalued. They may have a good payment. They may have a good rate, but they’re not happy where they live and they’re underwater. That’s what we’re really watching is where’s the absorption rate? What are these new listings coming on? I think, the Fed gets done doing what they’re doing, that will increase.

Dave:
All right. Anyone have any last thoughts on any of the stories today, before we move to our crowdsource section?

Jamil:
Dave, I give you an A minus, just so you-

Dave:
Wow. You’re just sucking up to me, Jamil. I think I got an F because that wasn’t even a news story. I just looked at a-

Jamil:
No, no I was sucking up. I was absolutely sucking up. Yeah.

Dave:
All right. Well, now Jamil has won today. He gets an A plus. The rest of you have failed. We’re going to take a quick break, but we’ll be right back with some questions from the BiggerPockets forums.
All right, welcome back to On The Market. Today, we’re going to answer one question from the BiggerPockets forums. If you want to ask questions to the panel, go to the BiggerPockets forums. We have an On The Market forum specifically go ask questions there. You can even ask questions to a specific host or panelist. This one we’re going to be first directed at James. Then I want to get everyone’s opinion about this. It comes from Jennifer Sovia, from Seattle.
She says, “Hey, there I rent in Kirkland and I’ve been considering a house hack in the great Oak Seattle or Portland area. I see the market shifting and feel like I should wait until Q1. I was considering wholesaling and flipping in these markets too, but due to the cyclical…” Wow, I can’t say that word. “Due to the cyclical nature. It makes me cautious. I know James Dainard does well here, but I don’t have his experience or capital,” Jennifer, that makes two of us. “Any advice on these markets. Thank you,” James, what advice do you have for Jennifer?

James:
Right now, if you’re really looking to get into a property, don’t be over cautious because what we have seen is in Kirkland is actually the biggest prime example of this is because the market has transitioned, we’ve seen a lot of transactions just fall through the table. Builders locked up. Lot of tech population are locking up. In Kirkland alone, we saw a 32% appreciation in March alone. We’ve seen that pull way back down 28%. There’s this big pullback to where you can actually get into a property to where we’ve already seen the most biggest drop in that. We’ve seen about a 30% drop off peak in Kirkland alone. With rates going up, if you want to wait till next quarter, your rate’s going to be a point and a half higher, which is going to be another 15% on your affordability. I don’t project that the rates are going to… that the pricing’s… We’ve already seen that massive drop.
If you wait, it’s going to be, I think Kirkland especially is going to be at more of a trickle drop or any of these markets. If you wait too long, you’re just going to pay more anyways with your interest rate. As you’re looking at these expensive markets, or in the Pacific Northwest, look at what they were doing and how big of a drop it was. Those are the overcorrection drops. If you’ve seen a more of a steady one like in Capitol Hill is another great neighborhood in Washington, that did not appreciate at the same rate that Kirkland did. It just had a little bit of a different vibe to it. It was more of a steady growth during COVID. That’s not really coming down as hard either. It’s just kind of steadily sitting there.
If you’re looking at these expensive markets, look at how much it dropped off peak, and that will tell you when to buy or not to buy at the same time. In addition to, in a lot of these older, expensive markets, there are a lot of elder sellers that actually… Or sellers in general, that owe very little or nothing on there. If you’re looking to get into your first deal, they’re actually… They may have felt like they missed the selling window, at this point. If you’re low on capital, you can talk to them about carrying the note, carrying some paper and getting that deal done and people are a lot more open to it now.

Dave:
All right. Thanks, James. Appreciate that on Jennifer’s behalf. I do want to ask the rest of you about the general gist of this question. Henry, it seems like this question is sort of asking one, should I time the market? Two, is house hacking cyclical in the way that Jennifer presumes wholesaling and flipping is? Don’t worry, Jamil, I will give you an option to respond to that.

