All Forum Posts by: Joel W.

What if you switched majors to something like finance? That may scratch your investing itch and give you a good degree and something to help you get a lucrative career to start building your investing fund. 

The market is way over heated. Likely just not the right time to invest. Sounds like you're so eager for a deal that you're willing to over spend. If you're not paying in cash then you're probably just not competitive enough.

Some people say that it's always possible to find a good deal. That's true, but the market conditions can make it much harder to find a good deal. 

Thanks for the interesting perspective Matt. WB has definitely missed some good opportunities, and does not understand tech, but I think he's still right about it being a non-producing asset (not sure the right word for it). BTC's value is only determined by the demand for it, which I guess is the difference between speculation and investing. Of course, BTC and other cryptocurrencies provide value as a currency, but that's not the reason they are valued the way they are. And I understand why a mutual fund, etc., may have to invest in BTC, but that still doesn't make it right.

On a funny note, I recently saw a Dave Ramsey YouTube video where he answered a call from someone who made $100,000 off of BTC from a $1500 investment (after a lot of volatility I assume). DR of course was very much against investing in BTC, and he said he would be surprised if the guy could sell it at all. Obviously DR knows nothing about BTC, or any cryptocurrency, but that still doesn't make him wrong. The caller got lucky is all. There are probably just as many people that lost out on BTC. 

I read Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb recently. One thing that stood out to me from the book was his reason why Warren Buffett has made so much money. The reason is that WB has a very fine-tuned filter. He only takes good deals, and they don't necessarily come along that often. We in the RE industry could learn a lot from that. 

Warren Buffett thinks BTC is garbage, and that's good enough for me. You might as well go buy Canadian dollars and consider that an investment. Block chain technology itself may have some good uses, but BTC is just a currency. Unless you're arbitraging between currencies, what's the point of buying any currencies? I feel the same way about gold and other previous metals. They're supposedly a good store of value until their price tanks. Even if the price of real estate goes down you're still left with a producing asset (assuming you bought something that actually cash flows). 

Well, I think there's more than a 50% chance this place is 100% haunted. haha :) Good luck. I hope it works out for you what ever you decide. 

Hi, 

It was nice to meet everyone the other night. 

Here's a link to the PSU real estate quarterly reports I mentioned. https://www.pdx.edu/realestate...

Scroll down and you can find 2020's and 2019's reports. They tend to focus on Portland, but do cover the wider area, and larger trends in the PNW and the west coast in general. 

Enjoy, 

Joel
 

Hi John, I'm actually originally from the mid-west and I'm thinking of investing in Kansas City (either state) sometime in the next couple of years. I'm very nervous about investing anywhere in Oregon, although I would at least consider it if the price was right. You may be able to find something outside of Portland (Newberg, McMinnville, Salem), or even up in Vancouver, WA across the river, but I've basically written Portland off. 

What do you think of investing in Kansas in general? Seems to me that the coasts in general (at least until COVID) are way too hot/inflated. I want cash flow and don't think it's really feasible here. That said, I'm a newbie so take that with a grain of salt. 

Take care, 

Joel

Rant warning!

This is just another case of people with good intentions not knowing anything about the system they want to "improve". Rent and housing prices have been going up for a while now in Portland, as I understand it is driven mainly by increased demand from moving into Portland from out of state (from California). Not only is there state-wide rent control, a relocation fee you might have to pay if you no cause evict, there is also a tax on new developments, and you have to rent out to tenants in the order they apply. If you build a new multifamily building you have to allocate a certain percentage of those units to low-income tenants. This will greatly increase the cost of building new apartment buildings and decrease supply, exactly what Portland needs to be doing. It seems simply to me, we need to be promoting more development, more supply to fix this so-called housing crisis. 

These policies are simply going to increase housing prices in the long, the opposite of what Chloe intended to do. Add to that the $50 million they want to cut from the police, I'm not sure Portland will be a desirable place to live in the future anyway, which I guess is another way they can lower housing prices in the long-term. haha

Portland State University's Business School (the only redeemable part of that corrupt and dishonest institution) puts out a quarterly report on housing in Oregon. Highly recommend if you want to learn more. This 2019 edition explains all of the new policies, starting on page 4: https://www.pdx.edu/realestate... 

The good thing is that if you already own in Portland your property values are likely to increase, but perhaps only in the short term until the city is burned down by anarchist rioters. 

Whew, thanks for letting me vent. LOL. 

JW

I'd like to attend as well! 

I'll have to check out Cardone's 10X book. Heard there's some good ideas in it. But I have to say, when I saw him a while back with Tai Lopez I was off of Cardone. Wasn't sure how they could fit so much sleaze and ego into  one room. LOL