Henry:
I don’t know if I call house hacking cyclical. It’s just the numbers. It’s all numbers. It’s all numbers no matter which way you look at it, right? If you’re worried about whether you should get in now or not, the question really is, should I get in now at market rates? I think that’s what she’s asking. My answer to that would be, no. Right? Your biggest buffer to conditions changing is to be able to buy with some sort of a cushion. If you can figure out ways to find those off market deals from the people that need to sell, not want to sell… It sounds like based on what James said, there’s probably some opportunities out there on the MLS right now. If I were that person, I would go pull anything that’s been listed longer than the average days on market for that area. I would analyze them and start making offers at what you feel like you would like to get into that property for. Under market value offers where you feel like you can make money.
If you make 25 offers, you’re probably hear 24, “No’s,” but maybe you get one person that wants to negotiate with you. Then you land yourself a deal that you get under market value. Now you’re in it with some cushion and then if prices do come down 10, 15, 20%, well, you’ve got some cushion. If your plan is to hold it for the long-term, none of that’s really going to matter. You’ll still be able to make money through that.
It’s just about how you get into a property and if you’re going to house hack, man. Yeah. Even better, even better. Now you can still take that same method of making the offer that makes sense to you, even if it’s not what they’re asking. If you land something and then house hack it and now you don’t have to pay to live there… That sounds like a phenomenal strategy to me.

Dave:
Yeah. Absolutely. Especially with house hacking, you have to factor in the cost of renting against waiting as well. Kathy, I’m curious, I get this question all the time where people are like, “Why don’t I just wait to the market bottoms? And even if interest rates are higher and you are paying more, I’ll just wait for rates to go down and then I’ll refinance. Then I’ll have a house that I bought at a lower price. Then at some time in the future, get a lower rate?” What do you think about that strategy?

Kathy:
Everything depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Are you buying hold? Are you flipping? Are you living in house hacking? What are you trying to do? And start from there. If six months ago, let’s just give an example with Jamil’s very open process of the multifamily that he was going to pay almost double for and today, it’s half the price. Should the buyer today not buy that? Obviously the buyer today is getting a screaming deal. There are opportunities out there and I don’t worry. I don’t care what the interest rate is. I really don’t. I care what the deal is and what the cash flow is and the fundamentals of it. Again, I started investing when it was 9%… the interest rate. Yes, eventually rates went down and we got to refine the deal was even better, but it was good then when we first purchased and if it stayed at 9%, we would’ve been okay.
Again, I don’t care what the interest rate is. I personally think the interest rate is right where it needs to be and should be. 5/6%. This is not a bad rate. What’s bad is how high prices went because rates were so low for too long. If they stayed low, it would be a big mess… a bigger mess. If you could find a deal that makes sense at a 6% rate, get it. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re trying to get cash flow and it cash flows at 6%, the fundamentals are there still. Your tenant is paying down your loan for you over time. Look it up. Look at pricing over time. It goes up. It goes up over time because like I said, there’s three times the money circulating now then 14 years ago, that’s weird.
That is not something I think is going to change course. I think the Fed is addicted to creating money. Politicians like it. They like to spend money. Constituents like the politicians to spend money on them as we’ve seen. I don’t think this is going to change. I think inflation is here to stay. Inflation is not new. Again, just go look at the last 40 years it’s been here. We just maybe don’t see it as well.
Again, make sure you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and stick with those fundamentals because we’re seeing better cash flow now than we did six months ago. When I sound positive to people who don’t like it, when I sound positive, got to understand what I’m looking for, which is, “Oh my gosh, I have more options and I have better cash flow. I don’t care what the rate is. I really don’t.” I’m buying in areas where there’s massive job growth and diversification of jobs and they’re jobs of the future. These are chip manufacturing areas where $53 billion just came in. These are jobs of the future where factories are coming in and being built. They’re not going away. Anyway, just know your goal and stick with it.

Dave:
Always timeless advice. Thank you, Kathy. Jamil, there’s a question in here or in the question, Jennifer basically says that wholesaling and flipping are cyclical. Two different strategies, but I know you have experience with both. So can you share with us like, are they cyclical? And if so, how do you balance the cyclicality right now?

Jamil:
Absolutely. Jennifer, great opportunity to clear something up for you. I believe there’s an inaccuracy in your concept of what wholesaling and how it works. Yes, pricing is fluctuating and things are happening, but I absolutely crush it when the market is going up and when the market is going down. The fact is that in wholesale, what we are doing is we are looking for potential wherever it lies right now. If pricing is going down, if we’re making adjustments, we’re making adjustments, but there’s still buyers out there ready, willing, and able to take a deal. I just did a wholesale transaction where there was no other wholesaler was willing to pay what I was about to pay and I was able to still make a substantial assignment fee. I almost don’t want to say it because it’s so high, but it was an incredible deal and it’s happening in today’s market.
What I want to say to you, Jennifer, is I believe personally, a lot of times we will trick ourselves into finding a reason not to take action, not to get started, not to do the thing. Please don’t let that happen to you. Please don’t let the facts that interest rates are a little higher than they were last year stop you from taking action in learning a technique or a tool that will create massive opportunity for you in your life, financial freedom in your life for you, your family, and all of the people that you care about. Please don’t let this be a reason why you do not take action. It sounds to me like this is just like analysis paralysis and not a real reason not to go.

Dave:
It sounds like everyone thinks basically house hacking is probably not cyclical. Something that you could do and pretty much in any market, I agree. Wholesaling, I’ve never done it, but Jamil, I’m taking your word for it and trust that what you’re talking about. She did ask about flipping though, which I’m curious about. Not all of you flip, but Jamil, James, Henry, you all do, right? Kathy, do you flip houses?

Kathy:
Well, we flip to investors, right? We’re looking for the cash flow. Yes.

Dave:
What do you guys think just quickly? We only have a few minutes left here. As a newbie, I know you are all experienced, but as a newbie, would you be flipping houses in this market?

James:
I was flipping in 2008.

Jamil:
Wow. I would pause on that for me personally, I would wait just a little while to see where things were before I would jump into fixing and flipping and I would stick to wholesale.

James:
It depends on your appetite for risk. We were new in 2008 when the market crashed to flipping, but we didn’t have a choice and we had to figure it out. When the markets get hard, your job as an investor is to figure it out and meet with the right people, build the right team around you. The harder it is, the more rewarding it’s going to be. Get to work, build the right team around you. I mean, yes, flipping is very risky. I bought three last week. I bought them right. As long as you’re buying, right, and you can do your analysis right at the same time, you can get into the market.
It’s honestly the best time to learn. This is when you’re going to learn how to do the hard work and you’re going to make more money this way. I mean, to be honest, wholesaling and flipping are cyclical. If there is no demand from flippers, wholesaling becomes very hard as well. It’s all supply and demand. Right now, what you’re seeing is a lot of the flippers were newer investors that exited the market because they got a little nervous, but it allows the buy in opportunities to resume on normal math, not fake math of what the Fed’s controlling at that point.

Jamil:
Fake math. Love it.

Henry:
I think the latter part of what you said, James is spot on, right? It’s about the deal. My advice would be, not to worry about your exit. You need to worry about your entry point. If you can enter the deal at the right price, if you want to flip it, you’ll be able to. If you want to wholesale it, you’ll be able to. If you want to whole tail it, you’ll be able to. If you want to Airbnb it or short or long-term rent it, you’ll have the option and you’ll have more options, the better you buy that deal.
If you focus your efforts, your time, your attention, your energy on becoming a master of your market and understanding what good deals are and then understanding how to go out there and get ahold of those good deals, you can… Your exit strategy won’t matter. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.

Dave:
All right. Well, thank you all for answering Jennifer’s question. This is a great question. We got a lot of good debate and discussion out of it. Thank you, Jennifer. Again, anyone who wants to ask these kind of questions, you can do that on the BiggerPockets forums. Thank you, Henry, Jamil, James, Kathy, for joining us today for this episode. This was a lot of fun. You guys really all got A’s. I was just trying to be a hard [inaudible 00:53:42] for a little while, but you did it a great job.
And honestly, we’ve done the show format twice now and would love to hear from people in the YouTube comments or on Instagram, what you think about this format? I think it’s a lot of fun. I learn a lot every time we do this and would love to get everyone’s feedback. Thank you all so much for listening and we’ll see you again next time, On The Market.
On The Market is created by me, Dave Meyer and Kailyn Bennett. Produced by Kailyn Bennett, editing by Joel Asparza and Onyx Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. And a very special thanks to the entire BiggerPockets team.
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